Neighbors Opposed to the Neighborhood Improvement District:

Four 'takes' (and a follow-up) on the trouble at Koko Bongo

2007-10-29T09:30:00.000-04:00

From the Daily News

Cop wounded, gunman dead
By STEPHANIE FARR & CHRISTINE OLLEY

In just three weeks Koko Bongo, a University City nightclub, is scheduled to host a party with a particularly disturbing theme: "City Under Siege - Part II."The flyers promoting the upcoming party littered the sidewalks near the club yesterday afternoon, where just hours earlier the theme was played out when a police officer was shot, the gunman killed and a bystander wounded in the police-civilian shootout.

Officer Sandra Van Hinkle, a 10-year police veteran detailed to the University City district, is recovering at home after being treated for a gunshot wound to her right leg at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

In light of recent minor fights outside the club, on 38th Street near Ludlow, 10 officers were assigned to handle crowd control as patrons poured out of Koko Bongo about 2 a.m. yesterday, said police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore.

As the officers attempted to move the crowd, estimated at between 300 and 800, a small group of individuals refused to budge.

"They said they were waiting for another group to come out," Vanore said.

When officers persisted, at least one man, Lamarr Bembry, turned and fired "directly at the police," according to Vanore.

Two officers returned fire and Bembry, 21, of Race Street near 54th, who had a prior arrest for carrying a firearm without a license, was struck once in the chest. He was pronounced dead at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at about 4 a.m. yesterday, Homicide Sgt. Charles Coan said.

At least 20 police cruisers rushed to the scene and blocked off Chestnut Street from 37th to 39th streets while dozens of students and other civilians gathered to watch the drama.

According to police spokesman Sgt. Ray Evers, Bembry was not the only shooter at the scene. Four other individuals were brought in for questioning but it was undetermined if any of those people face charges in connection with the incident.

Caught in the crossfire was a bystander who was shot in the shoulder and face while inside his vehicle. The man, whose name was withheld by police, was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He remains in stable condition.

Firearms were recovered at the scene, but officers declined to say how many.

Police foresight was credited with containing the situation, which Vanore said could have been much worse if the original detail of 10 officers had not been stationed outside of the club.

Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby said the officers did a great job "under extreme circumstances."

"Fortunately, our officer was OK and the situation ended up being not as serious as it could of been," McNesby said. "It just shows what our officers are out there facing every day."

Yesterday afternoon, neon signs advertising alcoholic beverages still lit up the windows of Koko Bongo and fliers advertising upcoming parties at the club still littered the entrance, sidewalk and nearby potted plants.

A man who answered the door yesterday afternoon and identified himself as a cleaner was so shocked by the news of the shooting that he left the establishment to watch the Eagles game at a nearby bar.

"I don't even want to stay here anymore," he said. "I don't want to be in this environment."

Koko Bongo has been reincarnated several times in the last few years. As recently as spring 2006, the club was known as "Brownie's" and before that it was "Club Pegasus."

In 2001, a disc jockey working the Club Pegasus scene was shot in the stomach as the club was letting out. He survived.

From the Inquirer

Shooting outside nightclub leaves 1 dead, two wounded
By Jan Hefler

Police were ready yesterday morning when a gunfight erupted on Ludlow Street in a crowd of about 800 patrons leaving KoKo Bongo, a popular University City nightclub where live music pulsates and the booze flows freely. A week before, there had been a fistfight and an unruly mob had assembled on Ludlow outside the bar, at 38th and Chestnut Streets, police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore said.

So 10 officers were assigned to the spot and they responded quickly yesterday when five gunmen began firing, he said.

Before it was over, shortly after 2 a.m., a 21-year-old suspect was killed and a police officer and bystander were wounded. Five men were arrested, and two handguns were recovered; charges are pending.

Police shot Lamar Bembry, of the 5400 block of Race Street, once in the chest after he brandished a gun and fired directly at Patrol Officer Sandra Van Hinkel, Vanore said. Bembry, who was known to police, was later pronounced dead at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.

Van Hinkel, a 10-year police veteran, was struck once, in the right leg, and was treated at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and released. She was part of the special unit assigned to the nightclub during closing hours.

Vanore said that four men had brandished weapons and that when police tried to move the crowd, the men fired on the officers. Two officers returned fire, he said. A few minutes later, another gunman fired a round, and was captured a block away by police.

A 34-year-old man who was sitting in his car in traffic outside the club was hit in the face and shoulder by stray bullets, according to Homicide Police Sgt. Charles Coan. Police declined to release his name. He was in stable condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Coan said there were no reports of an argument or fight inside the bar before the shooting began.

The club had scheduled a Halloween costume party on Saturday night. Formerly known as Brownies, the hotspot is frequented by college students who pay as much as $5 for rum drinks. It is a glitzy place where lights flash, bodies grind and music blasts. There are flat-screen TVs showing sports events, and, on special nights, a live band or DJ.

Vanore said that the nightclub recently had been closed and reopened, and that city officials would be looking into whether it should stay open. He said it was unclear why it was previously shut down.

From Channel 6 News

Officer Wounded, Suspect Killed in Gun Battle; Bystander in car also wounded
By Lauren Wilson

UNIVERSITY CITY - October 28, 2007 - A gun battle outside a nightclub left a police officer wounded and a suspect dead early Sunday.

More than 30 bullet shells littered the street outside the Koko Bongo club on the University of Pennsylvania's campus early Sunday.

Police were on the scene at 38th and Ludlow Streets because of trouble reported last week.
When officers spotted several gun-toting suspects, the trouble started again.

"At the crime scene, there were actually four weapons, so we believe there were four different shooters there shooting at police. Two of the officers fired back at them," said police commissioner Sylvester Johnson.

Five to six hundred club goers were present at the time.

"These club present a challenge to us. There are huge numbers of people who attend these clubs. They drink. They have weapons on them. They have access to weapons. It's a real problem," said Mayor John Street.

The injured officer, Sgt. Sandra Van Hankel, was shot in the leg. Indications are the ten-year veteran never fired her weapon.

The deceased suspect was identified as Lamarr Bembry, 21, from the 5400 block of Race Street.

A man driving past the club was also shot. He suffered wounds to his shoulder and face. He remained at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in stable condition on Sunday afternoon.

"The shooting has to stop. It really does. It's just senseless," said the victim's fiancé, Maya Johnson.

Police said at least one person was taken into custody, but there was no immediate word of any charges.

From the Daily Pennsylvanian

One dead, two injured in shooting; Cop hit by gunfire outside nightclub at 38th and Chestnut streets early Sunday morning
By: Katie Karas
Posted: 10/29/07

Costumed students returning home from a string of Halloween parties early Sunday morning were greeted by the sound of a flurry of gunshots, the result of a fight at 38th and Chestnut streets that left one man dead and two others injured.

Lamar Bembry, a 21-year-old resident of the 5400 block of Race Street, was shot and killed by police during a gunfight outside of Koko Bongo nightclub, located just off the edge of campus, Philadelphia Police Homicide Sgt. Charles Coan said.

Philadelphia Police officer Sandra Van Hinkel and another bystander were struck by bullets during the melee, in which dozens of shots were fired.

Van Hinkel was hit in the right leg by a bullet. She was treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and released shortly thereafter.

The other victim, a 34-year-old man who was sitting in his car in traffic on 38th Street, was struck by stray bullets in the face and shoulder. Police declined to release his name because he is a potential witness.

He is in stable condition at HUP.

Bembrey was shot by police once in the chest after brandishing a gun and firing it into the crowd while leaving the club. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The incident took place as police were trying to disperse the crowd of 200 to 300 people leaving the club at about 2:00 a.m. Coan said there were no reports of an argument or fight inside the club before the shooting began.

"There was really no altercation," he said. "Basically, the police were moving the crowd, trying to get the traffic flowing, when one male produced a gun and started firing in the direction of the police."

Police were already patrolling outside of the nightclub because there had been previous incidents at that location. They returned fire when the shooting began.

Several clubgoers were visibly shaken following the shooting, and some argued with police officers about the police's role in the incident.

Members of Philadelphia Police Homicide Division, which is investigating the case, would not say if there would be a seperate investigation into police conduct and referred all questions to Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, who could not be reached for comment.

Coan said police believe there were other shooters, though there are conflicting reports of how many.

Multiple people were seen being detained by police at the scene. Coan said that no charges have been filed, and that there are no suspects besides Bembry, who had a prior record. Police would not comment on why people were detained or when they were released.

The incident occurred a block north of campus, and many students living in Hamilton Court and Chestnut Hall, both located at 39th and Chestnut streets, said they could clearly hear the shots.

"I thought it was fireworks at first," said College and Wharton sophomore Alok Pandey, who lives in Hamilton Court. "Then when I heard all the yelling and sirens I realized what had happened."

The shooting was one of several incidents involving gunfire that have occurred on the north side of campus over the last few years.

A gunshot was reported at 40th and Market streets on Aug. 15, and an 18-year-old unaffiliated with the University was shot in the face on the 4500 block of Sansom street the day before.

A man was also killed on the 3900 block of Market Street this past December, and Engineering senior Mari Oishi was struck by a stray bullet during an attempted robbery at 39th and Chestnut streets in January 2006.

Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said the incident was indicative of a larger problem Philadelphia has with violence at its nightclubs.

"It is just another example of how easy it is for people to have guns and how quickly an argument in a nightclub can escalate," she said.

- Staff Writer Jerome Chen contributed reporting to this article.

From the Daily Pennsylvanian

Shooting at 38th and Chestnut: Evidence points to no police misconduct in local gunfight
By: Katie Karas
Posted: 10/30/07

Philadelphia Police officials are not investigating possible police misconduct in the death of Lamar Bembry because they have evidence showing that Bembry, who was shot and killed by police during a gun battle early Sunday morning at 38th and Chestnut streets, was among one of the shooters on the scene, said Lt. Frank Vanore of Philadelphia Police Public Affairs.

Bembry allegedly opened fire while leaving the Koko Bongo nightclub at 38th and Chestnut at about 2:00 a.m. and was shot in the chest by police in the ensuing gunfight.

Vanore said ballistic evidence revealed that police officers acted correctly in firing at Bembry. It also showed that there were at least two other shooters who participated in the gunfight, although no weapons from these shooters have been recovered.

Philadelphia Police were already on the scene when the shooting began because there had been a few minor instances last week when Koko Bongo let out, Vanore said.

Police temporarily detained a few suspects but have not yet charged anyone. They urge anyone with information regarding the shootings to contact Philadelphia Police at 215-686-1776.

Bill in City Council to create a BID in Frankford

2007-10-11T18:01:00.001-04:00

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:

The Frankford proposal is a true BID in that it involves retail and other businesses engaged in "trade and commerce" as required by the plain language of the enabling state law.
The Frankford proposal arose from grassroots efforts rather than top-down by people trying to secure high-paying jobs for themselves.
The Frankford proposal has no pretensions about setting up a public sector "development" authority but is simply intended to promote a "clean and safe" environment for patrons of business on and close to Frankford Ave.
The Frankford proposal has a total budget of $78,000 per year -- a mere $20,000 for administrative salaries and costs, plus $5,000 for office supplies, $3,000 for a state-mandated annual audit, and $50,000 for an outsourced cleaning and security workforce.
The Frankford proposal will set up an independent authority, having no comingling of funds with any existing agencies.

Click here to request a copy of Bill 070540 as an email attachment: Bill 070540

An independent condemnation of the NID

2007-10-09T09:05:00.000-04:00

Burean-Lucien Blackwell City instead of University City?; Lewis Harris, Jr.
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.

Even Paul Levy - arguably the "father" of NIDs in Philadelphia - agrees

2007-07-18T09:27:00.000-04:00

Paul Levy of the Center City District (CCD), of whom Lewis Wendell more truthfully than he imagined admitted he was "not worthy," agrees with one strong point made by opponents to the proposal by the University City District (UCD). UCD has labeled its proposal a "Business Improvement District" (BID), and tax rental property owners because they're in business.

Here's what Mr Levy wrote in a "letter to the editor" of the University City Review on July 18 2007:

"The CCD is a business improvement district. About 90% of our assessment revenue comes from office buildings, hotels, and retail establishments; less than 8% comes from apartment buildings."

This directly informs one of the main points many opponents to UCD's plan have been stating since the outset. "Business" districts are defined in the state enabling law as involving establishments engaged "in trade and commerce." Levy points out that the CCD indeed is overwhelmingly involved with these kinds of properties. Clearly, apartment buildings interspersed among them are ancillary - and probably should be assessed because they can't be reasonably excluded from the benefits.

The opposite holds in University City. This is clearly a residential district - and the few businesses here might be included in the assessments of any broad-based district simply because they can't be reasonably excluded from the benefits. All of which says that if any plan is to be considered feasible, it should cover all properties in the specified area.

It might be proper to propose BIDs for Baltimore Avenue between 45th and 52nd Streets or Lancaster Ave between 38th and anything beyond because these are business corridors. The relatively few owner-occupied as well as rental properties along these thoroughfares might be included in the assessments because they'd be receiving the benefits.

Thank you for the clarification, Mr Levy.

An Act of War: Battle lines are drawn in University City

2007-07-12T08:17:00.000-04:00

From the Philadelphia City Paper, July 11 2007

An Act of War
Battle lines are drawn in University City.
by Doron Taussig

On the first Thursday of every month, the University of Pennsylvania hosts a community meeting for civic-association leaders and other University City residents. The scheduled topic for the June 7 meeting, attended by about 70 neighbors, was health care. Before beginning the formal agenda, moderator Glenn Bryan of Penn's City and Community Relations Department offered the floor to Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell. Health care was never discussed.

Instead, Blackwell launched a verbal assault against Penn and University City District, the special-services agency that provides sanitation, security, marketing and development services to the neighborhoods surrounding Penn and Drexel. Specifically, she raged about UCD's suspension (and de facto firing) of John Fenton, its former operations manager. Fenton had been the guy to call if, say, a house of departing students left a bathtub lying in the middle of your street. He was widely respected for his efficiency in this capacity, but was disciplined after the Daily News reported he improperly used UCD resources, in the form of students assigned to community service, to set up a rally for mayoral candidate Tom Knox.

Blackwell had been both an ally of Knox's (the one-time frontrunner backed her for Council president) and a friend of Fenton's. Some suspected that Fenton's alleged favor for Knox had really been a favor for Blackwell.

At the First Thursday meeting, Blackwell offered an alternative explanation: UCD was using the Daily News story as an excuse to punish her for her political positions. She accused the nonprofit of secretly supporting Michael Nutter, called it an "arm" of Penn and, some observers say, declared herself "at war with" the university. The attack lasted for the duration of the meeting. According to a thorough account in the University City Review, every time someone tried to wrest the floor back, she told them, "Stop cutting me off." It was a takeover, a clear act of war.

Political friction is a familiar part of the landscape in University City, which has all the ingredients for discord: a diverse population with divergent interests, eccentric characters with strong opinions and an undercurrent of race and class tension. On one University City Web discussion board, UCD is likened to Hezbollah.

Indeed, since its 1997 inception, UCD has been one of the flashpoints for internecine conflict. For some neighbors, it's a mystery that an organization that cleans streets — using private funding, no less, primarily from Penn — attracts such vitriol. It does "positive things," says Jim Lilly, owner of a Metropolitan Bakery and member of UCD's business and marketing committee.

For others, UCD is a symbol of the university that provides the bulk of its funding and one imagined future for University City. Residents perpetually worry about being swallowed up and priced out by their multibillion-dollar neighbor. To these folks, who constitute either a vocal minority or a disenfranchised majority, depending on whom you ask, UCD is a facilitator of "Penntrification." Al Krigman, a landlord who's lived here for 36 years, calls the agency's efforts "social engineering."

"UCD has been pushing an agenda that's not in the best interest of the majority of the people in the area," he says.

Such concerns are heightened by UCD's strange public/private status. Right now, it's a special-services district, funded voluntarily and run privately. For the past two years, it's lobbied to become a business improvement district (BID), funded by an "assessment" charged to local businesses and governed by its assessees. It needs the approval of a majority of businesses and City Council to make this happen.

In either case, UCD performs governmental functions while remaining private and, technically, unaccountable to neighbors. This quasi-governmental status creates a potentially awkward relationship between UCD and the actual government. It's odd for a woman as entrenched as Blackwell to have another institution performing a semi-governmental role, and she views UCD as either a threat to low-income constituents or a challenge to her own power. Regardless, most neighborhood activists agree that tension between Blackwell and UCD pre-dates the Fenton incident. Interestingly, no one City Paper spoke to could point to any public instances when Blackwell spoke out against UCD, or vice versa. Instead, activists occasionally cited the UCD's failure to keep Blackwell-friendly people in its fold. Martin Cabry, for instance, is a Town Watch leader and a Blackwell ally who once sat on UCD's board. In his telling, he was forced out for dissenting too many times.

"I think I was too community-based" for UCD, says Cabry, now the director of zoning in Blackwell's office.

Fenton was another Cabry. Putting aside for a moment the apparent access he provided her to UCD resources, Blackwell liked the guy. He was old Philly politics, someone who knew how to follow what one resident calls "the informal political process." She could work with him.

"Jannie's a mensch," says one neighborhood activist. "She communicates with people, not with procedures or institutions."

Fenton has landed on his feet: He also now works in Blackwell's office, as director of community activities. But the councilwoman took his dismissal as a slap in the face. "They really don't respect us, in my opinion," says Cabry. "It was the straw that broke the camel's back."

After taking First Thursday hostage, Blackwell appears now to be backtracking from her attacks on Penn, but not on UCD.

"I don't have a problem with Penn. I do have issues with UCD's leadership," says the councilwoman (she maintains that UCD is an arm of Penn, and sees no contradiction therein). She intends to "re-evaluate" her relationship with the special-services district. "Every time I see UCD's name, I'll review the project."

Via e-mail, representatives from both Penn and UCD sought to de-escalate. "UCD has maintained a cordial and constructive working relationship with the councilwoman," wrote UCD Executive Director Lewis Wendell.

"We see a positive working relationship between the UCD and City Council as important, and for the last 10 years the University City community has seen some very successful development as a result," echoed Penn executive vice president Craig Carnaroli. But if they're unable to stem the councilwoman's rage, what happens? Asked what programs might be threatened by her "reviews," Blackwell says, "We do a lot of programs together, in parks, and ... parks, and streetscapes, commercial corridors."

Cabry explains the threat this way: "We're not gonna let them take credit for [things] anymore." In reality, Blackwell holds some purse strings, and can always try to block development projects, but not to an extent UCD can't work around. If she really wants to mess with the district, the most concrete power she has is to prevent it from becoming a BID: legislation to establish a BID must be introduced by the relevant district councilperson. Blackwell says she has no position on the BID proposal, and will abide by the wishes of business owners. But numerous neighbors are now convinced: UCD will become a BID over the councilwoman's dead body.

It's a standoff reflective of the larger University City picture. Blackwell may resent the influence of UCD, and its patron, Penn, but the school is a powerful, national institution — there's nothing she can do about that. At the same time, for all Penn's cash and cache, Jannie Blackwell is West Philadelphia. Mighty Penn couldn't get rid of this little councilwoman if it wanted to. It's stuck with her, and she with it.

Letter to the Editor of the University City Review by Glenn Moyer

2007-07-06T08:44:00.000-04:00

The response last week, “UCD Executive Director speaks out on Fenton affair”, concerning the “internal investigation” of illegal political activity by UCD confirms the complete lack of accountability demanded by the University of Pennsylvania when ruling over our community.

West Philadelphia residents have seen this ruthlessly controlled Penn entity, UCD, insist that all committees and representative bodies in each of its initiatives are secretly handpicked. The subsequent outrageous propaganda, which labels most of the local residents as criminals, has long bombarded the publication outlets and calls these handpicked, secretive groupings, “the community.”

When I announced, in this paper, the cancellation of the fall Clark Park festival in 2002, I first revealed the additional Penn tactic used against the indigenous residents when I revealed the existence of a secret UCD/FOCP Quality of Life Task force. This “task force” was actually a type of kangaroo court meant to prove that the “community” looked at the culture of our neighborhood as reflected in the park as something criminal.

In this paper and other publications, we watched as Penn’s agent and their partners called our community a drug infested wasteland where good folks feared; because it was overrun with prostitutes, drug dealers and gang members.

Neighbors, the treachery and patterns that we have viewed repeatedly by this Penn machine bulldozing our community and rights sends shivers up my spine. History has shown repeatedly what happens when the indigenous culture is labeled in this manner and the people are simultaneously barred from all levels of participation with government.

The UCD policy for delivering special favors for political friends needed to be published by UCD as soon as the Daily News broke the report of UCD’s illegal political activity and use of probationers. What we got; however, was exactly what we’ve come to expect from disingenuous unethical corporate entities. Rather than an investigation, UCD delayed releasing information while maintaining a stone wall. After a period, Mr. Fenton was packaged as a scapegoat in a ridiculous attempt to assert that a single failure of policy occurred. And UCD expects to return to its contemptuous deconstruction of our community in order to support this Penn marketing scheme. By refusing to release the special favor or cronyism policy, which UCD has followed for years, their attempt to assassinate the character of Mr. Fenton should be ridiculed and not accepted.

Folks, we have no idea how many unethical, illegal, violations have been sanctioned by Penn’s UCD over the last many years they have been taking over our community. We do know that we are not important as citizens under Penn’s march for plutocracy. How much more will we accept from this UCD?

Glenn Moyer
West Philadelphia

Letter to the Editor of the University City Review by Al Krigman

2007-07-05T08:26:00.000-04:00

Re: UCD Executive Director Speaks Out

Did Gavrilo Princip cause World War I by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand? Did John Fenton cause widespread dissatisfaction with the University City District (UCD) and its Neighborhood Improvement District (NID) initiative by using tax-exempt resources in what may or may not have been a partisan event in Malcolm X Park?

Believing either would be confusing precipitating incidents with underlying determinants.

In an e-mail interview last week in the University City Review, UCD’s Lewis Wendell does just this.

After alluding to administrative locks placed on the barn door now that the horse he blames for every problem is gone, Mr Wendell glibly stated that UCD would regain the confidence of the community by continuing “to do what it does best.” Business as usual, totally oblivious to local concerns about the group’s usurpation of prerogatives lawfully delegated to our elected government, embarrassingly shameless and cynical self-promotion, extravagant marketing efforts meant to stroke contributors rather than enhance the quality of life in the area, and development projects managed so incompetently that they merely waste money but fortunately fail to achieve the social engineering on the agenda of UCD’s primary patrons.

Having been asked whether the NID is in trouble, Mr Wendell asserted that the proposal on the table “has considerable support” and will continue to be promoted. Also oblivious to the strong opposition to such fundamental flaws as the disjunction between those who would be forced to pay and those who would ostensibly derive the benefits — with inflammatory renter and investor versus homeowner implications, the lack of accountability for activities and costs to the affected parties, the conflict of interest inherent in the obfuscatory commingling of personnel and functions with UCD, the superficial five-line tax-and-spend budget cavalierly pulled out of the air as opposed to responsibly synthesized from detailed costs of finely-tuned operations, and disparities with the “definitions” and “rational nexus” sections of the enabling state law as well as the uniform taxation clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

This would have been a great opportunity for UCD to revisit its mission and address the fundamentals that could make it a valuable asset to the community and not the source of contention and divisiveness it is. But that would be expecting people so arrogant as to have gotten into the present mess to be humble enough to get out of it.

I commend to Mr Wendell and his staff this, from “To a Louse” by Robert Burns:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

Alan Krigman
36-year resident and housing provider

When an organization fouls-up, who should take the blame?

2007-06-08T09:38:00.000-04:00

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.

UCD gets deeper into the bad judgement quicksand on illegal political involvement

2007-05-23T08:23:00.000-04:00

The following is a report from the (Philadelphia) Channel 6 news.

Probe Launched into Use of Students at Rally
By Dann Cuellar

May 22, 2007 - The question is whether students directed to perform community service were instead being used for a political rally for mayoral candidate Tom Knox.

The Community Service Program in the University City District has been suspended, and one of the top administrators placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation.
The event was held on the weekend before the election at Malcom X Park at 52nd and Pine Streets. Knox and his supporter, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, made speeches. Penn student Jeff Doto, who was serving 20 hours of school-ordered community service, says he was directed to help set up for the rally.

"We set up the moon bounce things, these amusement rides and they had the grill going with the barbeque. Tom Knox came and gave his speech," said student Jeff Doto.

Penn student Luke Walker, who was also doing community service, says he too was asked to help, which he thought was a little odd.

"Doing community service for a minor infraction is one thing. Working for a partisan campaign is another," said Walker.

Blackwell says she's the one that asked University City district supervisor John Fenton to send people doing community service to help at Malcolm X Park that day, but she insists it wasn't a rally for Knox.

"This was not a Knox rally. This was a community rally. I asked nobody to do anything for a Knox rally. I asked them to do it for a community fair in the park where we had a church rally," said Blackwell.

"It was a Tom Knox rally. They had on every corner, the four corners of Malcom X Park, Tom Knox signs. They were passing out flyers," said Doto.

The park's own website refers to the May 12th event as a political rally. A band playing at the event wore Tom Knox t-shirts, but Councilwoman Blackwell insists Knox's appearance was inconsequential.

"I'm telling the head of the UCD Board and anybody concerned, if you have a problem with my politics, come to me. I make my decisions about who I endorse," said Blackwell.

In a statement, University City District says in part, the UCD leadership is reviewing the matter and will determine an appropriate course of action once all the facts are known.

A spokesman for the Knox campaign says they had no knowledge that students doing community service were allegedly used to set up for the appearance. The spokesman added they would have been totally against it if they had known.

Another example of UCD's misguided interpretation of "community service"

2007-05-16T15:57:00.000-04:00

This, from the Philadelphia Daily News of May 16 2007:

Community service, Philly-style

Luke Walker is a grad student at Penn recently directed to perform 20 hours of community service for a minor infraction.

He dutifully appeared at the University City District on Friday. After orientation, he was handed a broom to sweep Powelton Avenue. After an hour and a half, things got interesting.

"The supervisor, John something, told us, 'We've got something else for you,' " Walker recalled. "They put us on a truck and drove north to a garage. It wasn't even in University City."

At the garage, the community-service volunteers were directed to load a truck with barbecue grills, coolers and a couple of Moon Bounce inflatable kiddie amusements.

"The next day, they drove us out to Malcom X Park [51st and Osage] and had us unload, inflate the Moon Bounces and set everything up," Walker said.

Included in the setup were "Knox for Mayor" posters, which made Walker think this was unusual community service indeed.

Several hundred people attended the Knox rally. When it was over, "we put it back on the truck and went on our merry way," Walker said.

"It was bizarre," he said. "All of a sudden I found myself working for the Tom Knox campaign and wondering, 'How did I get here?' "

The director of UCD's cleanup effort is John Fenton, who Walker heard was close to City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell. Blackwell supported Knox.

Fenton was off yesterday and did not answer an e-mail. Blackwell did not return our phone call.

This tongue-in-cheek but telling response to the situation by 27th Ward (including University City) Ward Leader, Matt Wolfe:

To: John Fenton, University City District

From: J. Matthew Wolfe, Republican Ward Leader, 27th Ward

Date: May 16, 2007

I was delighted to learn of your new program assisting local political candidates and committees in today’s Daily News (as well as on the listserv). It comes at an opportune time, as the University City Republican Committee is planning its Ronald Reagan Memorial Republican Rally for the Candidates in Clark Park for this coming July 21. We have arranged with the Philadelphia Orchestra to provide entertainment and expect several thousand loyal Republicans to attend.

I would like to put in my order for services now, so that we can ensure a great party for the neighborhood.

Since we expect a larger crowd than attended the Knox rally that you hosted in Malcolm X Park on Saturday, I would like to order two or three of the Moon Bounce inflatable kiddie amusements. We don’t want those kids getting bored with the classical music program and disrupting it, do we?

We will also need a large number of barbeque grills and coolers. It is hard for us to estimate the exact number we will need, so your advice in this area would be appreciated. This is where the University City District’s experience and expertise in managing political rallies is particularly valuable.

It was unclear from the article in the Daily News whether your services included the food for the barbeque, drinks or ice. Naturally, if these expenses can be borne by the University City District, that leaves us with more money to pay for TV commercials for our Republican candidates, direct mail and street money to get the Republican Party on track to take control again. Naturally, we will remember those who helped put us back on top.

Finally, we appreciate your manpower for our political efforts. It is great that you can supplement the normal UCD staff with court-ordered community service participants. I did not even know that it was legal to use the court system for political purposes. Silly me! Again, I am writing now as I presume that with some advance notice you can order even more workers from the courts. Since crime rates are way up right now (thanks in large measure to mismanagement of the police by the current Democratic administration in City Hall), you should have a large number of offenders in different programs to throw into our effort.

Thanks again. Your help in building a stronger Republican Party in University City is greatly appreciated.

You can't pee in the alley any more

2007-04-29T08:14:00.000-04:00

You can't pee in the alley any more
by Sumner A Ingmark

You can’t pee in the alley any more, Some new folks in the neighborhood deplore, Such things – and they get madder, When you go tap your bladder, Than when they find graffiti on their door.	Our block is diverse, if you check the roll, Some gays, Blacks, and Muslims, that is our goal. We won’t make a big fuss, If they act just like us, Sufferance on our terms is what we extol.
Please don’t sit on your porch smoking weed, ‘Cause the folks down the street all agreed, No more biding their time, They’ll instead drop a dime, And the cops will respond, guaranteed,	You can have a block party, but oh, The loud music and dancing must go, And lest folks get a load on, Drinking beer is verboten, Unleashed dogs are another no-no.
Do not drop a bottle in your trash, Or the ecosystem it will crash, You’ll be the butt of Al Gore’s shame, The one the vigilantes blame, ‘Sides, they’re fining offenders for cash.	They thought the neighborhood was awful, Activities just plain unlawful, So to suburbia they fled, But things turned ‘round and back they head, Giving us who stayed a pissant crawful.
It takes demeanor strong and true, Your own endeavors to persue, When principles for which you stand, Don’t fit into the bourgeois brand, And get denounced as ballyhoo.	What saved the neighborhood from blight, When the mobile middle class took flight? Multi-family rental conversions, On which the yuppies now cast aspersions, And hope to reverse, with Penn’s moneyed might.
Forget about Clark Park as “my ground” ‘Cause folks who claim the moral high ground, Have already made the big decision, To change it to reflect their vision: A well-controlled pie-in-the-sky ground.	Put an end to farting in the street, We all want this district smelling sweet, And if your doggie dares to poop, You’ve got to spray as well as scoop, Prepare for scolding if you cheat.
You’ve got to modulate your talk, When the time’s past 10 o’clock, Woe betides the girls and boys, Who walk by my house making noise, Thinking that this rule’s a crock.	Folks come to visit from afar, Our restaurants that serve foie gras, They don’t want pizza topped with liver, From greasy spoons that food deliver, Though they’d settle for a sushi bar.
Our denizens are in a panic, The market’s out of food organic, Will business slow or even stop, As people go elsewhere to shop, With fervor verging on the manic?	In research and teaching Upenn is first class, The learned professors are hard to surpass, But the community relators, At best are second-raters, So, please, Dr Gutmann, call the wolves off our ass.
The do-gooders are going beserk, To light streets where they think muggers lurk, But they don’t give a damn, That the project’s a sham, Which the researchers say will not work.	Penn acts like the neighborhood bully, And wants to control the place fully, With plans they’re prolific, They think are terrific, But the rest of us think are just wooly.
I pick up the paper, read it, and weep, When I learn that our civic groups line up like sheep, To get in on the handouts, You’d think there’d be standouts, Who knew they were whoring for cheap.	They claimed historic designation, Would be the neighborhood’s salvation, From owners who ostensibly, Acted reprehensibly. We doubted their true aspiration.
It shouldn’t be very surprising, If taxes will skyward be rising. The area’s been identified, As one that’s being gentrified, So assessments get drastic revising.	The realtor didn’t say those, Young renters next door didn’t close, Their window blinds and, Then naked they’d stand, Why we look at them, nobody knows.
There aren’t any spaces to park, My new car, getting home after dark, Cause the building next door, Has one family per floor, And each drives a battered-up ark.	They want a liquor store, oy vey, Across from where the Muslims pray, It’s not that they show bias, ‘Gainst a group that’s rather pious, They just scoff at another’s way.
The posters on poles get torn down, By neighbors who see them and frown, The signs do no harm, In fact, they add charm, To this pedestrian-friendly old town.	They put trash bins at corners for litter, But the lesson they’re learning is bitter, ‘Cause folks use them instead, For the garbage they dread, Left at home will attract some wild critter.
We’re lucky to have some stately old trees, And almost the whole population agrees, They’re worth working at saving, Not destroying for paving, Or for visions of planners to please.	Zoning changes that increase the density, Are fought by some here with intensity, The dissenters’ fundamentals Is that they don’t want more rentals, But for condos they have a propensity.
They sweep the walks, some every day, And doing so are quick to say, It’s safer and cleaner, There’s better demeanor, ‘Mongst the folks you think get in your way.	The homeless may sleep in the gutter, But watch what you say about clutter, You may be roundly admonished, So don’t at all be astonished, By whatever the person may mutter.
The funkiest vibes in the city, Are in our community pretty, Those vibes we loudly hail, Will soon be brought upscale, By a know-it-all steering committee.	They don’t need empirical data, To back up their harebrained schemata, Their intentions are moral, So they won’t brook a quarrel, And what we may think doesn’t matter.

Another (updated?) take on gentrification

2007-04-06T10:00:00.000-04:00

Urban puzzle
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.

By Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
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?

2007-04-06T08:30:00.000-04:00

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:
http://www.server-jbmultimedia.net/UCReviewFlip/sitebase/index.aspx?adgroupid=95079&view=single&pageno=3&webstoryid=11991073

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.”

Candidate Toy further stated that “the police support pedestrian lighting because they say it helps them see what’s going on and makes their job less dangerous.” He also claimed that “for those who are skeptical about its effect on crime – coupled with cameras, pedestrian lighting puts criminals on notice that they are being watched.”

These claims may seem intuitively obvious. But the unbiased research turns out to say otherwise. Abundant empirical evidence exists that improved lighting has no statistically significant impact on street crime.

Here are three authoritative references from sources with no hidden agendas that substantiate the lack of correlation between lighting and crime reduction. They’re all on the Internet and therefore readily available to anyone concerned enough to check.

The Influence of Street Lighting on Crime and Fear of Crime, by Stephen Atkins, Sohail Husain and Angele Storey. British Home Office, Crime Prevention Unit Paper No 28 (www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/fcpu28.pdf).
The Effect of Better Street Lighting on Crime and Fear: A Review, by Malcolm Ramsay and Rosemary Newton. British Home Office, Crime Prevention Unit Paper No 29 (www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/fcpu29.pdf).
Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising, Report to Congress by the National Institute for Justice Research under the direction of Lawrence Sherman, currently of the Jerry Lee Center for Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania (www.ncjrs.gov/works).

Perhaps Candidate Toy can produce documentation showing that his claims are anything but do-gooder speculation – and hardly the kind of substantiation anybody whose feet regularly touch the ground of Planet Earth would use to justify spending $855,000. If so, let’s have some references. If not, let’s stop making believe that this expensive project has any purpose other than gentrification and all that implies.

Alan Krigman, curmudgeonly 35-year resident and housing provider

One false premise, two phony surveys, and three proverbs to remember

2007-03-16T15:22:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-14T13:58:00.000-04:00

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:
A-space@defenestrator.org

http://www.the-aspace.org

Does the NID proposal violate the 14th Amendment?

2007-03-10T18:56:00.000-05:00

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:

Aribitrary application.
- It distinguishes between owners of rental property and owners of property in which they reside.
- It distinguishes owners on the basis of the number of rental units in their "portfolios" ostensibly to facilitate collection but for no reasons related to the types of property involved.
- The state legislation enabling the formation of NIDs distinguished between Residential Improvement Districts and Business Improvement Districts. Residential districts explicitly include "apartments" while business districts are specified as those involving trade and commerce - terms which do not apply to rental housing.
The stated policy of the University of pennsylvania is to discourage rental housing in West Philadelphia and to provide incentives for reconversion of row and twin houses back to the single-family occupancies for which they were originally designed at the turn of the 20th century. As an example, Penn's Real Estate Asset Manager, Esaul Sanchez, stated in The Daily Pennsylvanian of 2/17/06, "Creating new housing options for students will ultimately allow the houses between 40th and 43rd streets and Baltimore and Chestnut streets to become single-family homes."

The NID surtax, if applied only to properties that are commercial or owned by rental housing providers is discriminatory in raising the costs of operating the latter and therefore making the service less feasible - ostensibly contributing to what Penn apparently believes will higher vacancies induced by the attraction of "new housing options for students."

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

2007-03-07T12:03:00.000-05:00

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
University City needs our attention – there is so much more to do: for our blocks, our parks, our businesses and our people. The BID isn't about locking in the status quo - it's ensuring we work every year to improve it.

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
Businesses and landlords who are doing well ought to do good – the BID is their way to contribute back to the community that has supported them, and to be sure that everyone pays a fair share.

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.

In 1987, the Court's decision in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission outlined the "rational nexus test" requiring that city projects be directly linked to impact fee regulations.
In 1994, the Court ruled in Dolan v. City of Tigard [Oregon] that fee requirements must be "roughly proportional" to the municipal project proposed.

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:

there must be a reasonable connection between the "need" for additional facilities and new development;
it must be shown that the fee payer will "benefit" in some way from the fee;
calculation of the fee must be based on a proportionate "fair share" formula.

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

they are calculated by measuring the needs created for public infrastructure by the development being charged the fee;
they do not exceed the cost of such infrastructure;
they are “earmarked,” i.e., spent, for the purposes for which they are collected so as to benefit those who pay them.

A budget on the back of an envelope!

2007-03-07T10:19:00.000-05:00

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:
http://www.phila.gov/mayor/pdfs/FY07_Financial_Plan.pdf

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:
http://www.septa.org/inside/reports/OpBudgetFY07.pdf

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.

Proposed budget for the first fiscal year:
a.	Personnel and administration	$100,000
b.	Programs and services	$350,000
c.	Maintenance and operations	$250,000
d.	Capital expenditures	$300,000
e.	VMA replacement funding*	$400,000
*UCD currently receives $400,000 in voluntary contributions from commercial property owners and landlords. These property owners would be assessed under the BID, resulting in a loss of $400,000 in funding to UCD. Funding from the assessment will replace the revenue lost through voluntary contributions.

Here's the legislation governing NIDs in Pennsylvania

2007-03-04T15:23:00.000-05:00

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 1142, 1999

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

2007-02-15T09:10:00.000-05:00

by Alan Krigman

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 Vice President of Community Relations kept referring to all the 'terrific' things Penn had already done and was continuing to do - but totally ignored the point raised from the floor asking "by whose definition are these things 'terrific'?"
The Penn Trustee who heads the Trustees' Community Initiatives Committee referred several times to Penn's "partnership" with the community. The point was raised from the floor that the University's initiatives might be many things but "partnership" was not among them. Instead of showing interest into why people might think this way, he arrogantly responded that he was an attorney and could give us many definitions of "partnership."

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

2007-01-24T08:12:00.000-05:00

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:

with some background - www.iconworldwide.com/speakup
the form, directly - www.iconworldwide.com/speakup/nonid-01.html

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

2007-01-15T17:41:00.000-05:00

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.

The danger, however, is that other issues, such as neighborhood reinvestment, tax reform, and growing our job market could end up taking a backseat. This would be a mistake.

These issues are not only important but they also play a key role where it concerns finding long-term solutions to crime.

...

Extra police on the streets is a temporary solution. It does not address underlying problems that cause neighborhoods to exist in poverty and vulnerability.

This link between strong neighborhoods and low crime has been studied since the 1960s. It makes sense. Neighborhoods free of vacant properties, with vibrant shopping and people out at all hours, are places with lower crime rates that feel safer. There are more eyes on the street and more stakeholders protecting the community.

...

Data show that Philadelphia neighborhoods with recent reinvestment have had the largest reductions in serious crimes between 1998 and 2005. Neighborhoods lacking the same level of reinvestment have stayed constant or had increases in crime during the same period.

Center City, East Falls, Fishtown, Manayunk, Mount Airy and University City, all areas with significant reinvestment, have had drops in crime of between 33 percent and 69 percent.

Milton Friedman Was Right: "Corporate social responsibility" is bunk.

2006-11-26T09:31:00.000-05:00

Op-Ed by Henry G Manne, dean emeritus of the George Mason University School of Law
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?

2006-11-23T08:43:00.000-05:00

Monster Rally Protests Besmirching of Brand
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

2006-11-21T10:08:00.000-05:00

Commentary by a concerned stakeholder on the NID initiative by the University City District (adapted from a posting on the University City "listserv" discussion group)

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.