By Sandy Wiggins
I love our new Greenworks Philadelphia plan. Goal #7 calls for diverting 70% of our City’s solid waste from landfills by the year 2015. It’s an ambitious target considering our current 12% recycling rate, but one that is achievable as evidenced by other cities across the country like San Francisco, which is currently [...]

By Patrick Cobbs
There’s a big fight brewing over taxes in City Hall. Today, City Council moved ahead with its plan to explore whether the city can legally raise the wage tax. Council adopted a resolution that requires City Finance Director Rob Dubow to officially determine if the city’s revenues are down by two-percent or [...]

By Patrick Cobbs
When the bell rings, come out fighting. Philadelphia City Council budget hearings (cage matches) are underway, and the winners will be the ones who manage to drag themselves, bloodied and bruised, from room 400 when it’s all over in mid-May.
At least that’s how it feels sometimes.
Last week, I dropped by City Council to [...]

This video is taken from YouTube, and was produced and edited by International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement and not by WHYY.
By Patrick Cobbs
Mayor Michael Nutter made his 2010 budget proposal official Thursday with an address to City Council. He’s calling it “the people’s budget” because of all the good civic input over the last several [...]

City officials were on hand at the budget workshop to answer questions

By Bill Rowland
A cold, dark night greeted attendees at the final to citizens Budget Forum at the Pinn Memorial Baptist Church last Monday night. (Feb 23) Understanding just how contentious a public forum on cutting the city budget might be, I was sure that [...]

By Albert Yee
Watching 400+ seemingly impatient Philadelphians stand in silence for a minute honoring recently killed in the line of duty Office John Pawlowski was humbling. I didn’t think the niceties would last long, but they did, for the entire evening. In a stark change from the first two events (the first of which you [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

By Albert Yee
More than 500 Philadelphians gathered at Mastery Charter School in Germantown to talk about the city’s ever-growing budget crisis. The crowd was 200 more than event organizers had expected, but there was more than enough room in the gigantic gym for all. Getting everyone’s concerns addressed was another issue altogether.

To say Philadelphians are [...]

By Marisa McClellan
Driving up to the Mastery Charter School last Wednesday night, I was taken aback by how brightly lit and open the building seemed. So often, school buildings at night are spooky, forlorn places. Not Mastery Charter though, it was blazing, ready for the influx of Philadelphia citizens who were coming to participate [...]