In its ongoing fight for funding, Mt. Airy USA is close to securing a deal that would deliver as much as $100,000 in city funding to the embattled community development corporation, said Farah Jimenez, the group’s executive director.
The tentative deal comes after a public appeal by Mt. Airy USA to keep its revitalization programs alive and follows months of negotiation with the city Commerce Department, Jimenez said.
Last year, the Commerce Department cut the group’s annual subsidy from $75,000 to $50,000. Also, Mt. Airy USA lost a two-year commitment of another $50,000 from Philadelphia last fall when the city pulled its support of a street-cleaning program.
The expected windfall in city funding would help pay staffing and program delivery costs associated with the Avenue Project, the group’s umbrella initiative to revive the Germantown Avenue commercial corridor, Jimenez said.
U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Phila.) speaks with Susan Segal, a caseworker for Sen. Arlen Specter, before a check presentation ceremony in Mt. Airy last week. Fattah and Specter secured $1.2 million in federal funding for flood-damaged Cresheim Valley Drive. Community leaders from Chestnut Hill, including Maxine Dornemann and Paul Roller, were on hand to offer thanks for the assistance. (Photo by Michael J. Mishak)
by Michael J. Mishak
Last week, nearly a year after the second of two severe storm systems collapsed a section of Cresheim Valley Drive, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Phila.) delivered on his promise to provide federal funds for the flood-ravaged road, presenting an $800,000 check to the city. Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) provided “substantial assistance,” Fattah said, in the form of another $400,000 in federal funds.
The total $1.2 million was included in the $284 billion federal transportation bill signed by the president last month.
“We made a commitment to the mayor to fix Cresheim Valley Drive,” Fattah said in brief remarks before a crowd of community leaders and elected officials in Mt. Airy on Sept. 6. “We lived up to our word.”
When local entrepreneurs Patrick Fitzgerald and Ron Gonen pitched their idea of a rewards-based recycling program to Philadelphia officials, they had selected their hometown in part for its reputation as one of the nation’s lowest big-city recyclers.
Now, eight months into a successful and popular pilot based in Chestnut Hill and West Oak Lane, the duo’s startup, dubbed RecycleBank, is unexpectedly contending with another aspect of the city’s character: municipal corruption.
Awaiting word from the Streets Department on their proposal to take the program citywide, the principals — both Germantown Academy graduates — have decided to extend the pilot, which was set to expire at the end of August, while the city’s recycling office recovers from the most recent in a series of Philadelphia corruption scandals.
Last month, David Robinson, the city’s recycling coordinator, in addition to two other officials, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the government in connection with birthday and retirement parties for a former streets commissioner that were allegedly paid for with $13,000 in city funds.
Robinson, who boosted the recycling pilot as “a brilliant combination of classic retail marketing and city service” in the Local last year, pleaded not guilty to the charges in U.S. District Court on Aug. 9.
U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Phila.) speaks with Susan Segal, a caseworker for Sen. Arlen Specter, before a check presentation ceremony in Mt. Airy last week. Fattah and Specter secured $1.2 million in federal funding for flood-damaged Cresheim Valley Drive. Community leaders from Chestnut Hill, including Maxine Dornemann and Paul Roller, were on hand to offer thanks for the assistance. (Photo by Michael J. Mishak)