City Council gets curfew-crazy following Kensington Avenue bill

Earlier this year, City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada passed a late-night curfew for businesses along Kensington Avenue to crack down on nuisance establishments selling drug paraphernalia and operating gambling machines in an area harrowed by open-air drug sales.

The idea appears to have caught on, and business curfews are coming to neighborhoods near and far.

This Thursday three additional councilmembers introduced similar legislation for their districts. Businesses with liquor licenses would not be affected, leaving neighborhood taverns to operate as normal. Violations come with a $500 fine.

This wave of legislation partly reflects Council’s frustration with the proliferation of so-called games of skill — unregulated electronic gambling terminals — that have been cropping up in small businesses throughout the state. (An attempted ban on these machines faces a lawsuit.) Similarly, smoke shops selling drug paraphernalia and nicotine products have greatly expanded their footprint in the city, to the chagrin of many neighborhood groups.

But Council also sees these bills as a means to strike a blow against the kind of lawlessness that many residents feel spun out of control during the pandemic, with its apotheosis in the open-air drug market of Kensington.

”Residents don’t want what happened in Kensington and some other areas of the city to happen in our area,” Phillips said in an interview last week, when he introduced a similar bill for a different part of his district. “This bill sends a clear message that in our neighborhood we’re not going to tolerate any level of disruption.”

Tax-hike timeout: More than 60,000 low-income Philadelphians would be able to freeze their property tax bills if their home’s assessment increases under legislation advanced by Council Thursday.

Philadelphia already allows low-income seniors to freeze their tax bills as a result of hikes, but the new legislation by Councilmember Jamie Gauthier would expand that opportunity to any homeowner in the city considered low-income. That’s defined in this case as individuals who make less than $33,500 per year and married couples who combined make less than $41,500.

A Council committee advanced the bill Monday, and it was brought before Council Thursday. It is expected to be called up for a vote next week and would then head to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s desk.

But her administration has expressed reservations. Finance Director Rob Dubow testified Monday that the administration has concerns about the program’s implementation, enforcement, and cost.

He said estimates suggest the proposed program would result in between $39 million and $94 million in lost revenue over five years, depending on how many people sign up. About half of that would have gone to the School District of Philadelphia. Dubow also pointed out that the city already has an array of programs meant to ease tax burdens.

“We balance the cost of programs against other priorities, as well as other proposed relief measures,” he said.

Advocates and residents who testified in favor of the legislation said Monday that the city needs to fill a gap for low-income residents who don’t qualify for existing programs but get hit with rapidly rising property assessments.

Angela Thomas, who has long lived in the city’s Graduate Hospital section, saw her assessment increase by more than 45% last year. She said her husband unexpectedly died during the pandemic, and so she was left to pay a $3,400 annual property tax bill on less than $600 a month.

“There is no possible way I can pay that amount and put food on the table,” Thomas said.

The city last year paused reassessments after homeowners saw their property values increase by 31% on average citywide. Thousands of assessments more than doubled. Reassessments are expected to begin again this year.

Bump-stock ban, maybe: Philadelphia officials rarely get their way when it comes to gun control laws thanks to firearm-friendly legislators in Harrisburg who use the state’s preemption powers to overrule the city.

Parker and councilmembers know that. But they keep trying anyway, and on Thursday Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. introduced a bill on behalf of the mayor’s administration to ban “bump stocks,” which are devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire much more rapidly.

Bump stocks — called “rate-of-fire acceleration devices” in the legislation and known informally as “switches” — became infamous after being used by Stephen Paddock in the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 60 people.

“As we see an uptick in suspects using guns with switches and similar rate-of-fire acceleration devices, my administration is working to ensure that we hold accountable the people who use them,” Parker said in a statement. “These devices facilitate mass shootings and have no place on the streets of Philadelphia.”

Jones acknowledged he was fighting an uphill battle to crack down on the devices in Philly thanks to the state’s control over firearms regulations. But he noted the city’s recent success in fighting the spread of untraceable “ghost guns” by settling a lawsuit with two manufacturers of the weapons.

» READ MORE: City reaches settlement in case against two ghost gun manufacturers

“Fighting the good fight is what this Council should do,” he said.

I am ashamed of the University of Pennsylvania. I am ashamed that my university, our city’s largest private employer, with an endowment of over $20 billion, five times the size of the entire budget of the School District of Philadelphia, has continuously nickeled and dimed workers across campus.

State Rep. Rick Krajewski, a University of Pennsylvania alumnus, spoke at Council’s public comment session on Thursday to criticize his alma mater for what he called union-busting tactics.

The Ivy League school’s graduate student workers voted to unionize earlier this month.