By Tom Ferrick
The good thing about the budget crisis is that it gives the city a chance to re-examine its priorities and ask hard questions. One of them is: Is this program really necessary?
Mayor Michael Nutter asked that question earlier and came up with some interesting answers: No to all the city’s swimming pools, [...]

This morning, WHYY’s Brenda Jorett welcomed Mayor Michael Nutter to Morning Edition and asked the mayor about the continued deterioration in the city’s economy and budget.  Mayor Nutter announced that he would soon be revealing the full extent of the city’s current fiscal situation and plans to open up the upcoming budget process to citizen [...]

By Tom Ferrick
Lord of the Rings anyone?
If you think the dust up over the Mayor Nutter’s plan to close libraries, fire stations, city pools, etc. was a big deal, stick around. They were just skirmishes.
Now, the battle begins in earnest.
The Nutter administration this week went before the arbitrators who will decide the police-and fire-employee contracts [...]

By Elizabeth Fiedler, WHYY News
Click on play button below to listen to this story or use this link to download.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Violent crime is down citywide.  That’s according to statistics released by city officials yesterday, which show a 15% drop in homicides in 2008.  The city’s top cop says the numbers [...]

Not too many leftover since I’ve actually had a pretty productive blogging day but here goes:
Philebrity has video of a report by CBS 3 about a roving gang of teen girls that has been jumping young women - college students and young professionals - and robbing them.   The latest occured at 15th and Bainbridge, an [...]

By Elizabeth Fiedler, WHYY News
Click below to listen to this story or use this link to download
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Despite a difficult year, Philadelphia police have delivered on Mayor Michael Nutter’s promise to cut homicides.  Although the year also had a force mourning the deaths of four officers, the Police Department managed [...]

From Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane:
Hour 1
CHARLES RAMSEY talks about his first year as Philadelphia Police Commissioner. We discuss budget cuts, the city’s crime rates, and how the department is coping with the loss of recently slain officers. Ramsey was chief of the Metropolitan Police Deparment of the District of Columbia from 1998-2006. Before that, [...]

 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 Shannon Curley
Philadelphia has closed more than half of its curfew centers in a move that officials say is not related to the $450+ million projected budget gap Mayor Michael Nutter announced in September. The closings went largely unnoticed. We only discovered this after after initiating a follow up to our earlier story on the [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Mumia Abu-Jamal’s lawyers seeking a new trial. Abu-Jamal was convicted in 1981 in the shooting death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. This leaves a federal appeals court ruling upholding Abu-Jamal’s murder conviction in place, but ordering a new sentencing hearing.
Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot to [...]