Patrick Kerkstra

Ten minutes into my first interview with Pat Toomey, the terrifying reality sinks in: I am in no way prepared to tangle with this guy. He’s perfectly pleasant and courteous. But that doesn’t change the fact that in his somewhat grating, nasally monotone, Toomey is taking a hatchet to my questions as well as my assumptions about him. I’d been exp...

Like a boiler with a rust-eaten lining worn eggshell thin, huge sectors of Philadelphia's infrastructure have been neglected to the point where an explosion now looks inevitable. And a lo...

Philadelphia runs the least-effective delinquent-property-tax collection system of the nation's biggest cities, a system that has created a "culture of nonpayment" and cost the city and c...

A small demolition crew is slowly gutting the old Tastykake factory on Hunting Park Avenue for scrap. The six-inch stainless-steel tubes that piped batter throughout the factory are worth...

If the failures of the past are any indication, Philadelphia won’t be able to escape its fate. Not because there aren’t solutions, but because to date, the system has proved unable to ena...