Nutter urges support for tax plan to help Philly schools

Philadelphia’s mayor took to the airwaves Wednesday night to urge support of his tax plan for aiding the city’s school district.

Mayor Michael Nutter went live on 6-ABC to talk about the need for a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks or else new property taxes to help the school district fill a huge budget gap.

“Look, I get it. I don’t like these options either, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. It’s time to take a stand,” said Nutter. “Take on one of these proposals or a combination, but do something.”

Nutter went on to say that a council compromise to take money from the existing budget and shift it to the schools won’t work.

“Such a course would open up a huge hole in our own budget,” he said. “I believe we should use these dollars as we now intend–to insure that we have 120 new police officers on our street, services of our probation officers, funding of our district attorney and a critically important youth violence reduction program.”

The mayor concluded by saying that without some new money for the schools from the city, there would be no hope of having state funding restored to the district.