Guest commentary
By Ed Pettit
If you haven’t heard, Philadelphia and Baltimore have been locked in battle over the literary legacy of Edgar Allan Poe. Well, maybe it’s just me who has been locked in a battle, but there
has been a lot of media attention. Most recently, the NY Times ran a piece about the [...]

By Tom Ferrick
The weirdest thing about the debate over the budget cuts proposed by Mayor Nutter is not what is being talked about, but what is not.
The public debate is all about closing libraries and reducing the number of fire trucks.
There is no talk - zero, zilch, nada - about what may turn out to [...]

Templeton Foundation in West Conshohocken awarded National Humanities Medal
Phila Mayor to hold 8 town hall meetings to discuss budget cuts
City tries to explains logic of budget cut selection
Friends of Library plans donor summit to save libraries
City of Camden starts Safe Surrender program

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 [...]

It’s Our Money’s Ben Waxman put together a helpful chart outlining exactly how Mayor Nutter’s many goals have been affected by the current budget shortfall.  Unfortunately, it looks like depending on changes to the pension fund to “improve fiscal health” seems to have been pretty short sighted and in desperate need of a plan B.  [...]

If I’m here much later, I may just get to share SEPTA Watch’s cool sighting:

A BSL train sat parked on the tracks.  It hadn’t pulled up all the way.  No one was getting on or off.  And as I walked towards it, I noticed that most of the windows were covered.
I had stumbled upon the [...]

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter announced today that he will hold 8 town hall meetings to explain to the public the criteria he used in cutting city services. In addition the mayor says he wants to explain what led to projected 1 billion dollar budget gap over the next 5 years.
Meetings will be held from 7-8:30/9pm [...]

Guest commentary by David McAllister
Philadelphia faces a fiscal crisis today, one that Mayor Nutter has said can be solved only with significant spending cuts.  This is, of course, not the first time the city has had a budget deficit.  Less than twenty years ago, money simply ran out leaving city departments unable to make payroll, [...]

To begin with, libraries are not libraries. They are sanctuaries.
This is especially true in big cities, where life can be hard and the streets mean. They are places for latchkey children to go after school. They are destinations for the elderly to ease the loneliness that sometimes comes with old age. They [...]

DN Editorial: Budget cut rationale doesn’t make sense

The bad economy has sidelined many of Mayor Nutter’s campaign goals

SEPTA costs are mounting and that can’t be a good thing

Mayor signs casino legislation over the weekend
Friends of Library to announce plan for fighting budget cuts