Letters: In Chinatown, 2 nays for the Neighborhood Improvement District

THE PHILADELPHIA Chinatown Development Corp. (PCDC) has a track record of greening and cleaning our neighborhood. The proposed Neighborhood Improvement District (NID) is not the right vehicle at this time to accomplish greener and cleaner streets. The one important fact that proponents of the NID seem to gloss over is that it will add a 7 percent tax on all property owners in the proposed district during the worst recession of the century.

PCDC has worked tirelessly to eliminate the blight, trash-strewn lots and abandoned buildings in the area north of the Vine Expressway. PCDC supplanted blight by building more than 60 homes for people of all income levels in the last 15 years. In 2010, we transformed a space atop the Vine Expressway, at 10th and Vine streets, into a community park for the residents. In 2006, we partnered with TreeVitalize to plant 140 trees in the neighborhood. Today, 9th and 10th streets are getting makeovers to increase lighting and greening. PCDC has a three-person team cleaning daily, organizes the Mayor's Spring Cleanup and joins the Philadelphia SUNS neighborhood semiannual cleanup.

The NID's tax applies to property owners who have already been hit with a 10 percent tax increase approved by City Council in May 2010 and a 3.85 percent tax increase approved in June 2011. What neighborhood can afford a 20.35 percent real-estate tax increase during this recession?

PCDC wants greener and cleaner streets. The NID is the wrong vehicle to do this and the timing could not be worse.

John Chin

executive director,

Philadelphia Chinatown

Development Corp.

In response to Sarah McEneaney's letter to the editor, the opposition to her effort to create the Callowhill Reading Viaduct NID began with two people in the Callowhill neighborhood opposed to paying a 7 percent property-tax increase. We then contacted PCDC and formed an alliance united against the creation of a Neighborhood Improvement District. As a result of our efforts to defeat the NID, Councilman DiCicco removed the language about the Reading Viaduct Park from the original bill's mission statement during the initial hearing before City Council on Sept. 27. Since that date, Ms. McEneaney and Councilman DiCicco have vilified PCDC for defying them.