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Karen Heller: Dad Vail lesson: Get out in front

So the Dad Vail Regatta heads to Rumson, N.J., an event attracting 15,000 rowers and fans to a tiny, affluent town. Rumson has 7,200 residents and, from what I can tell, a handful of hotels, making the event a potential gilded version of the Dover Speedway on the Navesink River.

So the Dad Vail Regatta heads to Rumson, N.J., an event attracting 15,000 rowers and fans to a tiny, affluent town. Rumson has 7,200 residents and, from what I can tell, a handful of hotels, making the event a potential gilded version of the Dover Speedway on the Navesink River.

Good luck with that. Maybe Greenwich, Conn., would like to host the Mummers.

We can rail about the loss and affix blame, who dropped what oar, or move forward and progress from this perpetual pattern of gloom and doom and relying on that old canard that there's no money for anything except city employees' pensions.

Mayor Nutter bears some responsibility, but it's not all his fault. He has plenty of problems on his plate. He needs a better, stronger team, people who are engaged in the community, not simply in meetings. He needs to lose some of the soggy wood and tap able public representatives capable of getting things done.

Dad Vail leaders, no heroes in this mess, moaned that they had to row elsewhere after losing Saturn and John Deere as sponsors. Did they bother looking? What company wouldn't want its name affiliated with a collegiate rowing event promoting youth and health?

City Representative Melanie Johnson displayed the wrong attitude in defending the city's position. "I don't know where Philadelphia would have been able to come up with $250,000 to pay for them to put on the event," she said.

Garbage. This is the city that raised $68 million in 45 days for a painting. Dad Vail gave no one the opportunity, but city officials didn't even try when they discovered the regatta was heading north. Several business leaders told me they could get funds committed in a day.

Losing Dad Vail, no money for the lights in Rittenhouse Square, libraries, parades. It's akin to living in an emergency room, going from one triage situation to the next.

It's wearing to hear Nutter and other officials talk of Dickensian times when, in so many ways, Philadelphia has never been better or more vital. We need to shed the perception of the place as a decaying Rust Belt city on hard times, a hometown of losers - Nutter's precise message when he was elected two years ago.

So: Stop whining. Everybody has been hit hard by the economy. Adjust, adapt. We've all had to. The trick is to become proactive, engage smart and energetic people, consider what matters. And image matters, honestly, as well as approach and attitude.

Consider the punitive nature of doing business in the city. Why does it cost $50,000 to string lights in Rittenhouse Square? Johnny Dougherty stepped in and magnanimously waived the exorbitant fees his electricians and the theatrical stage employees union imposed in the first place. Now he's Santa Doc. Next time, don't charge so much and create the crisis in first place.

There needs to be a holistic approach to supporting what makes the city better, and a smarter business model. "We don't focus on the benefits," Councilman Bill Green said. "We only focus on the costs. If 15,000 people attending that regatta are from out of town, and they're staying in our hotels and buying our liquor and eating at our restaurants, is that worth more to the city than what it costs us to host the event?"

Also, as I've mentioned before, we need better rich people, another Willard Rouse, the next Lee Annenberg. Too many wealthy Philadelphians are cheap when it comes to civic engagement and supporting essential events. The business community needs to step forward. We should foster a competitive culture of sponsorship rather than a constant reliance on public funding.

"What's our strategic vision for our identity as an important city on the Northeast Corridor?" asks Harris Steinberg of Penn Praxis. "We need to pull together a civic, business, and philanthropic board and brainstorm for immediate steps to literally keep the lights on."

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg cultivated philanthropic leaders to be engaged in the city's development, people such as Caroline Kennedy in the schools. In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley courted a few wealthy individuals to pay for almost half of the $475 million Millennium Park, now a leading tourist attraction.

The point is to start thinking big, not acting small. The economy isn't going to be awful forever, and now is the right time to plan. Parks and Recreation Commissioner Michael DiBerardinis is hoping to build a giant stage, fit for theater and the Philadelphia Orchestra, for Fairmount Park. "We need to broadly engage and serve the city while attracting visitors as well," he says.

"Someone has got to own this type of civic dialogue and influence. We need to cultivate a culture of excellence in civic service and great emblematic leaders," Steinberg says. "The government can't do it all."

Nick Berardi, president of the Rittenhouse Row business association, says, "If it isn't working, the culture has got to be changed. We've got to team up with someone with better marketing abilities and share the responsibility. This could be the turning point to start running events more like a business." His group launched a spring festival, a city country fair, which attracts 60,000 consumers, all spending money in the district.

Instead of always reacting, Philadelphia's leadership needs to be innovative rather than perpetually playing defense. Business leader Judith von Seldeneck, who co-chairs the mayor's private sector task force, says, "We should be aggressively thinking about what do we want to bring to our community, and court businesses and events here."

Just like Rumson.