Labor groups call budget workshops a “ploy”

By Christopher Wink

Labor and union groups are calling foul play two days before Mayor Michael Nutter is coming to Holmesburg to talk budget.

“There’s no way that the large corporations of this city, the Walmarts the Sunoco’s can’t afford to help us out in these times,” Eric Braxton of the Coalition To Save Libraries told Tom MacDonald of WHYY. “That’s the solution to that problem.”

He and others say the series of budget workshops to be held by the mayor’s office and UPenn’s Project for Civic Engagement are wrongly focused on finding services to cut. He says there are other options, but says the mayor has his heart stuck on cutting services, like the administration floated with libraries.

The workshops begin this Thursday, Feb. 12 at St. Dominic’s School at 8510 Frankford Ave. in Holmesburg. Registration is at 6 p.m., the program begins at 7 p.m. There are three other workshops to be held, in South Philly, Overbrook and near East Falls.

Read more at It’s Our City, a WHYY blog.

Photo courtesy of WHYY.