June 6: Pa. Senate passes transportation package | Convention Center to get private management | End in sight for Traffic Court | Central Delaware Overlay | How parents are stepping up for schools

Good morning Streeters. We hope you and your loved ones are safe after yesterday’s 22nd and Market building collapse. 

The Pennsylvania Senate passed a much anticipated transportation funding package that could raise about $700 million more than the package proposed by Governor Tom Corbett. NewsWorks reports that much of that increase comes from higher drivers license and registration fees, removal of the gas tax cap and surcharges on traffic violations. 

Tom Ferrick reports that the Pennsylvania Convention Center’s board voted to hire a private management company to run the center. The board selected a West Conshohocken-based firm that runs 68 centers across the country. The Convention Center, which was supposed to bring in 20 to 30 conventions per year, has only eight scheduled in 2016.

The Central Delaware Zoning Overlay made its way out of the Rules Committee Wednesday and is headed for full Council. The overlay, which has been years in the making, would “marry future development along the Central Delaware to the city’s long-range development plan for that riverfront,” writes PlanPhilly’s Kellie Pactick Gates. If passed by full Council, the bill will, among other things, limit building height, with some exceptions, to 100 feet and require active uses on the ground floor frontages. 

The end is in sight for Philadelphia’s Traffic Court. Wednesday the Pennsylvania House approved a bill to do away with traffic court, and the Senate is expected to approve the legislation as early as next week. 

AxisPhilly looks at what some parents and local businesses are doing to raise money for the schools hit by the District’s doomsday budget. But, Axis asks, what about the communities that don’t have the kind of businesses and residents who can put up money to help support the schools?

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