Jim Kenney: Keep Your Campaign Promise. Bring Back Street-Sweeping in Your First Term.

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Sign our petition to tell Mayor Kenney to keep his campaign promise, and bring back street-sweeping services before the end of his first term.

Philadelphia is known nationwide as an exceptionally dirty city, and this dirt problem even has a name: Filthadelphia.

Mayor Kenney campaigned on changing this during the 2015 campaign, and restoring the street-sweeping program was a regular part of his stump speech. He even said that cleaner streets are worth the occasional hassle of alternate-side parking.

The red flags started going up right after the May primary, when Kenney started backtracking, saying he'd only bring the program back for neighborhoods willing to move their cars, and there would be some kind of opt-in or opt-out provision. 

This week we found out it's been cast aside even further, as a "Long-Term Priority" in the Zero Waste Action Plan released this week, described in the most non-committal possible language. At some undefined point in time, the administration will maybe "consider restoration of street sweeping."

That's unacceptable. Mayor Kenney needs to make restoring street-sweeping a priority in his first term.

As we've argued previously, street-sweeping should be one of Philadelphia's bedrock municipal services. Philly was actually the first city to have a street-sweeping program (thanks, Benjamin Franklin!), and now we're the only major city that doesn't have one. It's relatively cheap, costing the capital budget just $18 million in to buy the sweepers, and about $3 million in annual salaries to clean the whole city every other week. The problem isn't money—it's people who don't want to move their cars, even occasionally. 

The Mayor is already on the record saying that he wants to take the cleaner streets side of that trade-off, and now it's time for him to make good on that promise. 

Sign and share the petition, and help us send a message to Mayor Kenney that he needs to put clean streets first, and be accountable for what he promised the voters.

333 signatures

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Showing 284 reactions

  • Jess Ryan
    signed 2017-08-11 18:01:20 -0400
  • Zachary Billet
    signed 2017-08-11 16:42:23 -0400
  • Paul Kaplan
    signed 2017-08-11 16:18:10 -0400
  • Jack Connor
    signed 2017-08-11 15:22:01 -0400
  • Donna Heaslip
    signed 2017-08-11 14:33:54 -0400
  • Ian Shumard
    signed 2017-08-11 14:04:50 -0400
  • Brian Lawson
    signed 2017-08-11 13:52:24 -0400
    Street cleaning should be a core municipal service.
  • Hunter Hollis
    signed 2017-08-11 13:42:50 -0400
  • Paula Werner
    signed 2017-08-11 13:06:33 -0400
  • Erin Hurt
    signed 2017-08-11 13:03:22 -0400
  • Dominique Johnson
    signed 2017-08-11 13:00:10 -0400
  • Alex Popovici
    signed 2017-08-11 11:56:20 -0400
  • Douglas Williams
    signed 2017-08-11 08:39:20 -0400
  • Kelly Altrichter
    signed 2017-08-11 00:04:48 -0400
    People moving their car is not optional. There should be no opting out. I am in Raleigh, NC now…think I’ve seen 2 pieces of litter.
  • Harold Mesa
    signed 2017-08-10 22:00:53 -0400
  • Garrett O'Dwyer
    signed 2017-08-10 19:50:50 -0400
  • Brett Bessler
    signed via 2017-08-10 18:05:20 -0400
  • Cynthia Fulmer
    signed 2017-08-10 16:18:57 -0400
  • Beth Wichser
    signed 2017-08-10 15:32:02 -0400
  • Gina Wilson
    signed 2017-08-10 15:15:13 -0400
  • Matt Skolnik
    signed via 2017-08-10 12:50:18 -0400
  • Kelly Edwards
    signed 2017-08-10 12:01:40 -0400
  • Lauren Sullivan
    signed 2017-08-10 11:22:51 -0400
    It is an embarrassment for tourists, from sub par cities, to come to Philly and comment on how dirty it is. It takes away from the amazing qualities this city has to offer.
  • Daniel Linehan
    signed via 2017-08-10 11:10:18 -0400
  • Christopher Bryan
    signed 2017-08-10 10:49:35 -0400
    City hall. Visit Tokyo, home to 37 million. You can eat off the ground in their alleys, rarely a gum mark to be found and yet trash recepticles are still sparse throughout their city. #thinkglobal #beglobal
  • Christopher Mote
    signed 2017-08-10 10:28:32 -0400
    Christopher Mote
  • Heather Shultz
    signed 2017-08-10 10:00:36 -0400
  • Kevin Laskey
    signed 2017-08-10 09:10:06 -0400
  • Kelly Vass
    signed 2017-08-10 08:25:46 -0400
  • Sergio Armani
    signed 2017-08-10 08:16:13 -0400