Garbage collection is a hot topic in Philadelphia. On my block, at the gym, and on Zoom and phone calls, dozens of people from various neighborhoods have vented about the refuse that sits for days at a time on sidewalks and curbs. Everyone is frustrated. Most are baffled—especially by the City’s explanations. 

The rain? Really?

One friend visited Chicago recently and came back marveling at how clean the streets were. Yes, it’s possible! Even in a city dealing with Covid-19 that has strong municipal unions, high debt and discouraging poverty.

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What strikes me is that none of these people has mentioned doing anything to demand better service. We don’t act, because we don’t believe acting will make a difference. This is a problem. It may be Philadelphia’s No. 1 problem. 

Ours is a city with well-documented problems. High poverty. A spiraling homicide rate. Income inequality among the worst in the United States. The lowest college attainment rate of America’s largest cities. All of these problems rest to some degree on a more fundamental one. These problems grow and even exist in the gulf that lies between wishing and expecting. 

The officials that we have voted into office are well aware of their constituents’ dissatisfaction with the state of the city. But on many fronts they have not been compelled to change the levers of policy or practice. And that’s on us—voters and residents—as much as it is on them.

It’s one thing to wish that the garbage crew would show up on time. Or that schools would open in Philadelphia when they did in most of the rest of the nation. It’s another to expect it. To wish is to long for something we can’t really expect to happen—like living forever. 

Expecting is different. The dictionary defines expecting as “to consider probable or certain,” or “to consider reasonable, due or necessary.” When our wishes aren’t met, we shrug and go on with our lives. When expectations aren’t met, we’re more likely to do something about it.

Consider one of the most fundamental methods of acting: voting in elections. In the midst of a disturbing and prolonged spike in gun violence, there was a contested Democratic primary election for Philadelphia district attorney in May. Twenty-one percent of registered voters filled out a ballot. Nearly 80 percent didn’t.

Or go back to 2019, when more than 50 people ran for City Council seats. Twenty-three percent of registered voters cast ballots in the primary; 28 percent in the general election. Just a year later, 66 percent of Philadelphians voted for president. It’s not as if Philadelphians don’t believe in voting. Rather, when it comes to municipal elections, many of us appear to be convinced that voting is akin to wishing. About 30 percent of city voters, or 300,000, typically vote in national elections but not in municipal elections. Is it because they don’t care about local issues, or because they don’t believe their vote will lead to any positive changes?

Our collective lack of expectations goes hand in hand with the way our elected officials devote so much time talking about what is beyond their control. They hold press conferences and take to Twitter to blame Donald Trump, the Pennsylvania General Assembly, millionaires and billionaires—or even the rain—for the city’s woes.

Chicago, which longtime Mayor Richard Daley took to calling “the city that works,” had higher expectations back in 1979. No strangers to harsh winters, Chicagoans grew apoplectic when two unusually large snowstorms led to clumsy promises by incumbent Mayor Michael Bilandic, which were followed by unplowed streets and transit shutdowns. A month later, voter turnout surged to nearly 60 percent in the primary election—10 percentage points higher than any primary in the previous 24 years—and Jane Byrne became the first female mayor of a large U.S. city.

Voters in Austin, Texas, acted in a different way in their May 2021 election. No candidates were on the ballot, but two thirds of those casting ballots voted to put their mayoral elections on the same cycle as federal elections so that more citizens will engage in setting local expectations.

Back home, one good thing the Kenney administration has done is seek out feedback from residents. Twice, in 2016-17 and 2019-20, the City has surveyed residents on a wide range of quality-of-life questions. The latest results show a high level of dissatisfaction with City services:

• Just 31 percent of respondents rated overall city services “good” or “excellent”
• Only 23 percent said “agree” or “strongly agree” when asked about satisfaction with their neighborhood public schools
• 48 percent agreed or strongly agreed that they felt safe in their neighborhood (this was before the spikes in homicides and shootings had really started)
• 49 percent rated garbage collection “good” or “excellent”
• 21 percent rated the condition of streets as “good” or “excellent” (46 percent said “poor”)

Eighteen months and a pandemic later, it seems safe to assume these ratings would be worse if the survey were conducted today.

The officials that we have voted into office are well aware of their constituents’ dissatisfaction with the state of the city. But on many fronts they have not been compelled to change the levers of policy or practice. And that’s on us—voters and residents—as much as it is on them.

One friend visited Chicago recently and came back marveling at how clean the streets were. Yes, it’s possible! Even in a city dealing with Covid-19 that has strong municipal unions, high debt and discouraging poverty.

We’ve trained elected officials to believe that their job is to wish for things to get better. That’s how City Council can make a hullabaloo about a plan to “end” poverty while creating a new nonprofit with $10 million in funding. ($10 million works out to $24 per poor person in the city.) That’s how the City can create an Office of Violence Prevention and then make little effort to assess whether the office’s activities are helping to end violence. That’s how City Council can devote one of its main budget debates to a reduction in the parking tax worth less than 0.2 percent of city revenues—in a post-pandemic year when there is $1.3 billion in one time federal funds available for transformational investments.

Our collective lack of expectations goes hand in hand with the way our elected officials devote so much time talking about what is beyond their control. They hold press conferences and take to Twitter to blame Donald Trump, the Pennsylvania General Assembly, millionaires and billionaires—or even the rain—for the city’s woes. 

They do all of these things fairly secure in the knowledge that we—residents, workers, business owners—don’t expect them to make hard things happen. 

Well, we can blame these leaders. We can wish they would act differently. We can even vote some of them out. But until we change our level of expectations, they won’t lead differently. This is our city, and it’s up to us to tell our leaders what we want and expect.

Of course, tens of thousands of Philadelphians are engaged. Look at the many rallies that have been held to protest systemic racism since the death of George Floyd. But there again, the focus tends to be on the villain who is beyond our control. Just who is the system?

When education advocates and School District leaders repeatedly object to inequitable resources, which is surely fair, they also inadvertently send the message that success can’t be expected until some other “they” delivers the city more money for schools. District leaders tend not to mention that Philadelphia already spends more money per pupil on public schools than all but one of America’s 10 largest cities (New York), or that the District’s structural deficit is largely one of its own making, over several decades. (Another positive development under Mayor Kenney has been the willingness to prioritize education funding within the City’s budget in addition to lobbying for more from Harrisburg.)

Philadelphia is a city with enormous assets: our location, institutions, history and, above all, our people. Some of our challenges may indeed be beyond our control. Many are not. Addressing them starts with expectations, which then have to be followed by day-in, day-out intentionality and execution.

Mark Gleason led the Philadelphia School Partnership from 2011 to 2021. 

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