Patty approaches a door on her petition drive.

Nominating petitions for Harrisbrg City Council candidates began circulating Tuesday, February 17.

Patty immediately hit the streets in pursuit of nominating signatures from registered city Democrats so that she can appear on the ballot in the May 19th primary election. Patty will be in neighborhoods every evening and weekend until March 10th when the petitions are due back to Dauphin County.

Want to sign her petition? Call 214-6850 or email and she’ll come to you!

Councilwoman Patty Kim has made a very succinct case for why and how the bulk pickup program should be revived. (”Let’s not waver on needed pickups,” commentary, Jan. 7)

To me, it was a compelling argument and deserves the full support of all inner-city neighborhoods. The first to suffer when there is a budget problem are neighborhood services. As suggested by Councilwoman Kim, “We need more collaboration and less fighting.”

– DAVID S. WISE, President and CEO, Summit Terrace Association Harrisburg

I was very disappointed when I read Mayor Stephen R. Reed’s response to the Dec. 31 article, “Trash Stash,” about the trash problem in the South Allison Hill neighborhood and residents’ decade-old plea for bulk trash pickup.

The mayor’s response: it can’t be done.

I chair the Public Works Committee for Harrisburg City Council. I have studied bulk trash pickup for over a year now. I have met with all the stakeholders. I have looked at the numbers. Citywide bulk trash pickup is difficult and expensive, and it isn’t a magic wand to solve the trash problem in the city. But I can tell you this with confidence: It should be done and it can be done.

Let’s start with why it should be done:

• There are sections of the city that are effectively dumps. Daisy Street (in South Allison Hill) is by far the worst, but uptown has areas off of Maclay Street that are bad as well. Tires, mattresses, appliances — this is what we mean by “bulk trash.” These items sit there breeding disease and vermin, leeching pollution and generating more trash as people see that it is tolerated. Simply as a public health issue, it must be dealt with.
• The citizens want it. The people aren’t stupid. They know that City Hall can’t and shouldn’t be “the mommy” that follows its citizens around picking up after them. Yet they have correctly seized upon citywide bulk trash pickup as something that the city should be able to do for them. They want the city’s help in disposing properly of large, heavy, difficult-to-manage items. Some would say that is why we have government.

Now let’s talk about how it can be done:

• Get the cooperation of the Harrisburg Authority. We’ll need a discount on tipping fees at the incinerator for our bulk trash pickup. Though the Mayor’s strained relationship with the authority likely makes him feel this is impossible, I believe we can enlist their help.
• Partner with current neighborhood groups working on city beautification. These groups, like Weed and Seed (a state program run locally by Pastor Jason Rissler) and Keep Harrisburg Beautiful (a city program run by Kari Reagan-Bushey), are effectively, leveraging resources from non-city sources, so if we all rallied around bulk trash pickup as the priority, I’m sure they could help with resources, volunteers and “can-do” attitude.
• Harness the entrepreneurial zeal of our citizens. We have a home-grown bulk trash pickup expert in Leland Nelson, founder and CEO of Dirty Dog Hauling (you see his purple trucks everywhere). Leland embodies “can-do.” He is creative, enthusiastic and a real leader. We could use some of our budgeted resources to contract with him and other local small businesses to solve pieces of this problem.
• Get the cooperation of the city Public Works Department. As I and many citizen groups can attest, leadership of the department is the obstacle here. There are plenty of “can-do” leaders in this department. I know because I speak to them all the time. Maybe we need to make room for them at the top.
• Prioritize this in the budget. The City Council took the lead on this and put in $100,000. As the mayor said in the article, we will probably need more to tackle this issue. I have seen four budgets now, and I can attest that things get done that are a priority. Make no mistake, resources are scarce, but the mayor has found the money for projects that had no demonstrateable public support. So lets’ find the money for something that literally thousands of our taxpaying citizens want. That is how government is meant to work.
• Make it difficult to dump in the first place. Clearing the worst lots near residential areas of bulk trash needs to be part of this effort, and we should not pretend we’re helpless in seeing them fill right back up. When a lot is cleared, fence it off. Much of the land where this is a problem is city-owned. If it’s not, declare it a public health hazard and fence it off anyway. Let’s enlist neighborhood groups to monitor the worst properties with cameras (there are widely available video security systems for just over $900) and but up big signs that warn of monitoring and fines.

These are not wildly expensive solutions, and they could probably be paid for through a federal Community Development Block Grant. Of course, we can’t seal off the city from determined dumpers, but we can make it a lot harder for them.

I wont’ claim this proposal is perfect. Yet I strongly believe inaction is not an option. It is demoralizing to those who live in the neighborhoods and fight the irresponsible actions of a few. Doing nothing also emboldens those tempted to dump.

So I’d like to enlist the mayor’s help to make it better. When Mayor Reed has wanted something done, few can match his oratory and “get it done” demands. Few are as creative or energetic. I am afraid the mayor has lost interest in bringing energy, creativity and resources to the basic services of top priority to those he reports to: the citizens. This year is an election year and I bet a lot of us would like to be convinced otherwise.

I am committed to getting citywide bulk trash pickup done. I know my City Council colleagues are just as committed. I have been inspired by the efforts of citizens to address this problem themselves, but they need the city’s help. I will reach out to the mayor, and I urge him to work with all of us on putting the plans in place for a bulk trash pickup this year.

The city doesn’t need another fight. It’s a new year, so let’s together resolve to get a citywide bulk trash pickup done.

City Councilwoman Patty Kim hit the nail on the head with her observation on the issue of whether council or the mayor has the right to appoint the city solicitor:

“This is not the time to engage in a sparring match when we are dealing with major financial challenges that will affect every single resident and our future.”

Council Vice President Dan Miller is leading a challenge to Mayor Stephen R. Reed’s authority to appoint the solicitor, who heads a five-person city law bureau.

Reed contends it’s an executive branch position with mayoral power of appointment under the city’s strong-mayor form of government.

Miller disputes that legal interpret ation and has point ed to a 2003 Com monwealth Court ruling involving the City of Easton that he says supports council authority. The timing is right to address this, Miller says, since the position recent ly became vacant with the resignation of Stephen Dade and Reed’s nomination of Philip J. Harper to replace him.

We understand why this issue is of concern to Miller and other council members. Although the mayor has a long list of accomplishments during his seven terms in office, he also has a one-man operating style and a track record of keeping council in the dark on key projects.

The most recent example is the debacle involving his proposed Museum of the Wild West. The mayor spent millions personally collecting artifacts before the proposal even came to light. Then, after the city’s poor financial condition forced him to abandoned the project, auctions of the artifacts have only returned $1.7 million of the $7.2 million Reed spent.

Also, in Miller’s defense, the current vacancy and nomination give some justification to his pushing the issue now. But we agree with Councilwoman Kim that there are simply bigger things on which council and the mayor should be concentrating.

Council literally has the city’s short- and long-term financial framework in its hands as it continues to vet an investment group’s offer to lease a large part of city parking facilities over the next 75 years.

Reed contends the $215 million upfront payment and subsequent annual revenues will pay off parking authority debt, provide significant property tax relief, and put more police officers on the street.

If council rejects the offer — and Miller has been a staunch opponent of it — then it needs to put forth ideas to address high property tax rates in the city, crime and other pressing needs at a time when the nation’s dismal economy is going to create even more budgetary pressure.

Council’s full attention should be directed to those issues. It’s also not like council members are completely shut out of the solicitor appointment process, since nominations are subject to council confirmation.

Better timing to address this issue might be next year, when there will be mayoral and council contests on the ballot, and it can be brought up as a campaign issue.

At this crucial point in the city’s history, we have to question whether residents are as concerned about who appoints the solicitor as they are about seeing their elected officials at City Hall working jointly on remedies to immediately pressing issues affecting their daily lives and finances.

Harrisburg’s financial picture is too perilous to continue the luxury of a mayor and a city council talking past each other. Everyone needs to be on board to figure out the best strategy to deal with an incinerator that threatens to bankrupt the city.

And maybe for once we could get some agreement on just what the financial prospects are of the incinerator ever paying for itself and its massive $300 million debt, without annual subsidies from the city.

The incinerator debacle is an old story. And except for the fact that the plant in south Harrisburg is expected to be operating at its peak capacity of burning 800 tons of municipal waste per day early next year, the news doesn’t get any better.

Back when the incinerator was less than $200 million in debt, the public was told that a retrofit would generate sufficient revenues not only to cover the old debt but also the new debt incurred in practically rebuilding the entire three-burner plant from scratch. We had our doubts, but it got worse than even we expected when the first contractor botched the project.

The Harrisburg Authority, which technically owns the incinerator, hired a quality company, Covanta Energy, to fid and run it on the second try. And still we were told that it would all work out in the end financially, even make a profit in the out years.

Now a new analysis by Public Financial Management, which was hired by the authority, projects that next year’s loss at the incinerator would reach $13 million. And this comes after a major increase in city and county trash rates, along with financial backing from the city and county for a $30 million bridge loan to get the incinerator through the repair period.

It hasn’t helped that Mayor Stephen R. Reed and members of city council have been at odds through this entire mess, even to the point of both sides going to court to fight over control of the authority. Having lost that battle, the mayor claims that until recently the authority kept him in the dark about the shaky state of its financial affairs, which aren’t confined to the incinerator. It is hardly credible that the mayor wouldn’t’ know anything about the authority’s finances that he wanted to know.

Patty Kim, one of the few members of council who doesn’t appear to have her own partisan agenda, made the analysis known, stating, “I’m trying to sound the alarm…it’s definitely not looking good for the Harrisburg Authority.”

There is plenty of blame to go around for this fiasco. But pointing fingers isn’t going to help in addressing what Kim likens to a “tsunami.” For the common good, the mayor and members of council need to put aside their squabbles and start acting like grown-ups.