Karen Brown holds weekly public discussion about city issues

Tuesday at noon, Karen Brown will stand in front of the Municipal Services Building (at the Frank Rizzo Sr. statue, to be exact) for her weekly chat.

The Republican mayoral candidate started Tuesday Talks with Karen to address what she says are key issues in Philadelphia. On tap for this week are school options and flashmobs.

She plans to wrap up last week’s discussion about what education options she wants to bring to the city — like an elected school board — and then talk to the public about the issue du jour: flashmobs.

“I would never cut core servies,” Brown says of what she thinks led to the city’s current predicament. Mayor Nutter announced today an adjusted curfew, amped up enforcement and harsher penalties to quell the youth violence in Center City, but Brown says if services like police, fire and youth opportunities hadn’t been cut in the first place, flashmobs might not be an issue.

“Kids are not basically bad she said,” agreeing with Nutter’s statement that it’s only a small minority wreaking havoc in the city. But she likened Nutter’s decision to focus on the enhanced enforcement in Center City and University City to “putting a Band-aid over a flood.”

She’s been handing out fliers like this in Center City — about 500 a day, she says — to call attention to the need to prevent flashmobs before they start.

She says the mayor’s reaction is too little, to late, though Nutter today called for prevetion of, not reaction to, the violent mobs. Brown says the decision to keep some rec centers open late should have been put into effect at the beginning of the summer, adding, “Services for the kids are an essential portion of our budget.”