By Christine Cavalier

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you have the general idea of how the forums work. It’s crowdsourcing Philly budget style. If you need to catch up on what the forums are about, welcome back to Philadelphia. You’ve come back just in time! Hit the “More Posts in Archives” button at the bottom of this article. You’ll surf by a whole boatload of information you’ll wish you had when you were hiding under that rock in Fiji for the past few months. Please set aside at least 2 hours for reading time. Go ahead. I’ll wait. 

Back? Good. Here’s the lowdown on the final forum.

Hundreds of people came to the forums on a very cold and windy Monday night, (February 23rd). Pinn Memorial Baptist Church in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia was packed to the gills.

The crowds filing into Pinn Memorial Baptist Church in Wynnefield for the 4th Forum

After getting inside and registering, I ducked into a side room to get my bearings. In the small room, one of the forum organizers was apologizing to some wheelchaired attendees. Apparently there was no accessibility to the main meeting room upstairs. This was a huge gaffe. It was hard to believe that every member of Pinn Memorial is fit enough to scale the significant stairway every Sunday, so I thought about making a search for an elevator, but I got out my camera and let the organizers do their jobs.

Camera around my neck, laptop on my back, “Hi My Name Is” label on my chest and coat in hand, I headed upstairs.

An activist handing out literature.

People were mulling about, reading through some of the humongous heap of handouts different activists had given us on our way in. Some people had enough hands still free to get refreshments and still others were meeting up with friends. There were definitely some large groups in attendance.

Many advocates of varying city social service organizations showed up in force for what seems like all four of the city budget forums. These programs mobilized their people and sent their most vocal advocates. In fact, I recognized a lot of the same faces from the photographs posted on this blog from the previous forums. (I’m one of those “never forget a face” types. It made me wonder: If a significant number of attendees were repeat offenders voters, then perhaps we should note the differences in point allocations between the first and succeeding forums.)

Some activists for social services programs.

Some of these advocates wore cardboard signs around their necks in bittersweet irony and protest to call attention to the homeless shelters and other city social service programs.

One such “protestor participant” was Ms. Connie Naylor of the East Parkside section of West Philadelphia. I caught up with her while she was giving her video testimony.

Connie Naylor

Connie had a handmade cardboard sign hanging from her neck that read “HOMELEENESS [sic] HURTS ALL OF US.” She let me in on the secret sign club: Sign-bearers were all advocates associated with city social service organizations. She listed them off like a pro.

“Project H.O.M.E., Vote for Homes Coalition, Mental Health Association, Ready, Willing and Able, Lutheran Settlement House and the Office of Supportive Housing (OSH) are all here. We’re all wearing signs,” she said. Connie continued on with some of the statistics behind her reasons for being at the forum. “The city shelter system hosts 3,000 people nightly, 1,000 children a night. OSH has had too many managing staff cuts already,” she said. Connie and her self-labeled colleagues were at the forums to speak up for those they feel have no voice.

Connie also talked about the abandoned homes filled with squatters across the city and how these people are invisible to the Supportive Housing and social services system. “The owners of the houses,” Connie surmised, “probably owe so much in back taxes that they’ve abandoned the property.” If the city can’t collect the taxes or even find the owners, she’d like to see the city claim these properties and rehab them for low income families. Ms. Naylor, herself a beneficiary of some of the programs she mentioned, was an informed and passionate activist despite her medical disabilities.

I thanked Connie and she disappeared into the crowd. Facilitatos Louise Giugliano and Adrian Sagan came over to Area 10 where I was sitting. The crowd filled the room. Harris Sokoloff took the podium and welcomed the audience.

Harris Sokoloff addresses the audience.

“It’s very rare for city governments to ask for citizen input,” Harris said. “…Tonight we’re all here to do the difficult work of citizenship and … [we should be] talking about what’s good for all of us.” He reminded the audience that although there were government representatives in attendance, the forums were not run by the city. He explained the process of the break-out sessions. After a few more words, Harris handed the mic over to Chris Satullo and the panel discussion began. (see the video of other panel discussions to get the gist).

The panel discussion served the purpose of educating the crowd to the issues and limitations of the budget. Chris fed the panel prepared questions that covered basic questions about the city finances. It was like a live FAQ. The panel consisted of forum veterans Uri Monson of PICA Philadelphia, Clay Armbrister, Nutter’s Chief of Staff, Rob Dobow, the city’s Finance Director and Dr. Camille Barnett who is the Managing Director of City.

After the panel discussion, which took no questions from the audience, an older woman stood up and yelled out a question for the panel. ”Where is the city’s capital fund?” she shouted. “What is going on with those funds? We need to know that.” Like any seasoned household budgeter, this woman asked about the city’s savings. It’s logical; When a household runs into trouble, it opens the cookie jar, lifts up the mattress, or taps the 401K. The answer was given to her: the city’s capital funds are protected by law from any dipping. The crowd was told to disperse and the break out sessions began.

Area 10's half-circle of chairs before the crowd hit. Chris Satullo is chatting in the background.

What happened next in my break-out session space, Area 10, was a disaster. People came, but they didn’t fill in all the chairs that were neatly arranged in a half-circle, instead opting to sit at nearby tables. The half circle was too large and dented, so it was difficult to see (let alone hear) everyone in the chairs, especially those sitting at the tables. The facilitators tried to get people to fill in the empty chairs to no avail. Voices echoed in the room, as at least 5 other groups were starting to work. Loudly. It was difficult to follow what our facilitators were saying and impossible to hear what anyone in our area was saying. Then people started leaving, so the vote count was off. We started out with 21 members, then 22 (when they started counting me, Miss Lowly Blogger, as a participant), then went down to 19, then 18, then 16 by the end of the night. At the very end Ms. Giugliano realized that 3 observers in the back of the circle were just that, observers, and they didn’t wish to be counted. It was impossible to tell if any of the proposed budget cuts or taxes that we voted on as a group made the 75% approval level needed for a solid “Low Hanging Fruit” vote. Another thing our group wanted to do was begin with the “No Way No How” options, but the facilitators moved us away from that. It was a study in struggle. I almost searched the room for evidence of Stanford Prison Experimenter Philip Zimbardo or the ghost of Stanley Milgram. It was that frustrating.

The tally sheets for the votes.

Even with the challenges, most of Area 10’s (The Fighting 10′ers, as I like to call them) stayed on and trudged through. A fellow Area 10′er, Kevin Douglas, a graduate student at Penn studying for his MSW, helped the elderly woman between us read the handouts and understand the conversation. If anyone on earth is meant to be a social worker, it’s Kevin. He had such patience and kindness with the woman that facilitator Adrian Sagan made a point to thank him at the end of the night.

At the beginning of the break out session, the facilitators asked us to take 5 minutes to review the handout. One lady protested, saying that wasn’t enough time, but 5 minutes was all we got. At the end of the 5 minutes Kevin spoke up.

Kevin Douglas raises his hand

“If we accepted all the budget cuts, we could easily get to 100 points, but adding up all of the points allotted to the revenue streams would not even come close to 100,” Kevin protested. The facilitators reminded all of us that there had to be a balance in points between the two.

Parking was one of the first issues that came up. A little debate ensued, but it was evident early on that we wouldn’t have time to discuss anything at length. Still, the pay-to-throwaway garbage debate raged on a bit later. The woman who was sitting between Kevin and me leaned over to me and said, “I’m elderly. I live alone. Sometimes I don’t have trash to put out. $5 a week is too much for me.” I really felt for her; I think the fees for garbage pick-up are a bad idea, and this lady would be adversely affected by such a plan.

Debates faded, but we still hadn’t made much progress. At first I thought that none of my fellow Fightin’ 10ers was willing to cut anything anywhere. As we moved on, though, we started coming up with some interesting stipulations to the proposed cuts. Here are some of them:

*The vehicle fleet shouldn’t cut any of the social services cars. Instead, let the mayor’s office employees give up the city cars and ride Septa.

*Cut court budgets but don’t cut any public defenders.

*Release non-violent drug crime prisoners only.

*City wage tax increases don’t apply to anyone making $25,000 or less.

*Tie any increase in anything to ability to pay.

Other practical cuts in staffing were stipulated in other areas. The Fightin’ 10′ers were a very astute and creative group that wanted to go beyond the measures on the Penn sponsored paper. Facilitator Sagan suggested we use the wailing wall for all of our proposed stipulations. Good ideas were flying out the windows too quickly and the pace of our session sped up too much to capture any of the info later. I fear that the most ground-breaking ideas that could’ve come out of our session were lost. Hopefully the facilitators captured a few of our proposals.

We rushed through the proposals at random, finally coming around to the “No Way No How (NWNH)” list. Police & Fire, predictably, went on the list. Personally, I’m sure some cuts could be made in the police area. Any efficiency experts out there? We need a volunteer to help us find some quick gains with acceptable loss in the police department.

Thankfully, the Fightin’ 10ers saw the value in Parks & Recreation as well as the Libraries. Those went on the NWNH too.

We pretty much ran out of time after that. We didn’t waste too much time in debate, but with the noise level of the room and the weird set up of the circle, I missed more than half of the conversation. We could have done more as a group if we were in a small room on our own.

We didn’t get to 100, sadly yet predictably. Our votes were skewed by attrition of members. We wanted to talk about the alternative revenue list that some activists gave us but we were steered away from discussing them. We couldn’t agree on low hanging fruit. Still, we were there. We showed up. We tried.

Now the only question is this: What are YOU going to do? What do you have to say about the budget?

Let us know in the comments.

Read Christine Cavalier’s blog PurpleCar