Reform Begins With You – You Have To Want It

Reform Begins With You.

When I hear complaints about crime problems, invariably the subject then switches to schools.  Our lackluster public education system in Philadelphia puts out too many adults who have little hope to gain meaningful employment, which leads to some adults that have no hope, and with no hope, nothing to lose.

But take a closer look at our schools and we have a major funding problem.   The amount of debt that the School District of Philadelphia piles on every school year is astonishing.  We give over $1BN annually in just local taxes alone to the SDP and that’s nowhere near enough to fund it.

So if crime can’t be solved without schools, schools can’t be solved without funding and reorganizing it–but that’s where we are stuck.

The Sheriff’s Office Matters Here.

For the longest time the City of Philadelphia has been content to let tax collection slip by the wayside.  Blightlords who live outside of Philadelphia hold on to property and avoid any responsibilities that come with owning property, such as maintaining it and paying taxes on it.   We are a City that coddles blightlords.   Year after year I have watched with my own eyes as our municipal government did nothing to stop huge blightlords like Robert Coyle from ravaging neighborhoods with his failure to take care of his properties and then foist the costs of them on to the rest of the city.

I have seen the effects of what forcefully taking hold of property can do.  I have taken drug houses myself into Sheriff Sale and watched as block after block got better.  It’s like waving a magic wand over crime.  Can you think of the resources a drug house doesn’t consume?  Blight is very expensive and it’s a major tax drain.

Both blight and tax delinquency force the City to raise the tax burden on everyone who continues paying.   Raise this high enough and it can spell disaster.

I have seen how City-owned properties sit without resolution while privately-owned property surrounding it has lifted into a resurgence of urban renewal while a recalcitrant City government insisted–it pounded its fists on the table–that it could not send a property to resolution because no one would buy it.   In one case near my own house the City blew over $10,000 just to demolish a house that it could have sent to Sheriff Sale five years earlier when it was abandoned–saving the house and saving the taxpayer wallet.  But no.

Earlier in the year a brave member of City Council decided to send a basket of properties near the heroin supermarket of Kensington Avenue & Somerset Street to auction.  The money that came in netted over $1,000,000 what was estimated the auction would bring in.

‘What if the new owner is yet another blightlord,’ you ask?  Send them to Sheriff’s Sale again, I say.

Foreclosure is serious business but our local pols don’t take it seriously.

Aside from the investor and vacant sales, we still have a large group of people who fall into the grips of bank foreclosure.   Many of these people are left with no information on what they can do to avoid a sale and stave off foreclosure.  The lucky few who do manage to find a resolution through bankruptcy then discover from their bankruptcy attorney whom they’ve paid a load of money up-front that they can’t get ahold of anyone at the Sheriff’s Office because no one will answer the phone.

What is sad about this is that the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office blows millions of dollars away on crony contracts that could be better spent towards triage of property that comes in the door and making direct hard contacts with homeowners.   Nearly all of these people are lifetime Philadelphia residents who face the prospect of joining a class of lower income, they are the most vulnerable of the city’s people and their “reward” for homesteading here is to be treated like this.

I find this practice to be absolutely disgusting.   I want Philadelphia to have the most unique and forward-thinking property resolution system in the United States that treats borrowers as human beings and at the same time provides the fastest possible resolution to vacant and investor property.  This benefits our city tremendously by returning funds back to the school district as quickly as we can and at the same time we can do what is available within the legal limits to assist borrowers to get to either a diversion outcome or a softest-possible resolution.

It’s hard to maintain corruption in a realm of openness.

Getting hard facts out of the Sheriff’s Office often requires threatening to sue the Office when it tries to deny a Right To Know Request.  This is for basic information such as finances and asking questions on what it spends its money on.   Often the only way I can get a hold of what is going on inside the Sheriff’s Office is by utilizing connections that I have with employees who work on the inside.

The current Sheriff doesn’t know who these people are and would love to know–so he could fire them.

Further, employees who work there are bombarded with re-election campaign material from their own boss which they get at their homes.  Incidentally 19 out of the top 20 overtime earners at the Sheriff’s Office contribute regularly to the Sheriff.   And the overtime being claimed in some cases is extreme.  One Deputy Sheriff Captain has a $71K salary and receives an additional $74K in overtime on top of his base pay–which is more than what the Sheriff himself makes.

Full and immediate transparency in contracting and spending can eliminate these skeletons in the closet.  Further, charter changes to make the transparency upgrades permanent can prevent a future Sheriff from closing the curtain on the Sheriff’s books.

The current Sheriff won’t make promises that come to you and I naturally.

The opportunity to actually purchase a property at Sheriff’s Sale is very short–it lasts just a few minutes.   There is no proactive system to notify communities of properties that may interest them even though the technology to do this has existed for over twenty years.   There is no covenant between the Sheriff’s Office to work with the Administration to find more creative ways for resolution in case of a failed auction, such as a catalog auction and direct trades of property to the new Land Bank.

Further, the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office won’t even give you a certificate at settlement informing you of where your settlement money is going.   Some buyers who purchase tax sale properties quickly discover this when debt collectors start calling–most of whom were supposed to be paid by the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office.  Lawsuits continue to be settled by the Sheriff to this day because of this.   Other counties in Pennsylvania provide a certificate after settlement informing you of which debts will be treated by your settlement check and for what amounts.  This is a document you can take to court with you to protect yourself.   It doesn’t exist here.

We need a Sheriff’s Office that is in the modern era and benefits our city.

If we can’t accomplish that, then the Sheriff’s Office should be abolished.   But that is not the question you will be faced with on Tuesday.   You will be asked if you prefer the status-quo in Jewell Williams, or me.   I have won support from both sides of the aisle across a multitude of political attitudes.  All agree that the current Sheriff’s Office is a disgrace and must be changed.

I am offering you that opportunity to reform this office.   Reform is only a button-push away.    It’s button 225.

Press it tomorrow.

–Chris