May 7: Carpenters, Teamsters opt out of Convention Center agreement | Sanitation (In)Convenience | DRPA reform | South Street cameras | Pedestrian death in University City

Good morning Streeters. Here’s what we’re reading this morning:

Four of the Pennsylvania Convention Center’s unions have signed a new labor agreement that is aimed at giving exhibitors more control over how their displays are set up. The Inquirer explains the agreement is notable because the Carpenters Local 8 and the Teamsters Local 107 didn’t agree to new work rules and the Convention Center plans to go on without them, relying instead on the Laborers, Stagehands, Iron Workers, and Electrical Workers who did. The new agreement is in response to years of complaints from exhibitors about too-restrictive union rules – like those prohibiting exhibitors from using a screwdriver or stepladder – higher costs and headaches. The Convention Center is seeing dwindling business, which has a ripple effect on Philly’s tourism economy. 

If you do a block cleanup and expect to haul the detritus to a Sanitation Center in a rented pickup truck, don’t expect the city to let you in. Columnist Karen Heller explains a bureaucratic scuffle between Mt. Airy do-gooders trying to tidy their block and their inability to deposit waste at the Sanitation Convenience Center because of the type of vehicle it was in a U-Haul pickup, a commercial vehicle. Seems truly counter-purpose but rules are rules.

Calls to reform the Delaware River Port Authority after it spent lavishly on projects outside of its transportation focus have been met with legislation proposed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But DRPA’s acting chief officer John Hanson says reform legislation isn’t going to change much since DRPA is changing its ways and working to rebuild public trust, NewsWorks/NJ Spotlight reports.

South Street Headhouse District wants to see security cameras on every block. The Business Journal explains that effort is intended to curb crime and make people feel that South Street is a safe environment.

We are sad learn that a pedestrian flung from the Walnut Street Bridge in University City after a car crash yesterday morning has died from his injuries. NBC10 reports that a speeding driver ran a red light at 30th and Walnut, hitting another car, causing a crash that launched the pedestrian from the bridge near Penn Park and onto the pavement below. The pedestrian was a Penn graduate student.

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