- And this blank page where my fingers move
- Pennsylvania Hunger Games Diet: Cash for Corporations, Cuts for Kids
- The Incredible Shrinking Mayor
- Multi-tasking with the 1% … killing the schools AND making the poor pay for their funeral.
- Council Can Give the SRC the Money to NOT Privatize the System
- Predatory Payday Lending Bill Flies Out of Cramped PA House Committee
- Let the Games Begin: PA Senate Announces Details of Budget Proposal
- Good News on PA Revenue But Don’t Count Your Blessings Just Yet
- Defeat Corbett
- Set off without a Paddle: Unpacking the School District’s Disaster Capitalism
Councilmembers Green, Blackwell and Kelly File Suit to Keep Libraries Open
Submitted by Seth Levi on Wed, 12/24/2008 - 3:28pm.
City Councilmembers Bill Green, Jannie Blackwell and Jack Kelly today filed a lawsuit to compel the Mayor and the Free Library to comply with their duty under state and local law to seek City Council approval before closing eleven neighborhood library branches. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Monday at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 426.
The petition papers have been posted as a PDF here.
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Seth Levi
Office of Councilman Bill Green
215-686-3420
seth.levi@phila.gov
Dan?
So does this mean the class action suit and this council suit get combined? Glad to hear Blackwell is on -- I heard Rizzo was going to sign on but not Blackwell.
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hannah sassaman
267 970 4007
Basically, Yes
The cases will be consolidated and heard at the same time.
It will be very helpful to have members of Council on board.
Ok, I'll say it - strange bedfellows
The old Friends of Johnny Doc and Tom Knox reunite for, um, libraries, and to help the good guys.
But really, such strange alliances are what democracy is all about.
That's a good thing to file away and remember the next time one is tempted to indict by association a political opponent, or merely someone one is arguing with, no?
Permanent Interests Are Unifying
There's an old saying (I have seen early AFL leader Samuel Gompers credited with originating it) that there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests.
Permanent interests are often undervalued for the reason that they often remain untouched in political combat precisely because they are so important to so many.
But the decision of the Nutter Administration to aggressively tackle the rights of citizens to have convenient branch libraries reminds us all that even permanent interests can be fought against to our detriment if we do not fight back.
This battle will last as long as the Nutter Administration wants it to last. I have no idea how long that will be. But the more the public stays involved, the less likely such a thing will happen again any time soon.
off line for some time
pardon my absence, my son is visiting and between all the activities and the holiday, I've been completely occupied to the point of exhaustion. I haven't even been reading the newspaper, and so this is literally brand new to me.
I'm going to try to make it down on tuesday, not sure if I can.
Close the libraries but open "knowledge centers" with same costs
Can someone explain this to me?
Some of libraries are run by public-private partnerships. If we can wait to run ex-libraries as "knowledge centers" under such partnerships, we can wait to run them as libraries as partnerships. The building operation costs would clearly be the same for a "knowledge center" in a former library as a library in a library and presumably private donors are easier to gather up for something definite - like a library - than something vague and amorphous like a "knowledge center".
This plan sounds to me like a disingenuous plan to fight a court case via distracting press releases and PR when your legal case is weak.
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20081229_ap_phillymayoroutsi...
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.