PHILADELPHIA – In case you missed it, Mayor Jim Kenney answered Northeast Times readers’ questions in Wednesday’s print edition. Each month, the Mayor will answer Philadelphians’ questions in a different neighborhood newspaper as well as in monthly Twitter chats, radio appearances on WURD and Channel 64 segments. In March, the mayor will respond to reader questions in The Star on March 16. Submissions are due to the paper by March 10. Please submit questions to this email address star@bsmphilly.com.

Connecting with Kenney
Northeast Times // Times Readers
May­or Jim Ken­ney is reach­ing out to Phil­adelphi­ans in many ways, in­clud­ing an­swer­ing ques­tions from weekly news­pa­per read­ers each month.

Ken­ney’s news­pa­per de­but comes today in the North­east Times. He will an­swer ques­tions for read­ers of the Star, the Times’ sis­ter pa­per, on March 16. The Star cov­ers Brides­burg, Port Rich­mond, Kens­ing­ton, Fishtown and North­ern Liber­ties.

The may­or also makes a monthly, 30-minute ap­pear­ance on WURD (900 AM). Ad­di­tion­ally, he will an­swer ques­tions dur­ing a monthly seg­ment on Phil­adelphia Pub­lic Ac­cess Chan­nel 64. The first seg­ment will air on Feb. 25 at 7:30 p.m.

The #AskKen­ney Twit­ter chats will also con­tin­ue.

The Times asked read­ers to sub­mit ques­tions, and we re­ceived plenty. Ken­ney was able to an­swer eight of them, based on space in the pa­per.

In the fu­ture, we hope to have the may­or an­swer ques­tions on oth­er top­ics sub­mit­ted by read­ers. They in­clude the De­ferred Re­tire­ment Op­tion Plan, the 10-year tax abate­ment on new con­struc­tion, ab­sent­ee land­lords, the city pen­sion fund and Phil­adelphia Gas Works.

Q: Traffic con­trol lines in the streets are in dire need of re­paint­ing throughout the city but es­pe­cially in the North­east. The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion chose to ig­nore this ever-grow­ing prob­lem. Will your ad­min­is­tra­tion make a con­scien­tious ef­fort to re­paint traffic lines where needed to help make driv­ing safer on our streets?

— Steve Dutill, Sun Val­ley 

A: Hi Steve, my ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to re­du­cing traffic-re­lated ac­ci­dents and en­sur­ing well main­tained sig­nage, in­clud­ing street lines, will cer­tainly be a part of this plan. We ex­pect the Vis­ion Zero task force will be as­sembled this spring and we will be­gin act­ing on their re­com­mend­a­tion this year. In the mean­time, if you’d like to make a re­quest to have a spe­cif­ic stretch of lines re­painted, please con­tact 311.

Q: The Home Rule Charter states that any city em­ploy­ee trans­fer­ring to a new po­s­i­tion has a six-month pro­ba­tion peri­od. After the pro­ba­tion is com­pleted, the em­ploy­ee is ac­cep­ted to that po­s­i­tion. The em­ploy­ee is to be re­viewed two times dur­ing that pro­ba­tion peri­od. However, at any time, the su­per­visor can re­ject the em­ploy­ee, with a neg­at­ive re­view, and re­turn them to the pre­vi­ous po­s­i­tion, if it is avail­able.

Mr. May­or, this is the 21st cen­tury, and em­ploy­ees have rights. I am in my 17th year as a city em­ploy­ee and have been af­fected by this reg­u­la­tion. Is it pos­sible you could re­view this and make some sig­ni­fic­ant changes to the city’s charter?

—Mary­ann Rush, May­fair 

A: Hi Mary­ann, any changes to the charter have to be pro­posed by City Coun­cil and then con­firmed by the voters, but I cer­tainly agree with you that it is time to up­date some of our HR pro­ced­ures. The City doesn’t even have an on­board­ing pro­ced­ure for new em­ploy­ees! One of the first ex­ec­ut­ive or­ders I signed as may­or was to cre­ate a Chief Ad­min­is­trat­ive Of­ficer, who is charged with bring­ing our hir­ing, re­cruit­ing and per­son­nel pro­ced­ures in­to the 21st cen­tury. As part of that ef­fort, she will also be ad­min­is­ter­ing a city work­er em­ploy­ee sat­is­fac­tion sur­vey, so we can identi­fy prob­lems like the one you’ve just brought to my at­ten­tion and work to im­prove them.

Q: The pub­lic pool at Lin­coln High School is a com­munity gem, widely used by the res­id­ents and by swim teams in pub­lic and Cath­ol­ic schools. The lock­er rooms are a dis­aster: broken lock hold­ers, half the showers don’t work, shower tem­per­at­ure is not reg­u­lated, and the floors are dan­ger­ously slip­pery. Lock­ers haven’t been painted in years and are dirty and rusty in­side. Can you make a re­hab of these dress­ing rooms a real­ity?

— Ed­ward S. Marks, Holme Circle 

A: Mr. Marks, Un­for­tu­nately, our city has his­tor­ic­ally un­der­in­ves­ted in our parks, rec cen­ters and lib­rar­ies. Among big cit­ies, Phil­adelphia ranks at the bot­tom on this type of in­fra­struc­ture spend­ing. This is a tra­gic mis­take be­cause in ad­di­tion to the un­safe con­di­tions you de­scribed, these in­vest­ments are also tre­mend­ously cost-ef­fect­ive, with sub­stan­tial im­pacts on im­prov­ing our chil­dren’s after-school edu­ca­tion and re­du­cing crime.

The Parks and Rec De­part­ment is the largest pro­vider of after-school pro­gram­ming for Phil­adelphia chil­dren, which is a crit­ic­al ser­vice giv­en that some 57­per­cent of all vi­ol­ent crimes by ju­ven­iles oc­cur on school days, and 19 per­cent are in the af­ter­school pro­gram­ming hours between 3 and 7 p.m. When the Con­servancy and Parks & Rec in­ves­ted $5 mil­lion in Hunt­ing Park, over three years, crime went down 89 per­cent over that time peri­od with­in a half-mile ra­di­us of the park. In Fort My­ers, Flor­ida, po­lice doc­u­mented a 28-per­cent drop in ju­ven­ile ar­rests after the city began their Suc­cess Through Aca­dem­ics and Re­cre­ation­al Sup­port Pro­gram in 1990. Burg­lar­ies and thefts in a Phil­adelphia pre­cinct also dropped 90 per­cent, after po­lice helped neigh­bor­hood vo­lun­teers clean up va­cant lots and plant gar­dens, fall­ing from 40 crimes each month be­fore the cleanup to an av­er­age of only four per month af­ter­ward.

So, as part of a lar­ger ef­fort to turn around our schools and im­prove neigh­bor­hood safety, I will pro­pose his­tor­ic spend­ing on rec cen­ters, parks and lib­rar­ies in my March budget pro­pos­al to help com­munity in­fra­struc­ture across the city.

Q: Who is pay­ing for Love Park and who paid for the ice skat­ing rink? Schools need more money

— Donna Seitz, North­wood 

A: Hi Donna, I un­der­stand your con­cern about pri­or­it­iz­ing our lim­ited city re­sources, but both of these pro­jects are ac­tu­ally rev­en­ue-pro­du­cing, mean­ing they con­trib­ute money to the budget that we can spend on our schools and oth­er city ser­vices. The up­com­ing renov­a­tion of Love Park and the con­struc­tion of the ice skat­ing rink in Dilworth Plaza last year are also joint ven­tures between the City and loc­al busi­nesses and non­profits, so their as­sist­ance also helps to re­duce our net costs.

Q: How could we al­low the De­part­ment of Streets to use well over the en­tire budget on a single storm?

—- Dav­id Slowik, North­east

A: Hi Dav­id, our winter storm budget is ac­tu­ally some­what of an av­er­age fig­ure. Be­cause some years we get a lot of snow, like we did this year, and oth­er years we get al­most noth­ing at all, our budget dir­ect­or takes a five-year av­er­age of an­nu­al spend­ing on snowstorm cleanup, and uses that for the budget. As we have lim­ited funds, we don’t budget for the worst-case scen­ario, but we plan for an amount that we think is reas­on­able giv­en our last five years’ spend­ing.

In fact, giv­en that this was the largest storm our city has seen in dec­ades, we were ac­tu­ally able to op­er­ate pretty cost ef­fi­ciently. The City didn’t close early the Fri­day the storm hit and opened on time the fol­low­ing Monday morn­ing, where­as oth­er cit­ies like D.C. and New York were forced to close, cost­ing the tax­pay­ers ad­di­tion­al money on top of snow-clean­ing ef­forts. Ad­di­tion­ally, as a res­ult of our ag­gress­ive clean-up ef­forts, all primary streets were cleared and nearly 80 per­cent of res­id­en­tial streets were cleared with­in 24 hours of the end of the storm. Clear­ing the streets that quickly also mit­ig­ated the neg­at­ive eco­nom­ic im­pacts that would have oc­curred if most of our cit­izens were un­able to get to work that Monday.

Q: Hello, Mr. May­or. If Phil­adelphia would take con­trol of all the va­cant prop­er­ties in Phil­adelphia, put them on the mar­ket for in­vestors to fix and flip, it would help the tax base. Driv­ing the in­ner city every day, it makes me up­set to see these prop­er­ties just sit­ting there and fall­ing apart and not col­lect­ing real es­tate taxes. What’s be­ing done to get this prob­lem re­solved?

— Bill Sims, Re­altor, Cold­well Banker Hearth­side

A: Hi Bill, the City de­veloped a Land Bank sev­er­al years ago that does just what you’ve de­scribed. However, the pro­cess re­quired for the City to take pos­ses­sion of private prop­er­ties is pur­pose­fully not quick. We need to en­sure we’re re­spect­ing the rights of any­one who may have claim to the prop­erty as well as com­munity mem­bers who would be af­fected by the City’s ac­quis­i­tion of the prop­erty.

That be­ing said, we have made some sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress in this re­gard. The num­ber of va­cant prop­er­ties in or mov­ing to the Land Bank in­vent­ory is over 1,700.

Q: Why do you feel we should be a sanc­tu­ary city?

— Dav­id Lee, West Tor­res­dale

A: It’s a pub­lic safety is­sue. Full co­oper­a­tion between the PPD and ICE dis­cour­ages im­mig­rants from call­ing the po­lice when a dan­ger­ous situ­ation is oc­cur­ring or from co­oper­at­ing with loc­al in­vest­ig­a­tions that would solve and re­duce in­stances of vi­ol­ent crime. Full co­oper­a­tion with ICE also puts a sig­ni­fic­ant strain on po­lice time and re­sources that dis­tracts from keep­ing known vi­ol­ent crim­in­als off the street.

I know some people are con­cerned that a sanc­tu­ary city policy could make us less safe, but the facts just don’t bear that out. San Fran­cisco, for ex­ample, has a com­par­ably lower murder rate than those cit­ies without sanc­tu­ary city policies. And, even after the city amended its sanc­tu­ary policy two years ago to be­come more le­ni­ent to­ward re­peat im­mig­rant of­fend­ers, San Fran­cisco’s hom­icides con­tin­ued to drop the next year by 3 per­cent.

Ad­di­tion­ally, between 1990 and 2013, our coun­try’s un­au­thor­ized im­mig­rant pop­u­la­tion more than tripled, from 3.5 mil­lion to 11.2 mil­lion, but dur­ing these same years, the FBI re­por­ted a 48-per­cent de­crease in vi­ol­ent crime and a 41-per­cent de­crease in prop­erty crime. A 2010 Census Bur­eau study also found that nat­ive-born males without a high school dip­loma were three times as likely to be in­car­cer­ated for a vi­ol­ent crime than less edu­cated males from Mex­ico, El Sal­vador, and Guatem­ala, the three coun­tries of ori­gin from which the ma­jor­ity of un­doc­u­mented in­di­vidu­als come.

I am also the des­cend­ent of Ir­ish im­mig­rants who were very un­wel­come in this coun­try when they first came here a hun­dred years ago – so with policies like these I try to be a stu­dent of our own his­tory. Every new wave of im­mig­rant group that has come to our coun­try has got­ten a hos­tile re­ac­tion, but our eco­nomy and our pub­lic safety have ul­ti­mately been bet­ter for ac­cept­ing and in­teg­rat­ing them in­to our coun­try.

Q: Talk of pre-Kinder­garten sounds won­der­ful for kids and es­pe­cially the par­ents who work (cheap­er than day­care, for sure). My ques­tion: The School Dis­trict of Phil­adelphia has no money now, so where does the money come for pre-K (raise our taxes, for sure)? And 3- and 4-year-olds, how will they fare for an eight-hour day or longer? Naps, food, activ­it­ies?

-— Bar­bara Golden, Fox Chase 

A: Hi Bar­bara, I know eight hours can seem like a long day for a tod­dler, but stud­ies ac­tu­ally show that both chil­dren and fam­il­ies be­ne­fit aca­dem­ic­ally and eco­nom­ic­ally from an eight-hour pre-K day. There are sev­er­al suc­cess­ful pro­gram­ming mod­els for an eight-hour day that we will work to emu­late as we ex­pand pre-K ac­cess over the next three years — all of which en­sure chil­dren re­ceive the prop­er rest and nu­tri­tion dur­ing these hours spent in an early child­hood edu­ca­tion en­vir­on­ment.

When it comes to pay­ing for pre-K, we really can’t af­ford not to do it. Our schools are in crisis, and we’re not do­ing the kind of big sig­ni­fic­ant policy changes that will turn the dis­trict around. In­stead, we’re play­ing de­fense, rais­ing taxes year after year to ward off an­oth­er fund­ing crisis.

Pre-K is our of­fens­ive solu­tion. Kids who par­ti­cip­ate in pre-K are far more likely to stay out of spe­cial edu­ca­tion pro­gram­ming, gradu­ate from high school, get a job and stay out of the crim­in­al justice sys­tem than those who don’t. The school dis­trict cur­rently spends an av­er­age of $23,000 per child on spe­cial edu­ca­tion ser­vices per year. Phil­adelphia could save ap­prox­im­ately $5.6 mil­lion per grade, or over $72 mil­lion over the length of a child’s K-12 school years if all chil­dren were giv­en an op­por­tun­ity to en­roll in pre-K.

And, across the board, the re­turn on in­vest­ment for every City dol­lar in­ves­ted in qual­ity preschool ranges from $4 to $16 in the form of re­duced need for so­cial ser­vices, spe­cial edu­ca­tion, re­medi­ation and pub­lic safety activ­it­ies as well as in­creased tax rev­en­ue.