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

  • Kevin Lee
    signed 2019-10-03 13:48:21 -0400
    This is pathetic. Just got back from Barcelona, a city way more dense and bigger. The difference in municipal services when it comes to basic cleaning, trash pickup, sweeping is indescribable.
  • Emma Hardie
    signed 2019-05-07 10:05:41 -0400
  • Will Tung
    signed 2019-03-16 22:38:52 -0400
  • E Freeman
    signed 2019-03-09 19:02:54 -0500
  • Leslie Linnebur
    signed 2019-03-09 10:32:39 -0500
    Leaf blowers are NOT the answer and are just another pollutant.
  • Paul Grossman
    signed 2019-03-08 15:20:13 -0500
  • Michelle Hong
    signed 2019-03-08 14:50:02 -0500
  • Michael Sheehan
    signed 2019-02-12 09:53:27 -0500
  • Lydia Currie
    signed 2019-01-22 03:57:22 -0500
  • Richard Kinney
    signed 2019-01-21 13:16:02 -0500
  • William Green
    signed 2019-01-21 13:02:57 -0500
    Dear Mayor Kenney,


    I cannot approve of a street-sweeping plan which causes unnecessary air pollution while being too expensive to deploy citywide.


    Please call on our citizens to move their cars so that street sweepers can effectively operate.
  • Deirdre Aaron
    signed 2019-01-19 06:29:59 -0500
  • Joanna Joye
    signed 2019-01-18 16:27:53 -0500
    Joanna Joye
  • Peter Wolanin
    signed 2019-01-18 16:21:18 -0500
    Peter Wolanin
  • Mary Ann Leitch
    signed 2019-01-18 14:42:50 -0500
    Moving your vehicle once a month is doable in exchange for the long awaited CLEAN STREETS promise.

    Am against the air pollution of blowers and the limited territories with it being too expensive to expand in the future anyway & lucky for our lungs it won’t. Bad enough USPS, delivery trucks etc pollute badly daily. Another DUH council/mayor idea.
  • Ted Zellers
    signed 2018-12-10 23:21:48 -0500
    I’m tired of getting flat tires!
  • Kara Nelson
    @BellyofFate tweeted link to this page. 2018-12-06 14:58:02 -0500
    Sign and share to tell Jim Kenney to keep his promise to clean Philly's streets http://www.phila3-0.org/street_sweeping?recruiter_id=53444
  • Kara Nelson
    signed 2018-12-06 14:57:47 -0500
    If NYC can do this, we need to step up in Philly. We don’t need more cars in Philly…we need more clean up!
  • Kyle Mattson
    signed 2018-12-04 14:56:57 -0500
  • Joseph Torres
    signed 2018-12-04 11:06:17 -0500
  • Philip Green
    signed 2018-12-03 12:14:58 -0500
    Nasty streets are demoralizing to all Philadelphians. I have a car in south philly and would gladly move it monthly if not weekly for cleaner streets.
  • Mike Ford
    signed 2018-12-03 09:37:24 -0500
  • Katherine Powers Cuomo
    signed 2018-12-02 18:02:16 -0500
  • Margaret Turcich
    signed 2018-12-02 12:02:19 -0500
    MARGARET TURCICH
  • Thomas DeLuca
    signed 2018-12-01 18:08:32 -0500
  • Patricia Moore-Martinez
    signed 2018-12-01 17:54:10 -0500
  • Mark Graham
    signed 2018-12-01 12:35:23 -0500
  • Allan Domb
    signed 2018-11-30 22:27:47 -0500
    Important quality of life issue
  • Matthew Borda
    signed 2018-11-30 13:58:27 -0500
  • Logan Welde
    signed 2018-11-30 13:50:51 -0500
    logan welde