How Single-Entry Bookkeeping Saved a City
by Joe?Pulcinella
Move over, Onion.com! Here comes The Philadelphia Inquirer!
Buoyed by a projected $168 million surplus, Mayor Street made a joyous return yesterday to the borrowing and spending that marked his first term, promising money for the arts, neighborhood commerce, the riverfronts, police overtime, and even baby cribs in his annual budget address.
But Philadlephia is a ward of the Commonwealth? How can Street perform a financial miracle like this?
But Street took care to describe the spending as fiscally prudent, calling cultural institutions and neighborhood commercial corridors - which each stand to get $65 million of the proposed $150 million bond issue - "cornerstones of the city's economic vitality."
Oh. You just can't make this stuff up. The whole article is a hoot. Bread, circuses, wall-to-wall Wifi...it's all good, baby, it's all good!
Comments
Doc, you are SO right - what has happened to the people of Philadelphia that they simply lay down and accept the depredations of Street and his gang of (indicted and unindicted) criminals, and the equally criminal City Council?
How wonderful. Its a shame that he didn't decide to use that surplus to reduce the city wage tax, for which non residents pay without receiving any representation, and theeby eliminate the practice that has been considered illegal since the events of 1776+ at 4th and Chestnut
I wanted to ask that same question but I guess the author didn't want to appear impolite...so he settled for "useless."
I'd bet that the way it was figured was like this: the combined value of the collection was $50 million+. If you measure the aggregate value of everything inside the city's borders while the Dali things was going on, it would be $50 million+ higher than just before? Get it?
"he noted that the Philadelphia Museum of Art's recent Dali show had an economic impact of $54.9 million." How is this measured? Who's generating these numbers?
"Street proposed accelerating existing business-tax cuts, at a cost of $5 million for one year, but also asked to undo $46.8 million worth of planned tax cuts for the poor." So, let me get this straight - he wants to obligate the city's dupes, er, taxpayers to tens of billions of dollars in new spending due to an "expected" couple hundred million dollar surplus, and he wants to balance his budget on the backs of the poor. Where does he get the balls to do such things?
Did you see where Christine Flowers replied to our original story (like really recently)?
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