It’s the end of the first week of April and all eyes turn to (drum roll)… the Monthly City of Philadelphia Tax Revenue Update! (.PDF brought to you by the good folks at the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority or PICA.)
Let’s go to the numbers and, using our own understanding of these numbers, translate what they [...]

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 [...]

I’ve been writing the It’s Our City blog since June 2008, and in that short period of time I amazed at the challenges this city has faced in this tiny window. To be sure, not everything has been bad, who can forget The Philadelphia Phillies’ World Series Championship. But since the summer the city’s economic [...]

One of the interesting moments that came out of first Philadelphia City Council neighborhood budget hearing was watching the mayor’s staff get grilled over a controversial plan to raise property taxes 19 percent beginning in July.
In this video you’ll see Councilman Darrell Clarke accuse Mayor Michael Nutter (who was not present) of ignoring one of [...]

When Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium was imploded in 2004, there was one issue that didn’t go down in the rubble, a claim by the city that the Eagles owed $8 million. But today we’ve learned about a verbal settlement that was reached between former Mayor John Street and the team.
But this morning the city’s current mayor [...]

Video  by Monica Sellecchia
The City of Philadelphia needs to reduce its spending and/or raise taxes by $1.4 billion over the next five years. This is because the global recession has slowed business activity so much, that future tax revenues are expected to come in much lower than expected.
Earlier this month, Mayor Michael Nutter proposed a [...]

On March 24, 2009, It’s Our City began an outreach campaign to every member of the Philadelphia City Council asking for them to share with us their thoughts about the budget. The questions are pretty straight-forward.
Do you largely support the mayor’s budget?
If you do not, what areas do you see as problematic?
What alternatives do you [...]

The Philadelphia City Council held its first budget hearings yesterday and it was not a pleasant event for the mayor’s staff. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Patrick Kerkstra reports council appeared concerned over Mayor Michael Nutter’s choice of tax hikes.
The Nutter administration has proposed a temporary increase in the property and sales taxes, arguing that raising the [...]

The City of Philadelphia is facing a projected $1billion budget gap over the next five years. The mayor and his top budget team have sought out public input over the past couple of months and presented the administration’s budget proposal to city council. One man who has been in the middle of all of this [...]

Not to be outflanked by the “people’s budget” mayor, City Council President Anna Verna announced this afternoon that council will hold a few public forums of its own. In a statement released this afternoon, Verna went out of her way to signal that the public will have a role the council’s budget.
“Because citizens deserve to [...]