Collecting Unpaid Property Tax

While Philadelphia's ridiculously low property tax (or rather, absent reassessment of property values) has been an attraction to buy in the city, there's a flip side to the city's inefficiency.

Shocker, huh?

It seems for many long time residents and land hoarders, the perception of the city's property tax has been optional. So much so that currently the city is owed half a billion dollars in backed up property tax.

Well, the city is coming after you. That means foreclosures, wage garnishments, and leans. Words some property owners have evaded for decades despite our crumbling school district and struggling tax based economy.

In addition to streamlining the city's collections efforts, the city may even be usurping the Sheriff Office's sales program because of their corruption and ineptitude.

Check out the numbers here.

Closed Schools to be Sold

As the Union League allegedly plots to pilfer the remains of Philadelphia's public schools, Nutter's administration is poised to do what's best with what's left.

School closures have left the city with 31 unused buildings and at this point, and the city is left to determine which can be sold to help fund the school system, and which can be reused to benefit their communiy.

It's not a fun activity. In fact, it sounds a lot like the early loose reset of Parks and Recreation, the one where Ron Swanson suggested selling off City Hall and turning it into a TJ Maxx. While that didn't happen, our truthsmay be more realistic than fiction.

PlanPhilly posted a detailed article about the endeavor, at some points optimistic, at others, not so.

On one hand, the city is doing what it has to do. On the other, these sales usually go notoriously low and the properties can wind up in questionable hands. Unfortunately the city is not in the position to dictate what happens to the property it sells, just that it sells before it falls into disrepair.

With residential develop low, and in some of these areas nonexistent, they're tough sales. Universities have been noted for grabbing these opportunities, but so have predatory land hoarders.

We'll just have to wait to see.
 

Halloween Season Begins

Nick Brandt

It's October 1st, and time to kick off my favorite Holiday Season of the year right.

Lake Natron in Tanzania is a real life River Styx, with deadly water turning its animals into pillars of salt.

With extremely high levels of sodium carbonate, primarily from volcanic ash, this salt lake can get as hot as 60 degrees Celsius.

Take a look.

Shut Down, kinda

Welcome to the Great Shutdown of 2013. I really should add Facebook to my list of sites to block whenever anything politically sensitive is happening...along with CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.

While liberals post links to a shuttered Yellowstone National Park, conservatives blame a plan that was voted into law. Others cite wild claims that the unemployed will be forced to purchase Obamacare at rates ranging from $299 a month to a cool grand. Meanwhile friends inside the Beltway post pictures from cushy Shutdown Parties.

All of them managed to piss in my Corn Flakes this morning. 

First of all, good lucky shutting down a park the size of New Hampshire. We barely kept the gates closed at Valley Forge past 11am.

And to conservatives claiming that their unemployed brethren will be forced to eat a one thousand dollar insurance premium every month, most people don't spend $12,000 a year on health care. If two idiots optionally enrolled in this mythical plan they would actually be profiting the country. Besides, with so many conservatives complaining about "lazy welfare recipients," wouldn't such an astronomical penalty encourage everyone to go out and get a job?

It's amazing how comical people can be without cracking a smile.

Oh, and to all the ass holes sipping wine on your DuPont Circle roof decks laughing about the circus you created, your detachment from the country you represent entirely encompasses what's to blame.

After all, when Washington shuts down, the National Zoo closes, field trips to the Smithsonian get cancelled, and the Botanical Gardens close. Boohoo. Washington doesn't go out of business. Like the Congress that made the earth stand still, those that caused it will never carry the weight of their actions.

We will.

The National Gallery will reopen, Metro will run as smoothly and cleanly as it always has, and Congressional lackeys will go back to work in a week or two, looking for the next way to screw America. It's easy for five million cockroaches to thrive on the banks of the Potomac when they can feast on the carcass of the rest of us.

For other cities it's not so simple. Tourism will always thrive in Washington simply because it's Washington. We've spent decades building a fragile industry that enjoys just a fraction of Washington's success. Jobs in DC don't disappear. It's an industry town that pays itself with the taxes that we generate. When it doesn't have enough, it just grabs more.

Perhaps Washington doesn't understand the economic complexities of a real city because it isn't one. Maybe they don't understand the fragility of competitive industries because its nonprofit market siphons capital off the rest of the nation to thrive.

Rebuilding an independent city a complicated endeavor. Even larger cities like Los Angeles and Chicago will feel the after effects of DC's neglected duties.

DC doesn't care. It's become a nationally funded entity that exists solely to serve itself. Like our own corrupt City Council's detachment from Philadelphia, the U.S. Congress and Senate are even further removed from the America they represent. It's as if the Beltway itself is a great wall around the region's deluded narcissism.

It's no surprise that the phrase "what happens in Washington stays in Washington" gets uttered without a wink of irony.

Closure signs plastered on parks and landmarks around the nation are little more than a message from Congress. It's pretty obvious that this is just political maneuvering when much of what's actually closed consist of parks and landmarks that require no more security than that hired to enforce their closures.

Is the Congressional Health Care system closed? Are those that forced the shutdown on unpaid leave? Of course not. The shutdown can't affect those who shut it down. Why would it? It doesn't serve their interests.

As hissy fits go, this is as expensive as they get.

Outside Washington, we'll lose billions, people will be laid off, and businesses will close. These are concepts a Beltway Lobotomite can't understand. Maybe they'll understand come election season. If voters outside Washington haven't learned what Capitol Hill has become, government shutdowns could become the new filibuster. We don't want that.

Shut It Down

Gay Businesses Come Out

Philadelphia's impression outside Philadelphia leaves a lot to be desired. That's fine. We're Philadelphians. We're used to it, and we usually get a laugh out of the hate. We might be America's best kept secret. 

You think Philadelphia is that bad? Well, visit, then we can talk.

Nestled between DC and New York, too few bother to see what we're all about. I've had friends back in Virginia ask, "isn't it kind of a big Baltimore?" While I'd prefer "a small New York," Baltimore is nothing to scoff at, kind of like a DC cupcake with more icing and sprinkles.

But this isn't about Baltimore, New York, or DC.

This is about Philadelphia, and how all inclusively awesome we've become. On my way to Home Depot a woman in a burka was tailgating me. As much as her road rage annoyed me, I had an "a ha" moment, realizing she'd likely be profiled in New York, stopped and harassed for more than just a minor traffic violation.

Here, we're free to be. While our grab bag of religious, ethnic, racial, cultural, economic, and societal differences often sparks lively, sometimes offensively charged debates on message boards and blogs, we're free to practice what we want, how we want, and with whom we want.

About a year ago, the Human Rights Campaign placed Philadelphia at the top of its municipal equality index of LGBT equality. With Pennsylvania yet to legalize gay marriage, it says a lot that our municipality received a perfect score, with several bonus points that put us above San Francisco and New York.

This may come as no surprise to us. After all, our city is the only in the United States to brand its Gayborhood with rainbow street signs the way many designate their Chinatowns and Little Italys.

A night out in the Gayborhood might leave visitors wondering why. The "gay scene" in Philadelphia isn't as wild as smaller cities like DC or Portland. With about ten gay bars, some rarely crowded, you might think that Philadelphia is about as gay as Indianapolis...at least if you base inclusiveness solely on our ability to segregate where we drink.

That is where Philadelphia shines. Unlike conservative cities that isolate their gay bars and use them as defacto community centers, we need neither isolation nor therapy from a pint glass. America no longer calculates a city's gayness by its collection of gay bars, and Philadelphia helped make that happen.

We're integrated into mainstream society. Instead of sending a liaison to Harrisburg to help instruct our local Congress on issues in the community, we elected a gay Congressman, the first openly gay Congressman elected in the country.

While City Hall has embraced the gay community as much as any other, until recently the gay community has been relatively invisible on the street. In fact virtually every gay owned business in Washington Square West is fortressed behind a windowless façade.

As one of the first gay businesses to open its windows to the street, Uncles comes out as U-Bar

Many gay bars are still tucked in narrow alleys hidden from the street. Perhaps we never noticed what message this sent being that many of these establishments are so old.

In fact long before organized gay communities began emerging around the country, Philadelphia had already established an underground community in those same alleys, tucked behind theaters amid art clubs, catering to gay clientele in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. 

It's not surprise that the Venture Inn is purportedly the oldest gay bar in operation in the country.

Venture Inn c.1900

Of course, tolerance waxed and waned throughout history and will likely continue to do so. While most people will always be reasonable, any kind of diversity will never be entirely free from bigotry.

For now, things are looking up. While gay men and women step out from the confines of our rainbow clad Gayborhood, businesses in the Gayborhood are coming out themselves.

Perhaps in an effort to combat, or at least coexist with the city's attempt to rebrand the Gayborhood as the more marketable "Midtown Village," Woody's, Icandy, and U-Bar have all replaced their unbranded walls with large windows showing off their renovations.

Improved menus at Tavern on Camac, The Westbury, and Venture Inn have proven that gay bars are more than just places to drink.

It's unfortunate that Philadelphia's gay owned businesses shrouded themselves for so long, particularly in understanding our trailblazing history.

The Midtown Village marketing campaign created an inadvertent, sometimes veiled prejudice towards long time neighborhood businesses. While not directly pointed at the city's gay community, the neighborhood's prior reputation as a slum paired with the fact that so many preexisting businesses were gay, created an inadvertent and false impression that Philadelphia's gay community was somehow seedier or less pronounced as the cushy enclaves of DuPont Circle or The Castro.

This is a misunderstanding. DC's DuPont Circle always struggled with a community association that never embraced its gay community and most of its nightlife has been pushed to the nether regions of the U Street Corridor, ripe with so much development it will likely continue to be pushed further east. Meanwhile San Francisco has become so expensive that its former gay oases serve tourists while locals play in Oakland.

Much the way our Chinatown remains largely authentic, Philadelphia's gay community has been active around Center City's Washington Square West for so long, we're more integrated into our city's soul, despite how it may look to visitors and new residents.

As more gay owned businesses open up to the street, the community's visible presence will increase. While anyone can enjoy the recent developments brought by the Midtown Village campaign, improving the image portrayed by gay owned businesses will hopefully tell gay visitors and locals alike that there's no reason to hide in Philadelphia.

Job Security

It looks like Councilman Wilson Goode, Jr. won't rest until he's followed in his father's footsteps, destroying the city one way or another.

In yet another example of why electing familiar names is a bad idea, Goode, entirely out of touch with what has financially benefitted the city since 1997, is trying to kill the ten year tax abatement as it applies to properties under $500,000.

On the surface, the simplicity of Goode's plan seems to be about fairness.

Unfortunately, simplicity isn't what we need. The tax abatement is responsible for Philadelphia's first population increase in sixty years, a small increase, one we should not be content with.

While Goode tries to paint the tax abatement as an attempt to bribe wealthy residents to move into the city, those buying $200,000 houses in demilitarized zones are not wealthy.

The ten year tax abatement does more than just build new homes, it builds new communities and improves others. Most large cities have programs that encourage new home buyers to move to the city by providing tax incentives or auctioning off vacant properties. The tax abatement is Philadelphia's.

Goode remembers 1990 well enough to know that it works.

At a time when many Americans rarely live in one house for more than five years, our program encourages homeowners to invest in their neighborhood long term. Putting new residents in a struggling neighborhood for ten years increases the value of nearby properties, calling other residents, new or old, to revitalize their own. It's not a permanent solution, but it's one that's working and still has work to do.

Of course, the reason Goode's attempts to derail this program make no sense is because we're thinking about the city, the safety of our neighborhoods, and the quality of life for our residents. Goode is thinking about politics. As the son of a former Philadelphia mayor, Goode was raised in City Hall, not Philadelphia.

As the tax abatements drop off, newly tenured residents either decide to stay in a neighborhood they've spent the past decade improving or pass the property on to other Philadelphians paying their full share of the property tax. These abatements aren't bribes, they're incentives. Those who enjoy the tax breaks are also enduring the efforts of improving the city.

The city couldn't do it, so they outsourced it to us.

Let's face it. Without the tax abatement these new residents wouldn't be here shopping, dining, opening businesses, paying taxes and driving the economy in other ways.

But Goode knows how to keep his job. It's easier to blame temporarily tax exempt residents  for our failing schools than explain the intricacies of a program that proves they're paying their share and then some.

If Goode manages to bomb the ten year tax abatement he'll keep his seat, but development will cease, neighborhoods like Point Breeze, Kensington, and Mantua will quickly revert to the impoverished ghettos that they were, and slumlords and land hoarders will find their way back into many of the neighborhoods that have managed to push them out.

But in that world known as 1980, Goode has job security, and that is his only concern.