It's Our City is a project that uses TV, Radio and Web
to promote civic engagement in the Philadelphia region.It’s Our City TV: City budget crisis
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 am - by Matt Campbell. Filed under: Budget, It's Our City on TV.
Last night WHYY broadcast the fourth monthly episode of It’s Our City’s TV series featuring top city administration officials. This was a special broadcast due to the urgent nature of global economic crisis that is now taking its toll on municipalities. In this one-hour special Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and his Finance Director Rob Dubow discuss the one-billion dollar budget gap that faces the city over the next five years. The moderator is Dave Davies, a senior writer at The Philadelphia Daily News.
Click on the image to watch the show
Our next It’s Our City episode will feature the city’s Managing Director Camille Barnett who oversees all departments and is helping implement the new 311 phone system. This program airs Friday, Nov 28th @ 10pm.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Hi, this was a good forum with good information. But I’m still not buying Nutter’s approach to the crisis. I am totally with him about pushing the federal govt to step up to the plate (maybe Nutter and the other mayors should fly private jets to hand-deliver their letter) but I am still not convinced about cutting libraries, swimming pools, and fire dept services.
I am influenced by David Cay Johnston’s recent book called Free Lunch where he explains that govt hands out perfectly legal benefits/privileges to wealthy special interests at the expense of basic community services. So I am looking for details about the free lunches in this budget crisis. But so far I have only seen one editorial in the Daily News advocating for the Eagles to honor its agreement with the city and pay money owed related to the stadium deal, but the team refuses–and forces the city into costly litigation in the process. This money could keep the libraries open but there is very little discussion about the City pressuring the sports teams to pay their fair share. The Phillies parade is another example of how a city in fiscal crisis can pay for things when it really wants to–even though the Phillies really could have paid for the parade themselves and I believe that would be appropriate. Instead, another distorted situation occurs where Ed Snider gets to be portrayed as a hero for using his foundation’s money to keep the skating rinks open. But that money is a fraction of what Snider’s fortune comes at the expense of city taxpayers. I believe Comcast is another organization that free-loads off the city. I myself do not have the tools or resources to analyze those arrangements but I am hopeful there are some smart people out there who know the score and are willing to talk about it. I really believe these exploitive relationships cost more than libraries and swimming pools.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Given that the City has been on a spending binge since January I am disturbed but not
surprised at what has happened.
But why was it o.k. to allow the council to vote
themselves a 225% pay raise, wouldnt it be
better to work for no money during the fiscal crisis?
July 18th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Jct: There’s nothing wrong with small denomination municipal or California State IOUs if anyone can pay their taxes with them. When Argentina’s government workers were faced with cuts, their unions talked 6 state governments into paying them with small-denomination state bonds which could be used to pay for state services and taxes by everyone.
When the local currency is pegged to the Time Standard of Money (how many dollars per unskilled hour child labor) Hours earned locally can be intertraded with other timebanks globally! In 1999, I paid for 39/40 nights in Europe with an IOU for a night back in Canada worth 5 Hours. U.N. Millennium Declaration UNILETS Resolution C6 to governments is for a time-based currency to restructure the global financial architecture.
See http://youtube.com/kingofthepaupers
Too bad California IOUs won’t be accepted in payment for state taxes and services like state bonds were in Argentina. Too bad California IOUs will be denominated too big to use as local currency. Too bad Argentina people were smart enough to avoid the tent-cities catastrophe and California people are too stupid to follow their example.
If they make IOUs legal tender, I’ll take back every joke I ever made about Girlieman Governor Musclehead if he engineers the California state currency lifeboat.
But Philadelphia has an Equal Dollars system that could save them so they might be even stupider.