Press Conference: No Cuts to Essential Services Coalition

A member of the Save the Libraries Coalition pointed out to me that the process of the citizen forums organized by University of Pennsylvania pits different budget items against each other, putting libraries in competition with healthcare, or fire service.

At the press conference for the Essential Services Coalition, a community member from Kinsessing loudly welcomed his new brothers and sisters in a growing movement. For the first time, he is working side by side with labor unions towards a common interest. Communities are on the frontline,he said, because budget cuts would have an immediate impact on the ground in local communities. The coalition also includes youth groups, youth and housing advocacy, neighborhood groups, ACORN…

Select comments from speakers at the press conference:
Catherine Scott, President AFSCME (local DC47), said the Community Budget Forums prohibit true participation. Despite criticism of the process itself, the Forums continue to dictate what feedback city residents and taxpayers can give. In refusing to change the format Penn, WHYY, and the City have silenced any alternative solutions.

Pauline Borkin was there to represent Health Center #3. The Health Centers provide health care for some of the city' poorest residents. She said that cutting their funding would be tantamount to sanctioning the mass murder of tens of thousands of the city' poor.

Inside the Forum, some representatives from the Health Centers were sprinkled through the groups to advocate for a single line item: instituting co-pays as well as charging for over the counter medicines that are now free to patients. It struck me as particularly ironic that, with a billion dollar deficit, so much effort would be invested in debating whether poor people should get free aspirin. Meanwhile policies that have little popular approval were not even on the list of options. Chris Satullo, one of the moderators, raised the issue of popular resentment of the tax abatement. While this issue remained unrepresented among the choice s provided Forum participants, he did get city officials present to verify that the current cost of the abatement to the city is $79 million annually.

Another press conference speaker, ACORN member Fred Jones raised an issue which needs more clarification. He mentioned that the Temple University Health System, which has over the past several years acquired many community hospitals, is severing its ties with Keystone Mercy, a local health insurer. This he said is likely to send more residents to the Health Centers, thus underlining the importance of maintaining the city' Health Center system budget.

The president of SEIU, Local 32BJ introduced a union member; a security guard at one of the city' homeless shelters. He pointed out that these 300 security guards serve the most destitute members of the city, and yet the guards struggle to put food on the table for their own families. He called on the Mayor not to cut wages of security guards working in the city' system.

There will be an alternate forum hosted by the coalition at:
7pm on March 12, 2009

The location will be:
Arch Street United Methodist Church
55 North Broad St (at the corner of Broad and Arch)
Philadelphia PA 19107

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