Quote:
Originally Posted by japmes
Question: How is Parker able to pay for all of these QOL initiatives? Suddenly we have resources to clean the whole city and $100M for a comprehensive drug rehab center.  I'm not complaining but where are these funds coming from? |
My take is we've had the money but not the political will.
It takes more political will than you think to tell people they're going to have to move their cars for street cleaning when it hasn't been done for 20 years. People are lazy and there's a whole cohort of people who think, well if people just didn't litter, we wouldn't need this (and by extension, I don't litter, so I'm not moving my car).
What I like about her so far is that her attitude is I DON'T CARE.
That being said, the only thing that gives me pause is that I'm not sure she's actually working on solving the problem. $20MM a year for her "Philadelphia More Beautiful" project is a lot of money just to clean up a handful of commercial corridors. It feels like the money is going at clean up and not at all at solutions aimed at preventing it in the first place.
But, the clean up is needed now as everything has been neglected for so long. I'm hopeful as the initial layer of grime is removed people will feel more compelled to keep things tidy. I know I do. Even though I've always kept my block etc clean, when I notice things like the city cleaning a lot or a neighborhood park, it energizes me to step in a keep it clean after they're gone. The effort feels less in vain knowing the city is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
But, we need real solutions for dumping. Not just more people to clean up dumping. And there are solutions.
We need a real policy on street sweeping. It's still very ad hoc and I think a bit ineffective even in the areas where it's being done.
We need standards on trash collection. Like, why do we tolerate people putting little plastic bags of trash on the street (like using the plastic bag from Target as your trash bag). Why do we tolerate people leaving loose recycling on the street? It's incredibly dangerous for city employees from an injury perspective. It also slows the entire process down and contributes to the litter problem. In NYC you would be fined if you put a Target bag on the street as your trash bag. Of if you just left your recyclables in a loose cardboard box and expected the city to take it.
Also, people in this city unfortunately need to be taught how to be good neighbors. When you drive around the lower NE in particular, it's mind boggling how many of those small postage stamp yards in front of airlites are completely unmaintained. Start fining people for it. No, your grass shouldn't be 3 feet high. No, your can't have a 6 foot tall chain link fence at your sidewalk. I honestly think people don't know how to be good neighbors. Like, educate people. Has the city ever done outreach to flier those neighborhoods to explain city law and custom? Maybe people honestly don't know, either because they've never lived in a stand alone home or are immigrants and aren't accustomed to even having a lawn? It's hard to say...but it couldn't hurt to provide some amount of education on custom and standard (in many languages).
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