PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia is on the verge of becoming only the second city in the country to pass a tax on soft drinks, due to the mayor’s creative approach to push the plan as a way to address paying for pre-kindergarten opportunities, rebuilding crumbling recreation centers and creating community schools.

The 1.5 cent per ounce tax on regular and diet sodas is expected to raise $91 million. City council is set to approve the measure at its Thursday meeting.

The idea has failed twice in Philadelphia and dozens of times in places across the country in recent years.

The City of Brotherly Love looked to Berkeley, Calif. — the first city in the country to pass a soda tax last fall. But Berkeley, a town of less than 120,000, has nearly twice the median household income of Philadelphia and is overwhelmingly white.

In Philadelphia, often cited as the poorest big city in the country, more than 180,000 citizens — many of them children — live in deep poverty and only 45 percent of its 1.5 million residents are white.

“Berkeley’s not Philadelphia,” said City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds-Brown, who voted against the soda tax in 2010 and 2011, but is supporting the latest version, which includes a tax on diet soda.

“I’m satisfied because the homework says diet soda is more often consumed by non-African-Americans,” said Reynolds-Brown, who is black. “That’s casting the net far wider and more citizens have some skin in the game.”