From "It's Our City"
It Takes A Village To Solve A Budget Crisis
Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 12:03 pm - by Alan Tu. Filed under: Budget.
Hannah Miller, a Philadelphia activist, would be the perfect person to write a Stephen King-like screenplay adaptation to Philadelphia’s budget crisis. In her op-ed in today’s Philadelphia Daily News, she makes the case that citizens better realize that Philadelphia’s budget crunch is real and it’s up to them to help decide what impact it will have.
In an effort to help us see her point, she says think of it this way:
Say we’re a village in New England 300 years ago, and one night some wolves come out of the forest and eat half our sheep and cows, so we don’t have enough food to make it through the winter.
We have a town meeting to figure out what to do, and everyone in the village shows up.
Are we going to grow more potatoes? Can we divide up the cows so that no one goes hungry? Can someone go to the suburbs to borrow some sheep?
And can someone go kill the wolves (otherwise known as the financial-services industry) so they don’t do this to us again?
That’s really all the budget is: cows and sheep.
And since a lot of us in Philadelphia are apathetic slugs who like to complain a lot, she really lets us have it. Miller says that we all have an obligation to help Mayor Michael Nutter decide how the remaining (sacred) cows and sheep are going to be shared or to find other places food might be hidden.
This is about us, and whether we’re going to show up for the most important decisions to be made in this city (and country) in a generation. We don’t get to skip the meeting and then spend six years complaining that the sheep were distributed unfairly.
Do you ever wonder what happened to your idealism? Where did it go? Well if you’ve been living around this old village, it’s easy to become cynical when some of our leaders have been saving the best cuts for themselves.
But after reading her piece, That made me think what if idealism only works if others participate with you? If they don’t, then what we’re left with is “realism” and things go on just the way have for decades. What if Miller is right that if enough people actually believe that their opinions mattered it could have an impact. Well in this “New budget process” she believes Mayor Nutter is truly sincere about hearing from the public and that he doesn’t have his mind made up. I’m inclined to believe her on this point because the four citizen budget workshops are a direct result of his nasty experience he had with announcing budget cuts in November then asking the public “How’d I do?” Also, he’s a lot more accessible than the last mayor we had.
Schedule for the budget workshops
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Northeast
St. Dominic’s School
8510 Frankford Avenue
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Germantown
Mastery Charter School
Pickett Campus
5700 Wayne Avenue
Thursday, February 19, 2009
South Philadelphia
St. Monica’s Catholic School
16th and Porter Streets
Monday, February 23, 2009
West Philadelphia
Pinn Memorial Baptist Church
2251 N. 54th Street
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