Evan M. Lopez [ schools ] For weeks now, the School District of Philadelphia, its budget and its superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, have been cloaked in a fog of mystery. There’s the mysteriously large budget deficit, announced by the School District,…

At 2:00 P.M. tomorrow afternoon, City Council’s Committee on Streets and Services will hear a controversial bill introduced by Councilman Bill Greenlee that would require any new bike lanes to be approved by City Council ordinance. The bill was introduced…

Judgement day may or may not come on Saturday.  Either way, the heathens among us will still have our cameras, as I understand it. Therefore, City Paper urges you, dear heathen readers, to photograph the whole shebang — and we’ll…

Evan M. Lopez   In 2008, Bob Coyle, the now-infamous slumlord, walked away from millions of dollars in mortgages he’d taken out on a small empire of crumbling houses in Kensington and Port Richmond, leaving the local banks that’d loaned…

Dealing with the press, I imagine, is not always fun. We’re a needy bunch, often grouchy, and forever asking public servants to run around and help us in pursuit of our own glorious headlines. And so it is with thanks…

(From this week’s Million Stories section) Philadelphia is, if nothing else, a city of dreamers. And of fish. And of those whose dreams revolve around fish. Last weekend the city celebrated Shadfest, an event with two humble purposes: having a great…

  A few hours ago, a rare tweet appeared on behalf of Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez promising a “surprise” and a “special guest” at an event on her behalf in Kensington tonight. Sanchez is facing a tough challege from ward leader…

On Saturday, as neighborhood groups around the city organized spring clean-ups, about 60 neighborhood activists, residents, and city and Conrail workers got down to (the beginning of) the dirty work of cleaning the drug-riddled, trash-strewn, long-neglected Conrail railroad bed that…