For a city like Philadelphia, smaller is not better. To survive as a viable city, it has to attract new people. If it keeps losing population - and most of the folks exiting are middle class - then what will be left is a city that is increasingly poor. That is a city that cannot [...]

Sometimes you can get lost in the numbers and I encourage you to do so.

Appended is a data set on usage of public library branches in Philadelphia. They compare total circulation by branch in 2004 to the same numbers in 2008. Total circulation means the number of items people checked out – books, CD’s, [...]

 By Tom Ferrick
 After a few weeks of getting beat up over city budget cuts that target libraries, fire stations and pools, the Nutter administration has finally gotten its mantra down.
What people must realize, Mayor Nutter has said, is that many of these facilities and services were created for a city of 2 million.  Today, we [...]

By Tom Ferrick
The weirdest thing about the debate over the budget cuts proposed by Mayor Nutter is not what is being talked about, but what is not.
The public debate is all about closing libraries and reducing the number of fire trucks.
There is no talk - zero, zilch, nada - about what may turn out to [...]

To begin with, libraries are not libraries. They are sanctuaries.
This is especially true in big cities, where life can be hard and the streets mean. They are places for latchkey children to go after school. They are destinations for the elderly to ease the loneliness that sometimes comes with old age. They [...]

The most surprising thing about the budget-cutting booklet issued by the city yesterday is the signature at the end of the mayor’s introductory letter on page 5.
It reads Michael Nutter. I expected it to read John Street.
That’s because many of the cuts and tax measures outlined in the plan are the same ones Mayor Street [...]

When he took office in January, the biggest crisis facing Michael Nutter as mayor of Philadelphia was that he did not have a crisis.
Mayor…um…Street (How quickly we forget!) had left Nutter a budget surplus.  Revenue from the broad array of city taxes was increasing year-to-year - sometimes in excess of the rate of inflation.
The dilemma facing [...]

You want a transformational moment, I’ll give you one.  Try this title on for size: Gov. Michael Nutter.
No, Philly’s new mayor hasn’t  been elected governor of Pennsylvania, but the results of Tuesday’s election show that he could be.
Conventional political wisdom was that a black man could not run in Pennsylvania and win.
So much for that [...]

It happens at this time in every election season. The Democratic organization in Philadelphia begins demanding, pleading. screaming for street money.
They hint that unless the campaign of Barack Obama (and, before him, John Kerry,  Al Gore, Bill Clinton. Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson…and so on and so forth [...]

It looks like Barack Obama has closed the deal with Pennsylvania voters.
The latest Franklin and Marshall poll out today confirms it.
The Democrat holds a 12 point lead over Republican rival John McCain going into the final days of the campaign.
I doubt Obama will win by 12 points on Tuesday, but it looks like he will [...]