http://libwww.freelibrary.org/closing/
I don't know about you or the people of Philadelphia or the people of America in general, but I certainly wouldn't mind paying a little more in taxes!!!! This is what happens when you insist on tax cuts in tough years, fools. We all lose. Congratulations.
UPDATE:
This is from an interesting comment on Consumerist about it. A different side of the story and still fucked up! Let's get it together, people!
What's happening is that city leaders are making a highly-visible yet token "cut" that's designed to annoy people and convince them that higher taxes are acceptable. Once people accede to this manipulation — which is really no better than an extortion scheme — these conniving officials are relieved of the obligation to do what they ought to have done in the first place: make the serious and genuine kinds of budget cuts that would actually make a difference ... such as cutting waste and graft, and paring the size of government down to something which is both manageable and affordable. They squander money in ways you would not believe — and they do it all the time, under the illusion that it's the best way to operate.
Example 1: The Connecticut DOT could not be bothered actually managing a construction project, so they contracted out that task to a well-connected company. Only that company, which was paid millions to supervise it, did absolutely nothing. The work done was poor and had to be redone. In order to avoid paying to redo it, the construction company liquidated itself, its owners reconstituted as another firm, and proceeded to lobby for more state business. CT DOT officials — who obviously had no problem with this situation — were ready to award them more work, when the story was reported and the state A.G. had to step in. The re-work took another 2 years and a great deal more money, only some of which has been recovered.
Example 2: New York City public schools are famously home to what are called "rubber rooms." These are places in which tenured but incompetent teachers are allowed to sit and do nothing all day, yet earn their salaries for having done nothing. You see, they cannot be fired, no matter how bad they are; since they are by contract "entitled" to work, this is the only way to keep them from hurting kids' education or harming them.
Both of these examples, and more, are basically ways in which money is sucked out of the public coffers, for no good purpose ... and which are actually, actively defended by some officials, who consider these to be good ideas.
It's not just Philadelphia that uses this scheme of token, annoying, noticeable cuts to entice taxpayers into paying more ... governments at ALL levels (municipalities, counties, regional authorities, and states) across the country do it. It's an old trick, but curiously, it seems to work more often than not, and most people are blissfully unaware they're being "played." The cold hard fact is that government officials profit too much from bloated government and artificially-high budgets, for them to slice them down to size.
