City Council's Updated Affordable Housing Package Hits Closer to the Mark
(Mid-rise housing in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood | Photo: Jon Geeting)
City Council this week announced a package of affordable housing bills on the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act that together hit much closer to the mark than other recent Council initiatives, from the perspective of promoting both continued housing growth and more equitable access to housing.
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How One Block Illustrates the City's Broken Land Assessment Approach
(Vacant land in Graduate Hospital | Image: Google Streetview)
The Office of Property Assessments botched the land assessments again, and the 2000 block of Pemberton in Graduate Hospital provides a great illustration of exactly what the City is doing wrong.
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OPA Messed Up the Land Assessments Again
(1911 Rittenhouse lot | Image: Google Streetview)
The 2019 property assessments are out, as you can tell by reading any neighborhood Facebook group over the last two days, and while we're waiting for the City and the media to break down the trends, we already know that OPA once again botched the land assessments.
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Which Wards Have the Most (and the Least) Competition for Committeeperson Seats?
(Wards)
With the committeeperson ballot nearly set, we can begin to identify the wards and divisions with the most intense competitive elections. And we can also start to think about the places that will be ripe for write-in campaigns as we get closer to Election Day on May 15th.
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What Do We Know So Far About the 2018 Ward Elections?
For the past year and a half, Philadelphia 3.0 has been promoting the 2018 ward elections as a great opportunity for people to dive into local politics by running for committeeperson—the smallest elected position that matters in Philadelphia politics. Now that we're past the deadline for candidates to file, and petition challenges are wrapping up, we're finally getting a picture of where things stand.
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Redistricting Round-Up: 8 Day Countdown
(Joe Scarnati | Image: State Impact Pennsylvania)
In the wake of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision striking down PA's most-gerrymandered-in-the-nation Congressional maps, the redistricting news is flying fast and furious, so we've been rounding up a weekly digest of the top stories for those trying to drink from this firehose. Follow us below the fold for this week's news:
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End of an Era as Bob Brady Announces He Won't Run for Reelection
(Photo credit: Congressman Bob Brady)
In a meeting with Democratic City Committee on Wednesday afternoon, Congressman Bob Brady confirmed the rumor that had been swirling in local political circles for months: he won't be running for reelection.
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Philly Added More Jobs in the Last 10 Years than Amazon Has Projected for HQ2
(Amazon HQ1 | Photo: Jon Geeting)
Philly has tended to lag many of our peer cities in job growth since the Great Recession, but this week we got some good news from real estate research firm JLL about the city's jobs picture that shows we've at least made some big improvements on our own past performance.
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Redistricting Round-up: 15 Day Countdown
(One possible non-partisan Congressional map, courtesy of Daily Kos Elections)
In a major last-minute shake-up for Pennsylvania's 2018 elections, the state Supreme Court ruled this week that our current Congressional map is unconstitutional under the state constitution, and gave the legislature a short window to draw a new one. Here's what we know so far.
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Five things you need to know about the Amazon short-ish list
Yesterday, Amazon announced its 20 city HQ2 shortlist. There's a lot to read into the cities and "cities" that made the list. Here are the top-five things you need to know about who's still in the running, who isn't, and what it means for Philadelphia.
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