Residents working in small groups are giving Philadelphia's mayor advice on how best to balance the city's next budget

By Corey Abramson

The City of Philadelphia (much like the nation as a whole) is in the midst of a financial crisis. Currently, we are looking at another $1 billion dollar deficit over the next five years.

The way the Philadelphia fiscal plan works is helpful in some regards, and a bit overcomplicated in others. Years back, the state of Pennsylvania created PICA (the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority), a ‘fiscal oversight board’ to keep an eye on the city’s financial situation. Every year, PICA (as required by state law) oversees the balancing of a five-year projected budget from the city in addition to Philadelphia’s own yearly budget planning.

Last November, you might recall, the city did a lot of controversial cutting (libraries!) to close a $1 billion, five-year budget hole. Mayor Nutter then explained how he’d closed that gap at a set of eight town hall meetings.

When the new budget gap opened up this year, the University of Pennsylvania Project for Civic Engagement and WHYY organized four more open-forum-style meetings (very similar to The Big Canvas forums) for the arts held by The Great Expectations project) to provide citizen input before the mayor and PICA work out the 2010 budget. These four town-hall style meetings are known as “Tough Times, Tough Choices.”

The event I attended on Feb. 12 took place at St. Dominic’s School, 8510 Frankford Ave., in the Northeast. Upon entering the big auditorium, I was blown away by the sheer number of people in attendance. I was told to expect about 200-some people, but in actuality the event brought together about twice that, including not only taxpayers but civic leaders and elected officials.

In addition to small-group discussions, which served more of a ‘greater good’ forum, the event hosted two other ways for citizens to put out personal opinions and suggestions should they not get addressed elsewhere. The first of these was the “Wailing Wall,” a large poster space with a sea of Post-it notes from those in attendance. Anyone was allowed to write whatever he or she felt about the current situation facing the city. Additionally, there were rooms around the building for video testimony accounts from those in attendance.

First, an introduction and recap of the project from Harris Sokoloff of the PPCE and Great Expectations gave those in attendance an idea of what was going to be happening that evening. As he explained it, we were there to tackle a $200 million shortfall in a way that would have “…the least damage to quality of life.” The major weight of these forums over those held by the mayor in November comes from the fact that this is taking place before Nutter and City Council tackle the 2010 fiscal year budget later on.

After this, Chris Satullo (WHYY, formerly from the Inquirer) broke down the play by play of the evening. First would be a panel discussion with Camille Barnett, Stephen J. Agostini (from the Budget Office), Rob Dubow (director of finance), Clarence D. Armbrister (chief of staff at the Mayor’s Office) and James Eisenhower (of PICA). Mayor Michael Nutter was not in attendance intentionally.

GreatExpectationsNow.com explains: “The organizer of the event, the Penn Project for Civic Engagement, thinks it would be most helpful if the focus of these workshops remains on citizen judgments about the budget choices facing the city. The goal is to try something different from the town meetings the mayor held late last year. To keep the focus on citizen views, it was suggested that the mayor not attend, but instead send his senior staff to give information and hear citizens’ input. Mayor Nutter agreed.”

The panel section was quite lively, with Chris Satullo providing well-constructed questions. One of the first questions posed regarded President Obama’s interaction with the city. There was agreement across the board that the city cannot wait for a federal helping hand. Additionally, panel members cited state laws and charters that could get in the way of immediate revival even with help from up top.

As far as a potential stimulus bill, the panel responded, “The stimulus money is for infrastructure [and for the schools] and not really for operating on a budget.”

Satullo asked why so much of the focus was on cutting costs, rather than, for example, raising taxes on suburban commuters to preserve programs. The panelists answered that much of the problem stems from built-in, long-term costs that can’t be acted upon in the short term for an annual budget that Nutter has to present to Council on March 19. If you start cutting into the “discretionary” part of the budget to save money, those cuts hit services quick.

One panelist explained the difference between built-in and discretionary costs as the difference between the big amounts a household has tied up in things like a mortgage or utilities as opposed to expenses for quick, retail purchases such as renting a movie for home.

Following the panel discussion, the masses were broken down into 11 small groups. Each one had a pair of moderators. The goal of these smaller groups was to take the “Citizen Work Sheet” provided to each participant and fill them out after discussing them.

Within the citizen work sheets were 26 areas of the city’s budget as well as multiple ways we could cut them fiscally to allow for less of a gap in the budget. Each category (for example, the recreation sector) had a certain amount of points (each point counting for about $2 million) assigned to varying degrees of potential cuts (as for recreation, a 10% cut worth two points, or four million in the budget, would cut 68 positions and account for a “decrease in hours, programs and participation while a 20% cut is worth three points, or $6 million and would close 28 rec centers and end after-school programming and so on).

Harris and Chris who handled my large breakout group drew up four specific categories:
1) Low Hanging Fruit: “The easily discarded things.”
2) No Way, No How: “Not going to cut these things.”
3) Shared Pain: “These are things no one wants to cut, but that we can cut fairly.”
4) Gut Wrenchers: “Hard to agree on; may require further deliberation.”

After explaining the four categories, the breakout groups discussed in which categories the specific cuts should be placed. The discussions went on for quite some time, as there were many people in my breakout with special interests. For a full rundown on how my group, “Breakout Group M” divided up the points and cuts, as well as the other 11 groups, you can head over to the PPCE feedback Web site.