Budgets, branding and Dr. Seuss: NinetyNine’s mayoral campaign-coverage week in review

 Scenes from Tuesday night's Next Great City mayoral forum at the Convention Center. (Brad Larrison/for NewsWorks)

Scenes from Tuesday night's Next Great City mayoral forum at the Convention Center. (Brad Larrison/for NewsWorks)

At high noon each Friday during Philadelphia’s mayoral-primary season, NinetyNine will post a roundup of noteworthy stories from the previous week. Miss a couple days of coverage, or just want to catch up over the weekend? We’ve got you covered.

From NinetyNine and NewsWorks:

Philly mayoral candidates react to Nutter’s budget proposal: Mayor Michael Nutter proposed a budget that included a “9.34 percent property tax millage rate increase to raise $105 million to support Philadelphia school children.” His potential successors told NinetyNine what they thought about it.

Tony Williams finds it ‘curious’ that he’s considered ‘the charter-school guy’: Said the mayoral candidate while sharing a school-funding proposal, “Frankly, I think it’s kind of curious that people keep talking about me as the [charter-school] advocate when there are five other people in addition to me who are running who clearly are involved in charter schools and, by the way, use them, and participate with them.

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Mayoral candidates discuss taxes, green issues and personal ‘fun facts’ at Next Great City forum: At Tuesday night’s Next Great City Philadelphia Mayoral Forum, WHYY’s Dave Davies moderated a relatively tame discussion amongst the six-candidate slate consisting of Lynne Abraham, Doug Oliver, Rev. Keith Goodman, Anthony Hardy Williams, Nelson Diaz and Jim Kenney.

Breaking: Mayoral candidate Jim Kenney would eat green eggs and ham: To help 20 kindergartners get in the spirit for Dr. Seuss Day Celebration Day, mayoral candidate Jim Kenney donned a novelty red-and-white striped hat and read “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!”

‘Dark money’ arrives in municipal election (Off Mic): In the new world of Philadelphia elections, where free-spending, non-candidate groups could dominate campaigns, a new organization has surfaced that will focus on getting a better City Council. The same thing could happen in the mayor’s race, as well.

Q&A: Doug Oliver on the 10-year tax abatement, Vision Zero, and Philly’s waterfront (Plan Philly): We spoke with mayoral candidate Doug Oliver at his campaign office in the Bellevue earlier this week about a wide range of topics, including the role of city planning in retaining younger workers, waterfront redevelopment, the 10-year-tax abatement, Vision Zero, and more.

At HUD, Diaz opinion marked shift in public housing development (Plan Philly): Early in his tenure as the top lawyer at HUD, Diaz, who is now 68 and campaigning to be the next mayor of Philadelphia, issued a memo that laid the legal groundwork for a major shift in the way public-housing projects are built and financed.

From elsewhere:

Tackling education and its role in the mayoral campaign (The Next Mayor): Welcome to the first of The Next Mayor project’s Issues pages. Join the discussion on education and vote about its importance in the mayoral campaign.

Is Philadelphia Ready for a Plastic Bag Tax? (Citified): At Tuesday’s green-themed mayoral forum, one of the few issues dividing the six candidates was a prospective tax on plastic bags in our city. Although Abraham, Oliver, Kenney and Diaz all threw their support behind the idea, frontrunner Anthony Williams stood out in opposition, calling a single-use bag tax “a good idea in theory,” but ultimately a “regressive tax.”

Abraham: Education, poverty, jobs most crucial issues (The Next Mayor/WURD): The three biggest issues facing Philadelphia are education, poverty, and jobs, according to mayoral candidate Lynne Abraham in a radio interview last week.

Critics say Williams’ plan for school funding falls short (The Next Mayor): Mayor Nutter’s spokesman, Mark McDonald, said the administration could not comment until it sees Williams’ plan. McDonald noted, however, that several cost-saving measures were implemented following the Great Recession.

Philly’s Mayoral Candidates Pretty Much Cool With Wolf’s Ouster of Green (Citified): Most of Philadelphia’s Democratic mayoral candidates either agree with Gov. Tom Wolf’s shocking decision this week to remove Bill Green as chairman of the city’s School Reform Commission, or believe that it was his choice to make.

4 ways Anthony Hardy Williams says he’ll use open data if he becomes mayor (Technical.ly Philly): The policy director for the Anthony Hardy Williams campaign says the candidate will use open data to help implement “a citizen-centered and data-driven approach to governance.”

Mayoral candidate Jim Kenney chilled at the Tattooed Mom on South Street (Billy Penn): Self-explanatory.

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