I had originally imagined the snow swirling in my own head might morph into several blog posts, but instead, I've written one master update on the goings-on here in our fine city.
First, has anyone seen the news about Mayor Nutter's plan to charge city residents for garbage pick-up? I believe the mayor plans to charge residents for special trash bags which will be required for city trash pick-up. Overheard my boss telling our admin assistant about this plan yesterday: "Sounds like the streets will be littered with trash." At first, I thought he was making reference to our former Mayor Street and his FBI probe.
Further our current mayor has now said that in light of necessary city budget cuts, he is considering charging a co-pay to patients who come to the city's Free Clinics for health care visits. He suggested that the charge would be $5 to $20. More threatening is that budget cuts may force closure of as many as 3 Free Clinics or the city's nursing home.
The Health Distric free clinics are supposed to be the stop-gap for anyone without health insurance. These moves will certainly strain the city's already-strained emergency departments through the city and prolong wait times even more.
The economy is hurting everywhere.
On a more positive note: This next one's in honor of our Philadelphia Phillies, winners of the 2008 World Series, who are now playing spring training baseball in Clearwater, Florida. Alas, because of my growing belly, I cannot Live Blog the games or see them in person this year. I'll have to wait for regular season, by which time I will certainly be big as a house.
So my exciting news is instead written on my laptop, in my house, in this fine city where earlier this week we had a "blizzard" of only four inches of snow. To be fair, the storm did spread varying depths of snow depending on where you were, but still. At my house, we only had 4 inches.
So really now, here's my good news: Chase Utley, sorry to say this, but you have a replacement. I have a new favorite Philadelphia Philly.
Cole Hamels.
An article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Hamels and his wife are investigating the possibility of adopting a child with AIDS. His foundation is focused on building a school in Malawi. Apparently, he and his wife honeymooned in South Africa.
"In addition to enjoying our honeymoon, we got to know about Africa and its issues," Hamels said.
Cole might be a nice name for my next-born.
Here's my last Philadelphia story for now. This one isn't particularly unique to Philadelphia, but it was written by Tirdad Derakhshani, the Inquirer's writer of one of my favorite features, Side Show. Tirdad wrote an article about the increased prevalence of conspiracy theories. A fascinating topic that I have written more about here.
Tirdad says:
"...[A conspiracy theory] helps us feel that there must have been some reason or purpose behind such a tragic accident. Some find it unbearable to see the universe as ruled by a play of contingent forces. For some, what we call an accident is merely a veil that hides mysterious motives.
The metaphysical need for meaning becomes dangerous when it hides the impersonal social, political, and economic processes that help define our lives...
...Conspiracy theories, which proliferate during periods of traumatic economic and social shifts, are a real form of protest by citizens angry over a system that makes them feel small, impotent. Ironically, they end up reinforcing that powerlessness."
As an example, let's say that your government is no longer providing you the health care you need, and your ailing grandmother has been kicked out of her nursing home. The fire department in your neighborhood has closed, the library near your house where your children go to do homework after school has shortened its hours, and you have to pay to have the city haul away your trash. You might think the mayor and the city council are in a conspiracy against you.
Unless the Phillies win the World Series!
3 comments:
Huh. I thought everyone paid for trash pickup. Every city I've ever lived in charged for that, though it's usually wrapped up as a charge on the utilities or water bill, depending on the city.
You know what I really miss that's only slightly on the subject? (it's late...) - mandatory recycling. I mean, we get recycling pickup here once a week, but when we lived in Wisconsin, it was illegal not to recycle! How cool is that? You could get fined and/or arrested if they found out you weren't recycling. That just plain rocks. Okay, it really IS late, isn't it?
We do have a good recycling program, I'll say that. It's not mandatory, but we are able to recycle lots of things. The city has a sorter, so we can throw everything all in the bin together.
Our other public utilities like water, electric, and gas are not run by the city. They are run by separate companies. Trash pick up and recycling has been free, I sort of imagine it to be part of the property taxes we pay. We pay a lot of other taxes - city wage tax, property tax, etc and talk is that those taxes are going up. I believe increasing taxes is ok if we get more services, or if we keep more services than we can afford as a city without higher taxes, but they are talking about raising taxes and taking services away - fire rescue, snow removal, library hours, summer pools, recreation centers and more. Some are already gone, others are at risk. And unfortunately, the areas most at risk for loss of services tend to be areas with more impoverished citizens.
Ooh, some of those are bad. I've never lived in a place that had free pools, recreation centers, trash pickup, etc. Now that I think about it, though, the trash pick up fee goes through the utilities company, not directly through the city, but the city pairs up with the utility company, or something like that.
Here, they're just stupid with their money. There's that stimulus package and instead of our city using its portion (whatever portion that might be) on useful improvements like road construction in overcrowded parts of the city or helping with expansion of a swamped airport, we want to use it to expand and beautify the SA River. Yeah. Sometimes I don't know what people are thinking.
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