Last Round of Community Meetings Ends

I attended four of the eight meetings.  They were a way for Mayor Nutter to tell the people what was going to happen, and I do believe to ask for ideas about the future.

Each meeting opend with some slides; not exactly a PowerPoint, but charts of other cities that are in the mess that Philadelphia is in. They include New York, Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta and LA.  Most of them have very low property taxes relative to other levels of tax revenue.

Most of the objections in the first meetings were about pools and fire stations, with libraries close behind.  At this meeting on Stenton Avenue, the fire issue was not present.  The firefighter union reps were not present this time.

Strangely, for a competent administration, the crowd was packed into a very small reception hall rather than the auditorium. This places the crowd on edge, and also surrendered the upper balcony to the overflow crowd.  Leafleting outside, I saw some people leave because of the crowds.

Yours truly made it to the end, and was permitted to ask a question if I agreed to be brief and to the point.  You can find  my question asked at about 144 minutes at  WHYY, our local PBS station. 

I asked if the city would consider moving away from unstable taxes on labor and capital, to the property tax (which is still stable)  reformed with the land value tax.  the Mayor seemed surprised by the question, but answered that if the plan proved "viable" he'd look seriously at it....