By Patrick Cobbs

The third of four citizen forums on the city’s budget crisis was Feb. 20, and I’ll be honest, I arrived at St. Monica’s Catholic School in South Philadelphia full of doubts.

Would there be anything interesting to say about an event that was sure to be a carbon copy of the one I attended a week ago? Is five years of $200 million-a-year belt tightening, which law requires the city to do, even possible? And mostly, will the city listen to its residents or is this “civic engagement” really just a tool to breed public complacency for policies that hurt people?

Part One: Filled with Doubt

Chicago is why I worried about this last thing most. Fiscal year ‘09 in Chicago was even worse that it was in Philadelphia - they were down some $420 million because of the recession. Twice what we face now. And they had a series of highly publicized public hearings prior to budgeting, too, like we’re doing now. In fact, they’ve been doing those pre-policy budget hearings for so many years reporters seem barely to cover them anymore.

In a recent phone conversation with Paul Meincke, a reporter for the ABC affiliate in the Windy City, he offered to search his database for me to see what local press those hearings got beyond his few articles on the station’s Web site. He couldn’t find anything.

Worse was the locals’ feelings about those meetings in Chicago.

Meincke called it “a big squawk.” Mayor Richard Daley spent something like $5 million to hire “an army of public information officers” to chat up these events, Meincke said. And on their real impacts to policy he seemed none too happy.

“It gives you the impression that there is open, honest government,” Meincke said. But, “With these hearings there was a common complaint that the city has already made up its mind.”

Most Chicagoans thought it was a show. The mayor was going to do what he wanted anyway. And he did, Meincke said, and made lots of people mad.

This all sounded too familiar. Sentiments like these and more came up at the first Tight Times, Tough Choices forum in our own Great North East. I’m no budget wiz, but I had to agree with many of them. It just seems like we ought to do better getting the money we need from a $3.9 billion budget without virtually mandating cuts to basic services as most of the forum work groups I visited the week before unwillingly veered toward.

Enter: Aaron Couch, Web developer and member of the Coalition for Essential Services, orange flier in hand. My friend Albert Yee introduced me to him in the lobby of St. Monica’s before the third forum got up and running.

He handed me the flier. “We want people who participate in the forums to know that there are other revenue generating ideas,” he said.

And how!

There were four new options on that paper, which was set up identically to the official work-sheet grid for the forum work groups. Together they generated a total of at least 680 “points,” or more than $1.2 billion of new money. And they looked just as plausible to a layman like me as the 26 mostly cost cutting options on the official work sheet, which only totaled something like 177 points on the cut side and 57 points in revenue generation.

Remember, the goal for each work group is to reach 100 points.

While softening some images of anorexia I formed over our $200 million a year diet, Aaron’s flier also raised the stakes for my biggest fear: Would the city listen? Or would my posts wind up as part of a Chicago-style public relations campaign to sell residents a done deal?

To be clear, there are obvious differences between these forums and the ones Meincke told me about. Probably the biggest: the Philadelphia forums are not city-run. The nonprofit Penn Center for Civic Engagement (which also paid me for this article) runs them, working with the city.

Thursday night, that agency’s executive director, Harris Sokoloff insisted that his group was in no way beholden to the administration’s agenda. “Yes, we are working with the city, but we do not, however, work for them,” he said.

And PCCE’s long history of good works seemed convincing enough of good intentions.

So then, what are Mayor Michael Nutter’s intentions?

Some indicators seemed to come out at the beginning of Thursday’s forum when a panel of city officials addressed all 350 attendees at once to give an overview of the city’s budget situation.

The director of the City Budget Office, Stephen Agostini, described the nutshell. More than half of the city’s budget is tied up in “things we can’t touch,” he said. That would be debt service, utility bills, pension payments and other contractual obligations. What’s left is $1.8 billion of squeezable money, close to half of that going to police ($525 million) and fire ($190 million), with prisons, streets, human services, public health, etc. to round it out.

With that in mind, “If you’re going to solve this problem, you have to go where the money is,” Agostini said to the big group.

The message from the overview was clear: Sure there are lots of other potential money making options out there, but cutting services and modest tax increases are the most doable things within the fiscal year (prior to July 1).

Practical, yes, but not too hopeful.

That’s when something inside me took shape. Standing in that gymnasium surrounded by people I had never met and would never see again, I realized we had something pretty important in common. We wanted something that would not come out of panel discussions or fit on budget work sheets. And we wouldn’t find it in news articles or reassurances from politicians. We might not even get it by standing up and speaking our minds, as a frustrated Madeline Shikomba of South Philadelphia did in the middle of that big meeting when she said, “The overview? I got a question about your overview.”

We were there, I think, because we wanted to know that we were going to make it. Things might get worse and times may get leaner, but I got the sense that most of the people standing around me were most concerned with that loss of hope.

More murders, more cop killings, more poor people freezing in the winter, or roasting in the summer, more young people dropping out of school and edging closer to the overcrowded queues outside of our prisons - these are the things that tear at a city’s soul. We don’t want any more of them. And if I had to make a bet on just what message most people wanted city officials to take back to their desks from these forums, I would go with something like that.

Part Two: Anybody Seen the Hope?

Another big thing about these forums is that the city promised to listen to what people said in them, according to Sokoloff.

Promises, schmomises. I brought the case of Chicago to Stephen Agostini.

The first thing that struck me about the budget director, as the crowd filled out of that big room, was that he was an easy guy to stand next to. Not too big, but that wasn’t it. It was more about his bearing. Confident, yes. Before coming to Philadelphia a year-and-a-half ago, he had already done the city-budget thing for Milwaukee, Seattle and San Francisco, so why not confident? But he wasn’t gleaming with it.

He didn’t shift on his feet either, and his big, brown eyes didn’t look past me to something more interesting or drill into me like two diamond bits. What I got was - I hesitate to say it - openness, and a sense that he was in the midst of something very new.

“The [civic engagement] process here is unlike anything I have ever been involved with,” he said, referring to the forums. “Yes, we’re listening. There are staff people in my office and the Managing Director’s Office - there are people who are reading everything.”

Since the forums began, they have become a common preoccupation in City Hall, he said, and many of the sentiments and ideas coming out of them are making their way into meetings and policy discussions already.

“We are really interested in what people have to say,” he insisted.

Even before he took the job, the concept of reaching out for greater public input on policy was a point of discussion during his interview with Nutter. Agostini even held his own pre-policy town meetings on the budget last spring, but the speed of this economic crisis, which he described as “really breathtaking,” knocked Nutter and Agostini off their game.

“That incredible speed required us to do some things that… we would have done differently,” he admitted.

Then in December the mayor made it clear that it was time to create Philadelphia budget policy in a very different way. That’s when the public engagement option really started to take shape.

Okay, but what about Chicago?

He told me that he knows some people have called the forums “staged” and some have complained that the workshops are stacked with “set ideas.”

“No,” he said. “We are listening. We don’t have a firm sense of what we need to do yet, and we are really looking to these events to know what we should consider.”

At a time when most other city governments would be trying to get proposals done, he insisted, “we are really waiting.”

Part Three: The Heart of it All

The third major detail of these forums that supposedly sets them apart from other municipal approaches is the emphasis on citizen work groups. This is certainly true of Chicago, which follows the old and tired crowd-asks-the-panel-questions model, according to an email from Dan Mihalopoulos, City Hall reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

These groups are what Sokoloff called the heart of the forums. The theory goes, by getting regular people together to work through real (albeit simplified) budgeting issues, the city will be able to see two things. One, what is important to people, what they will accept and what they won’t. And two, new ideas.

The first part reminds me of a political focus group, so I had some confidence in that portion of the process going into Group Seven at St. Monica’s School on Thursday night. I was more skeptical about the second part.

Let me set the stage.

Picture a classroom, normal-size chairs in a large circle, desks pushed against one forgotten wall. There is a clock, two doors, big windows, two giant chalkboards hung with several pads of chart paper, a PA speaker that crackled noisily once or twice from high on the wall, and those yellow florescent lights that we all know and love humming away above us.

Twenty four residents, most white, some black and Latino, sat in the circle facing Franne McNeal who facilitated - I mean, “moderated” the group. Two little girls, Aminda Kirshenbaum, 10, and Ruth Duink, 2, played quietly in a nook near the windows.

McNeal later explained that Sokoloff is very clear on her title. A moderator is someone who people’s comments and ideas go through, like a conduit. A “facilitator” might be seen as generating discussion, and that’s not what organic citizen input is about.

No sweat, though. McNeal was well-suited to the job. As a business coach by day, she uses a thing called “appreciative inquiry technique” to get all the nine-to-fivers in sprinting shape. This seemed to work for Group Seven, too, mostly.

“It’s a process of asking questions to help people discover things in a positive way,” she explained.

From what I saw, it seemed a lot about validation. No expression of emotion, or fact, or factoid off limits, or at least, not condemned. Contrary to many of the municipal meetings I’ve covered as a reporter, where residents only get a short few minutes to speak and rarely get a response at all (think of Chicago), a central goal in this group was to encourage conversation, expression and give and take.

As McNeal said, “Disagreement is fine, but what we’re trying to capture is where the passion is.”

Carol Lydon assisted the group, too, by noting all the concerns and points brought up during discussion. All of them. As a paralegal, she’s good at this. A look over her collection of giant Post It chart paper, (which clung to every flat surface of one wall by the end of the night,) and a reporter gets a good idea of where the group’s been.

And this goes back to the work group’s goals. Not so much to win the budget-cutting game and chop all $200 million from the books, but to work with the task, make comments, make objections, make suggestions and make compromises. Interaction and new ideas. And write it all down so lucky people like Steve Agostini can read it when he prepares the new budget for March 19.

Speaking of Agostini, one of his troops was also there, way in the back. Assistant Budget Director Maia Jachimowicz looked nothing like the villain you might expect from a government official bent on making the city worse for everyone. In fact, she didn’t sneer, scoff or scowl, or try to steer the group in any way. Mostly she just stayed quiet until someone needed information that was not on the hand out. Then she gave it, no questions asked. She even smiled from time to time.

The group was off and working minutes after sitting in the chairs. And, credit to McNeal and Lydon, no sense of having to rush through the task entered the room then, nor even did the faintest expression of regret surface later, when the group only reached 57 of 100 points. Chalk up one for quality of interaction.

But then something very subtle happened early in the meeting that struck me. It involved our friend Aaron Couch and his hopeful orange flier. I had to wait till everything ended for it to finally prove out. And it did prove out, in a surprisingly big way. I’ll tell you about that thing later.

Along the same lines and immediately after the Couch incident, Bob Coyle, 48, of South Philadelphia objected to the work-group focus. “To be honest, I know you say you are transparent, but I respectfully disagree. Even the way it’s [the worksheet is] laid out, I mean if you were really serious about generating revenue, I’m skeptical.”

McNeal was not condemning at all of Coyle. Her voice was kind and her gestures open, but she was quick to stave off any further discussion of forum design by reiterating that the goals of the forum were about group work on the official work sheet.

“And, Bob, if you are not comfortable with that -” she began.

“Oh no, I’m staying,” Coyle interrupted.

The rest of the night was pretty smooth sailing. As with other groups I visited during the first forum, Number 20 on the work sheet, make the Eagles pay $8 million in back rent on The Vet - yes The Vet - was the first action the group agreed on. That took about 30 seconds. Other “Low Hanging Fruit” included Number 16, cutting the city’s vehicle fleet by 800; Number 24, raising the sales tax from 7 percent to 7.1 percent; and Number 17, increasing the city’s amusement tax from 5 percent to 6 percent of ticket prices.

That was a quick 16 points in the win column.

Next task was to determine the off limit, or “No Way, No How,” items. This was also a pretty speedy process. By 75-percent majority vote the group agreed not to cut Police, Fire, Recreation, and Public Health or make the most drastic cuts suggested on the work sheet to Human Services, Fairmount Park or the Libraries.

That took at least 108 points out of play.

And with these big-ticket items off the table, every step forward now was incremental. Here is where opinions and tempers started to flare. Take the next item that was discussed, a revenue-generating proposal to charge residents for trash pick up.

“You’re gonna make me pay for them to pick up my trash?” said Annie Aiken, 62, of South Philadelphia. “Yeah, right on. And then you gonna give them a broom and shovel to sweep it up?”

The group avoided that potential 13 pointer and instead adopted a 2 pointer that would charge businesses for the same service.

Stalled at somewhere close to 20 points, people broke into smaller groups to consider more creative options and compromises. In one sub-group, recreation and libraries came up again to some people’s great concern.

Kevin Ailmartin, 53, of South Philadelphia, gestured to his daughter Helen, 12, who was sitting quietly off to the side. “Without the Rec Department, I’d be lost because they fill in for me. Without the libraries, I’d be lost because they fill in for me. Because I work nights.”

Public health also came up again, raising still more concerns.

“I’ve been a nurse for 33 years,” said Yolanda Hunt, who works at city-run Health Center 3. “If you close the health centers - I mean you have infectious diseases, and people with HIV. They don’t have any other place but us.”

The health-center discussion spilled over into the larger group, bringing up issues of undocumented immigration, welfare, health insurance and, most vocally, equitable payment options if co-pays were instituted as a revenue generator.

“They should have to pay a little bit at least while they are getting service,” said Janet Buchino, 61, of South Philadelphia.

Ann Marie Moss suggested establishing a sliding scale co-pay option to account for income differentials among patients. That didn’t go over well.

“So my parents who worked their asses off will have to pay for everyone who decided not to?” asked Lisa Reynolds, 27, of Bellavista.

South Philadelphia resident Rosa Santiago, who also works at a health center, preferred the flat rate co-pay over a sliding scale for administrative reasons, but even then, only with conditions.

“We’d have to see what that flat fee would be and how it would impact use,” she said. “Because if that person does not come in for care and they go to the Emergency Room, guess who’s gonna pay for it. You and me.”

And after the longest discussion of the night, Group Seven agreed to charge co-pays for uninsured visits to the health centers. For 1 point.

Clearly, this is tough work.

The biggest ticket revenue-generating move, and one of the group’s final acts, was to pass a one-tenth of one-percent increase in wage taxes for city residents as well as commuters. This earned 17 points, so work ended on a high note.

As people packed up to join the crowd filling the hallway, some were enlivened and some, like Annie Aiken, remained frustrated. True to her block captain duties, she was still complaining about unfilled potholes and bad traffic signs.

And that little thing that happened with Aaron Couch when the group began had just gotten about as big as it could get. I didn’t think to ask either him or Franne McNeal about it because it hadn’t fully sunk in for me yet.

The thing that happened was silence.

Back at the very beginning, when people were introducing themselves around the circle, Couch waved his orange flier and explained about it in much the same way he did to me. In response, McNeal moved fast to redirect the group’s attention using the same fully accepting tone and manner she did with Bob Coyle.

She addressed the group at large: “Because everyone doesn’t have that and because this is the third of four forums, we are asking you to focus on what’s on the white sheet.”

There are three things I don’t know. I don’t know if McNeal was instructed to shut down consideration of the orange flier by PCCE, or whether she decided to do so alone. And I don’t know whether she intended to suggest a few seconds later that Bob Coyle leave the room when he complained about the content of the work sheet. But Coyle clearly thought that was coming when he interrupted her and insisted on staying.

I also don’t know whether any of those orange flier suggestions are worth a damn. In fact, I suspect some of them would be totally unworkable. But I do know, after McNeal’s double move to exclude, let’s call it ‘off the work sheet thinking,’ in her comments to Couch and Coyle none of those options or anything else like them was ever considered again. In Group Seven, straying from the worksheet became a completely effective social taboo.

I have to wonder if, in this micro society, that taboo worked to stifle other new ideas. That is to say, did it undermine work-group goal number two?

Part Four: Making Love, Making it

A final difference between budget forums in cities Windy and Love is that in Chicago it is impossible to tell what if any impact the citizen forums have on policy, City Hall Reporter Dan Mihalopoulos said. In Philly, by contrast, the city is supposed to make an account of that impact. One way it will do so is through Nutter’s upcoming appearance on WHYY’s Radio Times on March 3.

We’ll have to see if that does the trick.

Another way we can determine this impact will be with simple leg work. The digests of what took place at these forums are online. It’s the same stuff the city gets. If certain things like making the Eagles pay that back rent are not done, and cuts to police and fire are considered at all, we know the city was not paying attention.

When we get around to talking about “gut wrenching” territory, the compromises nobody wants to make on the back half of that road to 100 points, then things might get more confusing. It looks clear that these last millions will have to come from hundreds of little budgetary slights of hand.

What might be even more telling of impact is the five-year balanced budget plan, which the city is also required to come up with soon. We have heard in these forums that the main reason for the focus on unpopular cuts to services is because of the short time frame on hand. Potentially, more popular options like First Judicial Court funding, health and pension contribution adjustments, and real estate tax reform might be more long sighted, so they probably ought to show up on the visible horizon given the clear call for lasting solutions at these forums and elsewhere.

One hopes, anyway.

But the bare, and sometimes worrying, fact is we just can’t know what is really on the minds of city officials. It is at least encouraging that all the city suits I met and observed at these forums mirrored Agostini’s apparent openness.

Again, one hopes.

Though I doubt that any of us will really be happy until we start to feel like we, as a city, are going to make it again.

Sadly, that special renaissance of hope we’re looking for may be long in coming, given the realities of the times. The shortest road there may not even come with the fiscal year 2010 budget, or the budget after that. In fact, that path may not go through official Philadelphia at all. Or, more to the point, it may not get its power there.

Regardless of your criticisms of these forums, regardless of their flaws, there was an energy buzzing in them sure as the hum of those overhead lights. That was not the power of the city seal. And it wasn’t magic. It came from the same force it ever comes from. From every person who showed up on cold nights, from every blogger, every online commenter, every soul with an opinion to share, or shout.

Like gravity, this energy is a function of mass. And the only way to hold on to it is to refuse to let it die. City Hall may listen; it may not. The economy may turn; it may not. Either way, if we keep coming together, if we keep engaging, I can’t see how we won’t “make it” eventually.