This Just In: Philadelphians Have A Sense Of Decency
New Poll Finds 84% of Philadelphians Would Give Up Wage Tax Cuts
to Avoid Layoffs and Cuts at Libraries, Firehouse, Parks, Pools.
66% think City Should Wait for Word on Federal Bail-out.
As my man Wilford might say, it’s the right thing to do. Will this rise the heat on Bizarro Nutter enough to roll back some of these cuts? Let’s hope so, Wilf, let’s hope so. Accompanying press release after the jump.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, December 2nd, 2008
New Poll Finds 84% of Philadelphians Would Give Up Wage Tax Cuts to Avoid Layoffs and Cuts at Libraries, Firehouse, Parks, Pools.
66% think City Should Wait for Word on Federal Bail-out.
Philadelphia, PA- A poll of 650 Philadelphia voters conducted last week found that an overwhelming majority of Philadelphians want Mayor Nutter and City Council to consider alternatives to the current plans for budget cuts.
Of various revenue-raising scenarios proposed, the largest number of respondents would prefer to forgo the wage tax reductions coming to city residents in 2009 from state casino revenue. Almost as popular is a plan to revalue Philadelphia homes to their fair market value, raise the property tax rate, and offer an exemption that would help protect lower-income homeowners.
“The cuts were formulated behind closed doors, with a secretive decision making process that shut out ordinary Philadelphians” says YPP founder and co-editor, Dan Urevick-Acklesberg.. “These poll results show that most Philadelphians agree: they want the doors of City Hall opened, and strongly want the Mayor and City Council to consider alternatives before such deep cuts are enacted.”
The poll was conducted by Del Ali of the firm Research 2000 of Olney. MD and paid for by YoungPhillyPolitics.com. Research 2000 polls can be seen on CNN’S “Inside Politics” and are also mentioned frequently in the National Journal’s “Political Hotline”, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Wall Street Journal.
“The budget and spending cuts do not seem too popular,” says Ali about the poll. “And that is an understatement.”
In addition to questions about tax increases and other revenue-collection ideas—including demanding payment from the state for Philadelphia Court costs—there was overwhelming support for the idea that Mayor Nutter should delay any cuts or layoffs until it becomes clearer what President-elect Obama plans to do to bail out cities.
“We just want the Mayor and Council to consider all of the alternatives,” says Ray Murphy co-editor of Young PhillyPolitics.com. “It’s clear that Philadelphians are willing to forgo a tax decrease and some are even willing to pay more in taxes to maintain and improve city services. I think that should give the Mayor and Council some serious pause before making permanent cuts.”
Full polls results including the polling memo and cross-tabs are available. Interviews with Del Ali, the Research 2000 pollster, are also welcomed. Please call or email above to get more information.
YoungPhillyPolitics.com is a four year-old blog that focuses on local and state politics. Most recently, the site led a successful fight to force the City to publicly publish election returns, rather than the past practice of allowing access to results for political elites and to the media for a cost.
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December 2nd, 2008 at 11:42 am
I’m not a stats expert, but can someone tell me whether 650 is indeed a good sample for a poll of Philadelphia’s electorate/taxpayers?
Also, the one I’m scratching my head at, maybe on account of my statistical illiteracy:
1.) 21% of those polled were in favor of Bizarro Nutter’s cuts.
2.) Only 10% of those polled want their scheduled wage tax cut.
Does this mean that 11% of the polling body wants the Nutter budget cuts and decline their scheduled wage tax cut? Who/where are these masochistic logic failures?
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Cheez –
1) 650 is not a bad sample size, assuming the sampling methodology is sound.
2) I think you are reading that wrong. I’m not delving too deep into these results right now, so I could be wrong, but I don’t think that inference is correct.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:24 pm
there is a dude that comes into my local Wawa for coffee thay looks exactly like Wilford. What makes it even more funny is that his girlfriend looks like Annette Funicello.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Dude what the fuck. I see the absurd title, click on to read the rest of the story and I see a “scientific” study brought to you by YoungPhillyPolitics. Ughhh.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
If anyone has paused for a moment you’d realized tax cuts in this city have done just that…paused. We aren’t cutting any more taxes for what looks like the next 6 years if you’ve read the mayors report. Mayor Nuter was elected to bring down two distructive taxes in this town the BPT (business privalge tax) and the wage tax. Not to sound all fucking GOP on everybody but Philadelphia is the highest taxed city in the country and when employers look to start and/or move a business here, whether big or small, the first thing they look at are taxes. Now economics 101 teaches us that businesses BRING more money for services but they also employee people as well. The biggest ill for urban america is the lack of jobs, their void is filled in by illegal jobs such as the drug trade, prostitution, chop shops, etc.
Nutter needs to still be cutting these 2 taxes right now more then ever. The city needs to bring private investers for those gov’t funded places that are TRULY needed. We can establish more funds by bringing in a fair land tax and having the state pay for the those locally incarcerated like they do in most cities like Boston and Baltimore.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Wilford Brimley’s oatmeal filled feeding tube has more credibility reporting Philadelphia’s economic woes then Young Philly Politics.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
A sample size of 650, in theory, allows you to say that you’re 95 percent confident that the survey results are within +/- 4 percent of what Philadelphians who are registered to vote actually think, which is pretty good.
In order for that to hold true, though, you need to be sure that other sorts of error (aside from sampling error) aren’t distorting the survey results. In this case, since the survey summary (http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?id=941588&da=y) doesn’t disclose anything else about the survey methodology, we can’t assess any other sources of error. For example, the summary doesn’t disclose any demographic information about the respondents, so there’s no way of knowing how the 650 registered voters that were interviewed (and their opinions about budget cuts, etc) are different from the other registered voters in Philadelphia who were not interviewed.
In other words, I’d take the results with a grain of salt.