Sneak attack on the park commission?
A little something for City Hall electees to think about over their summer vacation?
Two City Council members want to dissolve the venerable Fairmount Park Commission and reconstitute it as a less powerful agency within the Recreation Department.Apparently the suggestion has been made before, but it still seems out of the blue to me. On the other hand, most of the world subsumes parks under general Recreation oversight, so there's no reason Philly couldn't handle this as well as NYC. Just not sure what's bringing it up now...
Darrell Clarke and Blondell Reynolds Brown were to introduce legislation today - Council's final session of the summer - to make the change possible.
The bill arrived like a Stealth bomber, catching by surprise most of the 17-member Council, as well as the Street administration. It seeks a change to the city charter that could go before voters in November.
posted by ACM at 2:10 PM
4 Comments:
Quite an audience you have ACM. This seems so totaly weird. I just can't wrap my head around what the point of this move is. I'd love it if you could dig deeper and figure out what the real story is here. Who pissed off who?
I should add that I'll help, should you decide to dig a little deeper. I think may know a Clarke constituent or two who would be willing to make some phone calls.
One particular thing to be concerned about with respect to this move; the current Rec. Commissioner - who could be in charge of this whole deal - probably doesn't have the skill set necessary to run the parks.
The best I can manage is that the combination of full funding + no permanent head (they've had an interim for a long while now) looks like a power vacuum, and somebody is hungry to get their hands into things. It's possible, of course, that there are invisible power plays at work too; I don't know enough about Brown and Clarke to speculate. I gather that Brown has been considered a Street pal, but she's now asking for hearings on his wireless plan, so perhaps she's chasing a new power base.
In theory I'd be happy to dig, Chris, but I'm not really in a position to get inside of this one, I don't think. If you want to snoop around, I'll happily follow the leads or post the results. Perhaps some journalist is already on it...
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