Four questions on the ballot in Philly today.
The first asks whether the city should institute a committee to set water and sewer rates. On this, my vote is yes. It’s less than ideal, but the current method for rate setting is that the water department sets the rate. Thus the rate is set by a single person, the head of the water department. A committee seems like a much better plan than a single person on this.
The second question asks if the Mayor should be required to subit additional information to city council with his budget, “including, but not limited to, information about the cost of performing specific functions, the effectiveness of such functions, and the costs versus benefits of proposed expenditures, and to require the Finance Director to provide such information?” On this, I vote no. While I think that such information is important, in practice it is already compiled when addressing the budget needs of projects. My fear is that this requirement would be used as a de-facto veto to kill projects. See a project you want to block? Just tie it up in red tape with endless requests for reports about the cost / benefit trade-off of every little thing, and you can stall a project indefinitely. This will serve to raise the cost of projects, and will ultimately lead to more wasteful spending, not less. Writing reports isn’t free.
The third question asks whether the city should be allowed to give hiring preference to the grandchildren of police and firefighters killed in the line of duty. This would be an extension of the city’s current policy of providing preference to the children of police and firefighters killed in the line of duty. On this question, an emphatic no. Granting preference to grandchildren is simply taking things too far. Will we extend preference to great grandchildren in 2016? The city should hire the most qualified applicants for positions.
The final question seeks approval for the city to borrow $123.7 million for capital improvements in areas such as streets, transit, sanitation, etc. An emphatic yes on this. Philly is in dire need of capital improvement. Our infrastructure is crumbling to pieces. We need to do something about that.
520 Chestnut 
Leave a Reply