PlanPhilly and Philadelphia Inquirer tax delinquency demo and discussion

Today, at WHYY as part of Philly Tech Week’s ongoing FREE lunchtime series, PlanPhilly reporter and Inquirer columnist Patrick Kerkstra demo’d a public tool created in partnership between PlanPhilly and The Inquirer to help shed light on the city’s tax delinquency problem.

Following the demonstration Kerkstra also joined a panel of delinquency and news technology experts including: Julie Busby, City Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Rob Kandel, assistant multimedia projects editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, who crafted the app as part of the series launch; Kevin Gillen, Vice President of eConsult, who provided estimated property values for delinquent properties; and Matt Golas, PlanPhilly managing editor since its inception in Fall 2006.

Watch the panel discuss how the coverage and tool came to be, how it was used in Kerkstra’s reporting and what’s next.

Kerkstra has covered the issue in-depth for some time, most notably in his award-winning Deluge of Deatbeats series, a partnership between the two above news organizations.

Philadelphia’s delinquency issue is an epidemic, he wrote in the series, with nearly 111,000 delinquent properties, or about 19 percent of all parcels. To put it in Kerkstra’s words, vacant property is “an old problem with serious consequences for the City of Philadelphia.”

This edition of Philly Tech Week’s Lunchtime Series is also a “soft launch” for a new event series called “Behind PlanPhilly.”  As part of efforts at PlanPhilly to have a more active and engaged role in local design and planning news – not just covering, but working to advance it – PlanPhilly will be organizing events throughout the year that give Philadelphians a deeper look at relevant issues in the built environment and what their role is in shaping it.

This is the first Behind PlanPhilly event, but there are more to come, so please give PlanPhilly your email address if you’d like to stay informed, or check back on PlanPhilly.

Contact us at mgolas@design.upenn.edu

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Today, at WHYY as part of Philly Tech Week’s ongoing FREE lunchtime series, PlanPhilly reporter and Inquirer columnist Patrick Kerkstra demo’d a public tool created in partnership between PlanPhilly and The Inquirer to help shed light on the city’s tax delinquency problem.

Following the demonstration Kerkstra also joined a panel of delinquency and news technology experts including: Julie Busby, City Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Rob Kandel, assistant multimedia projects editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, who crafted the app as part of the series launch; Kevin Gillen, Vice President of eConsult, who provided estimated property values for delinquent properties; and Matt Golas, PlanPhilly managing editor since its inception in Fall 2006.

Watch the panel discuss how the coverage and tool came to be, how it was used in Kerkstra’s reporting and what’s next.

Kerkstra has covered the issue in-depth for some time, most notably in his award-winning Deluge of Deatbeats series, a partnership between the two above news organizations.

Philadelphia’s delinquency issue is an epidemic, he wrote in the series, with nearly 111,000 delinquent properties, or about 19 percent of all parcels. To put it in Kerkstra’s words, vacant property is “an old problem with serious consequences for the City of Philadelphia.”

This edition of Philly Tech Week’s Lunchtime Series is also a “soft launch” for a new event series called “Behind PlanPhilly.”  As part of efforts at PlanPhilly to have a more active and engaged role in local design and planning news – not just covering, but working to advance it – PlanPhilly will be organizing events throughout the year that give Philadelphians a deeper look at relevant issues in the built environment and what their role is in shaping it.

This is the first Behind PlanPhilly event, but there are more to come, so please give PlanPhilly your email address if you’d like to stay informed, or check back on PlanPhilly.

Contact us at mgolas@design.upenn.edu

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