It’s Our City will post a video of last night’s meeting later today

Empty seats at last night's town hall meeting

The City of Philadelphia was expecting 500 people, the number looked closer to about 300 who turned out at the mayor’s first town hall meeting at South Philadelphia High School. With seven more town hall meetings it’s too soon to say whether the smaller than expected crowd bodes well for the Mayor Michael Nutter who has come under fierce criticism for recently announced budget cuts to libraries, pools and other city services.

Mayor Nutter called the current economic climate the worst since The Great Depression

If you were expecting that most of the crowd would give the mayor a hard time for cutting libraries and fire department services, you were right. Those two issues dominated most of the pleas and in some cases scoldings that citizens dished out to the mayor and his department heads. Most of the library backers tried to point out what they felt were contradictions in his campaign promises for fighting crime and now closing libraries. One citizen suggested that by closing library branches the mayor would be taking away one of the critical tools that keeps kids off the streets. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey fired back that he wished that were true, but that in his experience the kids who were committing crimes were not the ones who go to libraries.

There were large number of people who couldn’t understand how a mayor would dare cut services designed to protect the citizenry. One man said that by closing a fire truck company near a school could lead to the tragic deaths of children and that if this ever happened it the mayor would have to bear the responsibility. To that Nutter said that it was professional firefighters who had help advise him on the cutbacks and that he was well aware of the responsibilities he has as a mayor to the public.

Woman standing up to be heard by the mayor

Watching the citizenry line up one-after-the-other to bash the mayor for budget cuts, in many ways was an incredible contrast to the euphoric honeymoon that Nutter enjoyed in the spring and summer months. Once the mayor announced in September that city services would have to be cut by more than $100 million over in this fiscal year that ends June 30th that happy image of Nutter taking his daughter to school seemed to fade away forever. Mr Nutter is now the bearer of bad news and the public is venting its anger on him. So in many ways it seems that Nutter knows that the public needs a punching bag, and the town hall meetings are his way of saying go ahead take your shots.

To some extent that’s true, because the mayor told the crowd that the budget cuts he announced will take place for fiscal year 09. Meaning that unless private money can be arranged to keep facilities open their fate is sealed for the next seven months. He did say that he and his department chiefs are taking into consideration the comments into how he’ll draft the budget for the next year that runs from July 1, 2009 - June 30th, 2010. So make an effort to show up at the next town hall meeting

Monday, December 1st @7pm
Kensington High School
2051 E. Cumberland Street

List of all town hall meetings