Patrick Kerkstra

Even with the best efforts of race organizers and city officials, keeping the Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia might have been economically impossible.

In a major change on Mayor Nutter's leadership team, Managing Director Camille Cates Barnett - the administration's second-in-command - will resign effective June 30.

There is nothing small about Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, particularly on Easter. Not the choir, not the congregation, and not the charity, either.

Philadelphia runs the least-effective delinquent-property-tax collection system of the nation's biggest cities, a system that has created a "culture of nonpayment" and cost the city and cash-strapped School District $472 million in unpaid real estate taxes, penalties, and interest.

According to addiction experts, problem gamblers endure five distinct stages before shaking the habit: winning, losing, desperation, hopelessness, and, finally, recovery. Right now, Atlantic City is somewhere between losing and desperation, and recovery seems impossibly remote.

At the risk of sounding callous, my first reaction at hearing that Philadelphia's Sunoco refinery might close was excitement. Yes, it would mean job losses, as many as 900 good blue-collar positions, which are all too rare in this city in the first place.

The neighbors did what they could to dress up the gaping wound on their block. They painted the steps black and the porch a bold bluish-green. In the fall, they put a pot of mums out front.

Philadelphia's decades-long neglect of property-tax collections has been a disaster for public schools, the city budget, and typical taxpaying homeowners.

Phila. makes gains against property tax delinquents

Phila. makes gains against property tax delinquents