last night's meeting, the packed room, SHCA,
Packed? No. The room wasn't "packed" by any conceivable stretch of the imagination. We have 16,000 residents in Spruce Hill, the SHCA has about 400 members. And there wasn't even a quorum of the Board in attendance. Also, most of the -- what, dozen? -- non-board members who were in attendance came because they thought there would be more of that famous SHCA honest and open discussion of the Historic District issue (certainly not to hear Seidel, because there were no notices outside of what Jon Mourar says were notes to members of the Board, that he'd be there). The Historic District was barely discussed, of course, mainly but not entirely because the tax reform discussion lasted until quite late (not to mention "knit one, perl two").
As for your assertion that I have an agenda, I'll go on record with
mine:
I'd like to see multi-faceted tax reform in the City of Philadelphia.
I'd also like to see strict enforcement of City property maintenance
codes so that the developmental incentives behind the land tax have the
chance to overcome the nefarious effects of land speculating and
slum-landlording.
Everybody would like to see tax reform in Philadelphia, and folks who haven't become totally cynical about government in general and sideshows like the Philadelphia City Council in particular are interested in serious proposals like Mr Seidel's (on which you worked -- to your credit) ... certainly in learning more about the ideas he's espousing. But also in hearing what alternatives there might be to changing the tax structure in a way that favors economic growth, jobs and business opportunities for people who lack education and skills as well as for those fortunate enough to have acquired them, adequate public services, and so forth.
"... land speculating and slum-landlording"??? Harsh labels that hardly characterize the neighborhood and belie what you say is your agenda. Most people would like to see equitable enforcement of sensible property-associated City Codes. Sensible, with an emphasis on health and safety and a recognition that de gustabus non disputandum est. In a large enough sample of the property owner/manager population, we have to expect a small percentage of people several standard deviations below the mean, and this will be offset by about the same fraction an equivalent distance above it. But the ~95% within two standard deviations -- or even the ~65% within one standard deviation should neither be punished for the few who are below nor be forced (certainly absent due process or just compensation) to adhere to the personal standards (that nasty gustabus, again) of those who choose to be above. The market provides the mechanism in general ... but unless you're from Lake Woebegone "w! here all the children are above average" you'll know that there are always distributions, that the distributions always have tails, and that half the cases will always be below the mean.
To carry this loose statistical reasoning a bit further, I believe the whole University City area can be viewed as having a skewed distribution with a median well above the mean -- such that a very small and ever-decreasing number of exceptionally horrible examples is balanced by a large number of cases of responsible property owners, many of whom understand the market well enough to realize that the real community (the community that includes a lot of students supporting themselves, a lot of immigrants, a lot of senior citizens, a lot of blue collar people, a lot of young people just starting out on their own, a lot of ... well, you get the idea -- the well-to-do and comfortable are here, but are not exactly typical) needs solid mid-level rental units, structured and maintained in such a way that costs passed on to tenants are balanced with benefits provided.
That's my agenda, by the way -- a balance between costs and benefits that tries to optimize housing opportunities for my tenants, and in turn makes it possible for me and my crew to make a living and also live conscionably with ourselves. In case its not obvious from the above, my practical (as opposed to philosophical) objection to this historic district elitism is that the costs are way out of line with the benefits.
I'll stop here, rather than continue into a discussion of the historic district nomination as an especially insidious form of "economic rent seeking," which -- of course -- it is.
Al Krigman
