by Michael J. Mishak

In stark contrast to the cold reception Republican mayoral candidate Sam Katz received at a Germantown forum last week, Mayor Street was greeted with a standing ovation at the Venetian Club Sunday night during a Chestnut Hill Community Association-sponsored event. (Part of a bi-partisan effort, Katz will speak on Monday, October 27 from 8 to 9 p.m.)

Despite a local news channel's inaccurate announcement that he had cancelled his day's schedule, Street maintained that he was "having a great day." Street characterized the news station's move as "stunning." Alluding to the federal probe into city contracts, the mayor said he had experienced some "stunning things" since early October when a sophisticated listening device was discovered in his office.

With District Attorney Lynne Abraham as his warm-up act, Street delivered a service record of accomplishment to an audience — speckled with committee-people and ward leaders — that eagerly devoured his every word.

Upon election, Street said he made a "baseline commitment to focus attention on neighborhoods without turning his back on Center City." With Center City as "strong and vibrant" as ever, Street said, the city's neighborhoods are "looking better" and "feeling better about themselves."

The mayor said the "proof of the pudding" is represented by Citizen's Bank's $104 million investment in the 26 Neighborhood Transformation Initiative areas through mortgage assistance. Street sees himself as reversing a trend of deterioration created in part by decades of the illegal practice of redlining. "I'm proud of what we've done in the city's neighborhoods," Street said.

Street also claimed that he has "changed the prospects for the city's children" by advocating for School District CEO Paul Vallas and thwarting the state's plans to privatize public education through Edison Schools. "I stood in the way of Edison," Street said. The mayor contended that he would not negotiate with the commonwealth until the Edison proposal was off the table. With plans to build 14 new schools and its unprecedented funding, the school district is a model of improvement, Street said. Through negotiations with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Street said he helped to add 90 hours a year to each child's instruction time. And most recently, through the "last dollar" scholarship program, which provides additional aid to college-bound school district graduates, Street said he had advanced education in innovative ways. "I was dirt poor," Street said of his own childhood. "But I knew that I could go to college. Our kids have to know."

Increased funding and enrollment for after-school programs and beacon schools are evidence of the administration's commitment to children, Street said.

Street was quick to differentiate his administration's $300 million NTI investment from the Katz plan to borrow $750 million to replace lost revenue from cutting the city's wage tax. NTI, which focuses on eliminating blight, removing abandoned cars and treating vacant lots, was an investment in neighborhoods, not a loan to cover the city's operating expenses, Street said.

Katz's proposal to reduce spending throughout his five-year plan by cutting 4,000 city employees is unrealistic, Street said. Running down a list of municipal employees from the city's many departments — including police, fire, prison and court workers — Street said reducing city government would not only be an ineffective cost cutting measure, but also impossible.

Citing an Innovation Philadelphia report, Street said that the entire Philadelphia region — including parts of Delaware and New Jersey — saw a net growth of just 30,000 jobs throughout the 1990s. Street found Katz's contention that a reduction in taxes would attract more than 63,000 jobs laughable. "It's not going to happen," Street said. "The jobs will not materialize."

"Either he's fooling us — not intending to implement his plan, or he will implement it and it just won't work," Street said.

Calling on the audience to use its "common sense," Street said that if such a proposal could work, the Rendell-Street partnership, with the guidance of then chief of staff David Cohen, would have enacted it. "It's pie in the sky," Street said. "It's a ridiculous proposition."

Street said that his administration has already cut taxes by $150 million since taking office and is on track to cut another $600 million in the next five years. Katz's plan would result in a cut to the services people depend on, the mayor said. "People want help and they want it now, and they have the right to expect it," Street said. In addition to incremental cuts to the wage tax, Philadelphians will feel relief through a reduction in auto insurance rates for limited-tort drivers, Street said.

Unprecedented partnerships between the police commissioner, district attorney and mayor's offices have resulted in public safety advances, Street said. "We talk about these things like a family," Street said of the partnership. "There's not one drop of tension between these different offices." While squashing the city's open-air drug markets, Street said, Operation Safe Streets and a new form of policing has resulted in record numbers of gun and drug confiscations. On October 8, Street said, Philadelphia police served more than 80 search warrants and seized $350,000 worth of drugs, 40 guns and $100,000 in cash.

In addition to the police department's new Special Victims Unit facility, a state-of-the-art "everything and anything" DNA laboratory will open in the coming weeks, Abraham said.

"Center City is jumping," Abraham said. "Things are happening. We're getting people out of their houses and onto the streets," she said, attributing the growth to Street. Describing Katz as a "nice fellow" and "well-meaning," Abraham said he never balanced a budget. In contrast, she said, "nobody in this city knows the budget more than [Street] … He knows it inside and out."

And what about those who claim the mayor has a prickly personality?

"Personality will not carry the day," Abraham said.

Signing autographs for audience members afterwards, Street was a far cry from prickly, instead fitting a "warm and fuzzy" profile. "I don't know where they get this from," Street said of his personality detractors.