|
Title:
|
Mayor John F. Street's Budget Address
March 18, 2004
Good morning President Verna, members of Council, special friends and distinguished guests. I am here to present for Council's consideration my proposed 3.4 billion dollar FY 05 general fund operating budget and my proposed capital program and budget for FY 05-10 along with my proposed 5 year financial plan for FY 05 through 09.
This financial plan contains approximately 374.6 million dollars in wage and business tax reductions. Notwithstanding our rapidly declining capital borrowing limits, the proposed capital program makes effective use of our limited resources and reasonably provides for the maintenance of the City's existing facilities.
This budget and five year plan are offered during a time of great national and state economic distress. State and federal revenues in support of social and other services have been reduced; the national economy continues to compromise local tax revenues. And there is an escalating demand for services by Philadelphians who themselves are financially pressed by the loss of benefits, rapidly escalating utility costs, unemployment and other increased living expenses.
Although our city has here-to-fore avoided the service cuts and tax increases common to other jurisdictions, increasing health care, criminal justice, and pension costs are challenging our financial capacity. This spending plan delicately balances the need to deliver high quality core city services while simultaneously investing to promote a bright future for our city in the 21st Century
Philadelphia is a city of proud neighborhoods and we will never default on our commitment to regular people who live in them. Our highly acclaimed Safe Streets Program, our Neighborhood Transformation Initiative and afterschool programs are protected in this budget. Abandoned car removal, vacant lot cleaning, snow removal and code enforcement have improved the quality of life in our neighborhoods, and are also funded. Over 23,000 positions are funded in the various city departments and agencies which will allow us to maintain our core city services at or above current levels. However, the need to close a projected 227 million dollar FY 05 budget gap, projected to grow to 670 million dollars by FY 09, will require some significant changes in our service delivery goals and practices.
Proposed funding for many traditional services, programs and facilities has been reduced. Among other things this financial plan dramatically reduces our fleet, further reduces cell phones, curtails employee-parking privileges and continues to reduce the number of city employees. We will dispose of excess property, consolidate services where appropriate and work with our unions to lower the cost of delivering others. We will, however, work to avoid layoffs. Nothing is worse than losing one's employment in difficult economic times.
This budget maintains our commitment to public education. Our students and families are beginning to see the new materials, better-prepared teachers and support for struggling students that has been too long coming. However, notwithstanding recent progress too many Philadelphia public schools are far from the models of educational excellence appropriate to a world class 21st Century City.
This budget should not be viewed as a barrier to progress and prosperity or a source of pessimism and frustration. It allows us to make some powerful economic investments that will help grow our population; create new economic opportunities and build the new Philadelphia.
We will secure our future by turning our attention to job creation, waterfront development and tax reform.
We are off to an impressive start. The proposed office towers for Comcast and Towers Perrin, along with the Cira Centre, will be remarkable additions to our skyline. Those developments, along with the renovations ACE, INA is planning at 436Walnut Street signal that Philadelphia is a great place with a strong future. This development in addition to the major retail complexes being developed around the City, anchored by Lowe's, Home Depot and IKEA, along with the exciting new construction and renovations planned by the school district, represent several billion dollars of construction over the next several years. That construction will be accompanied by the welcome sight of construction cranes looming large on our skyline, unmistakable symbols of jobs, growth and economic prosperity.
This development will produce thousands of employment opportunities for people who live in our neighborhoods and our region. Our future will be distinguished by the presence of corporate leaders like Comcast, GlaxoSmithKline, CIGNA, ACE, INA, Sunoco and other businesses, large and small, who have decided over the last two years to remain in Philadelphia. That future will be promoted by the growing research and development capabilities of our 83 area colleges and universities. They have an impressive annual enrollment in excess of 300,000 students, many of whom, we hope to keep in our region as residents.
This dynamic future will be propelled by the creation of a 500 million dollar Economic Development Investment Fund, which I propose be funded over the next four years. This spending plan proposes to restructure the Water Department debt service reserve to make the first 125 million dollars available before the end of the calendar year. It is important to note that these dollars cannot be used to address our operating budget deficit problem.
The Investment Fund will underwrite an unprecedented investment in the fifteen miles of magnificent waterfront all along the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers waiting to be developed into spectacular 21st Century mixed-use communities. Communities that can become home to thousands of new Philadelphians, who will be magnets for new economy and knowledge industry jobs. That investment will establish Philadelphia as the "New River City" in America. Complementing the waterfront plan will be the new strategic plan for the city's other great untapped resource Fairmount Park. Together they will give Philadelphia a combination of water and park resources available for residential, commercial and recreational activities unparalleled perhaps in the world. When combined with NTI these new centers of economic activity will be the lynchpin to reversing the trends of population and job loss in our city.
To help prepare for my second term I invited more than 100 distinguished men and women from this region to participate in the Philadelphia 21st Century Review Forum charged with making recommendations to guide our second term activity. The considerable work of the Forum is published in a report entitled "Perfect the Vision, Secure our Future." You will hear a lot more about its recommendations in the coming weeks, particularly the work of the Ethics Committee, which was led by Judge Ida Chen. This budget supports an increase of $550,000 for the Inspector General's office in FY05 as a part of our commitment to higher ethics and standards of accountability.
Based on the work of the Regional Cooperation Committee chaired by Nick DiBenedictis, the CEO of Aqua America, I am convinced that a critical part of our pro-growth agenda requires the promotion of our city and region. To do this the City should partner with the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce in its campaign to market the Philadelphia region as a business destination. I propose that the city contribute $250,000 dollars in each of the next four years to support the Chamber's Select Greater Philadelphia Campaign.
As we work to perfect our vision of a world class 21st century Philadelphia, we must diminish the negative influence our overall tax burden has on families and businesses. We must become more economically competitive.
Therefore, our spending plans incorporate the following proposa
|