Sources: http://articles.philly.com/2015-02-09/news/58933278_1_doug-oliver-race-philadelphia-gas-works\ http://articles.philly.com/2015-03-06/news/59848684_1_doug-oliver-bald-eagles-democrat-oliver http://dougoliver2015.com/ http://www.greaterphilachamber.com/download/public/doug-oliver-candidate-questions-transcript-(1).pdf http://planphilly.com/articles/2015/03/05/q-a-doug-oliver-on-the-10-year-tax-abatement-vision-zero-and-philly-s-waterfront

The Philadelphia mayor's race received a dash of youth if not experience Saturday with Doug Oliver's formal announcement that he is running.

At 40, Oliver, Mayor Nutter's former spokesman, is by far the youngest candidate seeking the Democratic nomination - a fact he clearly hopes to exploit to boost the chances of what by any measure is a long-shot candidacy come the May 19 primary.

Oliver is a Philadelphia native whose most recent position was senior vice president for marketing and communications at the Philadelphia Gas Works. He is not considered to have a realistic chance in this year's race, given that he lacks name recognition, financial and organizational support, and a record of significant public achievement.

His 12-year-old son Ifanyi attends Glenside's Phil-Mont Christian Academy and splits his time between his divorced father and mother Natalie Martinez. The two parted amicably (she is circulating petitions for Oliver), and they decided to share custody in East Oak Lane without court intervention.

"I didn't want to be 'mandated' to be in my son's life," says Oliver, taking a stand more fathers should emulate.

Not having his own son in a Philly school won't play well politically.

Funding

How about endorsements?

"None," he says evenly, "short of frustrated Philadelphians who want something different."

He is different - not a lawyer or career politician like his opponents. After three years with PGW, he became Mayor Nutter's press secretary for two years, then returned to PGW as a senior vice president.

Without endorsements, without big money, without bodies, how can he expect to win?

Nutter started out in last place in 2007, he notes, and finished first, with 106,805 votes. But Nutter had endorsements, and turnout in that five-way slugfest was an anemic 35 percent.

Oliver says that out of some 800,000 registered voters, 411,000 are under the age of 45, and his opponents are all at or above 60.

"The city is getting younger," Oliver says accurately, and "if these young people come out and vote, who do they see in their best interest?"

Issues

"So there are four key areas where I would focus as a Mayor to make us more competitive. The first is an investment in schools. You cannot have a world-class city with a thirdworld education, employers know this. They don’t want to move to a city where their employees can’t educate their kids. We have to address that if we want to attract business to our city.

Number two, is our tax structure. We tax the wrong things and we tax the things that can leave, wages and business and guess what they do leave. We don’t have to have the lowest tax structure, but we do need to be more competitive than we are now and make investments in that area.

Number three, we have to have cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of government. People are looking. They are watching us and if we can’t get along with each other they won’t want to step into that mess, so we need to show businesses all across this country and all across the world that Philadelphia is here and open for business. We want to welcome them with open arms.

And lastly, we have to have strong neighborhoods. We have to invest in our neighborhoods because with 98,000 small businesses that is the core of our city and it’s not just in Center City anymore. We have to make investments in our neighborhoods if we expect to be a vibrant city that’s competitive. "

Education People tend to get distracted by the public vs. charter debate. At the end of the day, our sole focus needs to be on creating school environments – public and charter – that foster positive educational outcomes for all students. Currently, there are too many public and charter schools where performance is mediocre at best and a disservice is being done to kids. This cannot continue.

I will institute aggressive intervention policies to deal with underperforming Philadelphia public and charter schools. These policies will include putting a performance improvement plan in place for schools that underperform in any single academic year and changing the management of schools that fail to meet standards for two consecutive years. When necessary, new, experienced management and good teachers will be drawn from high-performing schools and placed into failing schools.

After decades of failing Philadelphia students, it is evident that a shift must be made in the role of the SRC. I believe the Mayor should appoint three SRC board members, while the Governor should appoint the two remaining board members. This enables lines of accountability to be maintained with the City and State and aligns the interests of the Superintendent and the governing authority. Most importantly, I believe that the SRC should function as a regulator rather than as an operator. The SRC’s core responsibility should be clear and unequivocal: ensuring that no school in the City of Philadelphia is ineffective and enforcing change when needed.

Teachers cannot be blamed for failing schools; they have historically not had the resources they need to do their jobs. In any system, however, there are weaknesses that have to be managed. Teachers – just like schools - should be held accountable to standards which are fair and which recognize the reality of classrooms today. When teachers don’t provide our children with the education they deserve, the City must have the flexibility to retrain or replace them.

The School District spends roughly $129 million to operate 19 consistently underperforming schools. With approximately 200,000 students in the school district, the average cost to educate a student is $12,500 per year. Only $6,000 per year, however, is spent on each student. Where is the delta going? It is being taken from students to manage the City’s non-education related financial challenges.

The City is in a difficult position given that the Commonwealth holds the purse strings and that non-Philadelphia Pennsylvanians resent their tax dollars being directed at underperforming Philadelphia schools. Worse yet, they don’t believe that any money that might be appropriated would make it to classroom. In this climate, we can’t count on funding from the state. Even as we continue to push for a fair funding formula out of Harrisburg, Philadelphia may need to make tough funding decisions to educate our children.

Budget

" I’d be in favor of selling municipal assets to generate one-time money, which if applied to the pension fund would free up money that could either be reinvested into the pension fund to pay it down faster, or it could be used to provide critical city services like police and fire, reduction in business taxes or pay for our schools."

" I think we do ourselves a favor when we take a broader look at city services and see where we might leverage city budgets between one department and another. Consider a wise investment in the streets department to keep trash off of our streets pays off when we don’t have to spend more money in the water department to clean that same trash out of our rivers. That’s just one example of the types of things we as a government can do to make sure that we’re using the resources that we have wisely while we take the necessary aggressive steps to forestall the catastrophe that lies ahead if we don’t find a way to get our pension and healthcare costs under control. "

Job Growth Each of the many tens of thousands of businesses in this City, regardless of their size, plays some role in creating jobs for Philadelphians. Therefore, the City of Philadelphia must be pro business – not just pro big business. This means supporting small start-ups from hair salons to tech companies, creating programs to attract new firms of all sizes, and developing incentives to keep existing businesses in the City.

Speaking of start-ups, the sooner we begin removing the barriers and red tape that impede their success, the sooner they can grow, hire, and scale as they capture more market share. We also need to put in place pro-growth incentives like lower tax rates during the initial post-launch phase to properly support the growth and development of start-ups and accelerate their job creating potential.

" I’d like to ensure that small businesses have access to capital. I’m thinking about CDFIs, community development financial institutions that have more relaxed rules that allow access to capital making it a little bit easier for small business but not only access to capital but ensuring through the office of small business that these businesses have the business acumen to spend the money that they do have access to correctly. "

I believe we should reduce the business privilege tax and the wage tax and add new tax credits. When offering these tax incentives, the City needs to extract legal assurances from their recipients. If they are in receipt of public funds or tax breaks, businesses must be accountable for their projections related to tax revenue and job creation. If the City makes an investment, it is reasonable that it expect a return on that investment.

"My goal would be to duplicate those numbers, but duplicate it in half the time. So by the end of my first-term I would like to have created an additional 4,000 jobs in the city and employ an additional 10,000 Philadelphians. I will work with the business community to get this done. I will work to aggressively reduce both the business and wage tax with a dollar for dollar increase in our property tax to ensure that the city has the resources it needs to run itself and at the same time creates an environment where business wants to be. "