District attorney lynne ape abraham. The former p kenney kenney. The former Vice President of margareting and communications for e1pgw, doug oifrlt. Otr t hahp hc rmer state senator milton jf street. Andt curren. 3 state in senator, anthony williams. Quickni reminder,82tu┐3uz onee1 minute to answer each question. We will begin with this. I think all of you would agree that education is really a key issue in this election. The 84 million budget shortfall is a cloudlp hanging over our city and over the education system. As you may know mayor nutter has proposed a 9. 3 property tax that your q solution . 4 and if not, where would you find the money. Lets start with you Lynne Abraham. Thank you, jim. And thanks to nbc 10. I believe in a the recommendation of our mayor uq we put anotherco ngocnr9. 3 tax on real estat] is really regressive, and it hurts the people that most need to hold on to their dollars. I think i have urged city council to take up thejf issue of School Funding before the may primary, but unfortunately, they did not. I do believe that our governor help with the issues of School Funding and he proposes a percentage of Real Estate Tax that will be much lower. So the mayor is proposing a Real Estate Tax higher, and the jjujijrjco proposing a Real Estate Tax lower. Where would you find the one is convene a group of ,y e been talking about and thinking about taxes for a very long timeni to have a rational and fair tax policy so that we can have a recurring and always available tax base for us to pay for our r schools, to make surexd that our people have adequate coverage in everyni aspect of education, and make sure that ouri] children have a relentless he had voekt in education by me as their mayor. I dont hear any dollar figures or any percentages. Well, i think that the issue of percentage is a little premature. Weo[ know that we have to have to put at least id recommend at least 20 million into Early Childhood education. That i think we will have if dqktuqz the kinds of thinking5a about how we save tax dollars, how we trim our government, and how we can save andconit qgst those monies back into the School System by for exampleok raising thecxd use on occupancy tax and key coupling other taxes and making sure that we have ao q 9 rnor gets from the legislature and then well see what kinds of monies we need to rb proposal . If not, where would you6z fine the 4 money. No, i do not agree with e1it. I would look at whats best for the children. Whats best for the children ise1 to have a fullyxd fundsed program. I i you look at my website you will see that i have an that eightpoint proposalr includes the 108. 5 million that collected. All of those properties will give us an opportunity to collect another 75 million. X oc if you look at the website, you will seet point by point what im doing in this time period. I cant give you all÷d of the items. All right. Jim kenney do you agree with the mayors proposal . E1 no. I would say at thefa outset i the choice was the schools needed to close or weq needed the extra money. But i dont think that thesn d that we should be doing a tax increase again. There are places in the government where we can get this. Zero jfbased budgeting works well. It savedfa 3 a year and we can do it in philadelphia building from the bottom and note1 from the top down. I think we can do a procurement process, it is a live on timee1 xd auction, its not a closed bier where peopleni open the bid on one day and city around and compete with eachrother forq the city work. You can accomplish tphat in one year go through the entire city budget . Wex oc budgeted for a 2 savings. Montgomery county was at 3 . And at 2 which is conservative we can hit that number. I thinke1 commercialized liens not liens where people are put out of their homes, but securitization ofco liens could also bring in 40 million. Thats a one time thing. And yoeng ifnt want to get rid of theni taxni abatement. I like it it has done well. But the land thati] thenr Beta Properties were built on were sorely reassessed. Lp if we can reassess theland we can raise perhaps another 15 to 20 million. Thats recurring number. I also want to see what the governor is going to do. And i think he will be successful in bringing some dollars back to the city. So lets wait. Kt how about you, doug oliver . Do you agree with the 9 Real Estate Tax t increase. I would ratherok starte1 where we agree. We agree that editionok isnro[ paramount. Before we get to a conversation of raising taxes we have to expiope any number of other options, some of which are recurring funds, some of which areco oneco time. I believe we havergovernor who is committed to doing the safe. We are hopeful of getting money that comes from the state. 3 o he is willing to make sacrific hr t hahp hc order do that. It is the role5a] of the mayor to support him in that. I think we can look at payments from our secondaryo[education and Nonprofit Institutions but are sometimes run like privatexd they fought against that. Again, it doesnt have to be payments. It had beenozservices. At the enhd of the day we are trying to have a School System that works. Sometimes it is a mou n issue. Sometime it is a management or curriculum issue. We need to anything your out which is which. Before we raise taxes, lets explore that option look atnb all theco delinquent taxes that havent been paid and altho that is one time money there are other ways of generating money by keeping the cityi] closed after 2 p. M. W3 could be revisited and viewed as a way of generating money for our school street. Milton street do you agree with the mayorsq proposal . No. And many shall perish for lack of knowledge. Money. Whatzhkppens is we dont go to the very basic. We have to look atxdn we h le a Minority Schooling jfsystem 75,000mfblacks 25,000 hispanics and q19,000 caucasians and others. You have a Minority School that you have to raise taxes, and minorities owe very little bit in taxes. T what you need. Ke slation. I made that this speech 32 years ago in harrisburg when we were 20 million definite simpson. I framed the piece of legislati o p led video bingo before we ever hadcoxd gambling that would have raid 100,000w9 the low sq 300,000 on the high side that would have been dedicated tone school district. Ua cf1 o the philadelphia legislators beat that down. Okay . So we have to understandlp basically that you are never going to Fund Philadelphia schools from taxes. Tsyurj out. Forget it. Q minorities dont own enough real estate or enough anything to have enoughx ia here would you find those dollarsg independent funding source. I would have to harrisburg. I would use my experience ine1 harrisburg. And i would getq enabling legislation that would allow us to raise enough money to fund our schools with the help of harrisburg with the minimum e5utt qv give to us fund our schools. And i wouldnt tax cigarettes. Thank you. Senator wc u agree withcthe mayors proposal . If not, where would you find the money . I dont. I dont know anyone has kmenltded. But actually the mayors proposal exceeds the necessity toq raise the 80 million. What he has proposed is well above 80 qsr lion. Thats the first part. The second is the governor has the weighted funding formula part of the okconversation. The fund of the using of municipal assets is not a one actually the one timerbearing of funds closes the gap in oury1 city paying down our pension obligations brings out money. In addition to that it anillows us to use theco general fund so we schoolsko appropriately. I also say this in closing. Enabling legislation is exactlyx ot sure how you dont want you want enabling legislation but not a cigarette tax. That i brought him and also the 1 sales taxok are aly1i]q enabling legislation ladies and gentlemen, were going to pause for a quick break. And well be rigp erage for the debates for philadelphia mayor. We paused there, because, ok unfortunately, one ofrour xd candidates Lynne Abraham fell ill. She is not feeling well. She has stepped back. She is resting now. She is going to be okay. Age for noa we are going to continue on with our remaining candidates. Unforeseen and e1unfortunate. Wenr continue for your patients during thhd period. Senator roberts, you were talking about your thoughts regarding funding for education. The audience is hoping that the District Attorney is one tough cookie. And3w i think its most appropriate that people recognize we are not invincible in terms of this activity. Im sure she will be fine. And most appropriately we are all cheering for her today collectively. The last thing i was bringing upe1 was the issue of tax increases. I think people need to remember this the t councilman mentioned thet jfq fact t i he would change the abatement process. E÷ he raised thervalue of the property, is in fact a tax many thin 1 thet fa abatement process worksni effectively. You need to recognize the consequences to that is significant to businesses who have thrived andxd drivenxd all those towers across philadelphia process. We asked viewers to weigh inco on some of these concerns on our nbc 10 app. E1 rachel because of it. And also our partners at the Philadelphia Chamber of commerce say the wage taxcot and the abatement taxt really are stifling growth. As mayor we want to know, which taxes will you work to reform or lower . Lets start withjf fayou, mr. Diaz. I agree with that comment. Theco regressiveness of the business taxes and the waste taxesw3 deny us the opportunity to grow our economy n. Philadelphia, 66 of the city budget is made upok ofq those tax when only 16 is made up of the Real Estate Taxes. What we need to donsxjuaqtially is what other cities 34 of the Real Estate Taxesw3q makes up the budget of thexd city. We need to be able to have a ni reform with regard to those taxes and begin to tax the commercial properties in a way in which we eliminate the business tax, try to essentiallyco reform thejf tax that the uniform constitution hasfb e if we donte1 start that we are going to continue to lose the city from businesses andlp business opportunities. This is what you havexd to do. What most cities do. You go across the city line and people dont have to pay the 4 wage tax. Councilman. I think to be an effective mayor, you need to have balance. To say you are going to get rid the wage tax entirely or knock a point off in four years, you better be prepared to limit services. People wont be happy living in a city with no services. We have been reducing services. When wage and business taxes were goingxd down in small a w 9qm but we are going in the right direction. I think as the economy gets better and we have more moneyo7 toco file into tax reduction based on the level of services that we offer our citizens i think we can accelerate our Tax Deductions that way. I think we should look at the uniformity cause fromq harrisburg. Three or four coyears. Thats not an immediateo[ thing. And thats . ; fine. We should still pursue it. I think you have got to continue to Balance Service levels and tax lpcuts. It doesnt sound like you want to lowe n the wage tax. We have been lowering it its down about ao[ point. And itxd further needs to bm . 7 lowered. But if you are going to knock a n four years, i dont see it unlesshafuz economy growsco to such a agree that you can put back in the dollars. I think we have taxed ourselves into oblivion here in the city of philadelphia. We have no less than two different tax reform commissions that have occurred over the last decade. We studied it and we studied it and we just havent implemented it. We know thate1 business arent coming here becausee1 we are c uncompetitive, that we tax the thingu esses through regressive business taxes. We knowrthat we have undervalued proper4x roperty taxes. I appreciate the vision doing dollar for dollar increase in business and wage with a dollar for dollar increase in property. At the end of the day we can talk about it. We can talkes. n about and it talk about it. And we have. But also we address it we are going to have difficulty attracting businesses tot our communities. Its not just the taxes that prevent the businesses from coming its also our schools. Hopefully we will havee1 an opportunity to talk about the role that education plays in attractingq businesses to the city. Milton street. I have about 5,000 people in my community tht if you give them a job they would be glad to pay wage t taxes. What welpjf need to do as mayor of the you areq not goingn. to be able to correct everything. Thats a job to give to the city the city controller is supposed to handle that bring back recommend dapgss and deal with that. Do you know how many years we have been haggling andxd fuss6e and fighting over the wage tax . Its just something that goes on and on az÷ on and on. Create some jobs. Senator williams . E1 we have been hackel elhaggling about the wage tax for a long time. 40 of our tax is levied around the wage tax. Only city in, he ma. Which stays if you are on the edge you are able to move w[ nand. So it does not work. Yes, we have to dramatically cut that wage tax to bring al qaeda people back to philadelphia. It is not a fairy tale for people to understand the energy hub that we talked aboute1 will drive people back to philadelphia. We have to spread this acrossh the wage tax ahe one thing that peoplei]e1 talkt q about consistent three will allow hymn them to stay in philadelphia or move back to philadelphia. The question sci is it the chicken or the sneg i g w a business guy i understand that you have to invest beforenpva hahp hc can have an economy thats growing. The bottom line is someonewo has to talk about a Growth Strategy for philadelphia. You cant raise taxes or cut programs anymore. E1 you have to have a plan to grow an economy. And i have one. The work force really is changing here in philadelphia. You know right now, is in the midstq of building a huge tower in our city. The innovation and Technology Center just down the block. Q they are going to need highly skilled workers to fill that building. How would you as mayorxd ensure that those highly skilled workers dont go to some other city instead . Lets starte ni with you or,ni oliver. Jumped around in the order. . Keepsqco it interesting. Fair enough. I think onexd of thele changes lp ill segue with education once again. We have got an agricultural model here that says kids need to be [ of school byco 2 00 p. M. So they can be in the fieldq with their parents. We have got curriculumnr g q around mrn umanufacturing. So we teach to the test focus on theo7o standardized testingx az indians kids dont have to think or learn how to learn. The reality is . ; that the environment they are going to need to be prepared for is totally different than everything we are preparing them for right now. When wet talk about having anco educated work cforc t we have to start by thinking what 9e those jobs we are preparing them for . Frankly we dont know what someco of those jobs are. I had the ability at netxd fab, a new startupxd company here in ther th ahp hc future are minds boggling and the impact on cities and how efficient we are is absolutely mindxdt bogglings. We need to prepare our city for those we have to start with n . Aq at as early as e1prek. Mr. Street . Philadelphia you are gcnking about . From south street to vine street and river to river. Or the phila ophia out in the the community out where i p live kout in kensington out in southwest philadelphia . Are you talking about creating jobs in that community . There are two reasons why people andrbusinesses wont come and one is and thet inability to hire a Productive Work force. And the second one is crime. High t crime. So when you aree1 talking about force in philadelphia you have to stop crime. Yourcant havejf people walking a dog getting shot dead. E1 you cantfaq have pregnant women sitting down and getting shot dead. You cant have threeyearolds sitting on the steps, getting shot deadrnmndead. Q school. Until you dot somethingn m about that crime then your philadelphia is restricted in its growth. E1 it wont go out into the community where we actually need the jobs. And i have more to say about that but the red lightxd is on. Thank you for respectingw3 your time. Senator williams . I think that we need to fabt reality, that we are notlp training our students who are graduating from Public Schools that align with where the jobs are. And so i wouldjf propose that we extend the High School Experience about two years, take the millionst of dollars we are spending on jobe1 training currently and wasting it down a toilet that doesnt align with a job experience. So if you want to have them build a Building Work ine1 the building or be an entrepreneur thats a line they are experience or their education should lead to as it used to with what jobs are here. Faq the tech community, the qt Biolife Community are underpopulated with skilled employees. If wexd simply extent the High School Experience by two years align the money so public money or Community College can certify those students you will change the Poverty Index in philadelphia change neighborhoods in philadelphia and most importantly, they will stay here in philadelphia. Mr. Diaz . We have a 28 poverty rate in the our city. he School Reform commission has r in the middle of it and it has not reformed a thing in 13 years. Youve got to terminate that reform commission. Youve got to give the schools back to the parents and threat parents do the guidance and give local control and hold the mayor accountable for making sure that the schools work. Can you give us an example sorry to ina example of at city where that has worked . Ill give you schools thatxd work. Right across the border i represent a School Called leap which essentially hasco axd prek progr