PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future

1.    What is the role of parks and recreation in a vibrant 21st Century City?

2.    Funding for Philadelphia’s parks and recreation has been cut to the bone and has lagged behind other Philadelphia City Departments for decades.  In fact, Philadelphia’s park related expenditure per resident is far less than Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Boston, Cincinnati and many other American cities.  What steps would you take as a Councilmember to invest in Philadelphia’s new Department of Parks and Recreation so that it can fulfill its role and potential?

Candidate Responses to Parks Alliance Questions

Ralph Blakney:  Click here for response
Sherrie Cohen:  Click here for response
Councilman Wilson Goode: Did not respond.
Councilman Bill Green:  Click here for response
Councilman William Greenlee:  Click here for response
Councilman James Kenney:  Click here for response
Malcolm Lazin:  Click here for response
Janis Manson:  Click here for response
Joe McColgan:  Click here for response
Elmer Money:  Click here for response
Edward Nesmith:  Did not respond.
Denny O’Brien:  Click here for response
Steve Odabashian:  Did not respond.
David Oh:   Click here for response
Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown:  Click here for response
Councilman Frank Rizzo Jr.:   Click here for response
Al Taubenberger:  Click here for response
Andy Toy:  Click here for response

Thank you for all that you do for Philadelphia’s parks and recreation.  

The Philadelphia Parks Alliance

(PHILADELPHIA)—A new study from The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative finds that Philadelphia’s 311 contact system succeeded during its first year of operation in giving residents improved and easier access to information about city government. It did so at lower cost than other cities and won strong ratings from its customers.  But the system also mishandled thousands of service requests, and nearly one quarter of all service requests were not completed in the promised timeframe.

The study, A Work in Progress: Philadelphia’s 311 System After One Year, reviewed Philly311’s operations in 2009 in relation to 14 other communities that operate 311 systems.  Among those communities are most of the largest with such systems—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami-Dade County (FL), Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Detroit, Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC), San Francisco, Columbus (OH), Baltimore, Denver and Pittsburgh.

Almost all of the 311 centers in the study had reduced their budgets and staffs in the past year due to recession-driven city budget cuts.  Philly311’s own startup funding was reduced by at least 60 percent in 2008 and 2009, a cut that forced it to rely on a temporary computer system and delay hiring agents with outside call-center experience.

“The Philly311 contact center had a rough start but improved dramatically by the end of 2009, particularly in handling requests for information,” said Thomas Ginsberg, project manager of the Philadelphia Research Initiative and author of the report. “But the city struggled with service requests because it made only modest progress toward integrating the 311 center with the departments that actually do the tasks.”

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Managing Director Camille Barnett have said that making the system better will require investments in technology at Philly311 and in other parts of city government. Nutter and Barnett have not said when or whether they would seek those investments. The Pew study found that achieving significant cost savings and efficiencies would require a major technological upgrade. Philly311 did not save the city money in its first year, nor was it expected to.

In a companion poll conducted for the Philadelphia Research Initiative, Philadelphians generally expressed satisfaction with Philly311, although only 28 percent of those polled could recall the number without prompting and only 15 percent had called it. Both results reflect the administration’s decision to do little or no promotion of Philly311 to save money and avoid overwhelming the fledgling system.

Among residents who called the number looking for information, 68 percent said they were satisfied and 29 percent dissatisfied. Among those calling with a specific complaint or request, 60 percent were satisfied and 33 percent dissatisfied.  And 53 percent of residents who were aware of the service said that Philly311 represents a “major step forward” for the city while 28 percent said it “won’t make much of a difference.” The poll was conducted in early January, after the first major snowstorm in the region but before the next two.

A Work in Progress also reviewed cities’ 311 performance across key measurement areas. For the year as a whole, out of 15 cities, Philly311 had the second highest percentage of calls abandoned before an agent answered (26 percent.) And out of 13 cities, Philly311 had the second longest average wait time to speak with a live agent (1 minute, 45 seconds.)  Much of that was due to start-up problems. As the year progressed, the experience for Philly311 callers improved dramatically. Callers spent less time waiting for agents and more time talking to them, with fewer calls being lost. While Philadelphia’s abandoned-call rate was one in four for the year as a whole, it dropped to just one in 17 by year’s end.

The contact center had several shining moments, providing fast and easy updates during spikes in calls in October during the World Series and a transit strike. The center also had recorded audio updates for the historic snowstorms in December 2009 and February 2010.

Between January and December 2009, about 1.1 million calls were made to Philly311, roughly the same number made a year earlier to the City Hall phone numbers it replaced. About seven in 10 calls were for general information. The others resulted in roughly 64,000 service requests, which Philly311 agents transmitted to the appropriate agencies through a patchwork of computer links and manual routines. In one major fumble, the system mishandled thousands of routine housing-inspection requests intended for the Department of Licenses and Inspections—requests that either were not submitted to the department or were submitted and not reported back as done.

One purpose of a 311 system is to reduce the load on the 911 emergency lines by giving residents with non-emergency requests one number to call. In its first year, however, Philly311 diverted fewer such 911 calls than city officials had hoped.

The Managing Director’s Office, which set up and runs Philly311, appeared to make the most of its limited funds in the startup year (2008) and first operating year (2009). It patched together low-cost software to emulate aspects of a more costly full-blown 311 system and assembled a large database with answers to hundreds of questions.  Philly311’s FY2010 operating budget of $2.8 million amounted to 0.08 percent of the city’s general fund expenditures, among the smallest proportions in the localities reviewed. The average 311 call cost Philadelphia taxpayers $2.20, compared with a median of $3.39 for the group.

About the Report

To prepare this report, Thomas Ginsberg, project manager of the Philadelphia Research Initiative, reviewed the history of 311 efforts in Philadelphia and analyzed contact-center data from Philly311 and other cities. The poll was conducted by telephone between January 8 and January 19, 2010, among a citywide random sample of 1,602 city residents, ages 18 and older. Interviews were conducted with 1,302 landline users and 300 cell phone users to reach a broad representative sample of Philadelphians. The final sample was weighted to reflect the demographic breakdown of the city. The margin of error for the entire sample is approximately +/- 2.5 percentage points. The margin of error is higher for subgroups. Surveys are subject to other error sources as well, including sampling coverage error, recording error and respondent error. Abt SRBI Public Affairs designed the survey and conducted the interviewing, working with Cliff Zukin, veteran pollster and professor of political science and public policy at Rutgers University.

 

The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, Friends of the Boyd and AIA Philadelphia Historic Preservation Committee invite you to A Reception to Celebrate the Philadelphia Historic Interiors Bill and to Honor Councilman Bill Green.
Tuesday, January 26
5:30-7:00pm
Hyatt at the Bellevue
19th Floor - Cliveden Room
Broad and Walnut Streets, Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Historical Commission is now empowered to designate eligible interiors to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Pla ces after Mayor Nutter signed City Council Bill No. 080527 into law. This important amendment to the City's preservation ordinance was the result of the initiative and perseverance of Councilman Bill Green who introduced the bill, obtained co-sponsors and worked with a variety of different groups to refine and obtain passage of the bill.
The Preservation Alliance, Friends of the Boyd  and the AIA Philadelphia Historic Preservation Committee invite you to attend a reception honoring Councilman Green for his efforts.
This is event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required.
To register: info@preservationalliance.com or 215.546.1146 x3.
Eligible interiors are those that are open to the public as part of normal business operations or were designed originally to be open to the public. Interiors of private residential spaces are specifically excluded. The Historical Commission approved revised rules and regulations regarding procedures for nominating historic interiors in December 2009. After review by the City Records Department, the measure will go into effect on approximately February 1, 2010. Click here to read the final draft rules and regulations.
Come help us celebrate this important advancement of historic preservation law in Philadelphia!

Avencia Launches Redistricting the Nation.com, a Ground-Breaking Public Engagement Web Application to Measure Compactness and Gerrymandering of U.S. Election Districts

Launch Coincides with Release of Avencia's White Paper on Gerrymandering and Redistricting

Philadelphia, PA - October 21, 2009 – Following the upcoming 2010 census reports, states and municipalities will engage in a nationwide legislative redistricting process.  But in some parts of the country, the redrawing of district boundaries for partisan advantage has been rampant, which ultimately reduces the impact of individual voters on the election, resulting in lower voter turnout, and less competitive races.  The expanded use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has created both new potential for sophisticated gerrymandering and a possible means of implementing unbiased redistricting. 

With Redistricting 2011 around the corner, Avencia Incorporated, a Philadelphia-based geographic analysis and software development firm, is releasing the “Redistricting The Nation” (www.redistrictingthenation.com) website to provide the public with better information about the legislative redistricting process and tools that support and encourage fair representation and competitive elections.  

 
The site allows citizens and advocacy groups to:
 Enter their address (nation-wide) and view the “shape” of their federal, state, and local election districts.
 Learn who is in charge of drawing the boundaries of their election districts (e.g., independent commissions or elected representatives).
 Compare the “compactness” scores of their election district to other, similar districts (less compact and unusually shaped districts are more likely to be gerrymandered).
 Draw new district boundaries on a map and generate compactness scores for the new district.

Avencia is also concurrently releasing a revised version of its 2006 study of gerrymandering (“Redraw the Map on Redistricting 2010”).  The new study expands the scope and methodology of Avencia’s original “Gerrymandering Index” to include state-level districts, council districts, and political wards for several new cities, and introduces three additional techniques for measuring districts’ compactness.  While poor compactness scores do not prove gerrymandering, they are a measurable indication of the practice.

The whitepaper ranks the ten most gerrymandered local, state, and federal districts in the country based on four different measures of compactness.  The study reveals some interesting findings. For instance, at the Congressional level, both FL-22 and NC-12 rank high in the study’s Top Ten for all four measures of compactness, while some of the worst offenders at the local level are: Philadelphia, PA-District 7; Miami, FL-District 2; Jacksonville, FL-District 11; Houston, TX-District E; New York, NY-District 4; and Philadelphia, PA-District 5.

Avencia is no stranger to political and election-focused projects.  Earlier this month, Avencia and Committee of Seventy, the Philadelphia region’s premier non-partisan government watchdog group, launched a sister website to the “Redistricting The Nation” site, dedicated to raising public awareness in the Greater Philadelphia area about the potential impact of the 2010 census on federal, state, and local election districts, available at http://www.redistrictingthenation.com/philadelphia/.  During the November 2008 presidential election, the firm built a Voting Incident Tracking and Mapping web-based application that tracked voting problems in real-time to enable Committee of Seventy’s record-setting 1,000 person volunteer force to respond faster and more efficiently.  Avencia also worked for multiple candidates in races to generate campaign walking and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) maps, and most recently generated over 400 campaign financing analysis maps for MapLight.org for their ‘Remote Control’ report.

“It is exciting to be able to leverage our global database of legislative districts and GIS analysis tools to promote good government and nonpartisan redistricting,” said Robert Cheetham, Avencia’s CEO. “It is a process that can be easily manipulated to protect incumbents and discourage competitive races. Our goal with this new site is to both educate the public early in the Census 2010 cycle, and to create software tools that will promote a more open, citizen-driven and transparent redistricting process in 2011.”

Political geography is at the center of several ongoing projects at Avencia.  The white paper analysis of compactness of election districts was made possible by Avencia’s Cicero product, a legislative district matching and elected official lookup web API, developed for local governments, unions, businesses, and non-profit political and advocacy organizations to match citizens with their local, state, and national elected officials.  Cicero taps a global database of legislative district maps and information about politicians, legislative bodies, and election events.  Initially beginning with only a few cities, Avencia has grown the database to include national, state and local legislatures for the United States and several other countries and made an interactive version available to the public.

Media Contact:  

Abby Fretz
215-701-7503
afretz@avencia.com