What I Would Like To See
Sometimes I think I’ve been a little shrill about the pools and libraries, emphasizing the negative over the positive. So I want to imagine something that I think would be truly awesome.
It’s June 2009 in a neighborhood slated to lose a pool. But instead of a bunch of uncomfortably hot kids and adults, everyone’s gathered around the mayor and a crowd of corporate leaders. There’s representatives from Comcast, Verizon, PNC, all sorts of people. All sorts of other PR people are there too. The news teams are there, the local ward leader, some cute little kids. The council rep is there. It’s a big deal.
“We were looking at a really bad situation with the pools and the libraries,” Mayor Nutter begins, before launching into a speech that ends with something like “…and on behalf of all Philadelphians, I’d like to thank Comcast, Verizon, PNC, [and everyone else] for stepping up and doing it’s part. You guys are the greatest.”
The Comcast rep steps forward and says a few words. “We here at Comcast are grateful to live in such a great city as Philadelphia. As a world-class company, we want to make sure we live in a world-class city. Public resources like pools for our kids and families help improve the quality of life for everyone, and so we’re proud to be adopting the pools for 2009. And now I’d like to turn it over to my good friend and competitor, Verizon, who will be adopting the pools for 2010.”
Everyone says their piece, and then they step back to unveil a shiny new sign giving Comcast a naming right to the pool. I’m sure there’s some other sugar in there too, but we’ll leave it at that for now (dammit Jim, I’m a blogger not a politician).
Everybody wins: Comcast spends $3 million dollars for customer loyalty that will last decades, as does Verizon and everyone else who participates. Communities don’t lose their pools. The mayor looks like a good guy for forging a collaboration between the public and private sector, winning a second term, and burnishing his legacy as the guy who saw us through.
I’d really rather not be bitching about the Mayor. I just don’t know why he’s so married to this “shut down the pools/shut down the libraries” thing, because it seems there ARE other options he just doesn’t want to explore. I want to be fair, but right now we working people in Philly are not being treated fairly ourselves.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Much like what the Flyers Mgt did for ice rinks, I would like to see famous wealthy Philadelphians (former or current) hold a press conferance and donate $1M per (or whatever) to the city specifically to keeping a library or pool open. Bill Cosby comes to mind almost immediately as someone whose message tends to have a strong positive streak to it.