March 6: Nutter budget round-up | Defining neighborhood boundaries | High cost of sprawl

Philadelphia 3.0, the new SuperPAC funded in part by parking magnates Robert and Joe Zuritsky, is denying formally pushing for lower parking taxes. Deputy Executive Director TJ Hurst says “as an organization” they’ve never pushed the issue with candidates, but Philly Clout found two candidates who say the Zuritskys quizzed them on it.

How quickly the politics turn: while we often hear from members of City Council that school funding is their top concern, now that they’ve been presented with the opportunity to vote for a funding increase, many members suddenly are sounding mighty tepid. 

Here are Claudia Vargas’s picks for the five biggest ideas in the Nutter administrations budget proposal, and Juliana Reyes’s run-down of the technology spending plan.

The budget proposal also comes with a new open budget tool that makes it easy to visualize the different line items. 

Some fascinating new sociological research looks at how long-time residents and newer residents define South Philly’s neighborhood boundaries differently.

Patrick Kerkstra is geeking out over municipal snow removal technology.

Streetsblog flags a new study showing that auto-oriented development patterns have a much higher public cost compared to compact urban development.