PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Mayor Cherelle Parker took the case for her proposed rideshare tax directly to City Council on Wednesday, while Council members continued to push back on the School District of Philadelphia's facilities closure plan.
For more than an hour, Parker made an impassioned plea to Council to approve her dollar-a-trip rideshare tax to stave off the cuts of 340 schoolteachers, counselors and climate managers. This came as Council members asked the school board to delay Thursday's vote on the just-revised plan to close 17 schools.
Parker urged Council to find new revenue for schools as it had in years past, with the liquor-by-the-drink and cigarette taxes.
“We have to work together in order to get it done and I want us to figure out a way to get to yes,” said Parker. “We have to make it matter. And it has to result in zero — zero — school-based cuts.”
She said raising local revenue and rightsizing district facilities would send a message to legislators in Harrisburg that the city was doing its part. “Rightsizing buildings is not about abandoning communities,” Parker said. “It's about strengthening them.”
While Council doesn't get to vote on the district's closure plan, it has leverage because it has a say on the rideshare tax. Hence, Council Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson asked Board of Education President Reginald Streater to put off the vote on the facilities plan.
“We are at a convergence of this facilities plan as well as being asked to fill in a budget deficit,” she said. “We will need time in order to do that with all of the new information that is just being presented that we have not had an opportunity to digest.”
Streater responded, “There is a sense of urgency. I think that could be perceived as rush, rush, rush. But for us, I've been living with this since I got on the board five years ago.”
He made no promises, but said he would take the issue back to the entire school board.
