Fight for Fiscal Responsibility
- The City budget process will start with a public priority-setting process to use meaningful public input to establish governmental priorities. The estimate used to define the revenue that will determine how much we will spend in the City budget will be established as a consensus forecast based on expert advice and input from all elected officials and the public.
- The City budget will be prepared in a way to show costs by programmatic area to best illustrate the true cost of City spending. It should be accompanied by documents listing the goals that programmatic spending strives to achieve. All new legislation and new City programs will be accompanied by fiscal-impact statements to show the value added in terms of the results that new spending will create so the citizenry can judge whether new programs achieve their goals in future years. The City will also establish policies governing granting of public money to private firms to make those firms responsible for achieving goals related to the receipt of funds or repaying the public assistance.
- The City will establish a Rainy-Day Fund capitalized by any budget surplus. The Philadelphia Home Rule charter will codify the City's need to save when revenues come in higher than anticipated and to cushion against unexpected shortfalls in the future. No longer shall any budget surplus be used as a carrot by any Mayoral administration.
- The City will seek a just and fair solution for PGW by calling for an emergency energy summit attended by high level representatives from the Public Utilities Commission, the City, PGW, the State legislature, our federal Congressional Delegation, as well as the Governor. All parties will work towards: Greater federal LIHEAP assistance so that no low-income families go without heat in the winter; Professional management of the utility and removal of all unqualified management level patronage jobs; Debt forgiveness in exchange for infrastructure investment in remote in-house quick valve gas shutoff technology so that streets no longer need to be dug up in order to shut off a single home's gas; An increase the income requirement needed to avoid a gas shut-off; The City will allow PGW to use any remaining money originally earmarked to pay down a $45 million dollar loan to enter into the energy trading market; The State shall authorize the City to sell gas within the entire 5 County Philadelphia region so as to enable it to enhance its revenue with higher income customers.
- The city will eliminate the 10-year tax abatement in favor of a job-stimlulation package inviting new and existing employers to launch and/or expand their businesses. New companies will be have no business taxes and the wage tax will be reduced by 50%. Existing employers will receive a 50% reduction in business taxes.
- The City will pay $460 million dollars into pensions and employee health insurance in FY 2009 or 22% of the total City budget. According to The Philadelphia Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, this is more than the cost of any City department with the exception of police and DHS. The City must offer current employees and make mandatory for new employees a defined contribution plan. This would eliminate unfunded liabilities for all new hires participating in a defined contribution plan since the city's contribution is defined and it will no longer be held responsible for guaranteed benefit levels. The City must also ask for additional union concessions for employees choosing not to enroll in a defined contribution plan by contributing 2-5% of their salaries into the pension fund. The review of the opportunity to eliminate or reduce the pension program by instituting a plan where employees can be responsible for their own contribution to a choice of programs offered by competing representatives.
- The City will identify revenue streams based on the sale or lease of city owned properties and/or resources that are longer necessary to the functions of government. The city will sell the airport and a stabilized PGW, using the proceeds to pay down city debt, reduce taxes and fight crime.
- The City will spend $80 million more this year than last insuring City employees. To reduce the cost of health care insurance for City employees and City residents, the City will leverage the population of the entire city, surrounding municipalities, including the Southern New Jersey suburbs into a virtual corporation. The approximately 8 million person strong corporation will purchase health insurance at a deeply reduced group rate.
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Consolidate Finance Functions of City and School District
The Finance functions of the City and the School District should be consolidated into a single departmental cluster within City Government under the Director of Finance of the City to ensure consistent practices and improvements to budgetary controls, procurement, and capital improvements. The payroll, the accounting, the procurement,the bond issuance, and pension systems need to centralized. Currently the City and the School District share revenues from real estate taxes on a 40 /60 split and thereby share a common financial base. Employees and administration of the Schools would remain separate. The improvement of common financial controls should result in substantial savings (to be determined).
City Employee Pension & Health Benefits
Re: bullets 6 & 8: Unless things have changed in the past couple of years, I think city employees are already contributing 6% of their gross salary to the pension fund (about the same as a Social Security contribution.) Health benefits are tricky to achieve economy-of-scale on: sure, if you expand the group, you tend to leverage insurers for lower premiums, but you also expand the risks associated with a higher number of catastrophic and chronic medical expenses to be incurred. Sometimes, smaller, more cost-control conscious groups perform better.
uncollected revenues
the city has too much uncollected revenues. Poor records can't identify absentee landlords for real estate taxes. Water bills, Gas bills and even Traffic Court have serious collection problems. Until these departments are better managed there can be no tax increases. Just how many millions are out there uncollected?
City should evaluate cost wise how Special Services Districts impact operations of certain city departments. Do they save the city money? Could city employees be better utilized in other areas without these districts?
Recycling is still piece meal at best. Utilize more community groups, assign block captains to distribute plastic tubs and information to neighbors. Recycle rain water from roof tops, currently all the roof water goes into the sewer system and backs up into basements when the rain is heavy.
Redirect this rain water into the alley and eventually into storm drains in the street.
Entire section
IMO this entire section has the net effect of increasing government expenditures, while our efforts must be geared towards streamlining government as much as possible.
The City should institute a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of its services with the goal of privatizing as many of these services as possible. The process of awarding contracts to perform these services must be made as competititive and as transparent as possible.
Privatizing equals povertizing
There have been so many disasters resulting from the substitution of private profit for public purpose over the years, the most recent of which is the disgrace at the Veterans' Hospitals. And think of all the graft and corruption that was Halliburton's gift to the people of Iraq. Public services cannot be made hostage to the profit motive.
Business growth
Since small businesses create 80 percent of the new jobs, the City should stop showing favor to large corporations.
Efforts should be made to assist the owners of small companies, and remove the red tape that keeps them from winning city contracts.
The City should stop providing tax breaks to large corporations that primarily employ workers from the suburbs. When a large company seeks a tax break, then the City should require that a percentage of its new hires be city residents.
If Philadelphia is to create jobs, it must support the companies that actually hire city residents and minorities. Furthermore, unions engaged in the construction of downtown condos should be required to use a certain number of city workers at these sites.
In addition, the City should stop providing tax breaks to wealthy homeowners who are moving into the City. Poor, elderly and middle-class workers are subsidizing the wealthy,a policy that is fiscally unsound.
Aiports
The city should investigate converting the airport to an independent authority. The Airport is a regional assett and vital economic engine; as such, it needs to be managed by professionals who will be insulated from the political whims of city officials (e.g. fat airport contracts to the mayors brother!). Plus -- then maybe, just maybe -- they will figure out a way to provide ashtrays at the curbs so it wont be so dirty.
Seriously, most major airports are run by authorities, so lets do the same here.
PGW - We already shoulder the burden
PGW wants a rate increase? Gas bills are quite high as it is. The cost of the low-income programs is already included in our bills. We also contribute to PGW's coffers through the Weather Normalization Adjustment Charge (the charge assessed per customer for NOT using as much gas when the weather changes). (This charge is not "capped", by the way, and it should be.) This is PGW's way of extracting money from it's customers without a rate increase. So, to ask for a rate increase on top of that is ridiculous. They should seek to recover their costs from within, (i.e. not awarding overly generous bonuses, or covering exhorbitant "high level executive" moving costs like they did a few years ago.) The customer's pockets are not bottomless money pits.
PGW and bus. priv. tax
Get rid of PGW. Lease it out to a private company. It can't get much worse than what they have now. Get rid of the business priv. tax. This city is disgraceful as far as that tax goes. As freelancers and business owners, you are killing not only us but the city as well by forcing out small businesses. It is a tax that only conglomerates can really afford to pay. We need these mom-and-pops in the city to keep the neighborhoods strong and to keep the hard workers in the city as opposed to those who just leech off the system while contributing nothing. Come up with a fair way for businesses to be taxed. Ask any business owner in the city, and they will name this tax as the number-one problem they face having a business here.
Keep the baby while throwing out the bath water
Taxes need to be fairer, but that doesn't mean that businesses, which are high level consumers of City services, shouldn't pay their fair share. Bigger businesses that are given preferences, like banks, insurance companies, utilities and stock brokers, should pay at the same rates as all other large corporations, and smaller businesses should get breaks, but we need to recognize that there is no free lunch. If we want better services, they need to be paid for, like everything else.
Selling or leasing PGW is only asking for trouble
I agree that PGW is pretty bad. However, I disagree with the idea of selling it or leasing it. Once the control of the "asset" is in the hands of another entity, and there is no competitor for us to turn to, customers are then at the mercy of the new owner. They too, will be looking to pass on "losses" to the consumers. Any money realized from a sale or lease will disappear in the blink of an eye, and squandered somehow, but not to our benefit.
Selling or leasing PGW
Sell PGW. I've never before lived in a city that owns a public utility, and I've never paid so much for heat before. Despite that, PGW is losing horrific amounts of money. Sell it, regulate the buyer. Sorry, but are we not currently at the "mercy of the owner?" I do not see the benefit. I am certainly paying the cost.
We pay high rates because
PGW is limited to selling in a market 25% of whose members are below the poverty rate, thus ensuring that it will have a high rate of late and nonpayers. The rest of us have to take up the slack. It's also forced to charge high rates because of government mandates to subsidize the elderly and poor, without any dedicated funding provided for that purpose. A private entity would do no better. Think Enron, Halliburton.
Also, PGW needs to be allowed to sell gas where the wealth is, in the suburbs.