Will
Book Leave Its Mark?
(Philadelphia
Daily News, 02/09/99)
Looking
Behind the City’s Facade
(The
Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/10/99)
Book
Covers the City’s Ills
(Philadelphia
Daily News, 2/11/99)
By
the Book: A
New Direction for Philadelphia, As Seen Through the City
Controller’s Office
(The
Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/15/99, Editorial)
Book Review from Pennsylvania History A Journal of MidAtlantic Studies
Vol. 66, No. 4, Autumn 1999
Philadelphia
Daily News,
February 09, 1999
Will Book Leave Its Mark? City Controller Outlines Vision for the Next Century
by: Paul Davies
Memo: RETHINKING
PHILADELPHIA
A series on the city and its future
City Controller Jonathan Saidel will never be confused with best-selling author John Grisham.
However, Saidel's office is scheduled to release a book tomorrow titled, ``Philadelphia: A New Urban Direction.'' The 293-page book, published by St. Joseph's University Press, is somewhat dense and quotes Aristotle, Plato and Shakespeare.
Unlike other government reports that often collect dust in a City Hall file cabinet, this book offers compelling insight into Philadelphia's strengths, weaknesses and potential at the dawn of the 21st century.
``This book charts a new direction in thought which lays the foundation for a whole new approach . . . if (cities) are to survive,'' Edmund Bacon, former city planner, said in the forward of the book.
Filled with charts and graphics that chronicle the city's rise and fall, as well as future projections, the book is a policy wonk's dream.
For average readers, the book offers insight into the inner workings of the city's $2.6 billion bureaucracy. It also puts forward ideas for improvement.
Saidel hopes the book will help shape the debate in the upcoming mayor's race. ``This is the most important mayor's race the city has ever faced,'' said Saidel, who flirted with running for the city's highest office last year. ``The city can either move forward, become stagnant, or worse, slip back to the way things used to be.'' Saidel has invited all the mayoral candidates to the book release party on Wednesday morning at St. Joe's.
``This book does not have all the answers, but it lays out a guidepost for the candidates,'' he said.
More than two years in the making, the book probes a variety of key issues that confront the city, from reforming schools, reducing taxes, fighting crime, improving housing and creating jobs.
The book attempts to link issues to show how each affects the other.
For example, lousy schools hurt housing as residents flee to the suburbs. High crime increases the cost of doing business here, which impacts jobs and economic development.
``One agency attacks this and another attacks that, but no one ever looks at the big picture,'' Saidel said.
The book offers more than 70 ``recommendations for action'' on a number of big and small issues.
One recommendation is to lengthen the school day, which Saidel says will reduce crime. Studies show many crimes are committed after school by kids who have nothing to do, he said.
Other recommendations include creating a rainy day fund to maintain the city infrastructure, and adding a box on state tax returns that would allow taxpayers to donate money to maintain historic Philadelphia buildings.
The small changes in and of themselves will not save the city. But improving services around the margin boosts public opinion about the city, and goes a long way toward attracting and retaining businesses and residents, Saidel said.
One long overdue major recommendation is to streamline government services. Just by reducing unnecessary reports within the police and public health departments, the city could save more than $4 million in personnel costs, Saidel said.
``The overlap leads to confusion and dysfunction,'' Saidel said. Every time a problem arises, the city creates a new bureaucracy. Yet no offices are ever eliminated, Saidel said. ``Just think about all the organizations the city created to fight housing problems,'' he said. ``Then take a drive around the city and look at all the vacant and falling down houses. It makes you wonder where all the money went.''
In addition to streamlining operations, the city needs to rethink the way it offers services, such as providing taxpayers one-stop shopping, flexible night and weekend hours and the ability to conduct city business via the Internet.
Greater effort is needed to work with the suburbs to capitalize on the region's strengths, Saidel said. ``The future of the region, as revealed in (the book), rests on cooperation among city and suburban governments and institutions and on the continued growth of education, health services, communications and small business,'' Randall Miller, a St. Joseph's University history professor, wrote in the book's preface.
The book is expected in bookstores this month. It costs $21.95. Telephone orders may be placed through St Joe's Press at 1-610-660-3400 or via a fax at 1-610-660-3410.
Send e-mail to Paul Davies at daviesp@phillynews.com.
©
1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Reprinted with permission from The Philadelphia Daily
News.
http://business.phillynews.com/columns/1998/CASS021099.asp
The
Philadelphia Inquirer,
February 10, 1999
Looking Behind the City's Facade
by: Andrew Cassel
Money & Business: More business news
Why the folks in City Controller Jonathan Saidel's office wanted to write a book about Philadelphia's problems is more than I can fathom. Nevertheless, I'm glad they did it. Ever since I finished reading former colleague Buzz Bissinger's book A Prayer for the City last year, I've felt the city suffers from a dearth of serious literary attention.
If you'll pardon a personal gripe, our area bookshelves just don't have the quantity or variety of local-centric books that a major metropolis deserves.
Saidel's book,Philadelphia: A New Urban Direction, which is scheduled to hit the stores today, helps fill the gap. The controller's scribes may lack Bissinger's flair for dramatic narrative, but their story is pretty compelling nonetheless.
It's about a city that survived the municipal equivalent of a heart attack in 1991, and came back -- without undergoing much of a real, lifestyle change. A city that, rather than change its diet or shed the weight that nearly brought it down, has chosen the municipal equivalent of a nose job and a tummy-tuck.
Yes, Philadelphia under Ed Rendell has a new sense of optimism, a cleaner downtown, and slightly lower taxes on employment and commerce. But Saidel's office looks beyond the ribbon-cuttings and finds a municipal bureaucracy still burdened with overlapping jurisdictions, paralyzing work rules, and an infrastructure built for 1950, when the city's population was more than two million.
Not just a boo-bird
Since then, the number of residents has fallen to an estimated 1.45 million, or a decline of some 30 percent. (I erred, by the way, in a recent column that said the population fell by half since 1950.) Our rosy national economy may be helping to slow the exodus of people and jobs, but there is little reason to believe that Philadelphia has insulated itself from further declines once the good times stop rolling.
Saidel's office turned up some fascinating comparisons, such as the fact that Philadelphia's municipal budget continued to increase even after the fiscal crisis of 1991. Other cities, such as Indianapolis, Ind., have actually cut spending -- not just in relative or inflation-adjusted terms, but in actual total dollars spent.
But this is not just a dose of old-fashioned Philly negativism. In fact, Philadelphia: A New Urban Direction actually has an optimistic message, to wit: The city's problems are not unfathomable, and the solutions begin at home.
Some passages, probably not coincidentally, would make a dandy mayoral campaign speech. Here's one, which you might call the "No-Whining Manifesto" (juiced up a bit with extra paragraphing and italics):
City Hall's own role
"In the past half-century, many city residents and employers have walked away from Philadelphia.
"This exodus has been encouraged by federal and state policy, motivated by racial prejudice, and forced by economic conditions. It has also been inspired by the direct action of Philadelphia's government.
"Federal and state policies created thousands of miles of expressways and mortgage-assistance programs, facilitating the flight of city residents; but by raising taxes instead of better managing spending, local government further encouraged that flight beyond the city limits.
"Racial prejudice and fears motivated many former residents to move away from increasing minority populations, but government's inability to provide quality schools or fight the spread of crime encouraged them to settle in suburbia.
"Economic conditions forced employers to consider taking their jobs elsewhere, but the city's failure to capitalize on its competitive advantage and give employers an economic rationale to remain in Philadelphia made their relocation decisions easy."
For anyone who's puzzled, troubled or exasperated by the city's condition, this book is well worth reading.
©
1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Reprinted with permission from The Philadelphia
Inquirer.
Philadelphia
Daily News,
February 11, 1999
Book Covers City's Ills
by: W. Russell G. Byers
There's plenty of bad news in City Controller Jonathan Saidel's new book, "Philadelphia, A New Urban Direction," but the overall message is unquestionably optimistic and upbeat.
In page after page and chart after chart, Saidel and his co-authors paint the portrait of a city that lived fat and happy as it slowly declined from a population of more than 2 million people to one which may soon dip to 1.4 million.
One might expect that a city on its way toward losing 600,000 people might cut back a bit. Far from it. As the accompanying chart from Saidel's book shows, most city departments, except fire, doubled and tripled in size.
Little wonder that total spending, even after adjustments for inflation and during periods of so-called fiscal constraint, continued to rise. Since 1970, the city's general fund spending, on a per capita basis, increased more than 72 percent.
Recalling analysis by Wharton Professor Robert Inman, Saidel reminds us that "Philadelphia families annually paid 12.3 percent of their income in local taxes the average suburban Philadelphian paid approximately half that amount."
Even more frustrating to Saidel, however, are what he calls "tax avoiders and evaders generally do not pay taxes for one of two reasons: they cannot afford to pay taxes or they can afford to not pay taxes."
He paints a picture of lax enforcement on the revenue collection side of the city for liquor taxes and gas bills. Had he added real estate taxes and traffic fines to his list, which he should have, he would have attention to scofflaws who cost honest taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
The bad news in the book, however, is just designed to shock those who might be complacent thanks to the progress under Mayor Rendell. Most of the book is devoted to evidence from around the country and world of what can be done to fix this mess. Hundreds of ideas are presented. Others are merely hinted at which deserve more attention.
Saidel repeatedly holds up Indianapolis, and could have referenced Milwaukee, as cities whose mayors force their budget directors to present year-to-year budgets which actually cut spending across the board by a few percentage points every year. That's cutting costs, not merely controlling them.
That's what private companies all over the world are doing to remain competitive. Cities that hope to be competitive in the 21st century will also do so, or die.
And doing so is neither impossible nor anti-labor. Saidel points out that Indianapolis has been aggressive about competitively contracting services to lower costs. Its mayor, Steven Goldsmith, says he uses a Yellow Pages philosophy for deciding which services to submit for competitive bids.
If he can easily find in the Yellow Pages companies that provide a service now provided by his city, he invites bids. And his unions, knowing they must compete, bid competitively and are winning almost as many bids as they lose.
And, why not. They know the work. Know the city. Know their strengths and weaknesses. And unlike their private competitors, they neither have to pay taxes nor make a profit. Public sector unions competing with private competitors, therefore, have a 10 percent to 20 percent advantage and should easily win more bids than they lose.
Once called radical, this kind of rational thinking is encouraged throughout "Philadelphia: A New Urban Direction" because anything less almost invites inevitable disaster. Those who read it can become part of city's solution. Those who ignore its messages will remain part of the problem.
W. Russell G. Byers is senior editor of the Daily News. Send e-mail to russell.byers@phillynews.com. Phone is 215-854-4789.
©
1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Reprinted with permission from The Philadelphia Daily
News.
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
February 15, 1999
By the Book: A New Direction for Philadelphia, As Seen Through the City Controller's Office.
Editorial
City Controller Jonathan Saidel and his aides have created an oxymoron - a well-written, courageous, informative book produced by city bureaucrats.
Philadelphia: A New Urban Direction should be required reading, with mandatory public discussion to follow, for each of Philadelphia's mayoral candidates.
Certainly, it is an invaluable tool for every interested citizen as we all come to grips with exactly how to insure Philadelphia has a solvent, job-rich future -particularly, whenever the next recession arrives.
What Mr. Saidel and his staff point out - and buttress with reams of fascinating statistics - is that, despite the Rendell administration's cost efficiencies and cost reductions, Philadelphia's fiscal foundation remains seriously cracked.
There's the surprising evidence offered that, between 1975 and 1997, city expenditures rose more than $500 million, from about $2.4 billion to $3 billion a year (in 1997 dollars, adjusted for inflation).
This at a time when the city's population dropped by about 300,000 people. So the city is spending more to serve fewer.
Sure, there are lots of reasons, some legit, some less so. But the fact remains that costs are too high; taxes are insufficient, and the city remains uncompetitive in the competition for residents and businesses.
What A New Urban Direction offers are solutions. Genuine, practical, doable solutions. Much of it will require courage, but isn't that supposed to be a prerequisite of leadership?
A few examples:
The number of Philadelphia's police stations, recreation centers, libraries and water department facilities has leaped in size over the last 50 years, but the number of people served per location has dropped more than 50 percent in most instances. Can some be closed? Politically impossible, you say, even if it can be proven financially and socially feasible? Well, the Saidel team suggests a special commission trusted by all to review all city facilities and then recommend closings that would have to be voted up or down by City Council.
An overhaul of the City Charter, unchanged since 1952, to reduce the cost of doing business by and with the city. Specific suggestions include modernizing bidding procedures and allowing the Revenue Department to contract out water-meter reading and billing to the Philadelphia Gas Works.
A dramatic streamlining of city government. It will require a strong mayor and courageous City Council willing to buck long-entrenched constituencies. For example, there are now five different motor vehicle fleet management operations: city, school, housing authority, parking authority, and gas works. Why not a consolidation?
In 1950, Philadelphia's person-per-square-mile density was 16,307. Now, it is 11,748. A program to consolidate - at city expense - residents living in
tattered housing scattered among bombed-out buildings would allow the city to clear blocks for new development. It would reduce the costs of providing services while producing stronger, more cohesive neighborhoods.
As Saidel assistants Brett H. Mandel, David A. Volpe and Kevin J. Babyak point out, there are no silver-bullet solutions here. Just a long, methodical slog that can re-create a city, and lower everyone's tax bill.
The discussion could start at your local bookstore, with the Saidel book in hand.
© 1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Reprinted with permission from The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Autumn, 1999
Book Review from Pennsylvania History
A Journal of Mid–Atlantic Studies Vol. 66, No. 4, Autumn 1999
by: Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University
Distinguished Prof. of History and Religeous Studies
At first sight, it may seem odd that a university press should publish what essentially amounts to a strategic planning document produced by a city agency, and equally curious that the work should be reviewed by an academic journal: after all, academics have a notorious tendency of writing and publishing for each other’s eyes only. In the present case, however, scholars from a wide range of disciplines have a great deal to learn from this thoughtful and beautifully produced volume, which tries to imagine how Philadelphia can sustain its much vaunted recovery of the 1990s into the new century. In theprocess of reveiwing and projecting recent trends, historians, geographers and sociologists are offered abundant evidence which in sum comprises a snapshot of the city at the end of twentieth century. We can wholeheartedly endorse the boast in the book’s blurb that this is “an extraordinary insider’s account of the inner workings of city government.”
For the authors, accurately discerning the New Urban Direction must take account of a wide range of factors, including the city’ s changing industrial basis, the shift to an economy based on services, and the area’ s changing demographics; and the appropriate response must be a multifaceted plan to addresss problems of housing, education, taxation and criminal justice. Briefly, the city must learn not merely to survive, but to become an attractive place, a “preferred place” in which to live or operate a business, or to visit as a tourist. The report is frank about the parlous conditions which overcame the city between about 1965 and 1985, the often grim years of fiscal crisis, soaring violence and political unrest, and the optimistic tone of the present document is happy testimony to the extent of the recnt recovery: finally, the city government has the chance to think creatively, and not merely lurch from crisis to crisis.
This is a fascinating document at many levels, and not merely for those interested in the specific case of Philadelphia: most of its lessons can be applied to any metropolis. This wider applicability is especially true of one problem which recurred throughout the document, namely the growing irrelevance of city boundaries as they are presently constituted. If we consider not just the city and county of Philadelphia but the sprawling metropolitan complex which surrounds it, then many of the most familiar urban trends simply cease to apply. In the Metropolitan Statistical Area as a whole, for example, population has not plummeted as it has in the core, and economic development has flourished and continues to boom. It is a truism, but the apparent decline of Philadelphia is in fact not a failure but rather a shift of population outside the core, a revolution made possible by epoch– making changes in transportation and information technology. Given their bureaycratic responsibilities, we could have forgiven the authors of this report for having ignored trends at this macro level, and it is refrehing to read their assessment of regional conditions in chapter five, their “Declaration of Interdependence.”
In summary, this is a valuable contribution to urban history and social science. Congratulations to Saint Joseph’ s University Press for having tackled such an innovative venture.