Bill in City Council to create a BID in Frankford |
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City Council will consider a proposal (Bill No 070540) to create a Business Improvement District (BID) in Frankford. Unlike the initiative which UCD is still flogging in University City:
Click here to request a copy of Bill 070540 as an email attachment: Bill 070540 |
An independent condemnation of the NID |
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By Van Stone SCOOP U.S.A. - Friday, October 5, 2007, page 11 (http://www.scoopusanewspaper.com/ScoopOctober507816.pdf) It’s good-and-ready time for poor and low-income people in Philadelphia to stop making excuses about the down conditions of their neighborhoods. Every working family, regardless of income, must become active in preserving their homes and their cultural history. The business owner, landlord and resident in Philly looking for a good example to follow, for saving black communities and average-income-working- white-families living in a city district are in for a big surprise. You can forget about considering the collective that makes up the city district in West Philadelphia known as, University City. In University City, area colleges lead by the University of Penn, and allotted to Drexel University, Lincoln University, etc., in the district, are silently supporting an administrative body that will force second governance over the University City residence. The University City neighbors have a life of their own. Since the early 50’s working blacks and whites together embraced the street slang term University City as a new way to identify commercial properties and residential portfolios, including pedestrian lighting, sidewalk cafes, neighborhood signage, gateways, murals and schools belonging to their historical and cultural diverse West Philly family. A narrow part of Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell’s district, then bounded by the Schuylkill River to the east, Spring Garden Street and Market Street via 40th Street and Powelton Ave. to the north, 50th Street to the west, and Woodland Ave. to the south, today the University of Penn is flexing it’s wealthy arm, uninterrupted and extended deeper and deeper into University City’s Burean-Lucien neighborhoods. If you have a lease you are part of the neighborhood. The University City District (UCD), adjoined to the UPenn, has filed a supportive document with the clerk of the City of Philadelphia to an agreement in writing between the City of Philadelphia and the UCD, acting to govern the University City area. That would mean its residents, landlords and businesses, and students, can not find this new governance unacceptable once the matter is passed. The UCD wants to conduct assessments for folks in University City to pay a separate real estate tax – To UCD. The UCD proposes that the name of the area formally become University City District, officially. The UCD has drafted what it calls a Business Improvement District Plan, or BID, to supplement the current level of voluntary contributions to its 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation. Since the UPenn has the will to start a war on Black Philadelphia Geographies, I propose that those watching this little war waged against at least 35,000 or more unfortunate residents in the University City consider this. Let’s block the way of UPenn by creating a new street slang term for University City in 2007. Here’s why. According to tax reformers a new city real estate method should be prepared by late 2008, which would project fresh assessments out in the summer of 2009 for the 2010 levy year. The City Council and the state Legislature approve tax relief protections such as homestead exemptions and property tax “phase-ins”. And speaking of city council, Councilwoman Blackwell, who is at war with UPenn adjoined with UCD will not approve tax increases to residents and businesses in the University City. UCD’s actions here are just one reason for Councilwoman Blackwell’s declaration of war against UCD. My best effort is and will be thrown in support of Blackwell’s war. VSP is geographically surveying changing the name of Univ. City District to Berean City District or Lucien Blackwell City District. What about giving low-income black and whites and college students a chance by using the compliment district name as one, the Berean-Blackwell City, instead of University City? Berean Institute has never attempted to create its own tax for better quality of education. Neither has the late Lucien Blackwell. But UCD has sought state legislation support for district, city and state tax in Philly for ten years or more. No name for their BID district could mean no district in power to tax working families. Write in or email me (vspfoundation@yahoo.com) your comments about this. And please check out the VSP Foundation by visiting www.frontpagenews.us. |
When an organization fouls-up, who should take the blame? |
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http://www.uta.edu/faculty/mputnam/SPCH3309/Notes/EthicalTheories.html The above is a link to an interesting piece from the University of Texas on corporate ethics and corporate governance. Much of it is relevant to the issue current in UC on UCD: a) On UCD's modus operandi in general b) On UCD's investigation of the alleged problem c) On "who takes the blame" - scapegoating, denial of responsibility, organizational cultures. |
Another (updated?) take on gentrification |
The gentrification of rundown city neighborhoods conjures an image of well-off whites displacing poor minorities. What's actually going on is far more complex, and the winners and losers can be hard to predict. The Boston Globe, March 31, 2007 In the 1990s, Boston had a face lift. Gentrification arrived and proceeded at full steam in places like South Boston and Dorchester, where decades of poverty and economic stagnation had created landscapes of blighted homes and minimal commercial development. Orchard Gardens, Commonwealth, Franklin Field, Harbor Point: These new communities of town homes and condominiums replaced Boston Housing Authority housing "projects." Property values around these developments and entire neighborhoods became attractive once again. Today, these areas are attracting middle-class homeowners, small-business entrepreneurs, and others who may not have viewed these areas as worthy of investment. As in other major American cities, gentrification in Boston is an ad-hoc process; government doesn't necessarily coordinate all of the redevelopment, nor can one predict which areas will become hot markets. Nevertheless, Boston did plan in advance by drawing on federal legislation -- most prominently, the HOPE VI Program -- to demolish its severely distressed public housing stock and then initiate a broader revitalization effort. When government and private funds are involved, the financial arrangements supporting redevelopment can grow complex, but the objectives are straightforward: Begin by de-concentrating poverty -- that is, get rid of the projects -- and then rebuild on a smaller-scale in ways that combine multiple uses and diverse populations. Any urban development strategy will be politicized because of the money at stake and the likely displacement of the powerless (from both the neighborhood and the money game). But in the Northeast and Midwest, revitalization is a particularly thorny process. In post-Civil Rights era Boston, Providence, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis, the situation has grown even more complicated because blacks and Latinos have made great strides -- in government and in business. The conventional view of urban politics can no longer be succinctly captured as whites dominating minorities: Those calling for gentrification are equally likely to be ethnic minorities with political and commercial capital. The long-held truism of gentrification -- namely that inner-city residents and their leadership will vocally oppose the redevelopment of their neighborhoods -- needs revision. If white-black conflicts are no longer the most salient, what are the main lines of enmity and alliance? Several social scientists are helping to make sense of the emerging landscape of race and politics in the contemporary American city, where the old social divisions have been reconfigured. Their work reveals that gentrification is still contested and economic development does not end up benefiting everyone, but predicting the winners and losers is getting harder. Minorities may be on the winning side more often than not. The senior and most eminent member of the group of sociologists examining gentrification is William Julius Wilson, university professor at Harvard. Wilson has been writing about the plight of the urban poor for three decades. "There Goes the Neighborhood," his most recent study (written with Richard P. Taub), analyzes four "working- and lower-middle-class Chicago neighborhoods": African-American, white ethnic, Latino, and one in transition from white to Latino. Drawing on the interviews and field notes of his graduate students, Wilson examines how ordinary residents react to urban redevelopment. The main contribution of Wilson's book may be to simply bring us up to date on the social and political fabric of the contemporary city. For much of the 20th century, our views on political and economic development tended to emphasize racial and ethnic divisions. Scholars and journalists usually looked at one ethnic group at a time, so it was not altogether surprising that our cities began to look like ethnic battlefields, with each group fighting for a share of the political and economic crumbs. This may have been an accurate way of understanding the old urban political machines. But Wilson's work suggests that we need a new perspective when looking at the consequences of gentrification. Wilson's focus on struggling low-income and working families is also a nice counterpoint to the academic and popular reportage of the last decade, where the city can sometimes look like a playground for the rich. In Wilson's study, you won't find the commonplace infatuation with the fancy cuisine, services, and attractions of the so-called "global city." Nor is the working class treated solely in terms of their role as a cheap source of labor (valets, janitors, nannies, etc.) for the bourgeoisie. Wilson shows ordinary Americans trying to eke out a place in a city that is changing around them. Their concerns remain basic and their language is right out of the 1970s: Parents worry about poor kids being bused into their neighborhoods; people want better crime prevention and improved city services. Their concerns over redevelopment also remain basic -- they want affordable housing, lower property taxes, and limits on the number of public housing units constructed in their wards. But, unlike the 1970s, the racial landscape appears more complicated because no one seems quite sure exactly who to trust, who to work with, and who the "enemy" is. In such a climate, alliances never follow predictably. In working-class Chicago, blacks and Latinos often work closely to build on shared interests and to put together initiatives that promote growth and development. On the south side of the city, white politicians are adapting by addressing the needs of the new Latino voters in their district. The only view residents of all four neighborhoods share is a concern over "prevalence of crime and other social dislocations in nearby black ghetto neighborhoods." Poor blacks get blamed by everyone. Wilson's emphasis on the unpredictable nature of racial politics in working-class neighborhoods reframes the contemporary perspective on gentrification, which has focused largely on the stormy conversion of poor neighborhoods to yuppie enclaves. Lance Freeman, a professor at Columbia, further challenges this view, taking up the question of just how stormy this transformation actually is. Freeman's "There Goes the Hood" brings us into the homes of two gentrifying black communities in New York -- Harlem and Brooklyn's Clinton Hill. Conventional wisdom holds that politicians and the property owners buying up dilapidated brownstones will pocket the winnings of gentrification. But Freeman insists that we must listen to "indigenous residents" -- those living and working in the neighborhood before gentrification arrived -- if we want to find out who is affected (and how) by economic improvements. Freeman shows that the commonplace view of economic development, namely that a gentrified neighborhood hurts blacks living there, is outmoded. Inner cities are diverse spaces where the poor and homeless share streets with the black middle class and the black entrepreneur. The popular lament over the horrible living conditions in the ghettos of the 1980s and 1990s failed to take into account those who were buying up property and establishing a productive presence during these tough years -- the working class, immigrants, and unionized workers who had well-paying jobs in transportation, parks, law enforcement, and other city agencies. No one bothered to recognize that the ghetto had grown diverse over that time, even while staying overwhelmingly poor. In both Harlem and Clinton Hill, Freeman found African-American store owners who struggled to stay afloat when the areas were depressed. On the face of it, gentrification would raise their taxes and bring in economic competitors -- like fast food chains and retail outlets -- that could put them out of business. But many end up thriving on the rising demand. Many adjust well to the new business climate and their empowered stance actually helps them to improve their relations with the city government -- which comes to see the area as a tax boon, not a drain on the municipal coffers. This is not to say that redevelopment does not create some divisions among neighbors who thought they had shared interests. Freeman tends to downplay these animosities. But it is hard to imagine that the indigenous shopkeeper and the franchise owner don't argue on occasion, or that there is not discord among the white rehabber renting out the three-story brownstone and the black entrepreneur returning to buy a home in her childhood neighborhood. To see how diversity creates strange and sometimes awkward bedfellows, we have to turn to Mary Pattillo's "Black on the Block," an in-depth sociological study of Chicago's North Kenwood-Oakland (NKO) neighborhood, a historically poor and predominantly African-American community rapidly gentrifying. Pattillo eschews most norms of social scientific objectivity by taking up residence in NKO. She is a homeowner and secretary of a local neighborhood association with great influence over local development -- not to mention a Northwestern University professor. Pattillo decides to stake her personal investment in a neighborhood that the city government and most financial institutions feel is still not a sure bet for short- or long-term improvement. Pattillo acknowledges her complicated role, as both interested party and analyst. But through her experience we see how complicated life can be for the black middle class. In her neighborhood, Pattillo and other newly-arriving homeowners, many of whom find themselves sandwiched between empty lots and dilapidated, low-income housing projects, are caught between two motivations: the wish to live in an area with decent stores, well-maintained parks, and adequate city services; and the ethical pull of advocating on behalf of those poorer blacks who might be displaced if the neighborhood continues to gentrify. At one point in the book, Pattillo speaks up at a Community Conservation Council meeting convened to discuss the use of a proposed park. Another member of the CCC wants to prevent "barbecuing" and "selling snow cones," activities that some see as encouraging poorer residents to loiter and disrupt the leisurely strolls of middle-class users. Pattillo dissents, standing up for her low-income neighbors. But the consensus vote is against barbecues. In this context, what is the responsible position of the black middle class? The question goes back at least to the 1890s, when W.E.B. DuBois wrote his seminal study of urban development, "The Philadelphia Negro." DuBois wrote that the indigenous and more cosmopolitan black middle class will forever oppose the newly arriving Southern migrant, unless the two recognize their conflicts only serve to strengthen the whites in power. In some ways, Pattillo picks up where DuBois left off. She cautions that, in Chicago, we must recognize that most whites will still not move into a black neighborhood. And because they still face discrimination by financial institutions and real estate agents, the black middle class have few options of potential neighborhoods in which to live, and many of the potential sites are poor areas where they will displace their poorer counterparts. This leaves blacks in a precarious position. They end up becoming the public face lending support to redevelopment of ghettos and public housing demolition. It is the black political leader who, when their neighborhood is on the upswing, advocates for protecting property values by demanding limits on low-income housing construction. But although it is the black middle class moving in and buying real estate, the physical infrastructure of their neighborhoods is being rehabilitated by white-owned firms that get the lion's share of the city contracts. Thus, the net result is that middle-class blacks have become brokers, helping to ease the path of mostly white-controlled real estate firms that wish to reclaim undervalued inner-city neighborhoods. White developers and politicians no longer need to suffer charges of racism. Even though they recoup much of the revenue from construction, it is the black homeowner who will be the first to support economic improvements to their block -- perhaps not willingly, but what choice do they have if they want to live in a decent neighborhood? Taken together, the work of Wilson, Freeman, and Pattillo offers a more nuanced picture of gentrification. Given the state of disrepair of US inner cities in the 1990s, it is not entirely shocking to find local voices supporting economic development and hoping to protect their investments. Not many general truths can be gleaned, except perhaps that the impact of gentrification depends largely on a constellation of local factors -- some concrete, like the existing makeup of minority political power, and some more abstract, like patterns of metropolitan residential segregation. We are left with a sobering look at the modern American metropolis, one still mired in the social obstacles and challenges that afflicted earlier generations. And we find compelling evidence that race still matters in American society, although after reading these books, it is not always easy to predict exactly how. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, professor of sociology and African-American studies at Columbia University, is the author of "Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor." |
Empirical evidence? What's that? |
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In the April 4th issue of the University City Review, Philadelphia City Council Primary Election At-Large candidate, Andrew Toy, had a "letter" lauding the University City District (UCD) in general and the organization's $855,000 Baltimore Avenue Pedestrian Lighting project in particular. Mr Toy displays that characteristic of the people Thomas Sowell has dubbed "the anointed," for whom self-congratulation is the basis for social policy. And who certainly don't need to be confused by anything as silly as facts when they know in their hearts that their motives are pure and their instincts are right. Primary Election Candidate Toy's letter is online at: The following is a response to this letter, which appeared in the April 11th issue. In his Letter to the Editor of April 4 2007, City Council At-Large Candidate Andrew Toy wrote in favor of new “pedestrian lighting” on Baltimore Avenue. He endorsed the project for reasons of “safety” and cited it as one of the “approaches that are working in other cities.” |
One false premise, two phony surveys, and three proverbs to remember |
The following is a commentary on the $855,000 project to install new pedestrian-friendly lighting on a five-block-long commerically-oriented stretch of Baltimore Avenue. It appeared as a Letter to the Editor in the March 22 2007 issue of the University City Review. It was written by NONID's own Al Krigman (local crank/curmudgeon - see below). The University City District (UCD) unveiled plans for new sidewalk lighting along Baltimore Avenue from 45th to 50th Streets at a community meeting last week. The project will cost $855,000. Nobody UCD says will benefit will have to pay a cent because the money will come from donations by the state’s Department of Transportation, the City’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, and the William Penn Foundation. So everybody should be happy to get this manna from heaven and be grateful to UCD for having made the arrangements. And any objections or doubts should be dismissed as the rants of the usual local cranks and curmudgeons who oppose everything out of hand. Or, should they? For one thing, the project is built on a false premise. The first slide flashed on the screen at the meeting stated that the goal of the “improved” pedestrian lighting is “increased safety.” Unfortunately, the premise that improved lighting increases safety is false. A recent item in the University City Review, for instance, quoted an analysis by Lawrence Sherman, of the Jerry Lee Center for Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, as saying "Is street lighting an effective approach in the reduction and deterrence of crime? The answer is inconclusive. The paucity of reliable and uniform data and the inadequacy of available evaluation studies preclude a definitive statement regarding the relationship between street lighting and crime." And, further, “offenders need lighting to detect potential targets and low risk situations. Who the lighting serves is unclear." Experts agree that improved lighting increases the public’s perception of safety. But thinking you’re safer and actually being safer are hardly the same. Regardless of who’s paying, $855,000 is a lot of money to spend to delude folks into thinking they’re safer when they’re not. A second problem is that UCD claimed it’s supported by surveys of merchants along the strip and local residents. Both groups purportedly placed a high priority on improved lighting. Neither the questionnaires nor the data were presented to back up this claim. And, given UCD’s shabby history of surveys that loaded both the questions and the segment of the population queried, these claims can be dismissed as having no substance. Merchants along Baltimore Avenue may well believe that new pedestrian lighting would be beneficial because of an aesthetic appeal that might help stimulate business. Do they believe it strongly enough to pay for all or even a reasonable share of it so state, city, and foundation money can be directed toward the purposes for which it was actually raised from taxpayers and philanthropists? Finally, there are those who figure the project won’t cost them anything, so “why look a gift horse in the mouth?” With UCD throwing around money to buy endorsements for its Neighborhood Improvement District initiative and the elitist vision of West Philadelphia it represents, three other proverbs seem more appropriate: “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” and “Take heed of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, and inwardly are ravening wolves.” Click here to read the report on the meeting where the plan was presented, in the same issue of The University City Review. |
Gentrification panel discussion at A-Space has been cancelled |
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The A-space panel discussion on grass-roots evolution vs top-down planning for community development, scheduled for April 16, has been cancelled. For information about a possible new date, or about other activities at the A-Space, contact: http://www.the-aspace.org |
Does the NID proposal violate the 14th Amendment? |
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To avoid violating the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, NID surtaxes must not be applied arbitrarily and must not have been enacted for a discriminatory purpose. (See relevant clause below.) The NID proposal violates this fundamental principle in both of the above ways:
The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. |
UCD's proposed NID and the Rational Nexus test |
The state law enabling the creation of Neighborhood Improvement Districts (NIDs)specifically requires that properties assessed the surtax meet a rational nexus test. This is defined within the body of the law as follows:"Rational nexus." The legal principle which requires that there is a rational, definable benefit which accrues to any property owner assessed a fee for said benefit in a neighborhood improvement district created under this act. All property owners within a designated neighborhood improvement district paying a special assessment fee must benefit directly or indirectly from facilities or services provided by a neighborhood improvement district management association within the neighborhood improvement district, provided, however, that property owners need not benefit equally. This is applied in determining what are "Benefited properties." Under the law, these are: Those properties located within a neighborhood improvement district which profit from district improvements based on a rational nexus test. Properties need not profit equally to be considered to have benefited. And, further, In the case of an NID which contains a combination of business, residential, industrial and/or institutional areas and uses, a weighted assessment may be instituted. In such case, the fee levied on property owners generally may be weighted higher for business, industrial or institutional properties than that levied on residential property owners, provided the basis for the calculation of the fee meets the rational nexus test. Yet, according to statements appearing on the UCD website in discussing the proposed NID: It's about fairness Which implies that the rational nexus would be every property within the proposed area, not just commercial properties or those owned by investors in and managers of rental housing. And, it points to a fundamental contradiction in UCD's logic: what is meant by "it's about fairness" when the proposal is to tax one category of property owners for what is claimed to be the benefit of others? It's about building the neighborhood Which implies that UCD does not consider the initiative "about fairness" — as in the previous statement — but about some notion that the owners of certain properties owe something to the owners of other properties, and that one should therefore be charged to benefit the others. Further, this raises the question of who makes the decisions about whether certain property owners are "doing well;" the extent to which any such success is a result of factors other than their own efforts, risks, and sacrifices; how much these entities "owe" to the community if they are indeed successful — as opposed to how much the community owes to them for the services they provide; and who should derive the benefits of a NID if it is established. UCD's NID proposal clearly flunks the "rational nexus" test specified by the enabling legislation. Note that the concept of and tests for rational nexus are not artifacts of this particular legislation, but are guiding principles in the levying of special impact fees on all or part of a municipality. "Rational nexus" was established by the US Supreme Court in two landmark cases.
As one example of how the rational nexus test is used, the Bay County FL Board of County Commissioners, in reconciling its policies with these cases explained that the legal basis for impact fees was that they meant:
As a second example, the State of Georgia has asserted that its proportionate share rule, and many of its other requirements, are designed to ensure consistency with the rational nexus test. It explains that the terminology comes from court cases in which fees for infrastructure — capital improvements — were held to be valid provided
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A budget on the back of an envelope! | |||||||||||||||||||||
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The City of Philadelphia has a budget backed up by 254 pages of data - figures projecting in detail how money will be spent, and adding up to the amount the Mayor's staff believes will be needed to keep the city running. You can see it online at: SEPTA has a budget backed up by 199 pages of data - figures projecting in detail how money will be spent, and adding up to the amount the Authority believes will be needed to keep the transit system running. You can see it online at: UCD has proposed a budget for it's first fiscal year. It's five lines long and appears to have been generated totally off the top of someone's head, perhaps scratched out on the back of an envelope during one of those hard-driving steering committee sessions (or lunch breaks), and finagled so it adds up to the amount they expect to collect from the 12% surtax on commercial and rental properties. Here it is, verbatim from the "draft plan" produced by UCD in February 2007.
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Here's the legislation governing NIDs in Pennsylvania |
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Here are two links to the state legislation governing the formation and operation of Neighborhood Improvement Districts (NIDs) in Pennsylvania. It's a bit unclear as to which of two laws takes precedence. House Bill 2858 (1998) refers specifically to "cities of the first class," which would include Philadelphia and is referenced on the UCD website. House Bill 1142 (2000) is later and is on the books as Act 130, 2000 and does not appear to refer to any class of municipalities in particular. They are the same in most important respects. Here are links to both: House Bill 2858, 1998 Your attention is directed especially to the definitions section of either bill, where the distinctions are made between "residential districts" and "business districts." UCD claims that there is no difference between an NID and a BID(their actual statement in the FAQ at the UCD website is: "The Pennsylvania law uses the term Neighborhood Improvement District (NID). A Business Improvement District (BID) is a generic term applicable in all states. There is no substantive difference."), the law clearly says otherwise. In point of fact, the law uses Neighborhood Improvement District as a generic term, but specifies that such districts may be residential, business, industrial, or institutional. And "residential" explicitly includes "apartments" while "business" specifies "for-profit activity involving trade and traffic, or commerce in general." Other than for certain isolated "strips" such as Baltimore Avenue, Lancaster Avenue, 40th Street between Market and Spruce, and Market Street - the neighborhood would meet any plain language understanding as meeting residential and not business criteria. UCD is trying to use semantics - saying that rental housing is a business - to finesse the law. |
Manifest Destiny – one exceptional community from the Schuylkill to Cobbs Creek |
The following "op-ed" item appeared in the February 14th issue of The University City Review. It was prompted by two points that arose at the February "First Thursday" meeting held by the Community Relations Dept at the University of Pennsylvania. The presumptuous myth of exceptionalism didn't originate in America. But it's been a pervasive theme here since the start. In 1630, before leaving England, John Winthrop told the Puritans they had a covenant with God to establish "a city on a hill" as a model for the world. In 1845, James K Polk invoked divine providence and inherent superiority to proclaim that the Manifest Destiny of the United States was to govern from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In 1898, William McKinley said God instructed him to take the Philippines "to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them." In 1916, Woodrow Wilson asserted that God wanted America in general and him in particular to make the world safe for democracy and show other peoples how to "walk in the paths of liberty." In our time, George W Bush stated that "our nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world of justice." Few among us actually think this country has been picked by an Almighty Being for anything special. Yet many believe we have uncontested title to the moral high ground. Even the celebrated neoconservative scholar, Francis Fukuyama, however, has derided such fatuous claims to privilege and virtue as presupposing levels of competence which are not in evidence. Judging both by party affiliations and tallies at recent elections, many good citizens of University City would deride what they consider the current national policy of global domination as unsubstantiated arrogance. But, as Tip O'Neill, once Speaker of the US House of Representatives, famously quipped, "all politics is local." And many of the same good citizens of University City accept implicit claims to privilege and virtue that presuppose competence by factions at the University of Pennsylvania whose mission is to exert hegemony from the Schuykill to Cobbs Creek. Appearances and civil liberties concerns notwithstanding, Amy Gutmann presumably won't copy Winthrop, Polk, McKinley, Bush, and others in history by sending her white-, blue-, or yellow-shirts to remove or restrain anyone who doesn't share Penn's self-proclaimed enlightened vision. Still, the University and its surrogate - the University City District - haven't hesitated to flex the school's monetary muscle to advance similar goals. Machiavelli would be proud of how they have co-opted selected local organizations, buying their gratitude and in doing so creating a cycle of dependency under the blatantly hypocritical rubric of partnership. Worse, Penn's coffers were filled on a premise of supporting truly exceptional scholars and innovators at a great teaching, research, and healing establishment. Not to let worker-bees in the community relations and real estate hives, who mistake the University's prestige for their own, enforce narrow notions of urbanity on city folks they haven't deigned to meet on anything like equal terms. Alan Krigman is a 35-year resident and rental housing provider in University City. He is rumored to have declined a nomination to be designated a historical object because it would have raised the cost and rigmarole of getting a haircut. Not that he gets them all that often. |
Article in the Daily Pennsylvanian about opposition to Penn's continuing bullying |
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The Daily Pennsylvanian of January 23 had an article about local opposition to continual bullying of the Neighborhood by the Univeristy of Pennsylvania. Below is the article, followed by a comment made by Al Krigman, followed by two anonymous comments by people who, shall we say, don't see things our way. Perspective: With frayed posters, an artist cries out, 'Stop Penn' As U. turns its attention to the east, some still protest the legacies of West Phila. expansion Alanna Kaufman They almost blend into the background - posters as worn and dirt-splattered as the grafittied walls that wear them. Yet the messages proclaimed by two versions of anti-Penn posters currently plastered across West Philadelphia are anything but passive or forgotten. One version is general, graphically depicting Penn as a tentacled monster and urging it to keep its hands off West Philadelphia. In large block lettering, the second version recalls Black Bottom - an area that Penn developed during the 1950s and 1960s, displacing a number of local residents - and cautions against West Philly being "next." Since they appeared on the streets last fall, the posters have been torn down, grafittied themselves and labeled vague and ungrounded by critics both within and outside the University. But for the artists - two West Philadelphia residents - and those with objections to Penn's influence in the region, these posters serve both as markers of solidarity and reminders of a fight against the University that, despite having lost some momentum, is far from finished. Signs From the Past Though they are a recent addition to the West Philadelphia scenery, these posters are conceptually derived from a print developed and distributed by one of the artists years ago. According to Rev. Larry Falcon - a West Philadelphia resident for over 30 years - original versions of the poster emerged in about 2001; around this time, some West Philadelphia residents were forming a resistance to a Penn proposal that would move the McDonald's at 40th and Walnut streets to 43rd and Market streets. Eventually, the proposal was withdrawn due to local opposition and the discovery of chemical contaminants at the Market Street site, but remnants of the cause lived on through the unification of anti-Penn activists in a group entitled "Neighbors against McPenntrification," led by Falcon, and through a batch of posters distributed by the group to local businesses. The posters, Falcon said, were crafted by a member of NAM who originally printed about 50 copies on brown butcher paper. Unlike the current posters, the sheets distributed six years ago featured a portrayal of Penn as an octopus hovering over 40th Street. With menacing eyebrows and pink fangs, the symbol bore a similar message to the one the current posters promote: Stop UPenn, hands off our neighborhood. Falcon said that, though the posters were not commissioned by NAM and were entirely the artist's initiative, they soon caught on among businesses and community members who shared these sentiments. "We put them up in the windows, especially along 40th Street," Falcon said of the posters, which included his contact information. "People came by and wanted to buy" them. And Roger Richards, a member of both NAM and Friends of 40th Street - a Penn-led group that works to bring retail to the 40th Street corridor - said that the same artistic elements and anonymity which attracted people to the original print hold true for the posters currently circulating. "We can all make educated guesses [about the posters], but I don't many people who know very much about it." And the artists intend for it to stay that way. Building a Movement Updating and redisseminating the anti-McPenntrification print is a task that the original artist, who asked to remain anonymous due to the illegality of the postings, had long planned to complete. Not intended to antagonize, the revamped posters "come from a place of frustration," the artist said, and "worrying about what is happening to your neighborhoods and your friends who live across the street from you." She said that, in particular, she and her partner aim to express opposition to the method of development in West Philadelphia, not the existence of it. Specifically, she said, higher rent prices force individuals to leave their homes, and local businesses get forced out by national chains that are willing to pay higher prices for retail space, particularly along areas like the 40th Street corridor. "Cities need this, but what I see happening and what a lot of people are concerned about is how that development and redevelopment ends up excluding the very people who have been here the whole time," she said. Accordingly, the artist said that one of the most rewarding aspects of creating the posters has been talking with people in the community while posting them. "I remember this one girl's face being like, 'There are people out here doing this thing that we believe in' - that's one of the things that I love about it." So much so that, in addition to the 200 prints currently posted, she and a friend are planning a new batch, created through silk screening. "I am an artist, for sure, but it is hard for me to not make work that addresses or deals with a lot of the things that I am concerned about. … They ended up being part of the same story." Gauging a Reaction But because the posters are primarily plastered across telephone poles and abandoned buildings north of Market Street and south of Baltimore Avenue, there is a chance that the story will fail to reach the characters it implicates. Even some Penn officials directly involved in partnering with West Philadelphia were not aware of the posters prior to being interviewed for this article. Glenn Bryan, Penn's assistant vice president for community relations, said that, while signage is not the most popular form of protest against Penn, the ideas presented are not unfamiliar. "We don't see this that often, but there are community groups that have not-positive sentiments toward the University's practices," Bryan said. And as for Penn's reaction to claims that they should stop interfering in the area? "We are part of West Philadelphia, and that's the response," Bryan said. Tony Sorrentino, the University's spokesman for facilities and real estate, said that the University currently does not have any development projects west of 40th Street, and that its relation to West Philadelphia is not grounded in real-estate ventures, but rather in community partnerships. Additionally, Sorrentino acknowledged that the development focus for the University in the coming years will likely be on the postal lands - a 42-acre plot adjacent to Penn's eastern edge. Regardless of this turn to the Schuylkill, the University's general influence is what is causing activists to stand behind the posters for the second time. "I think that community activists are greatly encouraged that there is still someone out there fighting," Rogers said. David Onion, a West Philadelphia resident and member of the Defenestrator, a local anarchist newspaper, agreed that the artists' gestures are still relevant. "Most people I know are pretty sympathetic to the posters," Onion said. He added that the support for the current signage stems from local individuals - such as the artists themselves - who object to the area's rising cost of living, which he said is attributable to Penn. Currently, Penn is not directly acquiring properties west of 40th Street. However, it is a financial supporter of the University City District, a local non-profit group dedicated to preserving the safety, businesses and attractions of the University City area. The rise in housing costs in the area has been attributed to UCD's efforts to make the area more upscale. "If doing the work of University City District can make University City cleaner and safer, and as a result prices are being driven up, that is out of our control," said Lori Klein Brennan, a spokeswoman for UCD. Brennan added that, while she has not seen the posters herself, it is illegal for groups to hang posters in the area without official licensing. Still, the audacity of the work contributes to its effect, Rogers said. "I think it has raised an eyebrow," he said. "I think it has reawakened an interest against the campaign against uncontrolled development." Comment by Alan Krigman Those who think that the "community relations" people at Penn are really so much more intelligent and well-intentioned than us slobs who live and work here won't understand the objections. For those who do know what it's like to have Penn buy control of the area, not only non-University affiliates but also stdents and staff who don't want to live in a UA-type of structured environment, the criticisms voiced in this article are very real. The article didn't mention the Neighborhood Improvement District (NID). This is a nightmare that Penn, working through it's surrogate - the University City District - is trying to shove down the commuity's throats (or do I have the direction and the anatomy wrong?). Anyone who wants a little independence in their private lives, and who wants to preserve the lower-cost opportunities of decent off-campus housing (and I'm not talking about 40th & Locust), register your opposition to the NID with our local City Council Representative. Do it by going to:
Anonymous comment #1 Krigman Sucks Krigman: You're a complete hypocrite. You're always the first to criticize Penn when there's an article about West Philly, yet you have no issue taking Penn student's money as a landlord. How much would your properties be worth without the money Penn has spent on the neighborhood? Face the facts: you're nothing but a parasite feeding off of the University. For those residents and businesses that have not benefited from Penn's expansion, they have every right to complain about the NID and other University initiatives. For you its just giving up a few cents off of the millions you've made off of Penn's back. Get over yourself. Post a reply to this comment Anonymous comment #2 Greedy Krigman, the Hypocrite Krigman is upset because, in his words, "They want to make us pay for it through a mandatory surcharge on real estate taxes; this will hit property owners directly..." So, Krigman will become poorer. You're so much the Robin Hood, Anal. (Did I get my anatomy or my spelling wrong???) You know what real estate taxes go towards? Making neighborhoods and schools better. You know why yours are so (relatively) high? Because there is no tax base. The only owners are people like you who, please admit, are merely concerned about their check books and bank accounts. If you're so upset about the company you keep (your neighbors), then move to the suburbs and keep to yourself. |
Investments in neighborhoods credited with crime reduction |
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The University City District is crediting its "public space maintenance" and "safety ambassador" programs for - among other things - a reduction in crime in the area. But, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer of January 15 2007, Gregory Heller of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission gives the lion's share of the credit to "reinvestment in the neighborhoods." In the case of University City, much of that reinvestment has been done by the investors who own rental properties - the very folks UCD is demonizing and saying should now "pay the neighborhood back." Here are some excerpts from Mr Heller's article: This poll and another by Pennsylvanians for Effective Government reported that, overwhelmingly, crime is the top priority. |
Milton Friedman Was Right: "Corporate social responsibility" is bunk. |
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The Wall Street Journal, November 24 2006 Milton Friedman famously declared that the sole business of the managers of a publicly held corporation was to maximize the value of its outstanding shares. Any effort to use corporate resources for purely altruistic purposes he equated to socialism. He proposed that corporation law should prevent managers from straying off the reservation to join the altruists, a power now almost universally granted them by state legislation. At a conference 34 years ago, celebrating Friedman's 60th birthday, I presented a paper questioning that dictum by noting that the vast part of apparently nonprofit-oriented behavior by corporate managers was really--and necessarily--a profit-maximizing response to business, social or political pressures dressed up to look like something else. For such a strategy to be successful, the behavior had to appear to be nonprofit maximizing, and, of course, had to be called something like "social responsibility." Since it was difficult or impossible to distinguish a profit motive from a charitable motive in any particular corporate action, a strong rule against corporate altruism, as Friedman was advocating, would invite judges to examine the propriety of a significant set of managerial decisions. I argued that American corporation law had traditionally had a strong "business judgment" rule whose principle aim was to prevent judges from even engaging in that kind of examination, which they were perhaps more likely to get wrong than to get right. Thus, if any plausible basis existed for a bona fide managerial decision, no matter how charitable it looked, I argued, we did not want a stronger rule that would invite judges to second guess managers. The assembled audience of Friedmanites, as we were sometimes called--Are we all Friedmanites now?--was aghast that I dared to counter one of the master's most pointed proposals, and the immediate response from the audience was hostile. Well, it was, until Friedman took the floor to declare that "I agree with everything that Henry said." That settled that. I assumed that I would not hear Friedman again declaring that corporate social responsibility was the equivalent of socialism. Consequently, I was chagrined over the ensuing years to hear him make the same pronouncement many times, though to my knowledge not with any explicit proposal for a change in the legal rule. Now I realize (I should have known) he was absolutely correct about the significance of proposals for socially responsible corporate behavior, whether they emanated from within or outside the corporation. These proposals reflect, as well as anything else happening today, the inability of many commentators to distinguish between private and public property--in other words, between a free enterprise system and socialism. Somehow large-scale business success, usually resulting in a publicly held company, seems mysteriously to transform the nature of numerous individuals' private investments into assets affected with a public interest. And once these corporate behemoths are "affected with a public interest," they must either be regulated by the state or they must act as though they are owned by the public, and are therefore inferentially a part of the state. This attitude is reflected not merely by corporate activists, but by many "modern" corporate managers. An integral part of the older notion of public utility regulation required that the enterprise be, or act like, a monopoly (whether "natural" or not), in order to be affected with a public interest. But in today's confusion, there is no such requirement. No arguments, weak as they are, about natural monopoly, market failure, government creation of corporations or the alleged government gifts of limited liability and perpetual existence, are required to justify the demands now regularly placed on business entities. Any large enterprise, no matter how competitive its industry and no matter how successfully it is fulfilling the public's desires, has a social responsibility--a term that makes mockery of the idea of individual responsibility--to use part of its resources for "public" endeavors. Today's favorite causes are environmental protection, employee health, sales of goods at below-market prices, weather modification, community development, private enforcement of (not merely abiding by) government regulations and support of cultural, educational and medical facilities. How did this transposition from private to public responsibility come about? After all, even the largest corporation started simply as an idea in someone's head. At first this person hires employees, borrows capital or sells equity, produces goods or service and markets a product. Nothing about any of these purely private and benign arrangements suggests a public interest in the outcome. But then the business begins to grow, family stock holdings become more diffused, additional capital is required and, voilà, another publicly held corporation. In other words, another American success story. But what has happened to implicate public involvement in the management or governance of these enterprises as they grew from a mere idea? Nothing. And if that nothing be multiplied by tens or hundreds or thousands, the product is still zero. So where along the line to enormous size and financial heft has the public-private nexus necessarily changed? True, there are now a large number of complex and specialized private contracts, but every single one of these transactions is based on private property, freedom of contract, and individual risk and reward. If one apple is a fruit, even a billion apples do not become meat. The origins of this transformation lie in the minds of people who do not like or appreciate the genius of capitalist success stories, including always politicians, who will generally make any argument in order to control more private wealth. Of course, the social responsibility of corporations is always tied to the proponents' own views of compassion or justice or avoidance of a cataclysm. But the logic of their own arguments requires that essentially private corporations be viewed as somehow "public" in nature. That is, the public, or the preferred part of it, often termed "stakeholders" (another shameful semantic play, this time on the word "shareholders"), has a pseudo-ownership interest in every large corporation. Without that dimension in their argument, free market logic would prevail. The illusion of great and threatening power, the superficial attractiveness of the notion, and the frequent repetition of the mantra of corporate social responsibility have made this fallacy a part of the modern corporate zeitgeist. Like the citizens who were afraid to tell the emperor that he was naked, no responsible business official would dare contradict the notion publicly for fear of financial ruin, even though the practice continues to cost shareholders and society enormous amounts. This is especially so in large-scale retail businesses like Wal-Mart or Coca-Cola or BP that are highly vulnerable to organized public criticism. Our laws against extortion do not function effectively when it comes to corporations. And so to some extent these private entities have indeed, via the social responsibility notion, been converted into crypto-public enterprises that are the essence of socialism. Milton Friedman was right again. |
Hey, what are partners for, anyway? |
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Special to the University City ® NONID ® Bulletin Board A monster torchlight rally was held recently behind the statue of Little Nell at Historic Clark Park ® in the University City District ® section of West Philadelphia. Members of the Funky Majority ® turned out in droves to protest the besmirching of the neighborhood brand as a result of several recent incidents at the University of Pennsylvania ® which abuts the region. (All torches burned biodiesel oil, no unleashed dogs in the Park were harmed during the event, and funky advertising posters were printed on biodegradable recycled-content paper and affixed to poles - not trees.) “We don’t care what they do up there on the moral high ground near the river,” one participant said, “as long as they keep it on campus. But they’ve been hyping what they call a ‘partnership with the community’ so far and wide they probably believe it themselves by now. So, when they get bad press because the president of the place poses with some insensitive jerk in a suicide bomber outfit, or their beloved faculty members go to the slammer for sexual misconduct involving students and little boys, it besmirches the clean and safe ® University City ® brand.” Organizers of the rally noted it would go against the laissez faire Funky Vibes ® of the University City District ® section to tell Penn ® what to do. “They call it a ‘partnership’ but all this means is they throw money around to buy themselves some kind of high hoity-toity vision they must have got off a Power Point ® presentation about a recherche place like Cambridge Mass or Georgetown in Washington DC. They don’t pay attention to what’s really here. And they sure as sugar haven’t asked for inputs from any of us benighted folks who give the ‘hood its coveted Funky Vibe ®. Still, we’re ready and willing if they want our advice. Or, at least, we will be until they give us free tickets and load us up onto the bus to the boondocks where we can afford the rents or maybe the property taxes.” |
NIDs should properly arise as grassroots initiatives |
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The contentious NID initiative in the University City section of West Philadelphia has evoked, among many reasonable stakeholders, suggestions for modifications of the proposal as presented to date. Unfortunately, these suggestions don't match the way the actual NID law is written or and are incompatible with the NID being proposed. The question before the community is not "what kind of NID would you like?" - that issue isn't on the table, and it only diverts attention from the real dilemma before us. Namely, "do we accept this NID or not?" Perhaps we're all struggling to make any sense of the proposed NID because of one fundamental problem with it. The proposal did not arise out of any collective consensus of businesses or residents the way the enabling legislation strongly implies BIDs and NIDs arise. It arrived as a top-down mechanism from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), early in the planning of the University City District (UCD). At that time, Paul Levy [Executive Director of Philadelphia's Center City District] advised John Fry [of Penn] that UCD would eventually need to become a NID to continue to exist unless Penn desired to continue funding it at an extremely high level. Levy told this to the community, openly, at one of the sessions held by UCD to introduce its initiative. The NID, as proposed, therefore did not originate as a mutual idea of local businesses or residents, but as a strategic administrative decision by Penn in the late 90s to ensure that the UCD it desired and established would have a permanent revenue stream. Indeed, the question of whether a NID is the only way for UCD to continue has never been publicly considered. Since putting the NID into play, UCD has worked especially diligently to establish a "need" for its services, a dependency on and loyalty to the organization. The fact that had plans for a NID from the start while performing their "clean and safe," marketing, and selected development and activity support roles, is, however, a sign of cynical behavior, treating the neighborhood with contempt while putting the job security and other interests of UCD staff first. This calculation takes the merit out of even the admittedly good things they've done. It cheapens their apparent good works with a price tag. Yet, understandably, some neighbors and neighborhood organizations have 'bought into' the cycle of dependency and feel obligated to - tied to - UCD. And they are concerned, in part as a result of hints that without a NID, UCD may not survive. All of this regardless of the real costs to the community in terms of the reasons people chose to live, run businesses, and work here. Where some seek expedient, short-term, throw-money-at-it solutions to perceived crises, I seek opportunities for sustainable and ever-growing community-building, for being smarter about maximizing our gains and self-empowerment. This is especially crucial because we're a neighbor to financially and politically powerful institutions. There will always be debates about how to make the community "better," and what this even means, but such debates are good. And the issues of ehat's "better" and how to make it so should be the topics of discussion, instead of flavors of NIDs imposed from above. This community is not in crisis, and never has been - despite the revisionist history promulgated by the people who want to take control and implement their own vision of what it should be like in the future. The people who live here, long- or short-term, decided to do so on their own free will. They shouldn't be led to consider themselves so disabled as to give up their their identities or their self-determination. |
