Well that was quick. The William Penn statue at Welcome Park will not be removed:

The press release notes that the preliminary draft proposal was “released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review.

They are still interested in “rehabilitating” the park, which stinks. It’s four trees and a statue with a half-wall near 2nd and Walnut. Pagan is gonna go down there later this week and review the park. It should take him three minutes total, because there’s not much to analyze.

What’s interesting is this from Governor Shapiro:

The conservative allegation is that the Gov only came in after the fact to claim a partial W here. They’ll tell you that public backlash stopped this, and not the Governor’s office, which may or may not be true. We’ll never know!


But we’ll give the Gov the benefit of the doubt since he’s a Montco guy and Sixers fan who came on our podcast last summer. He’s a friend of the program: