Quality-of-Life

Our quality-of-life is key to our happiness. By maintaining and improving access to public amenities and keeping our streets quiet and clean, we can improve our own lives and our neighbors’ lives.

Over the past few years, I have worked with parents and principals to maintain their school budgets. When our libraries were threatened by budget cuts, I partnered with Councilman Nutter to keep their doors open. Over the past ten years, we have spent over 10 million dollars on recreation center improvements and public parks. With the help of business districts and civic associations, we have installed pedestrian lighting throughout Center City and finished streetscape improvements in many of our commercial corridors.

Legislatively, I continue to provide our enforcement agencies with new tools to combat blight and nuisances. I was proud to help craft a compromise that guaranteed the passage of the smoking ban that will successfully make more than 90% of all work places smoke-free. The Noise Code legislation I sponsored has been used throughout the City and has allowed many of our neighbors to sleep easier at night. Using the Broken Window Bill, we have forced the development of blighted properties and recent legislation on abandoned excavations should help insure craters no longer dot our neighborhoods and endanger our children. Stronger insurance requirements on new development will help protect neighboring residents from unintended damage.

I will continue to use the relationships I have fostered throughout the City to improve our neighborhoods and will continue to look for innovative ways to make sure our communities remain vibrant, safe and enjoyable.

Unfortunately, as we all know, unexpected problems occur. In order to handle these problems, I have hired a dedicated and experienced staff to handle your concerns. By fostering relationships with our city agencies, we successfully handle hundreds of constituent questions and concerns each week. Helping people is our job and I hope you never hesitate to call my office with any problem at (215) 686-3458.