Town Meeting on Federal Cutbacks and the City

Posted by on August 20, 2004

ISCV Town Meeting on Federal Cutbacks and the City

On Friday, September 10th, from 9:00AM to 12:30PM at the National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St., the Institute for the Study of Civic Values is holding a Town Meeting on “Federal Cutbacks and the City: Where Does Washington Go From Here?” The Community Development Block Grant is slated for a 4% cut this year. The Adult Literacy Programs have been cut. As the Town Meeting will make clear, this could be only the beginning. You can register for this town meeting at http://www.phillyneighborhoods.org/FederalCutbacks

Or if you forget that, just go to phillyneighborhoods.org and you’ll see a link at the top of the page.

Featured Presenters will be Martha Coven and David Bradley from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which is the country’s leading organization analyzing the impact of federal budget proposals on working people, the poor, and America’s communities. You can learn more about the Center by visiting their web site at http://www.cbpp.org.

The Town Meeting will represent a collaboration between the Institute and the Center. We are providing them with a list of programs that are critical to the City–the Community Development Block Grant, HOME, Section 8, and other housing programs; Ryan White and other federal funding related to AIDS; Workforce Development and TANF; and funding related to kids (schools, day care, social services). They will organize their presentation around these programs, revealing what the Bush administration proposes to spend on these programs over the next five years. The Center was able to gain this information through delving into supplementary material related to the budget but not included in the budget documents themselves.

We have invited four people intimately familiar with these programs to report on what these cutbacks will mean to the city in these areas:

– Elizabeth Hersh, Pennsylvania Housing Alliance (Housing)
– Jane Shull, Philadelphia FIGHT (AIDS)
– Ernest Jones, Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation (Workforce Development; TANF)
– Shelly Yanoff and Sharon Ward, (Philadelphia Corporation for Citizens and Youth)

And there should be ample time for discussion.

ISCV will conclude with recommendations on how we can have an impact on these budget federal issues, no matter what happens in November.

You can register starting now. The Constitution Center Auditorium holds no more than 200 people. We intend to fill it.

We hope you can join us on September 10th.

Ed Schwartz
ISCV