It doesn’t add up
When it comes to city government and public utilities in Philadelphia, money sometimes is the root of all evil.
Take SEPTA’s tentative one-year contract (please): Unless the deal brings the public transit agency into the 21st century by forcing SEPTA’s largely underskilled and overpaid workers to contribute a portion of their fat paychecks — 20 percent, for instance — to pay for their health insurance premiums, the contract will be a lemon for SEPTA passengers and the taxpayers of Pennsylvania. Considering that the average salary for a SEPTA worker is $47,000, payroll deductions would be fair and just.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Gas Works wants to impose a surcharge on its long-suffering, PAYING customers to subsidize PGW’s deadbeats. Here’s a novel idea, PGW — how about forcing the deadbeats to pay their bills?
Meanwhile, over at City Hall, Mayor John Street is floating a couple of ideas that are stupid at best: He wants the Free Library of Philadelphia to charge its patrons a fee for renting videotapes and DVDs. Why stop there? Why not charge pedestrians a fee to walk on the sidewalk in front of library branches?
Perhaps Mr. Street can prevail upon his ex-pal in Harrisburg, Ed Rendell, to find the revenue necessary to keep the free in Free Library of Philadelphia. Otherwise, let’s change the name to User Fee Library of Philadelphia.
As asinine as that idea is, however, an even more egregious proposal is to charge applicants for city jobs a $35 fee. Mr. Mayor, what’s up with that? That’s too audacious even for Philadelphians.
John Street, you’re a smart guy. When you leave office in January 2008, please donate your pension — deserved as it may be after 28 years of city service — to the city treasury and use your Temple Law School degree to continue to earn a six-figure salary. ••