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Philadelphia mask mandate ‘could spell doom’ for some restaurants, industry group warns

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Philadelphia mask mandate ‘could spell doom’ for some restaurants, industry group warns

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Philadelphia eating places are going again to imposing masks for purchasers after well being officers introduced Monday they’re reimposing the indoor masks mandate in response to a rise in COVID circumstances.

Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Affiliation President Ben Fileccia instructed “Fox & Buddies Wednesday restaurant house owners within the metropolis are “actually fearful” in regards to the affect of the mandate on their companies.

“We now have simply began to come back again from this pandemic. Individuals are beginning to come again to town and becoming a member of us at eating places, having occasions, having weddings and impulsively this throws a complete wrench [into it],” Fileccia instructed host Ainsley Earhardt.

PHILADELPHIA REIMPOSES INDOOR MASK MANDATE IN RESPONSE TO RISING OMICRON BA.2 CASES

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Fileccia mentioned Philadelphia is the one county of 67 in Pennsylvania with an indoor masks mandate, which can go into impact on Monday.

“We wish individuals again into Philly. We wish individuals again, becoming a member of us at eating places. That is simply going to harm,” he mentioned. 

Data indicators are displayed at a retail retailer in Buffalo Grove, Ailing., Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker introduced plans that Illinois’ masks mandate to be lifted Feb. 28 with exceptions for colleges, hospitals, nursing houses. (AP Picture/Nam Y. Huh) 
(AP Pictures)

“Lately we have been watching COVID-19 circumstances and hospitalizations rise in a number of European nations and a few locations within the US, and now have been beginning to see circumstances right here in Philadelphia rise,” Philadelphia Well being Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole mentioned at a press briefing on Monday afternoon. “We’re reintroducing the masks mandate in Philadelphia.”

Philadelphia seems to be the primary main metropolis to reimpose an indoor masks mandate after native governments and states throughout the nation lifted them earlier this 12 months in response to plummeting circumstances. 

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On prime of pandemic woes, Fileccia mentioned eating places have had points with labor, provide chains and inflation growing the price of items.

“They went via a lot previously two years. And we had years to recuperate from this. And any bump within the highway proper now may spell doom for lots of those small companies in Philly,” he mentioned.

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Northeast

Blue city police sergeants say they're paid less than subordinates as billions go to migrants

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Blue city police sergeants say they're paid less than subordinates as billions go to migrants

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The NYPD is losing sergeants in droves as New York City leaders scale back the allure of achieving the rank for police officers, who can make more in annual salary due to a system that allows experienced members of the rank-and-file to make more than freshly promoted supervisors.

Under an expired contract, pay for sergeants starts at $98,000 and is capped at $118,000 after roughly five years, according to the NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA). Patrol officers top out at $115,000 – meaning hundreds of sergeants make less than thousands of rank-and-file cops who have reached top pay for their position.

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“We’re going to have guys potentially in the next year, year and a half that will be making upwards of anywhere between 9 to $15,000 less than a police officer,” said Vincent Vallelong, the president of the SBA. “So you’re going to take a rank with more responsibility, you took a test, three tests, and at the end of the day, you’re losing money.”

MAILMAN MURDER SUSPECT WITH HISTORY OF VIOLENCE INDICTED IN BRAZEN LUNCH BREAK ATTACK

New York Mayor Eric Adams speaks as Jessica Tish, NYPD commissioner, looks on in Manhattan on Dec. 19, 2024. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

Over the course of a career, a sergeant could lose out on $80,000 to $100,000 in earnings, he said. 

Rather than creating a step program to incrementally increase sergeants’ pay, city taxpayers could be on the hook for an estimated $170 million if sergeants are promoted to top pay to outpace their subordinates, according to the SBA. 

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“It doesn’t seem like anyone’s priorities are in the right place, because back in the ’90s, when the city needed to be turned around and we corrected crime, it was the NYPD that did it,” Vallelong told Fox News Digital.

For comparison, the city reached a $220 million deal with the Roosevelt Hotel, owned by the government of Pakistan, to house illegal immigrants.

EXCLUSIVE BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK INSIDE NYC’S ICONIC ROOSEVELT HOTEL REPURPOSED INTO MIGRANT PROCESSING HUB

CLoseup of NYPD uniform showing a sergeant's chevron patch on a policeman's right arm

An NYPD sergeant’s patch and chevrons are pictured on an officer in 2022. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

“They’re bleeding money, the city, in all the wrong places,” Vallelong said. “Somebody in city governance either needs to go, or they really need to sit down and think this through and go back to basics. … Go back to basic math. Go back to basic economics.”

There are about 4,300 sergeants in the NYPD currently, roughly 200 shy of the target, according to the SBA. More than 70 left the department in January 2025, and 1,100 are eligible to retire by June. Others have been promoted to lieutenant in another blow to staffing levels.

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An estimated 1,200 active-duty sergeants are working second jobs to make ends meet in the high-cost metropolitan area.

“We are currently going through the mediation process with the SBA and are committed to coming to a fair solution that will continue to protect public safety,” a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams told Fox News Digital on Monday. 

OBAMA-ERA PROSECUTOR’S PROBE INTO BLUE STATE POLICE RACIAL BIAS CLAIMS CALLED ‘UNTENABLE’ FOR TROOPERS

Migrants on the streets of New York City

NYPD officers patrol as migrants congregate outside a hotel converted into a shelter in the Times Square area of New York City on Feb. 7, 2024. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)

While they see additional work in their normal range of duties due to understaffing, NYPD sergeants have also been given new assignments ranging from monitoring low-level nonemergency calls, vehicle pursuits from outside their own units, and reviewing hours of bodycam video on a monthly basis, according to the SBA. Those jobs give them less time to go out on patrol in New York City.

In that environment, officials worry top-pay officers will have no motivation to take promotion exams, earn promotions and refill depleted ranks.

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Contract negotiations that had been scheduled for the first week of February were postponed, and Vallelong said the city has ignored proposals from the SBA.

DANIEL PENNY DEFENSE EYES MANHATTAN DA ALVIN BRAGG FOR POTENTIAL MALICIOUS PROSECUTION LAWSUIT

Adams, a former NYPD captain himself, previously said he would reach a new contract agreement. 

nyc migrants sleep on sidewalk

Migrants are seen sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on July 31, 2023. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

“The mayor was a sergeant at one point in time. He had to be in order to get to the point where he’s at,” Vallelong said. “And you would think that he would understand this more than anybody else, because I guarantee you that if push came to shove, he’s not taking this rank unless he’s getting compensated the right way.”

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Departments around the country are struggling with recruitment and retention, making experienced NYPD members attractive to smaller departments where the cost of living is lower, while those departments also increasingly appeal to cops fed up with life in the Big Apple.

Migrants arrive at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan

Migrants arrive at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, New York, on July 25, 2023. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)

As a result, according to the SBA, NYPD members now face an increased workload while they have less experience overall.

“The mayor was just up in Albany asking for more money for migrants,” Vallelong said. “I know he’s had meetings with the president … maybe he should ask the president to step in like Clinton did back in those years and pass a bill in order to further law enforcement and recruit people and make it more of a respectable job again.”

“We have already spent over $7 billion on this crisis alone, and the previous administration committed only $237 million in funding to help house the migrants in our care and for future services,” a City Hall spokesperson told Fox News Monday. “We have continued to receive previously allocated reimbursements through the past week. We will discuss this matter directly with federal officials.”

Fox News’ Grace Taggart and Max Bacall contributed to this report.

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Boston, MA

Boston falling behind rest of state when it comes to housing, Boston Policy Institute says

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Boston falling behind rest of state when it comes to housing, Boston Policy Institute says


Once again, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has filed a bill asking the state legislature for permission to temporarily raise the commercial property tax rate beyond legal limits in order to deal with projected revenue losses tied to the sharp decline of commercial real estate values.

Wu’s tax bill based on Menino bill

We’re now entering year two of debate over this problem, which was initially made widely public by a report commissioned by the Boston Policy Institute, a new non-profit dedicated to analysis of city issues.

Institute Director Greg Maynard tells WBZ-TV that “The bill that Mayor Wu is supporting in the state Senate is actually based on something that was passed 20 years ago under Mayor Menino, and that was enabling legislation that let cities and towns all across Massachusetts choose to do the same thing that Boston is trying to do now. Mayor Menino got support from a whole bunch of mayors all over the state, as well as from Governor Romney, and so he was able to put together a coalition and really, really get that done, make the case that it was important. Mayor Wu, although she’s using the same legislation that Mayor Menino did 20 years ago, didn’t put anything close to that coalition together, and she didn’t get anything close to the coalition in terms of business leaders.”

The Mayor’s previous effort stalled in the Senate and a compromise with business leaders fell apart when it turned out potential tax hikes on residential property owners weren’t as severe as the city had forecast. But the relationship between the mayor and many elements of the business community has been rocky for some time, and we asked Maynard why. “I think an important part of it is, you can see the reaction from the Wu administration to BPI’s report last year. Our report came out, the mayor and members of her administration called it misinformation and said that it wasn’t true. And then shortly after that, offered this piece of legislation we’re talking about now, which is designed to solve the problem that BPI’s report identified.”

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But Maynard notes: “I think that Mayor Wu’s tax bill actually brings up some really important questions about how Prop. 2 ½ [the state law limiting local property tax growth and establishing the two-tiered tax system for commercial and residential property] actually operates, and whether a split tax rate…[is] actually legal or constitutional.”

Housing enters mayoral race

Meanwhile, the 2025 Boston mayoral race is underway, with challenger Josh Kraft and Wu already engaging on issues like housing development.

On housing, Maynard says “the debate we’ve seen over the last two weeks in Boston shows how far the housing debate in the city has come. It’s really focused on supply, and so Boston is finally starting to move into a debate around how to build more housing, which is something the rest of the state has been engaged in for a long time. But Boston’s politics, for whatever reason, has been really resistant to talking about the core of the issue…the MBTA Communities Act [requiring communities served by the T to reform their zoning to allow for more multi-family housing] brings up a really important issue that I think is going to be addressed in this mayor’s race, which is that because of the MBTA Communities Act, there are communities around Boston that now have denser by-right development just on the other side of the line from Boston. So it’s tougher to build in Boston now than it is in the communities that surround it and some of the suburban communities…so towns like Everett and Revere have built way more housing as a percentage of their total stock than Boston…the state has legalized ADUs [accessory dwelling units], the city has not done that. They haven’t followed Cambridge’s lead, either with the parking minimum abolition or with this massive upzoning. And so Boston is really falling behind the rest of the state in terms of making it easier to build. The city’s made it more expensive to build with stuff like increasing inclusionary zoning and increasing environmental requirements, but they haven’t done anything to loosen restrictions like we’re seeing in communities here in Massachusetts and all across the country.”


Boston has fallen behind rest of state when it comes to housing, Greg Maynard says

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04:59

Maynard also discussed recent developments in the city’s push to install bike lanes. You can watch the entire conversation here, and please join us every Sunday morning at 8:30 for extensive discussion of the key issues in the mayoral race and elsewhere across the region on the weekend edition of “Keller At Large.”

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Pittsburg, PA

Pirates’ Paul Skenes Teases Addition Of Two New Pitches

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Pirates’ Paul Skenes Teases Addition Of Two New Pitches


Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes was already a handful for opposing hitters in his rookie season.

Now, he is looking to become an even more difficult at-bat this season. The Pirates right-hander spoke about the additions he’s made to his game heading into his first full season in the big leagues and said he’s added a two-seam fastball and cutter to his arsenal in hopes of inducing more swings and misses this season.

“Just a cutter and a running two-seamer,” Skenes said. “Really just trying to create more swing decisions basically. That’s what it boils down to.”

The additions of a cutter and two-seam fastball could also help Skenes with his goal of becoming more efficient. Of the things Pittsburgh’s ace said he wanted to improve on, his efficiency is at the top of the list.

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“Being more efficient,” Skenes said. “I think it boils down to that. There are a number of different ways to do that, but that’s the big one. Just get guys out earlier.”

Skenes’ rookie season was one of the greatest in MLB history, as he went 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts while setting a Pirates franchise record for a rookie with 170 strikeouts over 133 innings. He was also the first pitcher in MLB history to have an ERA below 2.20 and over 150 strikeouts in their first 21 games and the second pitcher since 1913 to have an ERA below 2.00 through their first 22 appearances.

The Pirates’ ace won the 2024 National League Rookie of the Year and finished third in the Cy Young Vote. The latter made him the fifth rookie all-time to finish in the top three for the award and the first since Jose Fernandez of the Miami Marlins in 2013.

Skenes was also the first rookie pitcher to start an All-Star game since Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Hideo Nomo in 1995.

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If Skenes can effectively add a two-seamer and cutter, it could elevate his already elite stuff to another level. And if Skenes can find a way to improve on an all-time great rookie season, more awards could be in store for the Pirates star by the time the 2025 season is all said and done.

Make sure to visit Pirates OnSI for the latest news, updates, interviews and insight on the Pittsburgh Pirates





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