Guest commentary by Ed Schwartz

In mid-October I delivered  testimony at a City Council hearing prior to Barack Obama’s election on November 4th urging that the Mayor hold back on budget cuts until after the election and then assess what additional support we might receive from the federal government to ease our fiscal crisis.  Everything I predicted here has come to pass–and then some. Now–given the deepening economic crisis–leading economists are calling for a stimulus package of more than $500 billion. While there is still not the attention we need to the problems of local governments in most stimulus packages, the 10 Point Program set forth by the US Conference of Mayors  is a good start. It calls for $89 Billion in support for the Community Development Block Grant, the Energy Block Grant, the COPS Program, and a wide range of projects to strengthen our infrastructure. There are other proposals in the works that will help us even more.

Mayor Nutter has received national attention for bringing together a group of Mayors to request that the $700 billion set aside to respond to the Mortgage Foreclosure crisis be used to help cities gain access to credit. At a time when the City needs to borrow money to meet expenditures before revenues from the Real Estate Tax appear in April, this is an important priority. Without this help, the kind of fiscal disaster that faced the City in the Goode administration can happen again. That’s what did happen in the fall of 1988–and we never recovered.

But the nearly 575,000 people  in Philadelphia who voted for Barack Obama on November 4th weren’t thinking that this would create a great opportunity for a new line of credit in Washington. We were thinking about jobs and housing and safe streets and better schools and stronger support for our neighborhoods. That’s what Barack Obama  said he would fight for as President. And he’s keeping his promise. He’s made it clear that if a strong stimulus package–one that really helps the people of this country–isn’t passed in November–which is likely–it will be the first priority of his administration.

Whatever the Mayor of Philadelphia does or does not do in this situation is his call.

But we, the people of Philadelphia, need to raise our own voices in support of a stimulus package that genuinely helps all of us by investing in our infrastructure and taking national responsibility for the social problems in Philadelphia that we simply cannot afford to solve with the resources at our disposal. We need to fight for a stimulus package that provides direct and immediate aid to local governments facing the kind of deficits we face in Philadelphia libraries won’t be shut and recreation centers won’t be closed and the leaves will be picked up this fall and the snow will be plowed this winter. All of that is possible. But not if we sit back and assume that we can do nothing to make it happen. We can. And we should.

There will be a stimulus package in January. That is clear.

It’s time we all started talking about what we want in that stimulus package–and what we’re prepared to do to fight for it.

Ed Schwartz is president of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values in Philadelphia

Related links:

ISCV was established by Ed Schwartz in Philadelphia in 1973 to build a new politics of community focused on the fulfillment of America’s historic civic ideals.

Phillyblocks Network is a project by Ed Schwartz for community groups to coordinate meetings between block leaders and City agencies on neighborhood issues and problems