Jobs
In 2007, thousands of college graduates will be flooding the already saturated Philadelphia job market. Graduates will have to struggle with the city’s stagnant job growth and compete with existing job seekers, forcing many to leave the city for better prospects. The unemployment rate was just 4.7 percent as of January 2007, but the city continues to lose jobs.
The city’s biggest obstacle in attracting new businesses and creating a growing job market is its heavy business taxes. A study done by the Philadelphia Business Journal reported that Philadelphia’s business tax is the second highest of eight major U.S. cities and is the only city that taxes businesses on both gross receipts and net income. It is no wonder why some don’t view Philadelphia as a lucrative place to do business.
Tax reform has been an issue in Philadelphia for quite some time, and it will be up to the next mayor to make significant changes in the tax system. There are ways to decrease business taxes that will generate money without raising other taxes. For example, if the city can attract more businesses, it will, in turn, attract new residents. This will create higher property values, and generate revenue from property taxes without raising them. It is a daunting task for any mayor, but it is a problem that must be tackled or Philadelphia will continue to shrink in both size and status.
Safe Transit Stops
According to Next Great City, a citizen initiative, over 600,000 transit rides are taken by Philadelphians each day. Our city relies on public transportation, and polls show that the number one rider concern is safety. It’s not SEPTA, but the Philadelphia Department of Public Property that maintains the 12,000 transit stops in the city, only 272 of which have shelters. This leaves many riders waiting at unsafe, dimly lit stops that attract crime. The city has a contract with a national outdoor-advertising firm that sells advertising space at the stops and uses the revenue to install and maintain transit stop shelters. Philadelphia has no formal system of monitoring the company’s maintenance and distribution of shelters, and because advertisers want to sell ads in areas that will generate the most revenue, lower income areas that rely on mass transit are often neglected.
The current maintenance contract ends this June, but will most likely be renewed. The next mayor will have the power to negotiate better contracts and enforce equal maintenance and distribution of shelters throughout the city.
Air Quality
A 2006 American Lung Association study found that diesel exhaust is one of the top sources of air pollution that cause asthma. The Environmental Protection Agency has linked diesel fuel emissions to lung damage and premature death, and has classified it as a likely carcinogen. The City of Philadelphia runs its daily operations, from trash collection to school buses, with approximately 600 diesel fuel vehicles. So it is not surprising that in 2006, The Asthma and Allergy Foundation named Philadelphia one of America’s Asthma Capitals, and the third worst place to live in the country for allergy and asthma sufferers.
Christine Knapp of Next Great City says there are already ways the city can improve air quality. “Something very simple that the city can do is install a pollution filter, called a diesel retrofit onto all city diesel trucks,” Knapp explains.
The retrofit filters could reduce harmful emission by 90 percent. “A settlement with Sunoco Refinery earmarks $1.2 million specifically for diesel retrofits,” Knapp says. “And there is also federal funding the city can apply to for the installations on city vehicles.” The funds are available, they just need to be put to use.
Violence
There were 406 murders in the city in 2006, the highest murder rate in Philadelphia in a decade. Of the 10 largest cities in the United States, Philly has the highest murder rate per 100,000 people. To say there is an obvious cause and solution to this epidemic is unrealistic. Tom Ferrick is a political columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and writer for the Great Expectations: Citizen Voices on Philadelphia’s Future project. According to Ferrick, to understand the city’s high murder rate, we need to look at the two aspects of crime. He explains, “There is the societal issue of poverty, underclass and family. Then there is the structural issue of policing, dispensing of criminal justice and the courts.”
Ferrick believes there is little the new mayor can do to make a real impact on societal issues, but there are some steps that can be taken to address structural issues. “It is not simply a matter of the number of police,” he says. “But how they are deployed, how they are led, how they do their jobs that is within the mayors purview.”
One thing Ferrick suggests is changing how the city recruits new officers. “It is tough to find good recruits because the city has a requirement that a prospective officer live in the city for one year before he can even apply to take a police civil service test.” Ferrick believes the process should be changed, allowing anyone to apply and giving them a year to move to the city once employed as an officer. This will attract a greater number of qualified people to the city.
With our collective voices and projects like Next Great City and Great Expectations, the next mayor will not be short on ideas to address the city’s problems. Whatever the outcome of the election, we wish him (or her) the best in turning our city around so that the rest of the world sees Philly for what we already know it to be: A Great City.