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

Will you sign?

Showing 284 reactions

  • Dana Mitchell
    signed 2017-08-10 07:03:39 -0400
  • Leslye Rowland
    signed via 2017-08-10 06:33:13 -0400
  • Herb Lau
    signed 2017-08-09 22:33:21 -0400
    street cleaning budget needs to be doubled. we need much cleaner streets and sidewalks.
  • Angela Wang
    signed 2017-08-09 21:56:17 -0400
  • Amaya Capellán
    posted about this on Facebook 2017-08-09 21:15:27 -0400
    Sign and share to tell Jim Kenney to keep his promise to clean Philly's streets
  • Amaya Capellan
    signed 2017-08-09 21:15:06 -0400
  • Joe Doucette
    signed 2017-08-09 21:14:20 -0400
  • Edward Mockapetris
    signed 2017-08-09 21:06:56 -0400
    It is the least you can do for us since you promised…
  • Katie Donnelly
    signed 2017-08-09 20:01:33 -0400
  • Dave Marley
    signed 2017-08-09 19:00:08 -0400
  • Branden Collins
    signed 2017-08-09 18:23:47 -0400
    It isn’t endearing, it isn’t cute, it’s disgusting. You owe it to your constituents to at least try to follow through on this promise.
  • Julia Rowe
    signed 2017-08-09 18:21:13 -0400
  • David Golden
    signed 2017-08-09 17:46:58 -0400
  • Jan Deruiter
    signed via 2017-08-09 16:56:27 -0400
    Keep your promise !
  • Jason Teixeira
    signed 2017-08-09 16:34:29 -0400
  • Sequoia Medley
    signed 2017-08-09 16:05:42 -0400
  • Craig Schelter
    signed 2017-08-09 15:56:40 -0400
  • Johanna Marshall
    signed 2017-08-09 15:40:08 -0400
  • Sofi Milani
    signed 2017-08-09 15:37:58 -0400
  • David Flanagan
    signed 2017-08-09 15:23:09 -0400
  • Jim Sommers
    signed 2017-08-09 15:22:06 -0400
  • Daniel Jaquish
    signed 2017-08-09 15:08:00 -0400
  • Camille Gervasio
    signed 2017-08-09 15:06:48 -0400
  • Jeremy Kaplan
    signed 2017-08-09 15:05:31 -0400
  • Andrew Jones
    signed 2017-08-09 15:00:45 -0400
  • Leonard Bonarek
    signed 2017-08-09 14:58:42 -0400
    Mr Mayor, street cleaning shouldn’t be such a heavy lift. I know it was done away with during a fiscal crisis, but that time is over, and we need folks to at least move all these vacant cars once in a while.
  • dave sunderland
    signed 2017-08-09 14:53:12 -0400
    Bring this back now!
  • Max Morgan
    signed 2017-08-09 14:52:22 -0400
    Duh!
  • Jake Sternberger
    signed 2017-08-09 14:49:02 -0400
    I grew up in Pittsburgh where everybody referred to Philly as Filthadelphia. Before moving here, I assumed I would be walking in streets covered with garbage, grime, human urine, dog feces, discarded syringes, and dead bodies. I am happy to report that I have not yet seen any dead bodies.
  • N Mulligan
    signed 2017-08-09 14:46:23 -0400