The Potluck Dinner Dialogues: Gentrification Anxiety

The menu was jam-packed Wednesday night in South Philadelphia.

Eggplant parmesan. Meatballs. Ziti with sauce. Passionate citizen advocacy. Energetic exhortation from the two candidates who would be mayor of Philadelphia.

It was the first installment of "Yo! Mike, Yo! Al!: The Potluck Dinner Dialogues."

Picking up on a suggestion from Democratic nominee Michael Nutter, the Great Expectations project is staging a series of these potlucks around the city this fall.

Citizens who've taken part in the Great Expectations forums during this year bring a covered dish, their experiences as citizens of this city, and their questions for Nutter and Republican nominee Al Taubenberger.

The second potluck was held Friday night in Mount Airy. To see detailed reports filed by local citizen-bloggers invited to cover the events, see the project Web site, www.greatexpectations07.com.

Notes from the warm, lively, unusual session in South Philly:

The recent release of revised city property-tax assessments has turned up the heat on issues that have simmered in many neighborhoods for a while. The catchall term for this constellation of concerns is "gentrification," though that's a loaded term.

In many city neighborhoods, influxes of newcomers have brought energy - and higher property values. They've also brought high anxiety for longtime residents, who fear higher taxes and unyielding pressure for them to move out. Couple the prospect of higher taxes with a meltdown in the subprime lending market, and it feels like a rude "reward" for the old-timers who held those blocks together in harder times.

"I'm a gentrifier myself," said Franklin Evans of South Philly. "My wife and I can afford higher taxes if they're reasonable. But I can see my neighbors feeling the pinch. " He expressed concern that the 10-year tax abatement for new construction, which has fueled the go-go market, produces wildly unfair taxing results.

Nutter defended the abatement as a success in luring investment, but outlined his plans to tweak it so that it's more lavish in less-developed areas and dialed down in hot parts of the city. He also said the city could avoid whacking people with unfair hikes if it ended its bad habit of setting tax rates before the tax base is reassessed. Taubenberger said he liked the idea of pegging your assessment to the price you paid for your home, keeping it the same as long as you live there.

While the city's murder rate got surprisingly little air time, the schools were a focus. Nutter vowed that his first priority in lobbying Harrisburg would be school aid. Taubenberger lamented the folly of cutting money for extracurricular programs.

Each candidate defended the importance of cutting the business privilege tax in the face of very skeptical questioning from some residents. "I thought you were a Democrat!" one challenged Nutter.

Taubenberger, who leads the Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, said high taxes help create a steady stream of small businesses' leaving the city: "These job losses don't make the paper because they're smaller. But this exodus has to stop. "

Offered a chance to turn the tables and ask citizens to do something, the candidates agreed on a priority: Make New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin eat his words about Filthydelphia. Keep the city clean; stop littering; treat the city as if you're proud of it.

That's a message with practical and symbolic pop, which the new mayor would be wise to stress as he takes office.