I’m happy to have Gauthier as my Councilperson but I don’t think democracy is well served when incumbent candidates run unopposed.

The collective wisdom of this sub sets a pretty low standard.

If your argument were true we’d be seeing a decrease in rental costs as more units become available but the exact opposite has been happening. You might be able to make the argument that the new units are helping slow the pace of rent increases but that’s an entirely different animal.

Here in the 3rd District our councilwoman has introduced zoning bills that require all projects in a very large area that are over a certain size to include a percentage of affordable housing onsite. Philadelphia has the largest poverty rate of any large us city. When you building new top of the market housing and transplants move in all it does is incentivize the destruction of old housing stock to build more top of the market housing. Poor people are being pushed further and further away from the urban core and some cases out of the city. What we’re severely lacking is the construction of new housing for the poor and lower middle class.

None of the new construction is going to result in lower rents and if you really believe that I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you. You probably think that privatizing utilities leads to lower rates for customers.

Are you really complaining, on Christmas, that gentrification is going to slow down? Wtf is wrong with you

I never said or even implied the dynamic would change if the GOP was in charge of Philadelphia. Our city council has a veto proof Democratic majority and zero interest in reform and that’s a major problem. We need a real opposition, not the WFP pretending they’re not Democrats while voting in lockstep with them at every available opportunity. The two Republicans we have on council aren’t much help. David Oh SOMETIMES stands up to the majority but O’Neill is just short of useless.

Nationwide the two party system we have is the source of many of our problems. Open primaries and ranked choice voting would help break their stranglehold on power by allowing third parties and independents a real chance at being elected.

I’m not sitting on the sideline, I actively oppose the local Democrats at every available opportunity. I hope you enjoy perpetuating a single party government and all of the corruption that comes with it.

Our local Democrats would never support open primaries or ranked choice voting because it would diminish their power. It doesn’t matter anyway because those changes would need to be made at the state, not municipal, level.

The local Democratic Party is an embarrassment of corruption and ineptitude and I want no part of it.

It’s going to be an embarrassment to Democracy how few people decided who the mayor of the sixth largest city in the country is going to be. We need open primaries ASAP