Great Expectations Civic Leader Forum III

Part III of the forum was when mayoral candidates Michael Nutter (D) and Al Taubenberger (R) took questions from the group. Above is a shot of Nutter answering a question. Perhaps it was the first question Skip asked: with the ever-increasing immigrant population of Russians, Asians, Hispanics, Africans and others, what would each candidate do as mayor to deal with providing services to facilitate the transition.

Taubenberger reminded the group that he's the son of German immigrants. He didn't have a specific plan on how much money he'd put towards programs or what services needed to be provided, but he was committed to making everyone feel welcome, legal or not.

Nutter deferred to Councilman Jim Kenny's plan to open an Office of New Philadelphians [.pdf] to lure more immigrants to Philly. He added that Philadelphia should make more of an effort to expand the number of languages it prints on flyers to a dozen or more, not just english and spanish. He stressed the importance of the mayor physically getting out of City Hall more and more and showing up at events in ethnic communities; "sometimes it's just a matter of showing up" he said.

Judy from Washington Square wanted more affordable housing downtown to keep young people from moving away. Taubenberger put his support behind shifting tax abatement monies to affordable housing and large developments set aside specifically for affordable housing. Nutter pointed to inclusionary housing. He noted the 60k shortage of affordable housing downtown and the abundance of $3M condos, but the lack of $100k - $250k homes. He did note the high costs of building, too high.

After the Q&A session, both candidates made their rounds to the crowd thanking them for coming out and being an important part of their communities as civic leaders.

I just happened to be sitting at the table with Nutter's former Chief of Staff, Julia Chapman. He came over to confer with her as to how he did and to catch up while the Inquirer's Chris Satullo wrapped up.

On the ride home with fellow attendees Marisa and Beth, we went over what we thought of the event. We were all happy to attend and happy that everything went smoothly. None of us had been to that part of town before and exploring new parts of town is always fun for me, even if it's just one building.

I've put up a gallery of photos from the event here, the shots are a bit bigger and you can see them all at once with captions. And shots of the notes from each breakout session can be found in this flickr set from the day starting here.

Part I | Part II | Part III