Yesterday, City Councilman James Kenney introduced legislation for a ballot initiative to make the Philadelphia Office of the Inspector General an independent branch of city government. Currently, the Mayor appoints the Inspector General and can just as easily remove him…
On May 12 of last year, a 22-year-old woman named Melanie Colon was found shot to death in Juniata Park. The same week, a 52-year-old woman named Lavonne Thrones-Johnson was discovered beaten to death in her apartment. Both were brutal…
Various recent tough-on-crime measures have yielded an overall decline in violent crime, the city trumpeted not long ago. Theyve also yielded a nasty byproduct: overcrowding in the Philadelphia Prison System. A class-action lawsuit against the prisons, set aside as populations…
[ scraping by ] $3,700.88. For months, that number has been ingrained in Carmen Delgados memory, right down to the penny. It represents the seemingly insurmountable overdue balance on her utility bills, an arrearage that kept her, her husband and…
Some of the smartest people in Philly have spent much of the past year or so trying to figure out how to attract investment into one of the city’s most under-utilized regions, the Lower Schuylkill. Here’s an idea that they…
Last year, City Paper wrote about how the most significant byproduct of the registration of sex offenders in Pennsylvania may not be an improvement in public safety, but rather the marginalization of ex-offenders attempting to reintegrate into society, find housing…
If youve ever wondered if there is still such a thing as the American dream, a few hours with Meletios Athanasiadis might restore your faith. He and his mother came to the U.S. from Greece with very little, and by…
So yesterday, way back in 2012, we pointed out that Ferko, the Mummers string band that opted for the theme “Bringing Back Those Minstrel Days,” seemed poised to walk a precarious line between the lovably, and therefore pardonably, un-PC-ness of…
Around late September, property owners along Bodine and Cadwallader streets in Kensington started getting notices in the mail: The Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority wanted to take their property, and it would be setting the price. Maybe it was because it was…
A bill from Councilman David Oh to put hefty fines on skateboarders and cyclists who ride over public art or memorials has been amended to reduce the maximum fines from $2,000 to $1,000, but it still includes the possibility of…
