Blight removal in full swing

Mayor John Street unveiled a plan to remove the 40,000 vehicles currently abandoned on city streets. Philadelphia Mayor John Street kicked off his city-wide abandoned vehicle removal program yesterday by hitching a decrepit car to a tow truck, climbing behind the wheel and driving it out of North Philadelphia. Responding to a backlog of 40,000 abandoned vehicles reported to the Philadelphia Police Department, Street announced that the city will tow 1,000 of the vehicles each day for a 40-day period. Following Street's speech, State Transportation Secretary Bradley Mallory outlined steps the Pennsylvania government will take to further the initiative by revising the state's procedures for towing cars. Street, who has made neighborhood blight removal a top priority for his administration, had promised to remove abandoned vehicles from city streets during his inaugural address. "We intend to remove every single one of these abandoned cars," he said yesterday. "If we can't remove abandoned cars from neighborhoods, then we don't have a very bright future as a community." Dozens of community members, state representatives and City Council members turned out for Street's announcement at the North Philadelphia Ramonita Negron-Rivera Recreation and Community Center. Per the mayor's plan, the PPD will assign all current abandoned vehicles officers to a newly created centralized unit, which was established to organize the task of towing the city's deserted cars. "This move will place the responsibility for towing abandoned vehicles under one centralized command, promoting efficiency and effectiveness," the mayor explained. The program, which will begin April 3, encourages citizens to call a new hotline number to report abandoned vehicles. Private salvors will also be permitted to move the abandoned vehicles, with $15 per vehicle offered as an incentive to do so. Street had no definitive figure regarding the financial costs the removal will incur for the city, and did not release any cost estimates. However, he reaffirmed his commitment to the project no matter what the cost. "We're going to go from the problem to the money, not from the money to the problem," he said yesterday. "Although we're always concerned with money, we're not going to get caught up in it. It's too important." To support the city's effort, Mallory read a letter from Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker to Street, promising help in this initiative. "These heaps of steel impact the health and safety of our citizens and are indeed a quality-of-life issue that our residents should not be expected to tolerate," Schweiker wrote. In the letter, Schweiker explained that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will aid in the effort by changing the specifics regulating which cars may be towed. City officials expect this will help remove approximately 40 percent of Philadelphia's abandoned cars. Street also said he met with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge last month to help outline several other initiatives the state will develop to help in this process of blight-removal. Among other things, PennDOT will work to make its staff more available to process abandoned car claims, and a full-time PennDOT liason will be assigned to Philadelphia. Members of the North Philadelphia community -- the site of yesterday's announcement -- remain optimistic about the impact the plan will have on their neighborhood. Jimmy Martinez, an area resident, said he hoped the mayor's program would free up space to devote to children. "We want to see if the mayor can help us take care of an abandoned lot nearby and make a playground and cultural center out of it," Martinez said. "We really want to make the area safe for children to go."

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