Mayor Street outlines his budget for FY 2000

The budget foruses on improving public schools and fighting blight in Philadelphia's neighborhoods. Philadelphia Mayor John Street submitted his first yearly budget to City Council yesterday morning, highlighting as priorities education, blight removal and fighting crime. He also introduced his five-year capital program for FY 2000 to FY 2005 to the 10 Council members and the dozens of community members in attendance. "While the budget and five-year plan include funding for city services and key initiatives, like the expansion of our after-school programs, it is a conservative budget," Street told those assembled for his address. Street's budget speech focused largely on the very same issues that he pledged to address when he took the reins from former Mayor Ed Rendell last January . Street put the budget's greatest sum of money -- $250 million out of $2.7 billion -- toward his new neighborhood revitalization initiative, the "Saving Neighborhoods Campaign." "This will be an all-out assault on neighborhood blight and destabilization," Street said of the new campaign. The mayor also focused on his plans for improving Philadelphia's public schools. While pledging to work with the state legislature and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge to solve the school district's present fiscal crisis, Street also discussed several new projects. One such initiative will focus on keeping children off the street by providing them with constructive after-school activities. "My administration intends to dramatically increase the number of children who have a safe place to learn and play in the after-school hours and during the summer," Street said. And Street also promised to help eradicate Philadelphia-area crime by allocating millions of dollars to criminal justice programs, the district attorney's office and new police facilities. City Council Majority Leader Jannie Blackwell, who represents the West Philadelphia and University City area, said she was pleased with Street's financial plans for the next few years. "It was a conservative budget," Blackwell said. "He did some excellent things. He tripled the after-school programs. It was a positive budget." Blackwell still remains concerned, however, about the loss of funding to the Walnut West branch of the Philadelphia Free Library that came as a result of Street's budget. "I hope that there is money to replace the lost funding," she said. "We've fought too hard." Street attributed the loss of funding for many such programs as a result of the city's large debts. "We are fast approaching our legal debt limit," he said yesterday in his budget address. And although the city is currently in debt, according to Street, his new operating budget begins spending the over $200 million surplus the city has accumulated for the past several years. "The surplus was built up in anticipation of increased costs," Street explained. "The $205.7 million surplus was clearly a fiscal achievement, but the greatest mistake we could make would be to forget the painful history of our financial crisis in the late '80s and early '90s," he said.

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