It's Our City is a project that uses TV, Radio and Web
to promote civic engagement in the Philadelphia region.Government watchdog website Hallwatch in Philadelphia to shut down
Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm - by Matt Campbell. Filed under: Uncategorized.
Long time city watchdog Ed Goppelt reports on his website this morning that “Hallwatch to cease operations” on Feb 26 @ 11:59pm. The site started in March 2001 after Goppelt learned that the Philadelphia City Council was considering fining owners of noisy dogs. Goppelt who owned a part-pit bull named Emmy Lou said he became frustrated that he couldn’t get any answers from the city. So he started publishing a website that listed everything from contact information on city council members to what bills were being introduced. Fast forward to 2009 the website now includes an impressive collection of original reporting on the local fight over casinos and of regional property values. Ed has been private about what he does when he’s not working on Hallwatch but one might guess from his stories that he knows a lot of real estate and local zoning issues.
His website doesn’t give a reason for why he’s shutting it down but he’s had a good run. I have tried reaching out to him and hope to hear from him soon. Thanks for your work Ed.
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Too bad. I love Hallwatch. When Mayor Nutter did his town hall meeting rounds, I asked him about the $500,000,000 owed to the city in back property taxes (as reported by City Hall and posted on Hallwatch). Nutter gave me some lame excuse saying they can’t collect all the taxes because some debts are too old - Bullshit. If property tax is owed on property, no matter how old, the property is legally allowed to be seized by the sheriff’s office and put up for Sherrif’s Sale. This is done in every single other county throughout Pennsylvania. Not in Philly — There are zipcodes in the city where nearly 60% of property owners don’t pay property taxes. It’s a lot easier to close down libraries than kick out deadbeats who don’t pay taxes, I guess. Hopefully someone else will fill Hallwatch’s shoes and bring this information to the attention of tax-paying, concerned Philadelphia residents.
January 26th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Does anyone know how he was able to sift throught the tax data and compile the tax delinquency stats that he posted on the site?
February 25th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
@viragophilly: This is definitely a late reply but from what I read at YPP, “Ed used some nifty SQL queries and scripts, running his site with Zope, which is fairly intuitive and easy to use. He had to pay for the BRT data (as do we all) on a monthly basis.”
February 27th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
[...] closed this week was Ed Goppelt’s Hallwatch.org. It was a local government watchdog website that went offline last night at 11:59 p.m. He gave us some warning when he posted this on his site last month. Ed [...]
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:45 am
I’m disappointed to learn that Hallwatch.org is shutting down. This website have been very useful and is helpful to those who use it. For example, I check different part of the city to see if the property taxes is fair but it wasn’t. I was shocked to see the people who live Port Richmond, Kendington, etc. has paid taxes a lot less than we’re paying. Now I see why we’re the one who carry the city with hig taxes. This is so unfair.
March 7th, 2009 at 1:38 am
I can speak with some authority as I used to do to grunt work data munging for Hallwatch (shame to see it go). For those interested in taking up the Hallwatch gauntlet the delinquency data came from the Department of Records (which I think we got for free if I recall ), which was then merged with the BRT data (which cost $100 back when I was doing it). If you need support, contact the Center for the Study of Economics (http://www.urbantools.net/), they would probably help with a new hallwatch if someone volunteered.
April 16th, 2009 at 6:05 am
sux, hall watch has been great for my research over the years , now I have money to buy property/s and now its just more work for me as far as info gathering, well thanks Ed for all your hard work , love to see what you do next.
peace.
September 9th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I miss Hallwatch. As an architect i derived much information at the commencement of a project and during permit processing. I was able to check ownership of lots and eliminate phony business deals based on fraudulent use of others property. The information was better than that issued by the City agencies. It was a one stop information site. I would be willing to pay a subscription price to get it back on. I hope he reconsiders.
RCH International-Phila Offiice
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Hello Brian Cole, I am capable and would like to look into recreating hallwatch.
Could you please contact me at whyyblog@phor.net.