Who Will Be the Next Mayor of Phillyville?

If there is any single reason why Philadelphia is "Philadelphia" and New York is "New York," that reason would be leadership. A Mayor of New York City had the vision to build the Erie Canal and thereby wrest the economic control of this country from Philadelphia's grasp. On the other hand, a Mayor of Philadelphia had the "vision" to decree no buildings be built taller than City Hall.

In NYC, a bad Mayor is David Dinkins and reasonable people would even defend him. In Philadelphia, we've got our pick of civic poisons - Wilson "the Mad Bomber" Goode or Frank "Nightstick" Rizzo.

The "institutional disdain for leadership" that has hamstrung this city since its founding cannot be allowed to continue. Philadelphia needs real leadership. Philadelphia needs new blood, and Ruby Legs wants to provide his.

Umm, maybe not literally.

As for blood, Ruby Legs is not a real person (he is the fictional embodiment of this author's cheesesteak-fueled Id) and therefore has none to offer. And Phillyville really isn't a place, it's more a state of mind. And, Phillyville really doesn't have any formal election laws so who's to say we'd even know how to count the votes. Some may ask why Ruby would even bother with the bother of running for Mayor of his own blog? Well, then you obviously haven't read the side bar - the dude obviously has a bit of a thing for sentimental symbolism and fancies himself to be some sort of scrapple loving Don Quixote.

And, all in all, virtual babies sure are nicer to kiss than real babies (no smelly diapers). So, let's have some fun - Ruby Legs is proud to announce he is running for virtual Mayor of Phillyville!!!

That said, let's get on with the platform.

1. Eliminate the Business Privilege Tax.

While people may want to live in Philadelphia, they definitely do not want to work here. And who can blame them? The Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia states clearly, "Taxes in the city of Philadelphia are onerous when compared to taxes in other large cities, and they are a significant deterrent to economic growth in the city. Relative to other cities, Philadelphia is generally ranked among those with the highest taxes in the nation."

Repealing the BPT is a no brainer. It is the first step Philadelphia must take if it wants to reverse the flow of jobs from the city to the suburbs. As noted by Larry Eichel of the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Philadelphia is the most expensive place in America for a business to operate - in terms of taxes and fees." The BPT consists of a .19% tax on gross receipts and a 6.5% tax on net income. The gross receipts tax must be paid whether or not a business earns a profit. In other words, it is truly a cost of doing business.

Worse, the business privilege tax presents an unfair burden to local and small business owners. The little guy is killed while large corporations move to Conshohocken. Proponents of the BPT fail to acknowledge that big corporations can and do shop among jurisdictions to determine the most favorable environment in which to operate. The guy down the street who runs the neighborhood bakery on 9th and Christian, he's stuck. If he moves to Conshohocken, his customers are not going to follow.

Operating a business should not be considered a "privilege." The cost of doing business in a major urban center is already great enough. Why do we need to give business yet another reason to pave over some Delaware County farmland to serve as the parking lot for their next headquarters?

2. Casino Work Project

Casinos are going to happen in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia can either embrace them or watch the casinos built elsewhere. Philadelphia cannot afford to shoot itself in the foot by allowing yet another source of tax revenues be diverted from city coffers to the suburbs.

The key is to make sure the casinos are done right.

Why should we saddled our waterfront with windowless aluminum boxes? We need not follow the lead of Vegas or Atlantic City. We can look to Europe or even Saratoga where casinos are/were often glorious examples of skill and craftsmanship.

Let Trump build his temporary tent. Let him have his revenue stream and force him to apply that revenue stream to pay the wages of a vast and highly skilled work force. Let's build palaces on the Delaware. Let's create monuments for future generations to enjoy. More importantly, let's use the cash generated to create a new generation of highly skilled craftsmen.

What neighborhood would object to a truly grand building built in its midst? What neighborhood would object to the proximity of highly skilled jobs?

3. Rewrite the Zoning Code

Philadelphia's zoning code is broken. If any citizen of Philadelphia wants to know why big companies stay away from Philadelphia, why jobs are located off 202 instead of Market, don't just blame the BPT. Blame our current system of zoning approvals.

Any project requires an inordinate amount the "grease" to quiet squeaky city officials and hyper-critical residents. Patronage hacks like David Auspitz are drawn to the system like rats to fetid cheese. The whole system needs to be scrapped.

Throw the bums out. Toss the entire code into the scrap heap. Rewrite the whole code from scratch. Identify specific policy goals the city wants to accomplish and create a unified system that coherently achieves those goals.

If we want a walkable city, adopt rules that require ground floor retail. If we want to dissuade the use of cars, we should adopt rules that require developers include space for bicycle storage. If we want to afford preference to the building of schools to the building of condos, we should adopt rules providing preferences for such uses. Whatever our goals are, they should be identified and they should be pursued by implementing a coherent zoning code crafted to insure the attainment of those goals.

4. Repeal the 10-year tax abatement and replace it with an architectural tax credit.

The abatement has created jobs and helped spur much needed investment in residential real estate, but I propose that other means can be used to achieve the same result and also achieve other goals important to Philadelphia's long-term health.

The jobs created by the 10-year tax abatement are low-skilled. Developers are replacing Philadelphia's great architectural heritage with cheap cookie-cutter homes built with materials shipped in from all over the globe. The 10-year tax abatement has successfully created legions of semi-skilled day laborers where skill and craftsmanship once reigned. I nstead of locally-crafted wrought iron and copper sheathing, we install built-in-somewhere-else, pre-fab garage doors. This city needs better.

A tax break for architectural preservation instead of architectural tear downs would create the investment in Philadelphia's residential housing stock and create a class of high-skilled laborers needed to rebuild the copper bump-outs, and the richly carved walnut doors and cornices.

In addition, an architectural tax credit could be used to lure businesses to relocate to Philadelphia. Instead of building some boxy office building off Route 202, a business could build its offices in an old warehouse off Delaware Avenue. The added costs associated with building in Philadelphia would be offset by the tax savings earned by preserving the historical edifice.

At the end of the day, an architectural preservation tax break would subsidize the continued investment in the city's residential housing stock AND would leave Philadelphia with its historical legacy intact, create a new class of workers that the city can rely upon to build its future, and could be used as a tool to lure businesses from the suburbs.

For those keeping score at home, that's four proverbial birds with one proverbial stone.

5. Restore SEPTA Trolley lines.

San Francisco is famous for its trolleys. Yet, you hop on a trolley in SF (other than a cable car), more likely than not, the trolley is going to be some reconditioned cast off from Philadelphia. A trolley used to run from Chestnut Hill all he way down to South Philly. One even ran from the Cheltenham Mall down to the Broad Street subway line. Sure would be nice to be able to pile on a trolley on Germantown Avenue and ride it all the way to CBP. Sure would be nice for Philly to be famous for its trolleys.

The Girard Avenue trolley line (Route 15) finally returned this past fall 13 years after it was "temporarily" replaced by diesel buses. Back in 1992, Rendell suspended services on the route 12, 23 and 56 trolleys to make room in the budget. Now that Philly is running a $202 million surplus, why not bring em all back? Why not add a few?

How about adding a trolley line linking Northern Liberties directly to Center City? Run it down Spring Garden. A decent means of getting residents to and from the city would be a great way to make sure Northern Liberties doesn't slip from its uber-yuppie perch back into the oblivion of the 1980s.

How about replacing the "Phlash" with a trolley? Commit the center lane of Market and Broad to trolley tracks. Sure makes more sense than using the center lane for parking (a truly peculiar Philly institution).

Maybe run a trunk out the Parkway to the Art Museum. Cars already have a bizillion lanes. Why not turn one or (gasp) two over to a trolley?

Philadelphia needs to reinvest in the infrastructure of its public transportation system. Reintroducing the romanticism of trolley's to city streets would sure be a good start.

6. Public Trashcans

Ever notice the amount of litter on our streets? Ever walk around all day clutching an empty soda bottle hoping to come across a trashcan?

We need more public trashcans and we need them emptied on a regular basis. We need litter laws to be enforced.

7. Real Estate Tax Relief For Fixed Income Residents.

Opponents of Philadelphia's real estate boom argue that it forces long-term residents out of their neighborhoods. They argue higher real estate values mean higher real estate taxes. And fixed-income residents like retirees cannot pay the increased real estate taxes and therefore are forced from their homes.

As an initial matter, Philadelphia does a terrible job of appraising property values. The BRT is currently in the midst of a year-long process of reappraising every property in the city. The BRT's goal is to assess all properties at full value instead of the "fractional value at which properties are now valued."

Simply replacing the equation used to assess properties does not address the single most glaring flaw in the system, the arbitrary valuation of city properties. On a single block, the real estate taxes paid by each resident will vary by thousands of dollars. One would expect that if the BRT was applying a consistent formula, houses on the same block should be roughly identical in value. Yet, appraised values and the resulting assessment values frequently diverge by several hundred percent. The only variable in the assessment process should be the property's valuation, e.g., the "Actual BRT Value". The variance in assessment values suggests the BRT is not applying a consistent Actual BRT Value to like properties. Simply replacing the formula applied to the Actual BRT Value with a different formula will not remedy this flaw.

Practically, a resident unlucky enough to have been hit with a high assessment subsidizes the tax bill of his or her neighbors. The system is incredibly arbitrary and unfair.

In addition to not being fair, by failing to apply a consistent valuation to like properties, Philadelphia fails to maximize its real estate tax revenue. If all properties were appraised regularly and rationally, Philadelphia would likely increase its revenues and thereby reduce its dependency on alternative sources of tax revenue (for example, the BPT).

More importantly, by failing to increase property tax rates in accordance with market values, Philadelphia effectively transfers tax dollars that should go to city coffers to the federal government. Yep, that's right, the residents of Philadelphia are giving too much of their tax dollars to the Cheney Administration.

The Federal Internal Revenue Code allows taxpayers to deduct from gross income the amount paid by a taxpayer in local property taxes. Any increase in real estate taxes will be offset in part by deducting the taxes against federal tax obligations. The failure of Philadelphia to conduct regular appraisals of property values in effect shifts tax revenues from Philadelphia to the federal government. And we know what happens when the federal government gets its hands on money belonging to city residents, it sends it to a bunch of peeps who live outside of cities.

Understandably, residents on a fixed income or no income would likely not be able to take advantage of the federal deduction to offset any increase in local taxes. As a result, the system should make exceptions for those residents. To the extent residents simply do not want to cash out their equity and do want to remain in their neighborhoods, they should be allowed to. Residents below a certain level of income should be able to apply for credits to offset increases assessed real estate tax increases.

That way, we'll all win and be able to enjoy revitalized neighborhoods.

Now, go ahead and tell me why I am idiot. And I apologize for turning off the anonymous comments but certain extremists, aka "racist stooges," were abusing the feature. Maybe once they move on to their next target, I'll relax the security 'round here.