Instead, I'd like to draw a set of lessons from the district that shed light on challenges that reach far beyond Center City. They all relate to each other and, to my thinking, all point to a radical reform proposal, which I'll get to in a minute. In addition to being smart and hardworking, the head of the district doesn't face elections or term limits. Paul Levy has run the district for more than 10 years. There are lots of ways to evaluate performance and the best ones don't place a time limit on success.
Time limits are lazy policy-making, whether for welfare recipients or chief executives.
But he has demonstrated, along with mayors like Richard Daley of Chicago, that there's a real benefit to accumulating experience and momentum in the executives who run cities. A special district exists to sort out costs and benefits. They also want somebody to clean the nearby sidewalks and the sidewalks between their shop and the subway or parking garage. They want Center City as a whole to be clean and to be perceived as clean throughout the region. But getting what they want is difficult because these kinds of local services require just enough collective action - but not too much.