I was reminded by Philebrity’s commentary on the city’s recycling PSA posters that this week marks the beginning of weekly, single-stream, curbside pick up of recycling.  WHYY’s Bill Hangley did a story that ran on 91FM this morning about recycling that included information about the city’s Christmas tree recycling program:

City officials want 2009 to be a banner year for recycling of all kinds.  Last year the city made almost $2 million reselling used glass, plastic and paper.  Starting today the Streets Department begins picking up recycling weekly instead of every two weeks.  While the market for resold recycled material has plunged in recent months, experts say the cost of landfill space in the region will continue rising by several percentage points a year.  That means it will only get more expensive to throw things away.

Drop off locations for the Christmas trees are available on the city’s website.  It’s important to reiterate that this is a drop-off service.  If you leave your tree on the curb, it will be picked up and taken to a landfill.  I know this is somewhat of a hardship for folks without cars who, like me, walked their tree back from a street corner sales location, but perhaps the new Obama-esque trend of organizing will lead one of your neighbors (or you) to offer to take a few trees to one of these locations on your own car roof.

Click on the play button below to listen to the entire story.

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So while it will now be easier to remember when to put your metal, plastic, paper, cardboard and glass on the curb, 2009 will also see fewer fire companies in service in Philadelphia.  WHYY’s Tom MacDonald talked to Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers to get more information, including the city’s plans for the decommissioned apparatus and the fate of the fire fighters:

Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers says the 7 companies were taken out of service at this morning, and the firefighters were put on the detail of packing up and decommissioning the equipment.

Ayers: “It’s a whole process where the older trucks are pushed back into inventory, some of which will be ultimately sold by fleet management and others which will be in storage, used for backup vehicles of some sort and also as vehicles when we maintain some of the others they will be put into use until the maintenance work is done.”

The Commissioner adds once the packing and moving is done, the firefighters will report to their new assignments.

Ayers: “They’re being moved around to omit the overtime, and where we needed to call in a firefighter on or off duty and pay them overtime, we won’t have to do that now they will actually fill those slots.”

On a personal note, Ladder 11 at 12th and Reed Street is about a block from my house and is included in the two ladder companies that are now out of service - the other being Ladder 1 near Fairmount.  Undoubtedly, it won’t be long until a structure fire or fire-related death occurs that many say would have been prevented had one of the closed stations been in operations.  Those in the affected neighborhoods must now hope that everything the Fire Department has said about continuity of coverage is true.

Click on the play button below to listen to the story.

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If you are a home alarm owner, the annual registration fee with the City of Philadelphia is going up this year. The fee is now $50- up from $35 in 2008. But why register your alarm in the first place? The biggest incentive, from what I can tell, is that you won’t pay a dime if your alarm goes off accidentally two times; whereas if you don’t register your alarm, you will face a minimum of $150 in fines for each false alarm. Registering your alarm system is essentially like insurance in that you get a discount once you have three or more false alarms. For each false alarm, you’ll pay $75, instead of $150 or more if you aren’t registered. The rationale behind why residents get charged for false alarms, more or less, is to help offset diverting police away from more urgent matters. Most false alarms are preventable, but it seems unfair to pay the fine if something like faulty wiring or a power outage trips your alarm. Last year, residents were actually permitted three false alarms at no cost. But under the current financial mess facing Philly, Mayor Michael Nutter reduced the number of false alarms allowed from three to two to help generate more revenue. (See Nutter’s budget cut plan, page 14).

You might be wondering how Philly’s home alarm fees compare to other places. Over in Norristown, (Montgomery County), there’s no fee to register your home alarm and you get off the hook for three false alarms. But any more false alarms, and the police can write you a citation ranging anywhere between $50 and $300. Across the Delaware River, in Cherry Hill, NJ- there’s no home alarm registration fee. But if you rack up three false alarms, be prepared to fork over $106. Any additional false alarms, the township summons you to court. Ouch. Down in Baltimore, residents pay $20 to register a home alarm, which is $30 cheaper than here, and there’s no cost for two false alarms. But the third false alarm costs $50, and residents pay an increment of $50 for each additional one. By the eighth false alarm, Baltimore residents are paying $300. It gets worse. After eight, the increment shoots up by $100, and eventually to $1,000 after 14 false alarms. 

Anyway, if you want to find out more information about home alarm registration and related fines here in Philly, here’s the police unit number to call: (215)686-1584

Photo by Flickr user iFranz. Creative Commons License

Greater, Greater Washington’s Cavan Wilk posted a fantastic piece about the possible end of shopping malls that had me wondering what the changing economics of these staples of suburbia could mean for this region.  Wilk’s points to a recent piece in Slate that is among the first from outside of the traditional “urbanist” movement - where one would expect to find folks prescribing the closing of shopping malls - to call for a wholesale rethinking of the shopping mall model:

Even writers from the urbanist community don’t advocate wholesale closing of malls, acknowledging that malls are private property. While economic commentator Mike “Mish” Shedlock declared that the “Shopping Center Economic Model is History” back in April 2008, he made no comment about where to go from here; as a libertarian-leaning economics and finance writer, urban planning and infrastructure are outside the scope of Mish’s blog. As far as I know, no one outside the urbanist community has previously concluded that it would be okay or even positive for malls to go out of business, and for the stores to relocate to Main Streets.  What a year it’s been.

While conceding that it’s unlikely that all shopping malls will suddenly go away, Wilk does note that in Washington D.C. at least, a number of retailers are turning away from the auto-oriented locations along suburban arterials with large parking lots and focusing on downtown stores in walkable locations:

But these stores [Banana Republic, Anne Taylor, Express, Guess, Kenneth Cole] have found success opening stores in walkable urban places. In the District of Columbia, there are four shopping districts that support clusters of national retail chains that are usually mall-based: Downtown (Old Downtown clustered around Metro Center), Connecticut Avenue between Farragut Square and Dupont Circle, Friendship Heights, and Georgetown. Columbia Heights is emerging and has a different mix of retailers. Additionally, some clothing stores that usually locate in malls have opened shop in the Fenton Street development in Silver Spring.

Wilk concludes that are there are a couple directions that this retail-driven revitalization of urban spaces could go.  Large corporate chain stores like those cited above and other retailers like Apple could continue to bid up rents in previously revitalized places driving out the legacy mom-and-pop operations.  To some degree we may have already seen this with the recent announcement that Restaurant Row pioneer Brasserie Perrier lost its lease because of a sharp increase in rent over its original 1996 rent.  It’s unclear what will be moving into that prime location but it’s likely to be another national chain with the willingness to throw a ton of money around to be in Philadelphia’s premiere retail stretch.

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Maybe you’ve set out this year to exercise more, lose weight, save money, quit smoking, lead a less stressful life or do something else. While resolutions typically are a personal thing, what should Philadelphia’s resolutions be? Mayor Michael Nutter and City Council probably have their own ideas for Philly in 2009. But what do you want to see happen in our city this year? In what areas does the Mayor and City Council need to do a better job? After all, Mayor Michael Nutter is soon approaching his first year anniversary in office. Here’s your chance to give him some pointers. Don’t forget to also include any ideas for how the citizens of Philadelphia can improve our city this year. Happy New Year!

By Tom Ferrick

If the Mummers don't take action, this could be the only guy left watching the parade.

What would you call a big parade that hardly anyone shows up to watch? I would call it a failure. In Philadelphia, we have a different name for it. We call it the Mummer’s Parade.

News reports in the Daily News and the Inquirer made it clear that the crowd that lined up on Broad Street Thursday to see the Mummer’s strut their stuff wasn’t… well…a crowd. There were long stretches of Broad Street that remained empty all day. Even at prime locations (at the Bellevue, to name one) parade watchers ran only two deep.

Parade enthusiasts offered the usual excuses for the lack of audience. It was cold. The publicity about the city cutting off the subsidy money may have kept people away. The parade was shorter this year, but maybe there were fewer people because the usual string band performance spots were also cut back. Etc. and so forth.

But, here is the reality: Attendance at the parade has been slipping for years. It has defied various attempts to juice it (Remember the parade on Market Street years?). Cold is not an excuse because the parade used to draw five to six times the crowd it does today on more frigid New Year’s Days.

Lose your audience and you lose your reason for being. But, if the Mummer’s want to get serious about reclaiming their place as anything more than a folk curio, they are going to have to address these issues:

1. It is not a parade. A parade is where you stand and witness a continuous stream of performers, marching bands, floats, etc. that go by at a continuous pace. The Mummer’s Parade is a stop-and-start affair. And sometimes more stop than start - especially when it comes to the string bands, which is why 90 percent of the people go to the parade. You often have to invest four hours on a street corner to hear 60 minutes of music. In terms of pacing, it resembles the Stations of the Cross.

2. It is monotonous. I won’t go as far to say that if you have seen one string band you have seen them all. But, if you have seen four or five you have. There is a reason for this sameness: The Mummers are wedded to tradition. Changes in performance, selection of music, choreography and costumes come slowly and incrementally. There may be differences in the polish of the performances, but not in their basic structure. They follow rules and rubrics handed down from one generation to another. That’s why it is hard to tell one string band (or comic or fancy division) from another. Now, ask yourself this: Would you stand on a cold street corner for 7 hours to watch 30 troops of Boy Scouts pass by?  Same uniforms.  Same marching style.  Same insignias.  Same.  Same.  Same.  The charm wears off quickly.

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