Town Meeting: Federal Cutbacks and the City

Posted by on September 3, 2004

[posted from Neighbors On Line Philadelphia]

Over 60 people representing more than 50 organizations have already registered for the ISCV Town Meeting on “Federal Cutbacks and the City: Where Do We Go From Here?,” scheduled for Friday, September 10th, from 8:30-12:30 PM at the National Constitution Center, 2nd Floor, Kirby Auditorium, 525 Arch St.

Note that the starting time for registration is 8:30 AM. The program begins at 9:00 AM.

To register for the Town Meeting, go to http://www.phillyneighborhoods.org/FederalCutbacks and fill out the online registration form.

The registrants already represent a wide range of community, human service, and advocacy organizations, covering housing and community development, job training, health, AIDS, ex-offenders rights, education and youth development, consistent with the focus of our program. Right now, we fight for the individual federal programs that affect us and have little knowledge of the rest. Yet when cutbacks hit a wide range of services, we all suffer as residents of this community. Bringing diverse groups together is a main point of the PhillyNeighborhoods email lists. It’s a main purpose of the September 10th Town Meeting as well.

For the next two weeks, I will be providing information on what is already happening with federally funded programs in the City. Trouble is clearly on the horizon.

Then on September 10th, we will be joined by Martha Coven and David Bradly from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, who lay out in detail the Bush administration’s five year spending plan in housing and community development, job training and development, health–including AIDS and drug treatment, and education and kids. This information is not widely known. It has not been assembled in this way before. And we at ISCV are as interested in what it will show as the active citizens of Philadelphia will be.

To get the discussion started, Liz Hersh (Pennsylvania Housing Alliance), Jane Shull (Philadelphia FIGHT), Ernie Jones (Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation), and Sharon Ward (Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth) will spell out what federal cutbacks will mean to the city.

Hope to see you on the 10th.

Ed Schwartz