Only weeks after City Council blasted the Zoning Board of Adjustment for failing to produce enough of its members to hold proper hearings, the same problems have cropped up, and Mayor Nutter appears poised to fix them.

City Council members and developers complained in September that the six-member board had postponed more than 20 hearings - some for three months - because it did not have a quorum, four members. Councilman Darrell L. Clarke proposed a voter referendum that would reduce the board from six members to five and require only three for a quorum.

On Wednesday, more hearings were postponed into December and January when the board couldn't generate a quorum. Board member Lynnette Brown-Sow said the situation could not be avoided Wednesday, when member Carol Tinari had a death in the family and Anthony Lewis Jr. got sick. The board already has a handicap because Chairwoman Susan Jaffe has been on medical leave for three months.

Zenobia Harris, an aide to Clarke, said she was at a hearing Oct. 21 that already had been rescheduled from June. That hearing started an hour late because of a similar lack of a quorum and could not be completed. It was continued until Dec. 2.

Nutter spokeswoman Maura Kennedy would not say whether the mayor was considering replacing any board members to guarantee better attendance. But it did sound as though he'd had enough: "We expect to be taking measures to address this issue shortly," Kennedy said. - Jeff Shields

An island escape Bonding with colleagues is always important, and four City Council members picked a choice location in which to do it.

Puerto Rico.

Maria Quiñones Sánchez, Bill Green, Curtis Jones Jr., and Blondell Reynolds Brown were expected to return today from a weekend jaunt to the island, a favorite destination for proud Puerto Rican Sánchez, who frequents the island to visit family.

The four paid their own way, and conducting official business did not seem to be on the agenda. "We are on a socio-economic ecological discovery trip," Sánchez wrote in an e-mail Friday. "And we are having a little fun."

That fun included celebrating Sánchez's 41st birthday. "I'm forever 39," she wrote. Of course, kicking back for a bit doesn't preclude the possibility of some scheming for the future.

Sánchez, Green, and Jones have been a tight-knit threesome since their joint election to Council in 2007. Reynolds Brown on occasion has been happy to join them in pursuing particular issues.

So was there strategizing going on of the type that would build a nine-vote majority on the 17-member Council?

Wrote Sánchez: "Four people gets you nine very quickly." - Marcia Gelbart

Ringing in a new brand The big news at this week's annual luncheon of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau won't have anything to do with conventions. Instead, it will have to do with Philadelphia's new "brand."

And guess what? It's a bell.

Mayor Nutter, scheduled to deliver the luncheon's keynote address Wednesday, will present a new icon - a slightly crooked Liberty Bell - that will eventually replace the official city seal on Philadelphia's Web site, as well as on stationery and employee business cards.

There's a new tagline, too: "Life. Liberty. And you."

The new branding has been a project of the City Representative's Office. To see a preview, go to http://business.phila.gov. - Marcia Gelbart