(Council President Darrell Clarke | Photo credit: WHYY)

City Council used to record the vote breakdown of how different members voted on legislation on Legistar, the vote tracking software that Council uses, but they stopped doing this randomly in 2006. That's ridiculous, and the next Council President should commit to posting the votes again. 

(St. Laurentius | Photo: Jon Geeting)

Last summer we wrote about the ongoing saga of St. Laurentius church, the historic and fast-deteriorating Fishtown church that's locked in an intractable legal battle that only Councilmanic Prerogative can save it from. 

(Multiple children were struck on the Parkway one day after Clarke's comments: Image credit: Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg on Twitter)

According to the Kenney administration's Vision Zero Action Plan, Philadelphia has the highest per capita traffic death rate among peer cities at 6 fatalities per 100,000 people. It's a big problem, and the administration is trying to do something about it through a comprehensive program of engineering, enforcement, and education aimed at halving the rate of serious pedestrian injuries and fatalities on Philly's public streets within 5 years.

(The Quaker Building | Image: Post Brothers)

Last week we wrote about how wards shouldn't be officially recognized as RCOs by the city, and discussed the example of the 14th Ward organization being assigned as the coordinating RCO to hear Post Brothers' zoning appeal for a conversion of the long-vacant industrial Quaker Building into a 350-unit apartment building at 9th and Poplar.

Lots of people like to complain about the price of new construction apartments, and say they want to see developers producing less costly housing. Developer Allan Nadav agrees, and he is proposing a new 49-unit building at 1613-27 Germantown Avenue in Olde Kensington whose 440-square foot studio apartments would rent for just $750 a month.

Council President Darrell Clarke is a guy who brags about driving to the corner store, so it's no surprise that his vision for the 5th Council District looks a lot more like the suburban sprawl of Phoenix or Atlanta than the rowhouse neighborhoods of Philadelphia.

(Council President Darrell Clarke)

This Tuesday, Philadelphians awoke to scenes of arson and vandalism. After weeks of a campaign warning of impending “direct action” against “gentri scum”, the outside agitators acted. Dressed in all black, wielding weapons, and attacking indiscriminately, they burned homes in Point Breeze, broke windows in South Kensington, and continued their pattern of vandalism across the city.

("Better off as a vacant lot than a triplex" - Darrell Clarke, probably | Photo: Flickr/Jukie Bot)

We've got a cool event coming up on May 11th that we're partnering on with Urban Land Institute, where we'll be talking with some local experts about what happened in the 5 years since Philly passed zoning reform.

The discussion will be focused on neighborhood commercial corridors in particular, since corridor retail has emerged as a major priority area for Mayor Kenney, at least rhetorically.

(The Claridge | Photo: Al Shapiro)

In Philadelphia, discussions about affordable housing tend to assume a binary world with "affordable housing" on one side, and "market rate" housing on the other. "Affordable housing," as the term is commonly used, assumes some form of public subsidy is going to be required, while "market rate" housing is assumed to be too expensive for the average person to afford, just by definition.

Council President Darrell Clarke once remarked, "This is Philadelphia. People drive to the corner store. This is what we do.” This attitude is common in his Council office, and it leads them to seriously misunderstand--and misrepresent--the interests of 5th District residents.