The debt solution is imminent.
That’s what we in and out of the city of Harrisburg have been hearing for the past three months. While another month has come and gone with no official pronouncement, punctuated by grinning politicians posing in photo ops, there are declarations made here and there.
One was made on July 11 at the Harrisburg Regional Chamber of Commerce and CREDC Community Forum on Economic Development by outgoing Mayor Linda Thompson. She said, “In the next several months, there will be a solution that will not only take care of the incinerator debt, but will also leave no stranded debt on the backs of the taxpayers of this city.”
Thompson also declared that the solution will include a plan to balance the city’s budget and assure it stays that way over the next five years. Giving credit to her own administration, she said that whoever is next mayor “will find things in much better order than what I did when I took office.”
We’re not exactly sure if this is true because, for the most part, the public has been kept out of the loop. Key phrases like “agreement in principle” and other scuttlebutt trickle down to the street, but, overall, we don’t know what’s going on, when it will happen or what the terms of the solution will be.
That’s the design of receivership, though. State takeover of the city’s situation dictates there is really no room for public input. Our elected leaders, we are told, have failed us. Thus, the structure of authority has spoken and is setting up to fix the problems. The state law was written and swiftly implemented to account for the crisis. All the while, the people of the city are stuck in the middle like children in a divorce, pawns in some conceptual game of power.
As a result of this alienation, there is a prominent attitude that the state, in its infinite wisdom, is failing the people of Harrisburg because it is neglecting to be sensitive to the citizens’ sense of democracy and freedom. We the people of Harrisburg are being done to. This is happening to us under the guise of for us. The message implied is that this is unavoidable, that this is what must be done. Officials have flunked, so a receiver needed to be put in their stead to fix the situation.
Indeed, there are some absolute challenges on the table that have nothing to do with the public and can’t be solved by the public because the public was never consulted in the first place. “The public” was used as collateral. “The public” was placated and made apathetic. “The public” didn’t give enough input when it perhaps could have made a difference.
Thus, it’s easier for many people to withdraw, shrug shoulders and say “c’est la vie.”
Unfortunately, for Harrisburg residents, that seems a viable survival mechanism as so many feel they are being dragged along this ride of bureaucracy and politics. It’s a challenge to understand what happened, what could happen or what didn’t happen. Even more onerous is attempting to process it and develop a stance on it.
These macro issues may be the headlines and proclamations that grasp the most attention, but, if the city is to have true recovery, it will need the public to be aware, engaged and optimistic about the city’s future. When it comes down to it, what’s broken will not get fixed by the receiver, but by the people, not only those who live within the city’s limits, though. The people of the region will have to play a part in it, too.
We must keep in mind that the receiver is here for one thing and one thing only: to solve the city’s debt problem. The other problems of the city—the deficient governance, the messy infrastructure, the lack of a community-based comprehensive plan, the social tensions, the distrust and the lack of collaboration to address all of it—that’s on us.
The receiver will leave, and, hopefully, the story of the debt with him. Then the slate is left for us to do what we will with it.
If the Thompson administration foresees its own legacy, there’s a better way to set it up than to give itself accolades for the upcoming debt solution that a state team will ultimately make happen.
Rather, in her final months in office, the mayor would do well to concentrate on the basic needs of Harrisburg. She is in a position to use her bully pulpit to educate residents and visitors alike on taking care of this urban core. Discuss ordinances about trash receptacles, vermin prevention, noise considerations and blight. Move beyond the podium at the press conference and travel around the city to talk about what’s already on the books and what already exists as codified ordinances of Harrisburg. Educate the public on community responsibility, on residential duties whether a homeowner or a renter, a landlord or a business. Generate leadership, goodwill, action, attraction and hope.
Undoubtedly, the debt solution will be put before us soon. It will be a done deal given to us in its whole form no matter what we have to say about it. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing left for us to do. Once the solution is complete, it will be the people’s turn to take over and fix this city.
Tara Leo Auchey is is creator and editor of todays the day Harrisburg.
