We received nearly 80 written comments at the citizen budget workshop held last night in South Philadelphia. While the turnout was over 400 people, fewer people chose to leave messages on our “Wailing Wall” or through our video testimonies than previous nights. The majority of messages are from folks who use many of the city’s [...]

Have you ever wondered why some Philadelphia playgrounds do not have swings and sliding boards anymore? We looked into the matter and here’s what we could find out. After conversations with Philadelphia recreation officials, it appears the reason is part liability, cost, and politics.
All play equipment, such as swing sets and sliding boards, must have a [...]

The 2nd of 4 budget workshops was held in Germantown at Mastery Charter School’s Picket Campus on Feb 18. More than 400 people turned out to help in their chance to help shape the City of Philadelphia’s next budget. They have been asked to help reduce city spending and/or raise revenues to close a projected [...]

Two of the blogs It’s Our City tracks are asking their readers if Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will really incorporate the findings from the on-going budget workshops.  We won’t know for sure until he releases his budget proposal on March 19 to City Council. Since WHYY is helping the Penn Project for Civic Engagement put on [...]

The city budget: totally off the wall
Someone pleaded with the city not to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable.
Someone suggested a special tax on “all the rich journalists.”
Someone wrote of how his 91-year-old mother relies on a city health center.
And someone complimented a Penn professor’s tie.
As part of the workshop on [...]

(Update 3:10 PM: City recreation officials have informed us that they are in the process of fixing problems at the American Legion playground, which we highlighted in our report. Read below for more information).
As part of the latest budget crisis gripping Philadelphia, all city agencies have given Mayor Michael Nutter a list of recommendations for how to cut operations [...]

Today at 1:38 p.m., a fellow name Abel became the 2,000th Twitter follower of WHYY’s It’s Our City civic engagement website. Abel is a 47-year-old real estate agent in Sacramento, Ca. While he may have found our site serendipitously, we’d like to believe he is a man who admires Philadelphia from afar and who might [...]

(Please note corrections to the gender references of the original story teller.  My apologies for the mistake!)
And I can call it a “great” story because this one did not end in tragedy as so many cyclist versus motorist stories do.  Ariel at Urban Direction talks about her his recent encounter with a particularly impatient and [...]

Plan Philly’s website is the repository for all of the 2-minute videos being taped at the budget workshops. As of 1 p.m., they had most of the videos online for everyone to see. What you’ll see is your fellow neighbors making their case to Mayor Michael Nutter not to cut their favorite city programs.
Click Here [...]

By Tom Ferrick
There was a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer the other day about trends in naming children that pointed out what has been true for several decades now - naming, which used to be a bow to tradition, is becoming a matter of personal expression.
Naming the kid after your father or grandfather or favorite [...]