The NEXT City Hall

A rundown of Nutter's new appointees and their priorities for the city this year.

by PW Staff

With a new and much anticipated administration settling into City Hall, many Philadelphians have begun asking anew, “What’s possible for this city?” But it’s not just us. Urban thinkers, policy makers, developers and marketers in cities across the country are asking the same thing.

And when ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson broadcasts live from Philadelphia to show the rest of the country a “day in the life” of this city’s new mayor, you know something is really going on.

Last year, for the first time, more people around the world were living in urban rather than rural areas. The potential consequences of increasing urbanization have put some cities in crisis: water shortages in Las Vegas, wildfires in the San Diego suburbs, an unending squeeze on affordability in New York and San Francisco.

But those aren’t the only stories unfolding. An increasing number of urban thinkers and academics see a much more encouraging future for older industrial cities such as Cleveland, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

We all know the story: As the U.S. industrial economy collapsed over the last half-century, a disproportionate number of cities in the Northeast and Midwest experienced significant population loss, including Philadelphia. This city has lost more than a quarter of its population over the last 50 years. In other cities, the population loss has been worse.

Yet after enduring a 50-year economic pummeling, older industrial cities are particularly well-positioned to take advantage of the trend toward accelerated urbanization.

In its report on restoring prosperity to postindustrial cities, the Brookings Institution outlines a host of distinctive physical characteristics it says provide rustbelt cities with an edge: walkable urban grids (check), great architecture (check), waterfronts (double check) and public transit (check … well, kinda).

But there’s even better news for Philadelphia. Philly stacks up incredibly well when it comes to economic advantages that the city and businesses can exploit for growth. Philly has a wealth of educational anchors—universities and colleges—that have invested in the city for the long term, and that infuse the city with a huge college-age population.

There are large tracts of land undergoing redevelopment along the Schuylkill—a rare and valuable resource to help reinvent a large city.

Affordability—and the chance it offers entrepreneurs, artists and the like to find a large likeminded community and a market—is another key to the transformative potential of the city right now.

Sports and museums, as well as a growing reputation for both great music and culture, and for being an important reference point in the nation’s history, are easy to take for granted in Philadelphia. But when you combine these factors with great geography (halfway between New York and D.C. isn’t a bad place to be for a city looking to revive its economy), Philadelphia has a decided edge over Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and the rest.

A new administration that has captured the imagination of its citizens gives the city an edge too. As Nutter unpacks his boxes and his priorities over the next few months, he’d do well to keep in mind that other cities will be taking notes on the various concoctions he and his people stir up in our little urban laboratory.

In fact, next month the Fed is hosting a conference in Philadelphia on exactly how older communities are reinventing themselves. Sharpen your speaking points and your implementation plans, Mr. Mayor. They aren’t just watching—they’re coming here to check it out in person.

Let’s be clear—Philly isn’t all puppy dogs and rainbows, and there’s a lot for the Nutter administration to tackle before this city’s promising future moves from conjecture to reality. Philadelphians, especially those affected directly by the city’s looming murder rate, might say crime has crippled this city much more than any natural disaster could. Police commissioner Charles Ramsey has to make good on short-term and long-term goals for reducing crime, while engaging communities and organizations working on the ground.

The administration will be challenged to think holistically about public transportation, energy planning and economic growth in the city, and will need to work with the state on education to determine the best approaches to building and sustaining successful racially and economically diverse schools. These and other issues will feature just as prominently in the national story that unfolds about this city’s recovery as they do in the local one.

The new administration should be mindful of the national attention focused on what’s next for Philadelphia. This is, after all, the chance to do it right—to make the most of what we’ve got, and make the next Philadelphia the one we’ve been waiting for. (Michelle Kuly)

Rina Cutler

Rina Cutler

Title: Deputy mayor of transportation and utilities.

Age: 55

Philadelphians, overhearing our conversation, interrupt to shake Rina Cutler’s hand. She’s a big, friendly woman with a Nutteresque dry wit and real skill at deflecting questions with great fluffy puffballs of vagueness.

Three years ago, when Cutler was running a parking consulting agency, PW’s Frank Rubino heckled her about ticketing policy. Cutler pretty much told Rubino to stop whining. Rubino responded by comparing her to Marie Antoinette and calling her arrogant and “roomy.” But apparently she doesn’t hold a grudge. You’d like her.

On policy matters: She’s vague on specifics, but she’s got a nice laugh. Her big idea? “Making agencies responsive to the public.” She says she’s going to talk to people, find out what needs doing and the best way to do it, clean up SEPTA, get rid of the graffiti, prevent the bridges from collapsing, put trash cans in the bus shelters, encourage recycling and pick up litter.

Cutler’s also big on Transit-Oriented Development, which transitorienteddevelopment.org defines as “the exciting new fast-growing trend in creating vibrant, livable communities … centered around high-quality train systems.” Which boils down to reversing the last 100 years of U.S. transportation culture and getting people out of their cars. But as to the how, Cutler, who doesn’t start her job till March, is cautious to the point of prevarication.

“There’s only so much you can do,” she says. “You’ve got so much money and so much road capacity, and obviously you’ve got to try to balance all the priorities.”

Background: Cutler’s department, which didn’t exist under Mayor Street, oversees policy and planning for “transportation, waste management, infrastructure and public utilities.” Her previous job was deputy secretary of administration for PennDOT. She started her career as Boston’s transportation commissioner. She then served as director of parking and traffic for San Francisco, where the Chronicle called her “a Boston bulldog who carried a ticket book with her and handed out tags on her way to lunch.”

At that, Cutler laughs. “I gave out some tickets to get a sense of what it felt like to be the ticket writer. That rational human being who goes home at night and pats the dog and kisses the wife? When getting a parking ticket, he becomes a raging maniac. I told my parking officers, ‘When people call you a bitch, it means Babe in Total Control of Herself.”

Her main weapon in dealing with problems in San Francisco and Boston: “A sense of humor—the same weapon I hope to use here.” (Steven Wells)

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Donald F. Schwarz

Donald F. Schwarz

Title: Deputy mayor of health and opportunity.

Donald F. Schwarz has been deputy mayor of health and opportunity for just 12 days. He makes this clear at the beginning of a recent interview about his plan for the office. In short, he doesn’t have one yet. His first days in office have been occupied by meeting all the folks at the Health Department, along with everyone else he’ll be working with. But he does have a mission. He describes it as: “Serving the public health and ensuring Philadelphians, to the best of our government’s ability, achieve their potential.” Okay, so let’s narrow the scope a little.

Background: Schwarz graduated from Brown University in 1977 before going on to earn his M.D. and M.P.H. degrees at Johns Hopkins in ’82. After completing his residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, he became vice chairman of the department of pediatrics at Penn and deputy physician-and-chief at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His more than 20 years of work led to national recognition in the field of adolescent medicine. Children’s health is his passion, and it’s something he hopes to make a priority in the Nutter administration. “Children need to have health insurance and access to healthcare,” he says. “And we have a number of children who are undocumented in Philadelphia. I think they deserve a dignified standard of healthcare, and the city will do its part—along with the private provider community—to assure they have access.”

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First on the docket: Improving the morale of employees working in the city’s eight public health centers. “We need to restore a sense of pride to the entirety of the Department of Health,” he says. “Over time the department has been passed over in terms of spending, and has sustained cuts now for a number of years. People have hung in there and done a wonderful job, but morale, when it suffers, people need to be reinvigorated.” Schwarz joins a mayoral administration he thinks can do just that, but he’s reasonable about the time it might take. “I’m realistic enough to believe we need to do this in a measured way,” he says. “Working with this mayor and the other members of the administration is quite extraordinary. It’s a wonderful group of people who bring an enormous set of talents to municipal government.”

How to do it?: He’s not sure just yet. Day 12, remember. On day 13 Schwarz finds himself at a ribbon- cutting ceremony for a new health annex at 61st and Woodland in Southwest Philly. It’s his first public appearance as deputy mayor. He’s introduced to thunderous applause from a community that’s familiar with his face and work. Morale seems to be rising already. (Brian McManus)

J. Shane Creamer Jr.

Title: Executive director of the city’s Board of Ethics.

Age: 46

About three years ago Committee of Seventy president and CEO Zack Stalberg was introduced to a nun. She asked him what he did for a living. When Stalberg replied that he headed up an organization that fights corruption in local government, the nun crossed herself.

With Nutter now in office, Stalberg and others have reason to believe that nun’s prayers could actually be answered someday. Nutter’s mayoral campaign message promised greater government transparency. And as a member of City Council, Nutter sponsored several measures aimed at cleaning up the city’s deeply ingrained pay-to-play culture. Significantly, Nutter introduced legislation that reconstituted Philadelphia’s Board of Ethics.

J. Shane Creamer Jr., executive director of the five-member board, is looking forward to working with a mayor who supports the body’s mission. “The fact that Nutter is prioritizing ethics in various ways will make the board’s work more successful,” he says.

What’s coming: Creamer says Philadelphians can expect several trends to emerge this year. First, the board will take steps to ensure more government transparency. “We’ve already seen this in the area of no-bid contracts, as well as with the electronic filing of campaign finance reports,” Creamer says. “But even more openness in city government is on the way.”

Another priority for board members is creating awareness of the ethics code. They plan to step up outreach efforts to employees, vendors and political fundraisers, says Creamer, who believes “people want to do the right thing.”

“The problem in the past was a real lack of consistency among city agencies when it came to enforcing ethics rules,” he says.

The Board of Ethics also intends to strengthen and clarify language written back in 1963, when Philadelphia’s original code of ethics was adopted. For instance, the existing gift ban is vague and open to interpretation—prohibiting employees from accepting items “of significant value” that could “influence decisions.” But the board intends to make it clear that city employees should not even be nibbling fruit from holiday gift baskets, “if we’re going to break the connection between political donors and elected officials,” Creamer notes.

Board members may also be busy implementing a package of ethics reforms that City Councilman Frank Rizzo is poised to introduce. The bills would ban nepotism, as well as gifts to city employees and elected officials. One would also require lobbyists to register with the city. A fourth measure would prohibit city employees and elected officials from holding positions with firms that do business with city.

The Committee of Seventy’s Stalberg predicts the bill will face fierce opposition, given that a handful of current City Council members moonlight. Councilmen Brian O’Neill and Bill Green do legal work. Jim Kenney is a lobbyist for an architecture and engineering firm. And Frank DiCicco sells real estate. “Even those council members who don’t have outside employment are reluctant to limit their options,” Stalberg says.

Even so, the most significant trend Philadelphians can expect over the next year is increased public confidence in the integrity of government, Creamer stresses. “People will see the rules are in place and that they’re enforced.”

The widespread impression that the city’s government is corrupt won’t vanish in a year, Stalberg says. “But certainly, we can start to reverse the cynicism.”

Chances of short-term success: Excellent—because ethics are a hot issue in both local and national politics. Mayor Nutter campaigned heavily on a promise to end the city’s pay-to-play culture, and that message obviously resonated with voters.

Chances of long-term success: Good. As time passes, ethics are likely to take a backseat to more pressing issues such as Philadelphia’s slumping real estate market and public safety challenges. So while Mayor Nutter will remain committed to ethics reforms, City Council may be somewhat less inclined to prioritize them. There could also be backlash from Council members and board appointees affected by the mayor’s far-reaching bans on political activity and outside employment. (Gwen Shaffer)

Charles Ramsey

Charles Ramsey

Title: Police commissioner.

Age: 54

Background experience: Ramsey, a Chicago native, has been a cop since before he was old enough to drink. He joined the Chicago PD at 18, and in his three decades there, rose to the rank of deputy superintendent. Ramsey then headed to D.C., where he was police commissioner for nearly nine years. In D.C. Ramsey was widely credited with cleaning up the police department. He reportedly promoted, demoted and ousted police officers, and even brought in the feds to investigate trigger-happy cops. He also injected more money into his department for training. After D.C.’s new mayor replaced Ramsey with one of his own, Ramsey found work as a police consultant in such far-flung places as Iraq, Poland and the Czech Republic. Before Nutter called him, Ramsey was on the short list to become Baltimore’s top cop, but he was passed over for a 26-year Baltimore police veteran. Ramsey’s supporters describe him as a cop’s cop, a straight shooter and an advocate for community policing. His critics dismiss him as an overly aggressive showboat who declares crime emergencies whenever he’s bored. But in the nation’s former murder capital, Ramsey is lauded for accomplishing an impossible mission: reducing overall crime, including homicides.

Specific plan of action: On his first day in office, Mayor Nutter declared a crime emergency in Philadelphia, and charged Ramsey to apply a tourniquet. Ramsey’s recently unveiled 33-page crime-fighting plan, based on his series of town hall meetings, is bold, namely because he burdens himself with a mandate: to reduce the city’s murders by 25 percent and its shooting victims by 20 percent by the end of the year. This, in a city that for the past two years averaged more than one murder and four shootings a day. Ramsey also says he’ll reduce violent crime overall by 20 percent, reduce the number of confiscated guns by 5 percent and complete tests on a significant number of the 6,000 pieces of ballistics evidence piling up in the department, all by the end of the year. He plans to conquer crime by: putting 200 more uniformed police officers on the street through redeployment, new police officers and the temporary use of overtime by May 1; focusing closely on the city’s nine most violent police districts; increasing the number of surveillance cameras from 26 to 250 by year’s end; and instituting the controversial stop-and-frisk policy. Ramsey also plans to increase the number of solved murders to 65 percent.

Chances of success: Experts say his chances are good. For one, Ramsey’s done this before, and like he readily admits, his plan is hardly rocket science. It’s basic policing, putting cops where crime occurs. And his targets aren’t overly ambitious—25 percent isn’t a drastic reduction. Of course Ramsey faces the usual deep-rooted obstacles: a crappy education system, no jobs for educated people (much less ex-cons), a revolving door of repeat offenders and a free flow of illegal guns. Then there’s the fear of communities living under an occupied police force.

“In some respects Ramsey’s plan resembles Gen. Petraeus’ plan for a surge in Iraq,” says University of Pennsylvania sociology and criminology professor Randall Collins. “But in Iraq, it’s worked to some degree.”

“I think the increased police presence is a good idea,” says veteran attorney Willie Nattiel, “as long as it’s not viewed by the neighborhoods as a siege. I hope the police actually get out of their cars and engage the community versus simply stopping and frisking every young African-American male on the block.”

But there’s seemingly universal agreement that Ramsey’s common-sense plan, which focuses on community policing, is long overdue.

“I think the people are in it this time,” says sociologist Patrick Carr, who’s studied violence in cities, including ours. “I haven’t seen that in Philadelphia in a long time.” (Kia Gregory)

Lori Shorr

Lori Shorr

Title: Chief education officer.

Age: 44

Background experience: Shorr comes to Nutter’s team from the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN), where she worked on a citywide initiative to combat the dropout crisis. Before that she worked as special assistant to the secretary of education in Harrisburg.

Specific plan of action: Education in Philly has its share of challenges, but top two priorities: cutting the dropout rate in half in five to seven years, and doubling the four-year college-degree-attainment rate in seven to 10 years. How to do that? Number crunching—and number sharing. “An important part of my work has always been about getting systems to share data, and seeing what you can learn from that,” says Shorr. “When you start to share data across institutions, you start to get a holistic picture of somebody—especially kids who’ve dropped out.” The data that will come from Shorr’s research, which she hopes will pave the way for better initiatives. “I want to be able to get good programs and polices out of it,” she says, “not just to do it for the sake of doing it.”

Chances of short-term success: Data collection takes a long time, so the mayor’s not expecting to see serious results for a while. “We’re going to have a K-12 statewide data system soon, but Pennsylvania hasn’t really been on the cutting edge of that until recently,” Shorr says. In the meantime, she’s keeping busy. Besides budgeting and five-year planning, the city is working with the School District on opening a dropout reengagement center, which they hope will be an effective bricks-and-mortar first step.

Chances of long-term success: Shorr worked hardcore on dropout rates at PYN, and in Harrisburg she worked primarily on aligning high school and college education. Before that, she worked at Temple, easing the way for first- generation college students. “Instead of throwing together a program for dropouts that’s based on my hunch, and putting millions of dollars into it, I’d rather us take our time to know what the best interventions are,” Shorr says. “We need to figure out how we can look at and serve kids more holistically, meaning having the School District and the state agencies work together more closely.” (Jeffrey Barg)

Andy Altman

Andy Altman

Title: Deputy mayor of planning and economic development.

Age: 45

Andy Altman had never considered moving back to Philly. After years in public service in California and Washington, D.C., the Germantown native (he graduated from Temple and got his master’s in city planning at MIT) started his own urban development company in New York. Working in the private sector agreed with him. He and his wife had their second child in December.

But then Mayor Nutter made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: the chance to rebuild Philadelphia into a healthy, thriving city.

“There are times when great things happen to great cities because of the leadership. I loved being part of it in Washington. Now it feels like it might be Philly’s moment,” says Altman, who credits Nutter’s “inspiration, vision, integrity and personal rapport” as the reasons he took a pay cut to come back to Philly: “If I’m gonna do it in my city—where I grew up—this is the time to do it.”

His D.C. cred: Altman comes highly recommended by former Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams, who’s known as the stiff mayor responsible for that city’s economic rebirth. During Williams’ second term the Washington Convention Center opened, D.C.’s credit rating reached an eight-year high, redevelopment of the Anacostia waterfront began (creating 4,500 housing units and 600,000 square feet of retail space), Major League Baseball brought the Expos to the District, construction began on a new downtown ballpark and the mayor’s New Communities affordable housing initiative was approved. (On top of all that, D.C. had its lowest homicide rate in nearly 20 years.) As Williams’ planning director, Altman was intimately involved in those achievements. A 2004 article in the Washington Business Journal called him “arguably the most sought-after planner in the country.”

Priorities: When he takes office later this month, Altman’s first order of business is to unite the bureaucratic agencies under his command—commerce, planning and development, zoning, L&I, housing and workforce development. “Philly has to be more competitive. We can’t be complacent,” Altman says of attracting more jobs—and people—to the city. But Philly faces daunting challenges. Altman’s workforce strategy, for example, must take into account the city’s low education level and high poverty rate. And getting the resources to execute his vision as the nation enters an economic recession won’t be easy.

The plus side: Altman comes with lots of experience in struggling racially and economically divided cities. He spent his early days in city planning in Los Angeles, where his focus was redeveloping inner-city neighborhoods during the Rodney King era of civil unrest. As director of city planning in Oakland, Calif., in the ’90s, he worked on a waterfront project that helped revitalize the surrounding economically depressed area. “That really got me excited and passionate about waterfronts,” says Altman, who several years later used D.C.’s enormous Anacostia waterfront project to connect the city’s growth with the revitalization of some of its poorest communities. He says the concentrated poverty in D.C.’s neighborhoods is in stark contrast to the nearby wealth and prestige surrounding Capitol Hill.

It’s an economic divide he’ll revisit on an even larger scale in Philadelphia, where he says the devastation of the postindustrial economy has created “miles of neighborhoods” that still haven’t recovered. “I’ve always loved cities,” says Altman, confessing he’s wanted to be a city planner since he was 10 years old. “And I’m interested in ones with challenges—I really like the challenges major cities have.”

Innovation Philadelphia: Many local groups are eager to sit down with Altman in the coming months to help him get his economic strategy right. Innovation Philadelphia, a nonprofit economic development group, wants to make sure Philly’s creative economy gets special attention in the new administration.

“Currently when we talk about the region from an economic perspective, we focus on life sciences or financial and business services,” says Kelly Lee, executive vice president of Innovation Philadelphia. “But if you look at the assets within the creative industries [in the Philadelphia region], they’re bigger. So we need to include the creative economy as part of Philadelphia’s identity, and brand it as such.”

(Although Nutter’s budget plan released last week pulls all city funding from Innovation Philadelphia, Lee calls the situation “stressful but not fatal.” She says her group is used to petitioning to get their funding reinstated, and they’re developing outside funding sources as well.)

Innovation Philadelphia’s Creative Footprint report, released last month, shows the surprising depth of our region’s for-profit creative economy: 766,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in annual tax revenue, with the numbers increasing exponentially each year. Furthermore, these are generally high-paying, “high-value” jobs—the kind that attract bright, young graduates to Philadelphia, or keep them from leaving.

Lee believes incentive packages for creative businesses will help make Philadelphia a destination city for young architects, graphic designers, writers, producers, filmmakers, software designers and other creative types.

On Nutter’s choice: Steven Wray, executive director of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, is impressed with Altman’s reputation. He says the appointment shows a commitment to linking planning and development—something that’s long been absent from local government. “There are enough good-enough things happening in the city that with a coordinated plan there’s an opportunity to maximize the benefits,” Wray says.

Like the Delaware waterfront.

“Some great plans have been put forward,” says Wray. “The challenge is connecting those outside plans with the city’s development strategy and ensuring it happens in such a way that city investments and infrastructure—like new water, sewer and transit lines, and other things—are able to leverage future development and stimulate private investment. One of the long-term goals is the private sector taking on more of the burden than the public sector.”

With Altman’s track record, it’s a safe bet the waterfront is one area that won’t be ignored. (Kate Kilpatrick)

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This Blows

Nutter promises reforms at L&I and Zoning.

During last spring’s mayoral primary, one line (which rolled off the tongue of more than one candidate) could be counted on to win cheers and giggles from whatever desperate, sad-eyed Philadelphia crowd had gathered with the hope of hearing something—anything—promising about their poor, forlorn city.

The question was inevitable: “What are your plans for L&I?”

Varying slightly with each telling, the answer was always accompanied by mushroom-cloud imagery. Of course, said both Nutter and Knox, first thing you’ll hear when the new administration takes over is the sound of the city’s hated Department of Licenses and Inspections blowing up.

The line worked so well because for many Philadelphia homeowners—and for anyone who’s followed the countless corruption headlines that have plagued the office over the years—L&I and its conjoined twin the Zoning Board of Readjustment have long symbolized everything that’s wrong with this city. Many suspected these two offices (Zoning is part of L&I) were the very reason we could never seem to get a foothold on the future, while smaller postindustrial rivals such as Providence and even Cleveland, for Christ’s sake, blossomed into models of 21st-century urban renewal.

Unlike in most functional cities where the rules were straightforward, in Philly—with its crazy quilt of zoning overlays and variances, along with building codes that seemed to change by the day and the inspector—the mere process of trying to bring a building up to code could be like going down a rabbit hole that emptied out into the seventh circle of hell—i.e., the basement of the Municipal Services Building. (Yes, we’re talking both Alice in Wonderland and The Inferno here.)

This is the place, as any Philadelphian who’s languished there will tell you, where, as once acknowledged by a surly L&I clerk, you could expect hostility, blame, hopelessness, dejection and a total lack of any clear or consistent answers—in other words, a version of Purgatory sure to leave you praying for death.

Inherit a violation that predated your purchase of your home, and not sure where to start?

Get in line, buddy. Fill out some forms in quadruplicate, and wait. We can’t tell you how long. And we break for lunch at noon. Leave if you want, but you’ll lose your place in line. Can’t you see we’re busy here? And no, you can’t take care of it over the phone.

Of course a Philadelphia homeowner (who faced considerably less headache than did a business owner looking to expand or to open a new restaurant, for instance) who was either trying to correct a violation L&I apparently pulled out of thin air or actually hoping to improve their property could avoid all this nonsense by paying a so-called expediting fee.

This fee—which ran hundreds of dollars—could be paid to L&I as an incentive to do its job within a reasonable time period (maybe a few weeks instead of months). And most taxpayers who couldn’t afford to sit in the basement of the Municipal Services Building all day for weeks or months while awaiting news of L&I’s latest whim wound up paying the fee.

Was it a payoff?

In a normal city maybe, but it was just business as usual in Philly—where, when PW last visited, the wall decorations in an upstairs L&I office consisted of signs reminding employees not to take bribes.

Any Philadelphian who’s dealt with L&I knows about the expediting fee. And most say they wound up paying it.

Were they bribing?

Possibly.

Did they care?

Hardly. Most just wanted the city to stop harassing them.

Those days of harassment and mystery fees may now at last be over.

Though he didn’t make good on his promise to blow up L&I, last month Nutter did make a promising first step toward changing the way the city oversees building and planning by replacing the old Zoning Board of Readjustment with his own appointees. It’s too soon to tell how the new board will work, but it’s at least reassuring to know the mayor’s on the case.

L&I, which oversees the Zoning Board of Readjustment, will likely undergo dramatic change after Andy Altman, the city’s new deputy mayor of planning and economic development, takes office later this month. Though it’s still too early for much detail, Altman’s first order of business, Kate Kilpatrick writes in her interview with him, is to bring together the city’s now-disparate bureaus of commerce, planning, housing, workforce development—and yes, zoning, and licenses and inspections—within a single unified department aimed at spurring economic development across the city by reducing the labyrinthine bureaucracy we’ve all struggled with—and that has kept us from becoming a postindustrial success story—for far too long. (Sara Kelly)

Rob Dubow

Age: 48

Title: Finance director.

Background: “The financial future of Philadelphia sets the tone for everything else we do,” Nutter said as he announced to much fanfare his first appointment—Rob Dubow—just days after the mayoral election. Dubow worked for Mayor Rendell, eventually climbing his way up within the budget office to become budget director in ’99. He was budget director again for Street from 2000 to 2004, went back to Rendell—this time to work as the chief financial officer for Pennsylvania—and eventually returned to Philadelphia to work as director of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority. He’s a smart numbers guy who’s well-liked—and well-known. “I’ve gone through some of this stuff before,” says Dubow. “When we have issues and need help, I know who to call.”

Plan of action: “In the short term our financial state looks really good … but we’re not making the investments we need to make in our infrastructure or our pension fund,” says Dubow. The budget for fiscal year 2009 is on the surface a conservative one, focusing on long-term fiscal health while taking into consideration some effects of the impending recession and leaving conspicuously absent planned casino revenue. Most increases have been modest, with the exception of big money for Community College of Philadelphia. There’s also a 40 percent increase in funding over the next five years for Fairmount Park, tied directly to a parking tax hike of 5 percent.

No revenue increase, no extra money: The five-year plan is the economic guidebook to Nutter’s other policies—more money for policing, for creative economic development, for sustainability projects (Nutter wants to make Philly the greenest city in America) and for a sounds-too-good-to-be-true bond issue that will cover almost all of Philadelphia’s whopping unfunded pensions and bail us out of our own local version of the Social Security mess, while putting extra cash into the general fund.

Possibility of success: A close look shows many old initiatives are left unfunded here, including Street’s Innovation Philadelphia and after-school programs. While this budget offers a new economic development package, the loss of the after-school programs is going to hurt a lot of kids, particularly the ones for whom that extra help and support could mean becoming one of the college graduates Nutter is desperately trying to attract. And the big pension bond gamble is just that. Like a similar plan introduced in 1999, it depends on the stock market not collapsing. Current estimates say that if it succeeds, it should drop $150 million into the budget each year, $100 million of which will go in a reserve fund with another cool $50 million to go into the general fund—not to mention establish a low fixed-interest rate. But in ’99 the floor fell out from beneath the plan when the stock market tanked. If it happens again, heavy losses could send the city spiraling.

The subtext of all this: We’re being crippled by pension spending and employee benefits. A penciled-in benefits increase cap of $403 million is a big signal that in the upcoming negotiations with the city unions, Nutter’s negotiating team isn’t going to pull punches. If the unions don’t like it, the situation could turn as nasty as, well, it’s always been. But if the budget and the five-year plan work, it’ll mean a drastic increase in our painfully low credit rating (second only to Detroit) and build the sturdy financial framework necessary to make major city improvements. As Dubow puts it, “It’s impossible for Nutter to do what he wants to do unless the city’s financial house is in order.” (Alli Katz)