Earlier this year, we announced NEast Philly would take on an investigative project through a J-Lab Enterprise Reporting Fund grant and our partnership with Philadelphia Neighborhoods.

We’ve been publishing pieces of that project throughout the year, and yesterday’s article about community building post in Mayfair capped our series. With more than 10 articles, several videos and a handful of interactive pieces under our belt, NEast Philly marks the unofficial end of the grant assignment. continue reading »

This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoods funded by J-Lab.

Joe DeFelice has put a lot of effort into that little playground. And a few hundred residents and supporters have all helped in small ways.

In fall 2009, DeFelice, the Mayfair Civic Association president and now a new Mayfair CDC board member, kicked off a $50,000 fundraising campaign to renovate and reopen the Mayfair Memorial Playground at Rowland Avenue and Vista Street. More than a year and a half later, the Mayfair Civic Association has $20,000 and is seeking the opening on a smaller scale.

That fundraising was done dollar by dollar and almost exclusively by volunteers, like himself.

If fundraising for the playground, which closed in April 2008 after a young girl was injured on out-of-date equipment, was kicked off while powerful state Rep. John Perzel was still at the height of his influence, in the middle of this decade, DeFelice says the process would have been quite different.

Instead, in October 2009, Perzel was a month away from an 82-count indictment of corruption and a year away from losing his three-decade grip on a statehouse seat to a freshman Democrat who had never held public office before.

“When Perzel was in power, the CDC was buying houses, [a] movie theater, building [a] rec center, etc., so I’m sure that a little playground wouldn’t have been that difficult to come by,” DeFelice said. “So in the old days, a check may have been written, but now you have a large amount of neighbors who didn’t previously know each other coming together for a common good and coming up with new, innovative ways to raise funds.”

So what’s the biggest impact from Perzel’s indictment, the historic state budget deficit and a shake up of community leaders in a tight knit neighborhood like Mayfair? Perhaps nothing short of a change in how residents improve their blocks forever.

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Pennsylvania legislative district 172, as it stands today. Click to visit Redistricting the Nation.

This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoods funded by J-Lab.

Shaping legislative districts is by no means illegal. It’s a part of the democratic process.

After each U.S. Census informs leaders about population and demographic shifts throughout the country, each state, county and municipality is meant to see subtle movement in its boundaries to better reflect the realities there, from balancing population totals and community divides. For example, in the post-1990-census redistricting, Philadelphia lost two House seats to its western suburbs due to population growth there.

Where redistricting has earned the more negatively connoted term of ‘gerrymandering’ — coined in 1812 after a partisan Massachusetts governor — has been when political, not population, shifts seem to motivate legislative rewiring.

Now again, Pennsylvania is revisiting its boundaries, like the rest of the country, following the 2010 census. In April, a former Superior Court president was named the independent chair of the state’s Legislative Reapportionment Commission, which by October is due to send to the state Supreme Court its reapportionment draft of state legislative districts.

One district that will be watched by some insiders is the Pennsylvania 172nd State House Legislative district, formerly the precinct of John Perzel.

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This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoods funded by J-Lab.

After John Perzel, the former speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, was charged with misusing public funds, he lost the seat he had held for more than 30 years in the 172nd District to Democrat Kevin Boyle.

Despite the scandal surrounding Perzel, people are divided about whether a powerful politician was better than a new representative in the Northeast district.

John McClogan, a Walton Park Civic  Association member, said he thinks a tainted Perzel is better than a newly elected representative.

“It’s a shame,” he said. “It’s the people who are suffering.”

McClogan said he thinks there is a big difference between Perzel and Boyle.

“Perzel was the speaker of the house. Boyle is just the representative. He doesn’t have the clout that Perzel had,” McClogan said. continue reading »

This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoods funded by J-Lab.

You can find an update to this post at the bottom of the article, from the April 12 Holmesburg Civic Association meeting.

About $10.6 million was funneled directly to the Mayfair Community Development Corp. since 2000, granted from the state Department of Community and Economic Development, according to its website. Much of it went into street cleaning and senior citizen programs.

The document states $800,000 was used toward the Devon theater.

The same state department gave the Holmesburg Civic Association and the Friends of the Holmesburg Library $5,000 each, according to state records.

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This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoods funded by J-Lab.

Kevin Boyle has made a conference room out of John Perzel’s closet.

The young freshman state representative from the 172nd district in the Northeast beat out the indicted former state Speaker of the House last fall and is settling in his first year of elected office. It’s just a matter of form that his constituent services are taking place in the same Frankford Avenue storefront that Perzel held dominion for a portion of his 32-year career. (Boyle is a Democrat; Perzel a Republican).

“We just needed another place to get work done,” Boyle told NEast Philly during an interview last month, standing in the small, undecorated, white room with a table and four chairs. Boyle’s chief of staff Seth Kaplan says the conference room was formerly a closet when Perzel had offices there.

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This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoods funded by J-Lab.

While former House Speaker John M. Perzel waits to fight corruption charges against him, there has yet to be rulings on some of the pretrial motions, a spokesman for the attorney general wrote in an e-mail.

Attorney general spokesman Nils Frederiksen did not say when these motions are expected to be decided on. Most of them from Perzel’s attorney, Brian McMonagle, seek to have the charges dropped.

Dauphin County Judge Richard A. Lewis ordered last month to delay jury selection until August so defense lawyers can look through evidence, including 1.8 million paper documents and thousands of computer files.

McMonagle argued during a pretrial hearing the Blue Card program was legitimate because it was used for legislative actions, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. continue reading »

This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoods funded by J-Lab.

Bob Dillon may look rusty, but the 68-year-old pitcher says he still has a lot of fight left.

He and his teammates workout at the John M. Perzel Community Center every winter Friday to warm up for the Philadelphia Senior Softball League season.

“We’ve been coming here for a couple of years now,” Dillon said. But other residents say they shouldn’t have a community center named after a politician indicted under corruption charges.

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This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoodsfunded by J-Lab.

In partnership with Philadelphia Neighborhoods as part of an Enterprise Reporting Fund grant from J-Lab: The Institute of Interactive Journalism, our reporters will take an in-depth look at the development and revitalization efforts in the district, specifically along the Frankford Avenue corridor in Mayfair, where Perzel concentrated his resources. continue reading »

State Senator Christine Tartaglione is “disappointed” with outgoing Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s veto of a bill that would extend the requirements of municipalities to provide health coverage for firefighters diagnosed with various cancers.

House bill 1231, dubbed the cancer presumption bill for firefighters, had some bipartisan support, but Rendell, who vetoed two other bills the same day, expressed concern about excessive costs to already burdened local governments. Nearly two dozen Pennsylvania mayors signed a letter urging Rendell to veto the measure, which was introduced by state Rep. Kevin Murphy and backed by Tartaglione, among others.

“I’m very disappointed with our outgoing governor,” she said of Rendell, while addressing just three residents and a handful of executive board members at the Frankford Civic Association meeting inside Aria Health Frankford. “This bill will come back next year.”

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