Now, high-level city employees at center of DROP controversy

City Council last week took the first step to bar elected officials from cashing in on the city's deferred retirement option program, a practice that had been criticized from the mayor's office to the state Capitol. But another DROP controversy continues.

The rules of DROP are this: In exchange for agreeing to stay four years and picking a date certain for retirement, employees can collect their pension and salary over those four years. It gives employees an incentive to stay longer and is supposed to give the city four years to train a replacement. Elected officials have come under fire for being able to collect their DROP payments and return to work. But a number of high-level employees also continue to collect their DROP payments and come back to work because their employer regards them as indispensable.

Most recently, the administrative director for the Fleet Management Department, Robert J. Fox, was allowed by Mayor Nutter to remain in his position after collecting his DROP payment. And the Board of Ethics last month decided to keep its general counsel, Evan Meyer, with a spirited defense by board chairman Richard Glazer.

"Refusing to rehire such an exceptional person for a relatively new and underfunded agency because there is controversy over the efficacy of the program would be wrong, self-defeating, and not serve any public interest," Glazer told board members.

The DROP payments for Fox and Meyer were unavailable from the Pension Board on Friday, but based on their expected pensions, Fox should have collected at least $270,000 and Meyer about $200,000.

And now the Pension Board itself is considering retaining interim executive director James Kidwell after his DROP date in April because officials have not found anyone to replace him. Pension Board vice chairman Bill Rubin said the board had planned to replace Kidwell in his previous role as deputy executive director. But with the departure of executive director Gwendolyn Bell in January, the board has yet to hire a replacement and might need Kidwell for several months beyond April.

Former City Controller Jonathan Saidel, who was on the Pension Board that supported the creation of DROP in 1999, doesn't like to see either elected officials or high-level employees return from DROP. "It just doesn't look right," Saidel said. "Maybe it's legal, but it's not anything I anticipated we would be doing."

Mayor Nutter, a leading critic of elected officials' participation in DROP, said through a spokesman he retained his general opposition to employees DROPping and returning. "But he also understands that there are circumstances when a closer look is warranted," said Doug Oliver, the spokesman. "In general, the idea is that these will be few and far between."

- Jeff Shields

It does not seem sporting to pile on the Streets Department, given that its employees have just cleaned up their third significant storm in the snowiest month in Philadelphia history. But the fact is the department fell down badly on trash collection in some sections of the city in February.

Delays of a few days or even a week might seem perfectly reasonable in light of the epic snowfall.

But on at least some blocks - the department puts the number at 50 - garbage languished uncollected for three weeks or more.

Most of those properties finally received trash service last Thursday, but by the end of Friday's storm, garbage was still piling up on at least a few of those blocks.

Most of the bypassed properties are on small streets or put their trash on private alleyways. Those small streets and driveways were unplowed and impassable for the big trash trucks, Streets Commissioner Clarena Tolson said, though smaller recycling vehicles made it through to at least some of the neglected blocks.

Residents, though, wondered why the city continued to ignore their streets last week even after most of the snow from earlier storms had melted.

"I'm just very disenchanted, and the suburbs are looking better and better," said Lynn Bornfriend, a Fairmount resident who said her small street was piled high with uncollected refuse.

About 13,000 Philadelphians called the city's 311 service last month to ask about trash collection, and most of them had dialed up to lodge a complaint of one type or another.

- Patrick Kerkstra

It took six months, but James Peter McNulty of Upper Dublin is finally free of about $3,500 in tickets issued by the Philadelphia Parking Authority. His middle name is important, because it was actually James Patrick McNulty who got the tickets.

James Peter McNulty informed the PPA in August, just a few days after receiving the incorrect notice from the agency that he owed it money, that he did not own the auto tag in question. The city's Parking Violations Branch wrote back in September to say the tickets were his.

In October, he provided documentation from the state that the tag was not his and told them that James Patrick McNulty had stolen his identity before.

Last month, he got notification that about $1,200 of the tickets did in fact belong to the other James P. McNulty. It's not clear why the resolution took so long. The PPA says the city's Bureau of Administrative Adjudication, which hears parking disputes, should have resolved the matter.

At the BAA, executive director Clorise Wynn said she wasn't sure what took so long but promised that James Peter McNulty would no longer be billed for any tickets.

McNulty said he would feel better about it all if, during his six months in bureaucratic limbo, he had been able to talk to someone instead of writing.

"You couldn't print them," he said, when asked for the words to describe the city's parking and collection practices.

- Miriam Hill