Tag Archives: Mayor Eric Papenfuse

Patience and Time: The reconstruction of Harrisburg will need long-term vision, effort.

June 30, 2014 | by Tara Leo Auchey

It’s been six months since the city of Harrisburg has officially been in recovery. Six months since the deal was signed, the Harrisburg Strong Plan enacted, and the city considered out of its “fiscal crisis.”

In that same time, a new mayor took office.

Eric Papenfuse rode in on a wave of great ambition, which largely reflected a public push for change. Fueled, too, by the state’s expectations, Papenfuse exhibited a determination to lead the city to glory.

When he was elected in November, Papenfuse said he and his team intended to “make Harrisburg a model for the whole country.” He spoke of taking the city “out of its current state of despair and into a new era of pride and prosperity.”

Everyone—the mayor included—wanted to see much get done fast.

After four years of the Thompson administration, three years of state oversight, and a year of listening to the negotiations of the crisis, people want to see the immediate benefits of the so-called “recovery” of Pennsylvania’s capital city.

However, the state would have been better to call the recovery plan the reconstruction plan, because that’s really what we’re in.

We’re in a period of rebuilding—not just physically but politically, mentally and emotionally.

We’re a citizenry re-establishing a relationship with our elected leaders—and they with us. The people of Harrisburg—the region not just the city—are trying to figure out if they are proud or ashamed of this place.

There are members of the public declaring enough isn’t enough and that the foundation is weak. Then there are those who are trying to cope and have hope that things will indeed improve.

This juxtaposition of attitude and stance is typical in a period of reconstruction. During these times, people have great expectations and great impatience for change of condition and society.

In Harrisburg, the air of expectation and impatience is palpable. I hear often the lament of when. When will this happen? When will that occur? When will this get done? Residents, commuters and observers from outside continually inquire.

Of course, we all have lists of wants. Undoubtedly, the public’s list of desires is similar to the mayor’s. One and all want Harrisburg to be better, and, with a glance around, we could see that meant fixing streetlights, maintaining roads and improving basic services like trash collection, codes enforcement and policing.

Of course, there also are the differences in the lists—different priorities, different approaches, different perspectives, different ideals and different visions.

Since January, the city’s communications director has sent out scores of press releases announcing various initiatives like the Broad Street Market Task Force, City Hall Beautiful, Adopt-a-Park, a program to reduce gun violence, an agreement with the fire union, the Housing Court, a lighting repair program, a “Word in the Burg” television program and a summertime campaign.

Papenfuse has revamped the budget, debated City Council about a variety of things, including new positions and a hiring freeze, and denounced the school district’s recovery officer.

That’s a lot. Maybe too much. Perhaps not enough at all.

The fact of the matter—and something for the public and the Papenfuse administration alike to remember—is that the city’s government doesn’t have the wherewithal to accomplish certain tasks, especially in this first year.

Harrisburg is still short-staffed and broke, and everything that needs to get done comes with paperwork, processes and procedures, some of which must be designed along the way.

Rushed notions of accomplishment can mess up the renewal and poison the vital optimism necessary in times like these. And, while enthusiasm naturally wanes every day people don’t see the improvements they want, it can be re-sparked again with the opportunity of long-term sustainability.

It’s impossible to eliminate anger, frustration and annoyance at the pace of reconstruction.

Fortunately, those feelings can serve as motivators for movement. They can also destroy the delicate sense of potential that envelopes a city attempting to reconstruct itself.

At this point in the year, we would all do well to reconsider our expectations and recheck our lists of priorities. This is a good time to revamp our ideas of what progress is and think about the long haul. Objectives like pride and prosperity will surely take longer than one administration’s tenure to establish. It will take more than a generation of people to sustain. It will take patience and time.

After all, ultimately, the point is not only to recover but to rebuild Harrisburg.

June News Digest

June 29, 2014 | by Lawrance Binda

School Tax Unchanged

The Harrisburg school board last month kept the school portion of the local property tax unchanged, as it reported a rare budget surplus.

The board unanimously passed a $133 million budget for the 2014-15 school year that retains the tax rate at 27.92 mills. School property tax bills will go out this month.

Recently, school property taxes have increased each year, as the board has struggled with recurring budget deficits. However, Gene Veno, the district’s chief recovery officer, announced last year that a financial analysis had discovered an unexpected surplus of about $12 million.

In addition, the board announced last month that it would reinstitute full-day kindergarten for the coming school year. Two years ago, kindergarten was cut to half-day after being threatened with elimination entirely.

The board also reappointed school Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney to another four-year term. Her base salary will remain unchanged at $160,000 per year.

Lastly, the board unanimously denied the revised application of Key Charter School, which had hoped to open in the former site of Bishop McDevitt High School at 2200 Market St. in Harrisburg. The board cited numerous deficiencies in the application in such areas as curriculum, student assessment and staff training.

Zoning Code Effort Revived

Harrisburg has revived a long-dormant effort to re-haul its aged zoning code, with a City Council vote expected early this month.

Council last month began discussing the code in a committee meeting, after which two public input sessions were held. A final vote on the new code is slated for the July 8 legislative session.

The effort to revamp the city’s zoning code began about five years ago to try to streamline and simplify a code that had become overly complex and even obsolete, according to the city. Over the years, the code, originally passed in 1950, had grown to include 27 base zoning districts and six overlay districts. The new code includes just nine base districts and four overlay districts.

After a year of work by Harrisburg’s planning bureau, City Council introduced the new code in 2010, but never acted on it. The code, with just a few adjustments, now has been reintroduced as the 2014 Zoning Code draft.

In a separate effort, Harrisburg also is in the process of developing a comprehensive plan for the city.

Task Force Meets

The Harrisburg Strong Task Force has held two meetings so the public could comment on a future nonprofit that will decide how to spend the city’s dedicated infrastructure and economic development funds.

The 10-member task force met twice at the Greater Harrisburg Area YWCA, briefing the public on its mission and asking for input. Ideas from the audience ranged from fixing sinkholes to fighting blight to helping employ youth.

The task force now will draft a governance structure and action plan that will guide the work of a future non-profit corporation that will disburse money earmarked exclusively for improving Harrisburg’s infrastructure and boosting its economic development efforts.

The Harrisburg Strong financial recovery plan created two funding silos, each for $6 million, for these two purposes. The future nonprofit will allocate money after judging the worthiness of projects and their ability to raise matching funds.

311 Number Confirmed

Harrisburg is on track to have a new 311 information system for non-emergency government services, thanks to the state Public Utility Commission’s approval of a city petition to administer the three-digit dialing code.

The 311 code, which will be restricted to Harrisburg residents, will connect callers to a centralized, automated directory of city services. Under the existing system, residents either would need to look up the numbers of individual city departments or, as often happened, would simply dial 911 with non-emergency calls, tying up the county’s dispatchers.

Mayor Eric Papenfuse recommended the adoption of a 311 system during his campaign for office last year. In March, the city submitted a petition to the PUC, which announced its approval following a 5-0 vote by its commissioners.

Papenfuse added that certain infrastructure upgrades necessary for running the system were well underway. In the next few months, the city expects to replace its phone system with one that will be able to accommodate 311 calls.

Summer in the City

The Dauphin County regional tourism bureau has budgeted close to $100,000 for Harrisburg’s “Summer in the City” promotional campaign, an effort to market the city’s summer cultural offerings on billboards, buses and the Web, city officials announced Friday.

The campaign highlights such events as the “Harrisburg Independence Weekend Walkaround,” a three-day program of festivities scheduled for the July 4 weekend. The full program, which can be viewed at Stayandplayhbg.com, includes free concerts in city parks, “family fun” festivals, a martial arts tournament and a reading of the Declaration of Independence.

The campaign will be promoted on area billboards as well as on each bus in Capital Area Transit’s 80-bus fleet. The Hershey Harrisburg Regional Visitors Bureau hired Top Flight Media, an advertising agency headquartered on Lindle Road in Swatara Township, to design the campaign.

Funding for the marketing campaign comes from the county’s hotel tax, a levy on overnight lodging that was raised from 3 percent to 5 percent in 2008. According to county ordinance, a portion of hotel tax revenues—about 13 percent—is to be spent on “appropriate and reasonable marketing and promotional expenses” for tourism in Harrisburg.

New Manager for Market

The Broad Street Market last month hired Ashlee O. Dugan, a member of the market corporation’s board and the founder of a local food-recovery organization, as its newest full-time interim manager.

She replaced Len Cobosco from the Camp Hill accounting firm Carey Associates, who came on as an interim manager in June 2013. Cobosco will remain employed by the market as a part-time financial manager, board members confirmed.

Officially, the position is transitional, since the market’s operations and organizational structure are still under review by the Broad Street Market Task Force. The market may open the search for a permanent manager again following the task force’s recommendations, Dugan said.

Amy Hill, a volunteer board member doing public relations outreach for the market, noted that Dugan has a “legacy connection” to the market. Dugan’s great-grandfather, Gilbert S. Miller, operated a butcher stand at the market from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.

Previously, Dugan served as a membership and marketing coordinator at the Pennsylvania Downtown Center. She also is the founder of The Greenhouse, an organization with the goal of locating and saving food that might otherwise go to waste.

The Broad Street Market has gone through numerous managers over the past few years. For more about its history and the efforts of the task force, read our feature in the April issue (“A Simple Plan,” p.14).

Fire Bureau Gets FEMA Grant

The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire last month received a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Assistance to Firefighters Grant of $114,840.

The grant will provide for advanced training and education of firefighters and fire officers in the bureau, said Acting Chief Brian Enterline.

“This grant was successfully obtained due to the collaboration and dedication of the city’s grants manager and some young brilliant firefighters and fire officers that are eager to rebuild the Bureau of Fire,” Enterline said.

He added that, over the coming year, firefighters and fire officers will attend classes that offer training and education in areas such as technical rescue, nationally certified fire officer and firefighter safety.

“These classes are essential for keeping our firefighters safe and expanding their knowledge in many aspects of firefighting,” Enterline stated.

The primary goal of the grant is to meet the emergency response needs of fire departments and nonaffiliated emergency medical service organizations. Since 2001, the grant has helped firefighters and other first responders obtain needed equipment, protective gear, emergency vehicles, training and other resources to help protect the public and emergency personnel from fire and related hazards.

Changing Hands

Adrian St., 2474: M. & B. Sumy to M. Jones, $58,000

Allison Ct., 6: T. Pham to 2013 M&M Real Estate Fund LLC, $38,000

Benton St., 600: A. Allegrini c/o J. Chubb to T. Griffin, $114,900

Benton St., 631: Fannie Mae to PA Deals LLC, $50,000

Berryhill St., 2306: T. Vo to Jiang Brothers Realty LLC, $40,000

Berryhill St., 2321: R. & L. Mason to L. Chen, $270,000

Berryhill St., 2437: J. Howarth to C. Still, $54,000

Briggs St., 231: J. Theurer et al to C. Natcher & J. McCadney, $92,500

Brook St., 346: Kirsch & Burns LLC to LMK Properties LLC, $31,200

Chestnut St., 2114: T. Cubitt to S. Felmlee & R. Church, $169,000

Duke St., 2433: P. Bui to 2013 Central PA Real Estate Fund LLC, $45,000

Duke St., 2622: PI Capitol LLC & J. Pierce to J. Conjar, $116,000

Forster St., 123: M. Warden to Heit Holdings LLC, $345,000

Forster St., 1815: Trusted Source Capital LLC to Blackscotch LLC, $30,000

Fulton St., 1705: Cartus Financial Corp. to R. Dickinson, $125,000

Green St., 1400: T. Wiestling to P. Misivich, $119,000

Green St., 1928: R. Riley & K. Stutzman to M. & S. Young, $205,000

Green St., 2223: C. Barner to J. & B. Readinger, $50,000

Harris St., 212: E. McKee to R. Evanchak, $136,000

Herr St., 1933: J. Kim to Bajwa & Rana LLC, $250,000

Hoffman St., 3100: B. Cates to A. Bhatti, $154,900

Hummel St., 203: Vitosh Investment Group LLC to Brethren Housing Assoc., $73,000

Kelker St., 218: Integrity Bank to C. Proctor & J. Mesa Cruz, $114,500

Kensington St., 2364: PA Deals LLC to M. & D. Graeff, $68,000

Kensington St., 2422: L. Schroeder to PA Deals LLC, $43,500

Locust St., 110 & 112: Mid Penn Bank to Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, $140,000

Midland Rd., 2401: D. Hollinger to J. & L. Arnold, $155,000

N. 2^nd St., 2437: D. Powell to C. Dove, $41,500

N. 4^th St., 2144: Kirsch & Burns LLC to LMK Properties LLC, $33,967

N. 14^th St., 322: D. Boyle to G. Lopez Figueroa, $30,000

N. 18^th St., 800, 1716 North St., 1717 North St., 1820 North St., 1913 Forster St. & 1915 Briggs St.: Shokes Enterprises LLC to JDP 2014 LLC, $499,000

N. Front St., 17: Association of County Commissioners to Harrisburg Building & Grounds Co., $525,000

Reily St., 219: PA Deals LLC to S. Briffa, $109,900

Royal Terr., 135: PA Deals LLC to S. Maurer, $38,500

S. 14^th St., 400: J. Rodriguez to R. Rodriguez, $40,000

S. 18^th St., 31 & 33: N. Grove to Capital City Investment Properties LLC, $67,500

S. 25^th St., 615: R. Pursel & Keystone Guardianship Services to 2013 Central PA Real Estate Fund LLC, $42,250

S. Cameron St., 443: P. Dobson to F. & D. Miller, $100,000

S. Cameron St., 1607: J. & R. Mallonee to I. Claytor, $61,900

S. Cameron St., 1660: Bemar Enterprises to D&F Complex on Cameron LP, $281,000

State St., 1935 & 1937 State St.: W. Kyles to C. Johnson, $112,000

Susquehanna St., 2142: FTM Properties LLC to A. Moore, $88,000

Verbeke St., 112: Random Properties Acquisition Corp. III to PA Deals LLC, $46,250

Verbeke St., 340: 44 Breed Street Nominee Trust & F. Ciccone to Historic Holdings LLC, $380,000

Vernon St., 1553: D. Boyle to J. Rodriguez, $30,000

Washington St., 111: Sirva Relocation Credit LLC to C. Altman, $129,000

Harrisburg property sales for May 2014, greater than $30,000. Source: Dauphin County. Data is assumed to be accurate.

County Tourism Bureau to Fund “Summer in the City” Promotional Campaign

June 13, 2014 | by Paul Barker

Top Flight Media’s Darren Smith at Friday’s press conference in city hall. At right, a rendering of a campaign poster at a city bus stop.

The Dauphin County regional tourism bureau has budgeted close to $100,000 for Harrisburg’s “Summer in the City” promotional campaign, an all-out effort to market the city’s summer cultural offerings on billboards, buses and the Web, city officials announced Friday.

The campaign, which will launch on June 23, will highlight such events as the “Harrisburg Independence Weekend Walkaround,” a three-day program of festivities scheduled for the July 4 weekend. The full program, which can be viewed at Stayandplayhbg.com, includes free concerts in city parks, “family fun” festivals, a martial arts tournament and a reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Mary Smith, president of the Hershey Harrisburg Regional Visitors Bureau, joined Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse at a press conference Friday morning in city hall to announce the campaign, which will be promoted on area billboards as well as on each bus in Capital Area Transit’s 80-bus fleet.

Bob Philbin, a spokesman for CAT and the city’s former chief of operations under Mayor Linda Thompson, said CAT buses were estimated to produce 3.5 million impressions over the course of the campaign. If the campaign runs through Labor Day, Sept. 1, that figure would amount to 50,000 impressions per day.

The visitors bureau hired Top Flight Media, an advertising agency headquartered on Lindle Road, to design the campaign. Darren Smith, Top Flight’s senior vice president, said Friday that this is Top Flight’s fourth year working with the bureau, and that his company sought to “over-deliver” on the city’s marketing needs.

Of the 13 percent of hotel taxes earmarked for marketing Harrisburg, most of it—around 8 percent—is paid directly to the Harrisburg treasurer. The other 5 percent is distributed to the Hershey Harrisburg Regional Visitors Bureau, which is Dauphin County’s designated tourism promotion agency. The bureau also gets 20 percent of total hotel tax revenue for county-wide tourism promotion.

Since 2011, total hotel tax revenues have come in between $9 and $10 million, according to figures provided by the county treasurer. Based on the allocation formula, the amount sent to the visitors bureau explicitly for spending on city tourism should have been just below half-a-million dollars each year—$445,000 in 2011, $450,000 in 2012, and $485,000 in 2013.

Rick Dunlap, the bureau’s public relations director, said it was hard to say what the bureau actually spent to market the city in those years. City and regional tourism often overlap, as when someone books a night at the Hilton downtown and then visits Hersheypark the next day, Dunlap said. But between media tours, sales missions and other promotions, he felt confident that the bureau had spent an amount “up to and exceeding” the revenues slated for city promotion.

Dunlap also said, however, that the absence of any formal marketing campaign made it difficult to provide a solid figure on spending. Prior to the administration of Harrisburg’s former mayor, Linda Thompson, marketing campaigns were typically brainstormed by a subcommittee of city and bureau representatives. In fact, the county ordinance provides for approval of such a spending plan by the regional visitors bureau in relation to city marketing dollars.

But a meeting between bureau representatives and Mayor Thompson, which took place early in her term, had indicated that her administration either had little time or little interest in a regional tourism plan, Dunlap said. “The past administration had quite a focus on keeping water out of their boat,” he said, referring to the city’s fiscal crisis. “There was less engagement from a tourism aspect.”

Attempts to reach Thompson for comment Friday were unsuccessful.

City Receives Gifts to Improve City Hall, Police Bureau

May 12, 2014 | by Lawrance Binda

City Council chambers in Harrisburg City Hall.

Harrisburg has received several donations to improve City Hall and the Public Safety Building, the city said today.

Penn National Insurance donated $5,000 to help make repairs and renovations to the downtown building and will repair the flag post in the courtyard that was damaged recently when a car struck it, said spokeswoman Joyce Davis.

Touch of Color Flooring soon will re-carpet the public hallway on the second floor, she said. Harrisburg-based Touch of Color already has installed new carpeting in the Public Safety Building’s Emergency Operations Center and walkway from City Hall, as well as in the main elevators.

In addition, the College Club of Harrisburg recently donated $100 to the City Hall Beautiful Fund, which has received other donations from individuals throughout the Harrisburg area, according to the city.

The family of the late Gov. George M. Leader has donated labor and materials to renovate the police bureau’s roll call and break rooms, in addition to new appliances for the break room, the city said.

“We continue to see area businesses and individuals step up to show support for Harrisburg’s recovery,” said Mayor Eric Papenfuse, who will officially announce the gifts tomorrow at a press conference. “The outpouring of local and regional support to help our capital city thrive is truly heartening. We encourage other civic-minded businesses throughout the region to join in this important program to maintain our government center.”

Balancing Act

May 9, 2014 | by Paul Barker

With receivership more than two months gone, and higher parking prices here to stay, it’s time we addressed an important question: where will Harrisburg’s prophets of doom direct their relentless cynicism?

One likely candidate is the 2014 budget. On Wednesday, during a City Council committee hearing, Mayor Eric Papenfuse announced a temporary hiring freeze, estimating that this year’s budget was more than $1 million out of balance. Given that the receiver’s Harrisburg Strong Plan projected a balanced budget through 2016, and that words like “hiring freeze” call to mind recent years of crisis, the announcement might have been expected to generate some carping about a failed recovery.

The important thing to remember about a budget, though, is that it’s only as good as its managers. The “balanced” 2014 budget, for all the expert advice that helped craft it, is really a mixture of educated guesswork and wishful thinking—revenues may or may not come in as predicted, and surprise events might add unexpected costs. There was also some amount of fudging, as with the $3.9 million “negative expenditure” tucked away on one line item towards the bottom, representing hoped-for personnel savings and as-yet-unfilled positions.

With respect to the revenues, there’s not much the city can do except hold its breath. As Councilman Ben Allatt, the budget and finance committee chair, explained, raising taxes isn’t really an option—residents are already feeling the pain of last year’s hikes. Steven Goldfield, a financial advisor to the receiver, also noted that two important revenue streams, the earned income tax (EIT) and parking system revenues, have been slow to arrive. In the case of the EIT, the problem largely seems to have been that small businesses failed to withhold properly under the new rates. In the case of parking revenues, a long winter, postponed installment of on-street meters and a delay in the consolidation of state parking contracts meant the city didn’t see its first payment until May 1.

Goldfield remained confident that the city would see its full $2 million payment, though he said he’d feel better once the second installment arrived. But in the meantime, the city must decide how to manage the possibility of a shortfall, which is where the expenses come in. Bruce Weber, the city’s finance director, explained that the city can really only control personnel costs: the other major expenses, health care and debt service, can’t be adjusted, at least in the short term.

That’s where the hiring freeze comes in, and it’s a choice that, in a sense, the original budget predicted. Most of the $3.9 million “negative expenditure” consisted of positions the budget hoped to fill, but which the mayor could leave empty at his discretion. It’s true that the city could use more staff (Weber and others have called current staffing levels “skeletal”). But it’s also true that, in the face of slower or lower revenues, it’s important that city officials not make promises they can’t keep.

The city’s budget may not be perfectly balanced, but it’s a vastly closer matching of revenues to expenses than Harrisburg has seen in years. And, Allatt said, one of his takeaways from Wednesday was that elected officials are “working together” to manage the budget as it goes. “Hiring freeze” has a ring of crisis about it, because it sounds like the fiscal distress of prior years. To capture the difference between then and now, a better word might be “prudence.”

Firefighters Agree to Cuts, Health Care Cost Sharing Under New Labor Contract

February 13, 2014 | by Paul Barker

Photo credit: Brian Bastinelli, BrianBastinelli.com.

The Harrisburg chapter of the International Association of Firefighters has agreed to a new labor agreement, Mayor Eric Papenfuse announced on Tuesday. The agreement, which the union approved by a 38 to 15 vote, includes reductions in scheduled salary increases, an increase in employee health care contributions and salary cuts for new hires. It also represents the final concession from the city’s labor unions required as part of the state-appointed receiver’s recovery plan.

“I think the important thing to note here today is that a tremendous number of sacrifices are being made by the members of the firefighters’ union in an effort to allow this city to move forward,” Papenfuse said. In meetings with the firefighters, he said, he had tried to convey that, without contract modifications, “the budget would not be balanced and the city would stay mired in the financial difficulties that had gotten us first into Act 47 and then into receivership.”

The mayor’s proposed budget for 2014 already included the expected savings under the new agreement, projected to be around $1.6 million, or around $20,000 for each of the 79 bargaining-unit positions in the fire department. This figure is somewhat misleading, however, as the direct effect on an individual firefighter depends on his or her time of hire, family size and consumption of health care.

Some of the savings are achieved through the elimination of scheduled pay raises, previously set under a contract extension signed by former Mayor Stephen Reed. The raises, which had been set at 3 percent per year beginning in 2013, will be zeroed out in 2013 and 2014 and replaced with a 1-percent raise in 2015.

A sizeable portion of the projected savings—around $485,000 per year, according to Susan B. Friedman, a lawyer for the receiver—will come from a change in firefighters’ health care plans. Formerly, the majority of firefighters contributed nothing to the cost of coverage beyond their co-pays. Under the new agreement, their health care plans will now include partial contributions from each paycheck, at a rate of $40 for individuals and $90 for family care, as well as deductibles, out-of-pocket maximums and a change in co-payments for prescriptions.

The largest chunk of the savings, around $520,000, is expected to come from a reduction in numbers manning each shift, from 16 to 14 firefighters.

On Tuesday, Mayor Papenfuse attributed the union vote, in part, to a pair of “behind-closed-doors meetings” he held with firefighters in January, during which he tried to restore trust between the city and its public safety personnel. “We met right where they sleep, right inside their quarters,” he said. “I extended a hand of partnership, of trust, and I am pleased to say I was met with a hand from the other side.”

Glenn Sattizahn, the local union president, also acknowledged the mayor’s role in bringing the new agreement to a vote. “The turning point, I would venture to say, was after the meetings with the mayor,” Sattizahn said. “He’s quite persuasive.”

But, Sattizahn added, continued pressure from the receiver’s office, which could eventually compel the firefighters to comply through the courts, also played a role. “There wasn’t really a whole lot of compromise,” he said. “We were, for the most part, forced into this.”

Old Business

February 12, 2014 | by Paul Barker

Susan Brown-Wilson, foreground, and other members of City Council at council’s legislative session, Tuesday, Feb. 11.

During her opening statement at last night’s legislative session, a few moments before she and her colleagues swiftly gutted the proposed pay raises and new positions in Mayor Eric Papenfuse’s 2014 budget, City Council President Wanda Williams asked the assembly to remember Feb. 13, 2010.

On that day, she recalled, council rejected the proposed raises of the newly elected Mayor Linda Thompson, whose first budget included a similar raft of pay increases. “I have to be consistent and fair,” Williams said. “I cannot treat this administration any different when it comes to fiscal responsibility.” She then proceeded to lead council members through a series of votes that, amendment by amendment, strained the Papenfuse proposal through the sieve of austerity.

They cut the proposed raises for the communications director, Joyce Davis ($9,500); the finance director, Bruce Weber ($4,950); the human resources director ($4,000); and the special assistant to the mayor ($5,000). They trimmed the salary for the heftily titled “Senior Advisor for Education, Youth & Civic Engagement,” Karl Singleton ($9,500), and removed a new position, director of sustainability, from the budget entirely. They even slashed the vacant position of business administrator, from $79,500 to $75,000—less than the cut to Singleton and Davis, which makes sense, because it’s better to save the biggest slaps for faces that are actually there.

To sum up, it was the old familiar scene in city hall. Facing requests from the mayor, council members threw up a wall of resistance and naysaying in order to achieve—well, what, exactly? Apparently not savings. No sooner had council stacked up the clippings from the Papenfuse budget than they proceeded to spend them all, restoring a “diversity officer” position at an annual salary of $50,000. The decision effectively reversed a separate proposal of the mayor’s, to consolidate the diversity officer’s role, which had been vacated in early January, with another position in human resources. This led to a long and tortured discussion about whether such a position was necessary, followed by council’s conclusion that it was, followed by a recess, as it was realized that the sum of council’s alterations was an imbalanced budget. (This was finally resolved by a $5,000 cut to the restored, and vacant, diversity officer position.)

It’s fair, of course, to question whether the mayor’s proposed raises are really about attracting the “best and brightest,” as he has said. Papenfuse filled many of the positions with close allies from his campaign—no surprise there—who will no doubt stay on board irrespective of the lure of a higher salary. But residents who were pleased with council’s performance last night might pause to reflect on what it represents, and whether it’s really worth celebrating.

For one, it would appear that communication between the mayor and council has already broken down. During the recess, Papenfuse said his overtures to discuss the budget had been rebuffed by every member except Ben Allatt. (Allatt, in any case, voted in favor of the cuts.) Instead, council simply sent him their proposed amendments by email on Tuesday afternoon. One member, Sandra Reid, seemed delighted with this strategy. When asked whether she had tried to engage with the mayor, she referred, with a smile, to a “gift” she had given him—a bag of sugar cubes, with a message about everyone “having to take their lumps.” It’s one thing to disagree with the mayor, but quite another to skip the step of negotiating and head straight for childishness and snark.

The second disturbing thing about last night’s session is how little council seems to have bothered with Papenfuse’s rationales. The boost to the human resources director, for instance, was meant to reflect the addition of a labor-law background to the position’s qualifications. In testimony last week, Papenfuse explained that the solicitor’s office was routinely inundated with legal questions from human resources; by placing a lawyer at the H.R. helm, he hoped to free up the solicitor for other matters. Council ignored this justification and made the cut without discussion. They did the same for the position of mayor’s assistant, despite the fact that the “raise” really reflected a consolidation of positions in the former mayor’s cabinet, from two assistants to one.

Before and after their votes, members of council claimed to defer to a sense of fairness, particularly with regard to the financial pain distributed across Harrisburg’s populace. They wanted to be the voice of residents, who have put up with increased taxes, and workers, who have put up with frozen wages. And indeed, at the start of Tuesday’s session, a handful of residents admonished council not to grant raises to a few in the mayor’s cabinet when many continue to endure cuts in the name of recovery.

But council went a good deal further than fairness, and wound up making adjustments that were indiscriminate and, in many cases, petty. The city will now spend exactly what it would have before, but in place of the mayor’s own cabinet priorities, we have a redundancy in human resources. And, thanks to the preferred style of several members of council, we also have that old Harrisburg standby—pointless acrimony.

Form and Function

January 6, 2014 | by Paul Barker

The atrium Monday morning at city hall.

“The idea was to create an indoor civic space, similar to an outdoor civic space, like the plaza outside.”

So said Martin Murray, formerly of Murray Associates, the architecture firm that designed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., City Government Center—or, as Harrisburg residents know it, city hall.

Murray, who retired in 2003, was describing the sunny atrium beyond the center’s brick façade, which earlier that day had witnessed the inauguration of Mayor Eric Papenfuse, along with the swearing-in of other newly elected officials.

The atrium rises through several floors of overlooking balconies to a transparent ceiling, which usually floods the interior with natural light. While the building was being constructed, in 1981, the soon-to-be Mayor Stephen Reed, then on the campaign trail, criticized the atrium as a waste of space. “But once he was elected,” Murray said, “he made great use of it.” Now the atrium is home to potted plants, a rotating art exhibit, and innumerable press conferences.

It was also, until very recently, home to a metal detector that may or may not have impeded the impression of an open space. But Papenfuse, in advance of the inauguration, had ordered its removal. “I felt it sent the wrong message and set the wrong tone,” he said. On Monday morning, in place of the plastic baskets for phones and keys, the welcome desk held an array of free pocket-sized booklets titled “Where To Go When You Need Help.”

As with each piece of architectural design, each political gesture has a form and a function. There’s the question of what it does, and there’s the question of how it looks. Inaugurations, of course, are ripe for such gestures, and the Papenfuse team had prepared many—from the ejected detector to the absence of an inaugural speech to the choice, applauded by many observers, to forgo an inaugural ball. Whatever his mayoralty will actually mean, it’s clear enough how he wants it to be interpreted: as a harbinger of frugality, openness, and getting down to work.

The most complicated of these gestures came after the ceremony, when Papenfuse and his communications director, Joyce Davis, accompanied members of the press on a tour of the center’s most dilapidated corners. A press release had described the mayor’s team being “alarmed” at the “evident lack of maintenance, the unkempt appearance of the offices and the inattention to proper record-keeping” throughout the building. In lieu of donations to an inaugural ball, Papenfuse was asking for members of the community to chip in to help fund a facelift for city hall.

On Monday, in the company of Police Chief Thomas Carter, Captains Annette Oates and Colin Cleary, and Public Works Director Kevin Hagerich, they led reporters on something of an inverted Potemkin tour. Floor by floor, the group pointed out select scenes of decay, as if to prove that things really were as bad as the press release said they were.

The worst offenders were in the Public Safety Building, across a second-story footbridge from the mayor’s office and home to the city engineer and police department. On the lower level, water damage was destroying the acoustic ceiling; several tiles had rotted apart, or were missing altogether. A police investigator pointed a flashlight at one of the holes, as if identifying the site of a break-in (“You’re paying an officer’s salary to these guys, and they wind up having to do custodial work,” Hagerich said).

Papenfuse seemed particularly appalled by the police break room, a fusty, dimly lit corner on the other side of a doorway scrawled with the words “2014 TRAFFIC CITATION: $37.50.” “I would personally be embarrassed to have an apartment that I would rent that would look like this,” he said. “It’s unacceptable.” It was about as close to indignant as Papenfuse got on the whole tour, though it was hard to see what, exactly, he had fixated on. The room held an antediluvian fridge and vending machine, but otherwise appeared perfectly functional.

In fact, the question of how extensive the damage was nagged at this reporter throughout the tour. Certainly, city hall was dingy. But was it unusually dingy? At one point, the group paused in a parking lot below city hall that was shadowy and gloomy—like every below-ground parking lot I’ve ever been in. In the police break room, various people remarked on how dirty the floor was. Was that evidence of neglect? Or was it a result of the very recent snowstorm, which caused people to track salt and dirt inside?

The gesture, given that it was calculated, could not have been hoped simply to show that cities without money fall to pieces. We knew that already, and anyway, that’s hardly the stuff of good press releases. Nor was it only about the need for city hall to be more welcoming, or to keep better records, though I believe Papenfuse is sincere in both those ambitions.

No, I suspect the Papenfuse team wanted a kind of inaugural twofer: an official, forward-looking statement on plans for a cleanup, and an implicit backwards shot at the former custodian of city hall. At the end of the tour, Papenfuse remarked that at least his office would not need renovations. He was referring, indirectly, to Mayor Linda Thompson’s well-publicized makeover of the office early in her term. The remark was part of the inaugural symbolism: a signal that Papenfuse’s new beginning meant something else’s end.

“If I had been doing things,” he said, sitting in the mayor’s chair, “my own office would have been the last to be repaired.”

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