Please let me remind you....

Dear Citizens of Philadelphia,

I would like to talk to you about the difficult situation that we as a nation, state and city find ourselves in right now. To put it bluntly and simply, we’re broke. We aren’t poor – poor is a state of mind, but we are broke and just like with your family, when we are broke we have to take a second look at how we are doing things.

I know that you don’t want your libraries to close. I don’t want mine to close. I also appreciate the fact that in the latest poll, you have expressed that you don’t want services to children, the elderly and the homeless cut. Good for you for knowing how important it is to take care of those who can not care for themselves. I know you don’t want to lose police officers or firemen. I know you don’t want to pay $5 per month for trash pick up and I know you don’t want your taxes raised. I get that. Were I you, I’d feel the same way.

But let me remind you of a very important fact here, we’re broke. The city is estimating a $1,000,000,000 deficit in the next 5 years -- for those of you math challenged folks, like me, that’s $1 billion.

Yes folks, we’re broke.

And when we’re broke, that means we have to tighten the belt a bit. In my life that means not going out to eat as much or not buying that sweater I have my eyes on, or cutting down on how many zillions of cable channels I have or getting a part time job.

For a city it means cutting services or raising revenue. And the way we raise revenue is to raise taxes. The talk of which caused you to boo Mayor Nutter today when he mentioned some short term tax increases.

Or we could cut services – which means that we close say 11 of 54 library branches. Yes, that is 20% of the libraries and that is a lot but would you rather have to walk a few more blocks to the library (by the way, my closest library is 2.6 miles away) Or would you rather not have a fire station in close proximity to your house?

Again, let me remind you. We’re broke.

You can complain all that you want about not wanting to lose services and not wanting your taxes raised. I get wanting 2 things at the same time but unfortunately, those 2 things are not currently compatible wants – so you pick.

Again, let me remind you. We’re broke.

Sincerely,
Amanda