Patrick Kerkstra

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ex-con who turned his life around is tossed out less than six months after being hired, made a "special assistant" to senior administration official Everett Gillison.

Mayor-elect Michael Nutter rounded out his leadership team with seven senior appointments yesterday, including three new deputy mayors and city solicitor nominee Shelley R. Smith, a former attorney with the city's Law Department and Ballard Spahr who is now counsel to the Exelon Corp.

CBS3 anchor Alycia Lane was arrested early yesterday after allegedly punching a plainclothes female New York City police officer in the face around 2 a.m. in Manhattan.