COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON FINANCE Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, October 8, 2024 2:10 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE RICHARDSON, CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR.
All right. Good afternoon. I note that the hour has come. The Clerk will please call the roll to take attendance. Members who are in attendance please indicate that you are present.
This hearing is now called to order. This is the public hearing of the Committee on Finance regarding Bill Nos. 240660, 240663 and 240655. Clerk, will you please read the titles of the bills and resolutions.
Bill No. 21 240660, an Ordinance amending Section 19-1301.2 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Homestead Exclusion," to revise the deadline by which applications for designation of property as homestead property are due, and making conforming changes, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 240655, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-3200 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Keystone Opportunity Zone, Economic Development District, and Strategic Development Area," to provide for additional extensions of certain benefits, under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 240663, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-1300 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Real Estate Taxes," to provide for a mechanism for informal review of individual property assessments, all under certain terms and conditions.
Thank you. Before I call on the Clerk to call the first panel, I'd like to recognize Council President Johnson for remarks.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I have several bills that are going to be going through Committee today. Just want to make a brief statement for the record, if that's okay with you, Madam Chair.
Yes, please. Thank you, Council President. We are honored to have you here.
It feels good to be back in the mix. Good afternoon, Madam Chair Gilmore Richardson and all members of City Council of the Committee on Finance. I want to thank you for your time and consideration and ask for a favorable consideration on Bill Nos. 240660, 240663 and 240655. Bill 240660 extends the following deadline for the Homestead Exemption from September 13th to December 1st. This extension is needed because assessment notices were sent out later than usual this year and homeowners need more time to apply for this vital program which can save them hundreds of dollars in their real estate taxes. Bill No. 240663 extends from October 7th to December 1st the application deadline for the property owner to request an OPA review of their property assessment. The OPA review can in some cases lower a property owner's tax liability significantly. The next bill, Bill 240655, would extend the KOZ designation for parcels of land at the Navy Yard owned by Rhoads Industries and parcels at the site of the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery now owned by Hilco Redevelopment Partners. S. Navy, has operated at the Navy Yard since 2016, generating significant tax revenue for both the City and the Commonwealth. Since 2016 Rhoads has invested nearly $100 million into its operations and plans an additional 150 million in future capital projects to meet growing Navy demand. 8 million in annual tax revenue for Philadelphia and 5 million for the Commonwealth. Rhoads collaborates with the local unions, the school districts and the Community of Philadelphia to create apprentice programs that provide students with a pathway to wellpaying jobs. And following a catastrophic explosion that occurred at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery in June of 2019, Hilco initiated significant environmental remediation investing million to clean up the site, 9 which plans to spend an additional 10 78 million. With the KOZ 11 extension, Hilco aims to attract 12 new businesses to the area and 13 projects the creation of 21,000 14 jobs. 15 With a strong focus on 16 diversity, Hilco has committed to 17 utilizing 50 percent minority-owned 18 businesses for construction and professional services along with hiring 50 percent of its workforce from Philadelphia. Half of that workforce is expected to be people of color. I just want to note for the record that commitment was based upon when Hilco first came in the city of Philadelphia and took over the refinery. In order for me to be supportive of the initial KOZ, we came to an agreement to make sure that 50 percent minority participation not only around the construction jobs, but the area that's very near and dear to me, and that's professional services. So those are the individuals who have the opportunity actually to work long beyond the actual facility has actually been built, the actual building structures. But most importantly, they partner with the Philadelphia School District as well as partner with the Community College here in the city of Philadelphia. I want to thank you, Madam Chair and members of this Committee, and I respectfully request that the Committee give a favorable recommendation and vote out all of my bills out of this Committee. Just want to personally say thank you. Also just say for the record, I have separate from my notes worked in partnership with Rhoads Industries around their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as well as Hilco. And I just will say just for the record, we'll do a deeper dive in this as time goes along. I also paid attention to their commitment and not only partnering with local organizations to make sure that the work that we're doing in South Philadelphia is conducive to the surrounding community, but also the philanthropic work that they have been doing since they arrived here in South Philadelphia. Just for the record as well, I'm born and raised in South Philadelphia.
I live on the 2100 block of Ellsworth Street, which is about maybe seven to eight blocks away from the actual refinery. I have seen -- and they will be able to talk about this more as they give their own presentation, that based upon them actually taking over the refinery who they were actually competing with, Sunoco, that wanted to keep the refinery under Phil Rinaldi, who is also a good friend, they stepped up to the plate to make sure that we closed down a very, I would say, non-environmental friendly, non-environmental friendly site. And they'll talk about what they have done to actually improve the actual climate and the environment in the immediate area. We'll do a deeper dive and they will speak more about the actual things they have done based upon the work that they have been doing since they arrived in South Philadelphia. But similarly with Rhoads Industries, I just want to note that they have also been very, very aggressive to hire young people who want to be apprentices inside that actual program at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. And so, with that being said, Madam Chair, I want to thank you for your time.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Council President Johnson. We appreciate the hard work of you and your team and for recognizing the importance of involving the community in the process. And so, we want to thank you all for the hard work that you all have done on this process. Thank you. And also, I'd like to recognize our Vice-Chair Councilmember Cindy Bass. Thank you so much for being here. Clerk, will you please call the first panel we have to testify on Bill No. 240660.
Okay. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Good afternoon, Chair Richardson and members of the Finance Committee. My name is Kathleen McColgan. I'm the Revenue Commissioner and Chief Collections Officer at the Department of Revenue. I'm here today to testify in support of Bill No. 240660 with our proposed amendments, which aim to enroll as many eligible homeowners into the Homestead Exemption program as possible. Bill 240660 amends Section 25 19-1301.2 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Homestead Exclusion." This bill will codify existing department practice of accepting applications until December 1st. The bill also codifies the Revenue Commissioner's ability to offer extensions to this due date at their discretion in extenuating circumstances. The Administration supports this bill as it will ensure applications will always be accepted until December 1st. We ask City Council to consider our amendments of Section 4(a)(1), which amends language about the Revenue Commissioner -- which amends language about when the Revenue Commissioner can offer exemptions. We believe this change offers the greatest flexibility for the department to increase enrollment when circumstances occur that would require an exception to the due date. We look forward to working with City Council to achieve this and to work collaboratively on communication and outreach efforts to inform the public about the application deadline. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Council President Johnson, do you have any questions for this witness?
I don't have any questions, but I do just want to say just based upon our last property assessment that took place, the average Philadelphian saw their property taxes increas by $600-plus. And so, members of the Council have been doing a citywide Tax Relief Workshop Tour to make sure as many people as possible take advantage of what we budgeted for tax relief measures in the City of Philadelphia. And so, I have no questions regarding the amendment, but we want to make sure we're doing everything possible to make sure people save money on their real estate taxes and won't be priced out of their home. So thank you. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Sure.
Thank you. Thank you, Council President Johnson. I did have a question regarding the amount of applications that you all have received thus far this year? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: For Homestead for this year?
Yes. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: I have the total number of enrollment at 237,000. For those that applied this year, I'll have to get that number and get back to you.
Okay. That'll be great. Thank you very much. Any additional questions for this witness? Okay. And so, I'll recognize our Vice-Chair Councilmember Cindy Bass and then Councilmember Jones and then Councilmember Ahmad, in that order. Councilmember Bass.
Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Commissioner. How are you? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Good afternoon. Good. Thank you.
This is very much needed, as you are aware. And we've done a lot of work today on making sure that people know about the Homestead Exemption. But no matter how much work we do there's still a very large universe of folks who don't know about it. Can you talk about what that universe looks like in Philadelphia right now? How many people are eligible that don't know about the exemption? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: I don't have that number with me right now, but I can get that for you.
Okay. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: I can talk a little bit about our outreach efforts though, if you'd like to hear about that.
Sure. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: So we are working collaboratively of course with City Council to attend many community events. Since July 1st of this year, Revenue has attended over 80 events across Philadelphia. Last month the Mayor sent an informational letter to every household in Philadelphia that outlined the programs that reduce tax bills for homeowners, and additional strategies going forward will include social media, adding town halls and clinics with City Council, grassroots organizations and other elected officials. We are also planning to do door-to-door canvassing and a call campaign in some of Philadelphia's most vulnerable neighborhoods.
Okay. I would just like to encourage also that we have a mechanism that, I don't know if we're considering, but when we send bills to property owners or folks in general we have the opportunity always to put an insert in the water bill or maybe the gas bill or other entities that we're connected to, so maybe that might be another way to get them on a regular monthly basis. And I would really like to see Revenue have some sort of goal for closing the gap. If the universe is 100,000 people, how are we closing that gap to get to less than 5,000 or 10,000 to get to 90 or 95 percent participation. So I just wanted to throw that out there and hope that it's something that you all could see fit towards working towards. And thank you so much for all of your help. You've really been great to work with. I just wanted to put that on the record. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Vice-Chair Bass. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Jones.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And I just wanted to put on the record that we often talk about when the City of Philadelphia does something wrong. We often talk about when City Council does something wrong, but I think we might want to put on the record when we did something right, and that is both the legislation that we're about to review today extending that deadline to the benefit of taxpayers, but also the effort that President Johnson has put out with billboards and mailings and things like that. I think workshops go a long way to let the public know that we're here to help and that we want to try to find solutions for these kinds of complicated tax problems. So I wanted to say for the record, President Johnson, well done.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilmember Jones. Before I recognize Councilmember Ahmad, I'd like to recognize Councilmember Landau who is here for the record. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I had a question about in this day and age of technology, of artificial intelligence are we not able to take our OPA records, know who is eligible for the Homestead Exemption, which is every homeowner in their primary residence and actually see if they make out better with some other program like LOOP or something else and make sure they don't have to jump through hoops to fill out forms and do any of this? We could computerize this whole thing and they could see the money in their pocket so that percent of folks who are the ones who need it the most who don't have the ability to go fill these forms don't know about this because they're working three jobs, why are we not making it easier to just make it automatic because they're getting it anyway? I was told -- I asked this question earlier in some other forum. I was told it's because they might qualify for something else. Well, we can automate that too. We have the ability in this day and age today to be able to pinpoint somebody with all their assets and proclivities. Our advertisers can get us -- if I look at an advertisement for something, it shows up in my email with the product placement. So I think we should help those who have the least by making this automatic so they can use this benefit. And the second piece I would like for us to consider is the highest echelon of our homeowners. Maybe they could do a voluntary giveback, because that amount of what they're doing, have a program where they can give that money and it can be directed towards home repair or something. Set up a fund, right, to say those to whom this Homestead Exemption does not make a huge difference, maybe they can voluntarily give that money into a fund that would help those who have the least, right, but automate this whole thing with these options. So I would love to hear if these are some things on your radar. As a city we're entering the 21st century. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Sure. Thank you for that question. We certainly share the same goal to get as many eligible customers enrolled into assistance programs as possible, and we do utilize data to do an analysis of who may likely be eligible and we reach out to them. However, we do not have conclusive information on properties that are owner-occupied. So that's really one of the biggest barriers that we have.
How do we get that information? Is there a legal way to get information which ones are owner-occupied? We can't tell the difference? We can triangulate water bill, we can triangulate electric bill and we can triangulate whose name is on the lease, right, on the deed. So there are ways to do this if we think hard enough to triangulate resources we have in our city. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: We use census track data to identify areas of the city where -- or to determine the percent of homeowner- occupied properties, but we don't know exactly which properties are owner-occupied, so that is the reason that we have to get as much word out on the street and do all of the outreach efforts. And like I mentioned, the Mayor's letter that went out to household properties to make sure that we are informing customers of the programs that are available and attending the workshops to have Revenue staff members there directly assisting them to get them into assistance programs and help them navigate which program they may be eligible for.
So those are the impediments to automation you're saying, right? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Yes.
The inability to be able to -- so I'll have to think about that, how we can make sure that we actually can identify homeowners in their addresses. Quite possibly if we all put our heads together we can come up with a way to identify correctly so no one is getting the benefit they're not supposed to get, right. But I do think we should make an effort to not put a burden on people who are struggling and own a home, it might be not the most palatial place, so they can get a benefit of that. So I would like to talk to your office further about how we can make that happen. Thank you. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Okay. Thank you. And I also just wanted to add that I received information during the testimony to let you know that we estimate approximately 86,000 properties are not enrolled in Homestead.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. You stated that 86,000 households are not enrolled in the Homestead Exemption, correct? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: It's an estimate, yes.
Estimate, okay. All right. Excellent. Thank you for that information. All right. Are there any further questions for this witness and for this panel?
Yeah, just one question. So what is the plan to enroll 86,000? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Through all of the outreach efforts that I mentioned, which is through social media, through the workshops. The Mayor's letter went out directly to approximately 350,000 households and then we are also planning to do door-to-door outreach in areas where we have looked at those census tracks and believe that there's a higher percentage of ownership and occupancy.
And what team would do the door-to- door outreach? Who's -- COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: That is the Mayor's Community of Engagement Empowerment.
That team will be going door-to- door with this information? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Yes.
Okay. So I probably want to make sure that we are also working in partnership with District Councilmembers. So if you show up at their constituents' doors, at least we're all on the same page -COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Absolutely.
-- regarding information. So whoever's going to follow up with that with the Chair and whoever runs the community engagement, so we can at least be on the same when folks are knocking on doors and individuals' districts. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Absolutely. We'll be reaching out to you.
Okay. Excellent. Any further questions for this witness? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, we thank you very much for your testimony and thank you for being here. Are there any further witnesses here to testify on Bill 2 No. 240660?
Thank you very much for being here. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Sure. Thank you very much. My name is Garrett O'Dwyer and I'm with the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations. Good morning, Chairperson Gilmore Richardson and Vice-Chair Bass, Council President Johnson, members of the City Council Committee on Finance. I'm the Associate Policy Director at PACDC and thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony and support of Bill No. 240660 to push back deadlines associated with the application for the Homestead Exclusion. We'd like to thank the Council President and Councilwoman Gauthier for their leadership in introducing this bill. PACDC is the leading voice of nonprofit community development organizations in Philadelphia. Our 60 CDC members and over 100 additional associate members are responsible for addressing key affordable housing, social service and economic development needs across the city. As our members have seen firsthand, the increased property taxes resulting from elevated valuations can put a significant burden on the ability of low-income homeowners to remain in their homes. Due in large part to the leadership of City Council, the City offers a number of programs to assist homeowners with managing their property tax burden. The Homestead Exclusion is one of the most important tools in this respect. However, we know that the program is often undersubscribed, which we just heard to the tune of about 86,000, which means that some homeowners who are in desperate need of this assistance are not receiving it. Given that the property valuations were released late by the City and that the valuations increased significantly over levels from two years ago, homeowners should have additional time to submit their application to participate in the Homestead Exclusion by pushing back the dates associated with applying for the Homestead Exclusion. Bill No. 22 240660 will give housing counselors more time to connect with eligible homeowners for residents to be educated and for more eligible owners to take advantage of this key program. We, therefore, fully support Bill No. 240660. To Councilwoman Ahmad's point, we also believe that the City must do more to not only ensure greater participation in the property tax relief programs, but that they are informed as to which program is right for them. The City offers a number of programs that are mutually exclusive, meaning that you can only be enrolled in one of them. However, the City offers little in the way of assistance in helping homeowners choose which one is right for them. We believe that the City needs to explore ways of automating part of this process and to develop digital property tax relief tools that can allow homeowners to better understand which program meets the need for them right now and in the future, as some programs might have different impacts on their finances as years go out. We would be excited to engage all of you in future conversation on how to make this a reality and work with our partners in the Administration to do that as well. Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of Bill No. 240660 this afternoon.
Excellent. Thank you very much for your testimony and for your work all across the City representing so many of our CDC partners. Are there any questions or comments for this witness? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, we thank you for your testimony. Thank you for being here this afternoon. Is there anyone else here to testify on Bill No. 240660? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, we will now proceed with Bill No. 6 240663. Clerk, will you please call the first panel we have to testify on Bill No. 240663.
Thank you all so much. Please approach the witness table. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Can you state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, Chair Gilmore Richardson and members of the Finance Committee. My name is James Aros, Jr. and I am the Chief Assessment Officer for the City's Office of Property Assessment. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on Bill No. 5 240663. Under the proposed legislation, the filing deadline for First Level Review applications related to Tax Year 2025 revaluation would be moved back to November 18, 2024. After this bill 12 was introduced, OPA moved this filing deadline back to November 18, 2024. This extension gives property owners approximately five additional weeks to make a decision on whether or not they should file 18 a First Level Review application to contest their Tax Year 2025 assessment. OPA appreciates the partnership with City Council in making sure that property owners have sufficient time and resources available to them to help make this important decision. That concludes my testimony and I am available to answer any questions you may have.
Excellent. Thank you. May you please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Sure. Good afternoon, members of the Committee. My name is Jonathan Sgro. I am a Divisional Supervising Attorney in the Homeownership and Consumer Rights Unit at Community Legal Services where I represent Philadelphia homeowners struggling to afford their property taxes. CLS strongly supports Bill 20 No. 240663 which would extend the deadline for property owners to file a First Level Review with the Office of Property Assessment to November 18, 2024. As a result of the 2025 re-assessments, the assessed value of a Philadelphia home increased on average by percent citywide. The Inquirer has reported that the largest assessment jumps are happening in predominantly low-income neighborhoods located near rapidly gentrifying sections of the city like Parkside and Kingsessing in West Philadelphia. The concentration of rapid assessment increases in certain low-income majority Black neighborhoods is particularly concerning in light of studies of the City's last major re-assessment in 2023, which showed that while OPA assessments met industry standards citywide, the 2023 assessments did not consistently satisfy those standards in predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods. Because it will take time to conduct a similar systemic study of the accuracy, uniformity and equity of the 2025 assessments, it's critical for individual homeowners to have an opportunity to challenge their assessments if they believe they are inaccurate. Pennsylvania law requires certification of new assessed values by March 31st of each year. Despite the March 31, 2024 deadline to certify property assessments for 2025, OPA did not make the new assessments public until publishing them online on August 7th. The City began mailing notices of valuation during the second week of August, meaning that homeowners received these notices less than 60 days before the October 7, 2024 deadline, the deadline that was initially set to file both an FLR and a BRT appeal. Despite the City's best intentions and efforts by the Parker Administration and Council to get the word out about the new assessments, there's no question that many, many homeowners will realize they need to file appeals well after yesterday's deadline has passed. City Council does not have the authority to extend the BRT deadline because it's set by state law. Therefore, extending the City's own deadline to accept informal appeals is a commonsense measure to give property owners a chance to notify the City of errors and ensure that their new assessments are accurate. Without it, many homeowners will miss the narrow window to appeal and be forced to pay inflated tax bills on inaccurate assessments. In conclusion, I just want to thank Council President Johnson and all the members of Council who supported recent legislation to increase the value of the Homestead Exemption that's been discussed so far today as well as creating the new Low-income Freeze program. CLS is happy to support Council offices and workshops throughout the city that spread the word about these programs, and we are really grateful to work in partnership with Council to ensure that no 9 Philadelphia homeowner is displaced due to rising property values. Thank you for your time and for your support of this bill.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony and the work at CLS. We all truly enjoy working with you all to get the word out across the city of Philadelphia regarding the plethora of programs that we have available that our residents can take advantage of. So thank you very, very much for your partnership and for your hard work. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Jones.
Yeah. I just want to go on record thanking you as well. If we relied only on the City Solicitor's Office or other legal entities, we would be unable to help all of the people who are requesting help. We're getting a lot of calls about this and it is comforting. You are like the security blanket to say, well, did you call CLS. And if they say no, well, then try that because they also help. In your assessment of the assessments, what percentage of the city has been re-assessed? And by the time we finish the entire city we're starting back, is that the wave of property assessments that you're seeing?
So I'm asking in the methodology that we do, I see the maps, I see some of the red areas that we live in, but how many sections of the city are they doing in one year? And is it a rotation and a system that comes back around to the beginning to start re-assessing maybe every two, three years? Is that what you're finding?
This might be a better question for AJ. But my understanding is due to state law and uniformity that when the City conducts a new assessment, they have to do a citywide assessment. They're not able under the law to conduct individual spot assessments.
So it doesn't feel like that. And maybe, yeah, you should answer this because I was on a block in North Philadelphia, I kid you not, earlier today and we were looking at playgrounds but then I started looking at properties. And I did the actual Redfin assessment. And I'm not going to say where it was because you'll probably go back out there, but theirs was reasonable. It was under value of what I would have expected to pay in that area. And so, I'm asking if we're doing it citywide, how close to accomplishing that have we come?
So every revaluation is citywide. We have not done revaluations every year for the last few years, but for Tax Year 2023 and for most recently 2025 we do a citywide revaluation. Now, that does not mean that every property in the city will see a value change. There are certain properties where after we run the data if the assessment seems to still reflect what that property is worth, then there is no reason to change that assessment. However, two years ago and again this year there were well over 500 -- and I believe 50,000 of the 580,000 parcels in the city that saw some sort of value change as part of the revaluation. We have to look at everything. We can't exclude anything or specifically look at one particular area or type of property. So we look at everything, but that doesn't mean that everything would necessarily change. But in most cases it's over 95 percent of the city sees a value change.
Okay. I'm going to accept that. I feel good for the neighborhood I was in because with this Homestead Exemption they might have been paying taxes on a dollar, like that's what it was appraised and assessed for. So I'm not going to balk about that. I am going to cry for the rest of us who kind of got hit over the head with these taxes. But we got to pay our fair share. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilmember Jones. Are there any further questions for these witnesses? The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.
You mentioned that -- CLS mentioned about gentrification and these are not necessarily swaths of communities that get gentrified all at once. It's one property here with the rest not being gentrified. However, when the assessment is done, that gentrified property can set the rate for the neighboring properties who had no improvements done. So I wanted to know what paths do those community members have when they're sort of putting in an appeal for change in their status, whether they have access to legal support, representation and any independent appraisals that they can do that would show the disparate values of their house versus what was improved on their block, the one anomaly that was approved on the block? Either one of you can answer that.
Certainly in terms of legal resources your office should certainly send people to us at CLS because we do represent homeowners in assessment appeals. Certainly the gold standard on an assessment appeal is going to be a private appraisal. That's going to garner a heck of a lot more information than the City is able to have about individual properties, just based on publicly available data, given the fact that the City cannot without the consent of the homeowner enter the property and understand every detail of the condition of the property, particularly the interior of the property. I think in neighborhoods that are experiencing significant development you do see rising values. But the important thing on an assessment appeal is to ensure that we're looking at good comps for that property to ensure if it's my client, that my client's home is being compared to a property that is actually similar in terms of type, condition, size and all of those things. And I guess AJ can talk about how the OPA deals with that on a systemic basis.
Sure. So no one sale drives a market in general. So if there's one sale on a block, our process is not as such that that sale now reflects the whole block or whatever. When you talk about neighborhoods that are gentrifying, one thing that I just want to make clear is that usually the sales start coming for either new construction or renovated properties, they might have an abatement, they might not depending on the contractor I guess, but those sales do not directly impact the homeowners, the longtime homeowners or those that have not made improvements. In the sense of OPA does not take a factor of the sale of the new construction and apply that to the older homes. We have condition codes for all the properties. So if that is new construction, we'll have it coded as such. If the property hasn't been updated in a number of years, we will have that noted as such. And so, sales when we do the modeling and each model has thousands of sales in it for the residential single family properties, each condition code will come up with a factor. And so, that's the adjustment of, hey, we see that properties in this condition and this neighborhood are selling for this much. That's how that number is generated. It's not by taking the sale of a newer construction and discounting that to some extent. Now, the flip side of that is if people are willing to pay more for those average condition homes or homes that need updating because they like the neighborhood now that there's new construction, we have to react to that. So that in a roundabout way obviously could drive up the value of those homes. But OPA is not backing a value out from the new home that just sold across the street that is maybe three stories when the rest of the block is two and has all these features that these other homes don't. We're looking at sales of homes similar to that. And in most cases, each area of the city the homes that sell the most are the ones that are what we would call average or slightly above or slightly below, meaning that they're not new construction, they're not heavily renovated. So that's the most frequent data we see with the sales. So we feel pretty good about those numbers reflecting the actual average condition for the most part. As far as people contesting the value, I always tell folks when I'm out at these workshops or whatever format is tell us everything you think is relevant about your property or if you're not sure what's relevant, tell us everything you can. So if you already have an appraisal, send that in. Maybe our square footage is slightly off, maybe there's something we don't know about the property if there's pictures or whatever. I don't take a stance on whether somebody should go out and get a private appraisal because that's a certain cost and we're not doing an analysis to tax whatever benefit for them. If they want to do that, they can do that for sure but it's not required for most single family homeowners. The other thing that we just say is that tell us everything, but realize if your home's in better condition than we have it, it could go the other way too. And that's not to scare anybody. But if you tell us we're missing 500 feet, we have to factor that in. But, yeah, just tell us if people are filing, look for homes that are similar to yours and tell us everything you can about the property and we'll see if we're missing something or if we need to update something when we do these reviews.
So the constituents' concern to us has been how detailed is their analysis. And I think we referred to it that not every, you know, we don't have data on every piece of property in Philadelphia. So I just wondered when you average out these things how disaggregated is the data? Is there a standard, we say we come to this in a block of X many houses, we do this kind of analysis to determine the rate?
It's not quite that in the sense -- we have data on every property in the city, so it's not a lack of data for the most part. Now, whether something about that data is inaccurate because maybe somebody hasn't done anything to their house in 40 years or maybe they did something and didn't take out a permit and we don't know. We get that a lot. My neighbor fixed up the house, they didn't take a permit out. Well, we're not going to know that. And so, the home that didn't might have the right value but they're concerned about their neighbor having the same value when they think it should be higher. So that is the case of we have some data but it might not be right in that instance. But I couldn't do it in 30 seconds here to explain the whole process. If you're interested, you, your staff, we have a presentation up to two hours long that we can give you on the whole mass appraisal modeling process to help you understand it. But there are multiple factors in every model that account for location, size, condition of the property. And it's not any one block in and of itself gets factored, but it's small neighborhood grouping. So any one block is probably not going to have enough sales for anybody to make a really good statistical analysis unless it's new homes, 8 they all sold in the last year or 9 two. Then you can use just those 10 sales. 11 Most of the neighborhoods 12 in the city will not have 13 sufficient activity just to stay on 14 the one block or even around the 15 corner either side to do a mass 16 appraisal or even a fee appraisal 17 so we have to expand it a little 18 bit, but those are applied to a 19 group of properties, not one block 20 at a time.
All right. We'll get that tutorial from you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilmember Ahmad. I wanted to just mention very quickly if you could submit for the record that for dissemination to the entire Committee, how many informal review requests you have received thus far this year and then how that compares to years prior.
Sure. So as of the end of September, which was the last pickup and accounting that the vendor who does it did, we were at approximately 9900 so 9,900 First Level Reviews. For comparison at the end of 2023, when that deadline hit we had about double that. It was just short of 19,900 total First Level Reviews submitted. So obviously there was still a week ahead of the original deadline and there's the extension to come. But we're a little under halfway of what we received in comparison to 2023 and lower than previous years as well.
Great. Okay. Thank you for that information. That's not great, but thank you for the information. I think we need to better understand that and how we could ensure that we're getting this information out to as many people as possible. It's an educational opportunity for us as a city. So thank you for having the information here today at the hearing.
The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Landau.
Thank you so much. I promise to be brief. Thank you so much for being here. I know that we don't have the legal authority to extend the October 7th deadline, so I wanted to thank you a lot for making the First Level Review deadline to November 18th, which we realize is only the First Level Review and not the appeal. So the appeal deadline was yesterday. I've been in communication with your office, with the BRT. I know that the BRT, their Commissioners are very generous in granting people's nunc pro tunc petitions so that they can file appeals late and still have their appeal heard and also we are going to go ahead hopefully with other Council offices and promote that broadly, that people should not hesitate to file their appeals even though it's after the October 7th deadline because we are pretty certain that given the circumstances that the letters went out late, that their appeals will be heard. So feel good about that. So I want to thank you both for your work. CLS, thank you. And just one statement for the Revenue Commissioner. Just for the Homestead, I'm wondering if you can cross-reference the 86,000 houses who have not applied for the Homestead with rental licenses in Philadelphia to at least filter some of them out and then maybe you'll come down to a smaller number of the doors we need to knock on. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you very, very much, Councilmember Landau. Are there any further questions or comments for these witnesses? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, we thank you very much for your presence today and thank you for your testimony. Are there any further witnesses here to testify on Bill 6 No. 240663?
Okay. Please approach the witness table. You can then again state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. (Witness approached Witness table.)
Hello again. Again, my name is Garrett O'Dwyer, Associate Policy Director for the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations or PACDC, and thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of Bill No. 240663, which would push back the deadline for the informal review process for property tax assessments to November 18th. We'd also like to thank the Council President and Councilwoman Landau for their leadership in introducing this bill. Changes to property tax assessments can be a cause of significant anxiety for low- and moderate-income communities, and ensuring their accuracy is of paramount importance. These communities are more likely to receive incorrect assessments while also being less able to absorb the cost of these increased evaluations. By extending the deadline for the informal review process for 2025, Bill No. 240663 will allow homeowners more time to better understand why their assessments may have changed and, therefore, be better able to decide whether to challenge the assessment or not. This could offer homeowners another safeguard from improperly inflated valuations. We therefore fully support Bill No. 240663. As I said before, we also believe the City must do more to encourage participation in property tax relief programs to make sure all eligible homeowners are receiving appropriate relief. Moreover, the City must do more to assist homeowners in determining which programs are best for them. We'd also recommend considering whether this informal review could include a review of property tax relief options for homeowners as well. We'd be excited to work with City Council on strategies to make this a reality again. Thanks for the opportunity to testify today in support of Bill No. 240663. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Are there any questions or comments for this witness? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, again we thank you very much for being here. Are there any further witnesses here to testify on Bill 13 No. 240663? (No response.)
Seeing none, we thank you all for being here. We will now proceed with our testimony on Bill No. 240655. I want to make the announcement that we have several panels, at least five panels plus our public commenters for this bill, so I'm going to respectfully request of all of you who are here to provide testimony on Bill No. 2 240655, if you could please summarize your testimony and submit your written testimony for the record so that we have the opportunity to ensure that each of you have the chance to be heard. So again, I'm asking that you summarize your testimony and submit your written testimony for the record. Also prior to the Clerk calling the next panel for Bill No. 14 240655, I want to notate for the record that we did receive written testimony from Ryan Boyer, Business Manager of Labor's District Council of Philadelphia and the Building Trades. And so, I just wanted to ensure that that was stated for the record. And we do have that written testimony. That will be a part of the record. Also, we will have to move forward with another very, very important meeting. Our Vice-Chair Councilmember Bass will take over as the Chair for a few moments until I return. And so, will the Clerk please call Panel No. 3, which is the first panel for Bill No. 8 240655.
Thank you all so much for being here. As you approach the witness table, we ask that you please state your name for the record and then you can proceed with your testimony in the order that your name was called, so beginning with our Commerce Director. Thank you very much. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Good afternoon, Chairperson and members of the Finance Committee. My name is Alba Martinez and I am the City of Philadelphia's Director of Commerce. I'm here to testify in support of Bill 240655 authorizing the City to apply to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the extension of Keystone Opportunity Zone benefits for two economic development projects, one in the Navy Yard and the second in the Bellwether District. Present with me today are my colleagues Deputy Commerce Director Dawn Summerville, Deputy Commerce Director Gianna Grossman and Finance Director Rob Dubow. After my brief testimony, we look forward to answering any questions the Committee may have. As you all know, the KOZ program is an economic development tool created by the Commonwealth to stimulate investment and employment on vacant and underutilized properties. This program enables the City to attract businesses and development projects that may not otherwise choose Philadelphia as their location. Much of the development Philadelphia has seen in the past years on vacant industrial sites 8 has been incentivized in part by 9 the KOZ program. The legislation 10 before you today sponsored by 11 Council President Johnson would 12 drive significant economic 13 development projects managed by 14 Rhoads Industries and Hilco 15 Redevelopment Partners. 16 Rhoads is a family-owned 17 company headquartered in the Navy 18 Yard that specializes in industrial 19 fabrication, installation and 20 maintenance. This is a business that makes submarines. They have become a key player in this sector. S. Navy contracts, Rhoads is planning a significant investment of over $200 million to expand their operations and capabilities. By extending benefits for the portion of the property that remains unoccupied and eligible, Rhoads anticipates a faster and larger rate of capital investment and operational growth. This would also help them leverage their lending capacity for future investment. As a result of the expansion, Rhoads will invest $90 million in additional capital expenditures that would otherwise not have been spent and create over 1,100 jobs. The Bellwether District is a 1300-acre site strategically located in Southwest Philadelphia. Evergreen Resources Group remains responsible for legacy remediation. Since 2020 remediation of the district has been managed by Hilco, a company specializing in repositioning large contaminated sites for productive and innovative reuse. By end of year investment by Hilco is projected to surpass $1 billion and they have created 3,100 jobs. Work to date has been solely focused on demolition, remediation, environmental cleanup and development. 4 billion and result in almost 22,000 permanent jobs. These are quality jobs that span a wide array of sectors; supply chain management, logistics, trucking, warehousing, life sciences, marine and rail operations jobs. The numbers do not include indirect jobs in complementary sectors. Right now this site is also being considered for multiple attraction opportunities. One of which involves a competitive multi- state process. Extending benefits will make the project more competitive, will accelerate the pace and result in more total real estate development. Ultimately, this means more spending and more jobs and a significantly larger economic impact for Philadelphia. The Bellwether District will transform Philadelphia's innovative ecosystem far exceeding original plans. In alignment with City requirements for KOZ, both Rhoads and Hilco have entered into pilot agreements, a Career-Connected Learning plan and an Economic Opportunity Plan. The City uses these vehicles to work with developers to ensure we create meaningful opportunities that benefit Philadelphia residents. As a reminder, the state requires each extension application to have Council approval, School District approval and the aforementioned City requirements in place. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. Our team is happy to answer any questions.
Thank you. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. My name is Joseph Welsh. I work for Rhoads Industries. I'm responsible for Government Affairs and Strategic Workforce programs for the company. Over the course of the past 10 years we have worked very hard at trying to renovate space in the Navy Yard. We took over a building that literally was falling apart. When it snowed outside, it snowed harder inside. It was that -- and a number of people have come down to visit us. So we realized we had to renovate a building. We also knew that we had to build a workforce pipeline. The Navy had told us this. They are currently reporting they need to add 5.5 million labor hours per year to the labor force total in the United States in order to be able to meet these requirements. All of the data that we've heard here today from Council President and from Ms. Martinez are true, the numbers are real. But the thing I want to tell you on the quality side, we're really devoted to trying to build the educational infrastructure here. We're working hard with the School District. We were able to get the Community College of Philadelphia a $2.7 million grant from the Navy to help build out their welding program. We gave them a $250,000 grant we had received to help build out the pre-apprenticeship program. And in the first two years we had a small return. This year, good news, we have two cohorts of eight students each going from the City schools into the Community College to get an additional 300 hours of weld training. We then come in and interview them and then we hire them. We put them in our apprenticeship program. When we hire them, we hire them at $23 an hour, we think is a living wage. And we train them for up to eight months spending about $80,000 to make sure that they're qualified. Most of our journeymen welders make six figures, so they're on a career track to really be able to lift themselves up and really have a good life and a good career. This particular program we're working on has a life span of 30 years so it's pretty predictable what's going to happen in the future. And the last time Admiral Caldwell was in (inaudible) over the whole program he said, how can we double the amount of work Rhoads is doing. So I give great credit to Dan Rhoads for that, but also our mill rights, Local 219, and our boilermakers, Local 19, and their really great work.
Yeah. Can you elaborate on your diversity, equity and inclusion numbers and also your efforts to expand opportunities for our young people based upon the demand of work down at the Navy Yard?
Our numbers now are about percent African 25 American, about 10 percent women. We're really thrilled that we have in our apprenticeship program seven young ladies by the way. This is a a great coup for us. But what we're really doing to try to enhance this is we're working again with the School District and the four weld programs within the City schools, but we're also reaching out to another post-secondary trading program called PTTI, which is in North Philadelphia. They do a pretty good job but they don't quite prepare them to enter into the workforce as we need, so we're going to take some of the state grant dollars we received from DCED and give it to them, and we're going to have our instructors help teach them how to better prepare their people to come right on board. But there's a lot of promise there and that's basically a community training center for people from North Philadelphia. We're all excited about this. I met with (inaudible) and we had some great conversations and we're looking to really build things out.
Absolutely, because I believe that part of the number one reason why we have gun violence here in the city of Philadelphia, and I know we got to report that numbers are down, but we now need to make sure that we double-down our efforts even more to actually eliminate the issue. And we know, we recognize a lot of it comes from poverty, right. In areas you see high poverty, you see high crime and gun violence, which leads me to I know you have the School District. That's part of the partnership. So, Alba Martinez, give me the requirement for the KOZ extension which requires a certain level of participation of students from the Philadelphia School District to participate in the internship program. It's similar to what we had to do with the partnership with Hilco when they first came to the city of Philadelphia. But just talk about those numbers just for the record to get our young people involved. And then also, I really pushed you and your team to rethink our partnership but not only just with the Philadelphia public School District, but we have thousands of young people that attend charter schools in the city of Philadelphia that isn't covered by this partnership. And what happens is when I talk to my constituents, they're all of our children, not just the children that go to public schools but children that also go to charter and parochial schools as well. So how could they be a part of that particular process to make sure we're being inclusive for all children? That's something to take into consideration as we move forward.
Thank you for the question, Council President. As I answer, I'd also like to invite Deputy Director Grossman to come up and elaborate on this answer because I think it's a really important question. I guess I want to start by saying that --
Can Ms. Summerville come also answer this question if you don't mind because --
-- that's who we have called to make sure that this process is very thorough regarding our young people in the District.
I just want to start by saying that I believe that our partnership with the School District in the context of the pilot is really important because of the size of the School District. However, it doesn't exclude establishing bridges and connections and pipelines from other educational institutions to these employers. Absolutely, Council President, that's an expectation.
I will challenge you to check the clarity around the actual guidelines because I do know with Hilco we had a little back-and- forth with Universal Audenried, which is a charter school. And at that time I know Jasmine who was the point person for Hilco kind of went beyond that school, the traditional School District partnership, to include those kids from Audenried, but we really was getting a lot of pushback from the District saying that parochial, charter schools don't qualify. So if you're saying that we do provide that opportunity, then someone needs to clarify that just for the record as we move forward for the future.
So what I'll clarify is that I believe that an agreement, a written agreement, sets a minimum standard in terms of the relationship with the employer, that that agreement doesn't govern our relationship with the employer and students. It governs a minimum requirement of a relationship. And the Commerce Department is not only well-positioned but equipped and prepared to expand the reach of these programs beyond the School District if that's something that our city believes is a priority. I happen to agree.
Thank you so much for the question, Council President. I'm Gianna Grossman, Deputy Commerce Director for Workforce Solutions. So the way we have set up the Career-Connected Learning plans is we worked very closely with the School District. One of our good partners is here today, Michelle Armstrong, that we ensure, especially when the ACT 158 guidelines came out, that the Career-Connected Learning agreements were in complete connection with everything that is required of the state and of the School District to meet those requirements. So we came up with what we call a Career-Connected Learning continuum, which starts at the exposure. So for middle school students, ensuring that they're aware these opportunities are available to them, working with students to have things such as job shadowing, site tours, informational interviews, making sure that all of these KOZ partners are participating in district career fairs and career awareness opportunities and then build on that. So from exposure, awareness and then work-based learning opportunities, so we build on those informational interviews, site tours, et cetera, to then get into work-based learning experiences and offering internships and post- secondary opportunities via some of those pre-apprenticeships.
Thank you, Council President Johnson. Again, I know that we've had this conversation previously and it is a concern for us as well. I agree with my colleagues. I think that is a minimum. I want to make sure that we let you know as well there are certain developers that have relationships with charter schools, and we accept that process through the Career-Connected Learning. I agree they're all our children and they all deserve equal opportunity as you're looking at career path and growing them up so that we can keep them out of poverty, keep them away from gun violence, so we will continue to lean in on that I think because the Career-Connected Learning and the guardrails that we've put in place were designed with us and the School District. Our team will continue to lean in that space.
And last question, what's the minimum requirement of student participation because I know there was a mandate early on with Hilco that this amount of students have to participate with the internship program? What's that minimum number?
So we build out the Career-Connected Learning plans as somewhat flexible documents because when we're starting, a lot of these KOZs are vacant sites, so we're working directly with those developers. And depending on the capacity of the developers, obviously this isn't usually their wheelhouse. We work with them very closely to ensure that they're doing something in each of those categories, but we ensure that there's something for each but we don't require certain numbers based on that level of capacity the developer has. As they get tenants, we expand those Career-Connected Learning experiences. Obviously we don't want students on, you know, vacant land, et cetera. So we work with them and kind of develop it over time to ensure that there's building experience.
So as the project grows, the student participation grows because you're starting off at the baseline with vacant land.
What seems to me impressive about Hilco is despite the challenges that that site presents, in the aggregate since they took over the project four years ago they've served over 1300 students in a variety of capacities, including paid internships, about 120 paid internships. So that is important and it is expected to grow as the project grows.
Quick question about the data. It's been four years you said and I just wonder if those students are tracked to see what actually they do if they're post-graduation or to see what the impact was of being engaged in that way.
Yes, so we are tracking all of that. And I will say Hilco was in an interesting position because they started their experiences during the pandemic. And so, a lot of that was virtual. So I would say we're building on that more and more now. They ensure that when they do things like informational interviews and site tours that they're then extending and ensuring that those students that are participating in those understand the opportunities for internships, et cetera, that from the internships that we're continuing to track what the next steps and opportunities are. I know Amelia is here too so I don't want to speak for you entirely. But we are -- Hilco is also working with our new intermediary for our youth, the workforce. So JEVs has taken over the role that PYN had. Hilco is actually paying into the C2L, Career-Connected Learning PHL system. So that helps with the data tracking. Not only are they paying the wages and stipends for those students, but they're also paying into the infrastructure of the system which allows us to better track, et cetera.
Well, I guess I'm going to go a little harder and let Hilco do their own presentation. But I guess also if you're doing these paid internships, which I think is awesome, right, I can name a couple corporations that come in front of this body a couple times and haven't offered to pay internships, right. But also, and I know this is some concern to community members, how do we go about the zip codes and targeting 19145, 19146? That's primarily South Philly. And then I know you got the folks that live in South Philly which is across the bridge. I think it's 19143. How do we go about categorizing and recruiting from those particular areas for people that want to participate?
So we're actually targeting the schools that are closest to Hilco. So we are working in that geographic --
And you just proved my point. I'm going to wrap up on this because --
-- right, is Audenried. And I remember it's like, well, if ain't doing Audenried, what's the point because it's right across the street. It's like here go the site, there's a bridge that separates the expressway to get from Wilson Park projects -- I mean, Wilson Park Housing to the site and then right down the street is actual Audenried. Now, I know there has been progress because I know they're participating in the CAP and so forth and things along that line. But just making sure that you got Audenried and also Alcorn and they're both under Universal companies, which isn't public schools. So taking that in consideration as we move forward.
Quick question. For students who are interested but don't have the skill set and need some help in getting to a place, do you have a track for those students in terms of getting them up to speed in order to be able to avail all these resources?
Yes, we work very closely with the School District to ensure that we are offering equitable opportunities and that we're also kind of building those pathways. So whether it's with specific KOZ developers or whether it's through the C2L PHL system, we do ensure that we're building the ability for students to participate and that we also are offering training and I think that's something we've done differently in how we've built out the Career-Connected Learning PHL program, is that there's training for students before they're going into these programs and additional opportunities to get to that level of being able to complete internships. So we're trying to think through all of these steps through that continuum and how we're able to engage students and offer these experiences equitably.
Okay. Thank you. Any additional questions? (No response.)
Now, can we have the Clerk call the next panel forward.
I apologize to keep you waiting, Madam Vice-Chair. My name is Amelia Chasse Alcivar. I'm Executive Vice-President of Corporate Affairs for HRP Group, formerly known as Hilco Redevelopment Partners. I want to thank Council President Johnson. I want to thank Chairwoman Gilmore Richardson and the other Councilmembers of the Committee today. Thank you for your consideration of Bill No. 240655. We are the proud developer of the Bellwether District in South and Southwest Philadelphia. HRP is a vertically integrated redevelopment firm that transforms complex and obsolete industrial sites into modern economic engines with positive community impact. We appear before you today to ask for a favorable vote for this legislation, which extends the Keystone Opportunity Zone designation with an extended pilot agreement to realize the intent of this economic development program and catalyze significant job and revenue creation. I want to also mention my colleague Jeremy Grey, Executive Vice-President of Industrial Development is here. After my brief presentation, we are happy to answer any questions the Committee may have. At HRP we work to align every project with our three pillars of community, economic and environmental sustainability. We respect the communities we join and the people who proudly built them. We protect the environment through remediation and redevelopment and we connect the past to a new future of opportunity. We acquired the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery site through an affiliate joint venture in a bankruptcy proceeding in 2020. As Council President mentioned in his opening remarks, our group was the only qualified bidder who did not seek to restart refining operations. We recognize the generational impact to transform 1300 acres in South and Southwest Philadelphia into a more sustainable space that will inherently improve the environment while creating thousands of jobs and enhancing economic and social mobility for the 60,000 Philadelphians living in the communities surrounding the site. As you know well, just five years ago this was the largest oil refinery on the East Coast. The refinery was responsible for 10 percent of Philadelphia's carbon 11 emissions. By decommissioning the 12 refinery and removing its 13 infrastructure, we've brought that 14 close to zero today. 5 million gallons of petroleum product and 950 miles of pipeline which is enough to stretch from Philly to Florida. In its place we're building a master plan commercial development with 750-acre logistics campus, a 250-acre innovation campus. Economic impact studies performed by Econsult Solutions project that the Bellwether District development will create over 28,000 direct project and construction jobs and 19,000 direct permanent jobs. We are deeply committed to ensuring Philadelphians have an equitable opportunity to access these jobs. That starts with expanding and diversifying the workforce pipeline where we have focused significant investment through a variety of programs and partnerships, including our Economic Opportunity Plan, which the Council President alluded to. That includes a minority participation goal of 50 percent for both workers and contracts as well as professional services and a local hiring goal of 50 percent Philadelphia residents and 50 percent individuals of color. We also have an agreement with the City to provide educational opportunities. I will gloss over that since we just spoke to it very eloquently, but I did want to re-emphasize that we've hosted over 120 paid interns to date and including 52 interns this summer. We did host our first middle school internship pilot program this year over spring break. That was a wonderful experience we look forward to repeating and we've provided educational programming to over 1300 students. We have a 10-year scholarship program with the Community College of Philadelphia to provide scholarships to students living in the five zip codes surrounding our site.
It is exclusively available for students in those five zip codes. We've provided 15 students with scholarship funds to date, some over multiple years. We're in the third year -- we just opened -- sorry, we just closed our application period for the fourth cycle of those scholarships. Partnerships, we also have partnerships with workforce diversification organizations and programmings including Everybody Builds, the Carpenters Apprenticeship Ready Program, Build Latino, Women in Construction, Women in Nontraditional Careers, Rosie's Girls, the Center for Employment Opportunities Re-Entry Program, and the Diverse Chambers Coalition. We're committed to transparent and inclusive community engagement. We host quarterly virtual public meetings, annual onsite community meeting and resource fair, and we participate in community-hosted gatherings on a monthly basis. We've participated in over 70 community meetings and events since last year. We also meet regularly with our Community Advisory Panel which is made up of registered 7 community organizations, community 8 development corporations, 9 nonprofits and other South and 10 Southwest Philadelphia 11 stakeholders. This extension of 12 the KOZ and pilot agreement we're 13 seeking is essential to secure the 14 success of the Bellwether District 15 development for several reasons. 16 First, the current KOZ 17 designation will expire prior to 18 prospective tenants at the site 19 realizing meaningful benefits due 20 to the significant development 21 timeline of a site of this 22 magnitude with the inherent 23 challenges that we inherited when 24 we purchased the refinery. 25 In addition to fostering economic development and historically disadvantaged region of the City, the extension will generate significant economic benefit for the City and Commonwealth according to the analysis by Econsult, including over 300 million in additional tax revenue due to an accelerated timeline that will catalyze job creation quicker. Finally, this extension will offset the significant demolition cost of the Schuylkill River tank farm, which our company pledges to decommission if this extension is granted. This 211-acre parcel located on the west side of the Schuylkill River contains over 40 storage tanks and 4 miles of pipeline. Granting this requested extension will enable us to move forward with the removal of this tank farm, which is the last remaining fossil fuel infrastructure on land that we own and an important priority for the community. In addition to the supportive testimony you'll hear on the panels today, I do want to note for the record that written testimony in support of the bill 9 has been submitted on behalf of Dr. Guy Generals, Community College of Philadelphia; Regina Hairston, President and CEO of the African- American Chamber of Commerce; Jennifer Rodriguez, President and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Lynette Sutton, Founder of Girl Concrete who's the prime concrete contractor for our first building; Megan Smith, founder of Brownstone PR, an M/WBE firm we work with for professional services; Maitreyi Roy, Executive Director of Bartram's Garden, a member of our CAP; Josh Anderson, principal of Universal Audenried Charter School, member of our CAP; Anton Moore, President and Founder of Unity in the Community; Ricky Duncan, President and Founder of the NOMO Foundation; Jemilah Agara; Kemar Johnson and Natalyn Dennis, three School District of Philadelphia students who interned at the Bellwether District and we're proud to have one of our interns here today to testify. Thank you very much for hearing our testimony in support of Bill 240655. We're happy to answer any additional questions the Committee may have.
Yeah, I had a couple brief questions. Let's talk about the tank farm and the work that your team is doing regarding the remediation of the actual site based upon EPA standards, based upon the state standards of what's actually required. And we've had these conversations before, but I want to do it in a public setting just for the record.
Certainly, Council President Johnson. Maybe I'll address the tank farm first, and then we do have several other individuals in the room from the state and DEP and a former EPA official that may be able to answer more detailed questions on the remediation. So the Schuylkill River tank farm is a portion of the parcel of land that we own, which is 1300 acres. Our initial development plan focuses on the thousand acres on the east side of the Schuylkill River, which is currently master planned in the campus fashion that I mentioned. The tank farm is on the western side. It is not part of our initial phase of development. It is significant investment required not only to remove the current fossil fuel storage infrastructure on the site but also to raise the site above the floodplain. It is a very low-lying site, so to ready it for development alone is a significant investment and not one that we could justify when we initially purchased the property. The ability to secure this extension of the KOZ and catalyze our development activities and tend an attraction faster on our initial Phase 1 development plan will allow us to capitalize the deconstruction, remediation work and resiliency improvements required to make the tank farm ready for development.
The value of the tank farm if sold is -- their estimates vary, but we initially received several offers from potential buyers that would use it for fossil fuel storage, and I may turn to my colleague Jeremy Grey just to make sure I get that figure correct, yeah, as it was valued by the appraisals.
I'm just talking about profit over environmental stewardness. So I want to get an idea --
Sure. I know it exceeded $80 million. I think at one point they went quite a bit higher than that at different points in the market. As you know, that's a fluctuating market for an asset of that type. But it's, you know, let's say ballpark 100 million, 82, a little over that.
And in the event that you do sell it, and the tank farm will be used for what and the impact on the environment? Just trying to get everything out for the record, very transparent.
Absolutely. It would be used for petroleum product storage and transport. And the impact to the environment, the tank farm according to EPA data average year- over-year produces between 4,000 and 5,000 metric tons of CO2 per year. So that's very small in comparison to the refinery but it's still significant. It's the equivalent of close to 1,000 motor vehicles on a yearly basis.
So we had an environmental conversation, I remember visiting the site, and one of the things that was touted during the actual briefing was the decommissioning of the refinery has had what positive effect on the actual environment from a numbers standpoint that was touted around the table.
Absolutely. According to the City's Office of Sustainability which created a report on the refinery in 2018, so just a year before the explosion, the refinery was responsible for percent of 14 Philadelphia's CO2 emissions which 15 is about 3 million metric tons per 16 year. It was the largest refinery on the East Coast. If you look at the EPA data today, that is as close to the baseline as you can get. So we've essentially made Philadelphia the -- removing the refinery has reduced 16 percent of Philadelphia's total CO2 emissions citywide.
Let's shift to diversity, equity and inclusion, right. We know you're building your first warehouse on the site, right. For the most part, everything else has been demolition and we haven't really got to the point where we start ramping up. However, just give us an idea of what your diversity and inclusion numbers look like, efforts that have gone into making sure the work that's taking place down there, and not so much on the construction side because we always talk construction. You can give me those numbers, but also professional services as well.
Certainly, Council President. As you mentioned, we have only recently ramped up construction activities. Some of the work taking down the refinery infrastructure is extremely specialized work. But we are currently as of our most recent Q2 EOP report, we are at a 41 percent performance against a 50 percent minority worker goal. And I want to just note because we're particularly happy about this given the trajectory, that we're at a 51 percent performance against a 50 percent minority apprentice goal. So as I mentioned in my testimony, we're very focused on seeding that pipeline because that's going to be our path to ensuring those inclusion goals are met. We're at a 4 percent against a 12 percent female workforce goal. One of the reasons we're heavily invested in women an apprenticeship and pre- apprenticeship program is to bring more women into the building trades, and you'll hear from some witnesses today that are involved in those programs. On contracts we are at 4 percent on our contract goal. 5 We've had very few contracts on the 6 projects to date. One of our 7 strategies to ensure that we are 8 able to ramp that up significantly 9 we're seeing very positive 10 projections from some of our 11 general contractors, is we're developing the site -- we do not have one general contractor for the entire site. We're developing it on a phase basis, so we bring in each general contractor. Part of the RFP process is ensuring that they have a robust EOP and inclusion plan, and that's one of the criteria that we evaluate them on and we've worked to instill in the past year with the help of our new EOP consulting team at Talson Solutions and Maven, Inc to make that enforcement process extremely robust. We have weekly calls with most of our contractors. We have monthly progress reports that we go through together and we also are working with -- we expect and are working with each of them to execute outreach and inclusion events, including the one that your office helped us host in late February of this year.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Any other questions from the Committee? (No response.)
And I want to recognize the presence of Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. And if there are no other questions from this Committee, then thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Can we have the Clerk call the next panel to testify.
TJ Lepera, Telia Allmond, Mungu Sanchez, Jim Snell and Erin Dwyer Harvard. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
How's everybody doing. Okay. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony in whatever order.
Good afternoon for Chairperson Gilmore Richardson, Vice-Chairperson Bass, Council President Johnson and members of the Committee on Finance. My name is Telia Allmond and I serve as Recruitment Coordinator with IBEW Local 98 and Program Coordinator for Rosie's Girls Pre-apprenticeship Program. I'm testifying today in support of Bill No. 240655. Established in 1900, Local 98 tirelessly promotes excellence and integrity in the electrical industry. Since its early days it has evolved from a small group into a vast community of professionals, advocating for electricians' rights and providing comprehensive training. Representing a diverse workforce, Local 98 upholds values of solidarity and collective bargaining committed to enhancing members' lives and community welfare. The Bellwether District redevelopment is a generational opportunity for the trades in Philadelphia. This project provides jobs for our members as well as training and growth opportunities for apprentices and journey workers and pre-apprentices alike, one being in the room 2 presently to testify for the same bill who is a Rosie's Girls graduate and also will be a Rosie's Girls ambassador this year. Over 2,000 union workers have already been employed at the project site. With a total of over 20,000 construction jobs projected, the pace of site job creation will accelerate with the pace of development which is one of the reasons we support this legislation. HRP Group, the developer of the Bellwether District, shares our commitment to developing a more inclusive pipeline into careers into the skilled trades, into ensuring local Philadelphia youth are connected to opportunities. By partnering with IBEW's Rosie's Girls program, HRP is playing a direct role in providing opportunities for high school-aged young women in Philadelphia to pursue careers in our vibrant electrical industry. Local 98 is proud to partner with HRP to build the Bellwether District with skilled union labor and urges the Committee to favorably recommend this legislation today. Thank you for considering the testimony of IBEW Local 98 in support of Bill No. 11 240655. We are happy to answer any additional questions the Committee may have.
Thank you for attending and for your testimony today. And please state your name for the record and proceed.
Okay. Thank you, Chairwoman -- Vice-Chairwoman Bass and members of the Committee on Finance and just arriving obviously Chairwoman Gilmore Richardson, good afternoon. My name is Jim Snell and I serve as Business Manager at Steamfitters Local 420. At Local 420 we are proud of our craft, proud of our city and determined to do everything we can to ensure the city will continue to grow and prosper. We are committed to supporting efforts to revitalize Philadelphia in order to attract new business and new employment opportunities for our members and all residents. For this reason Local 420 strongly supports Bill 14 No. 240655. The redevelopment of the former PES Refinery into the Bellwether District is a transformational opportunity for the trades and for the City. With a development timeline of more than 10 years, this project provides job opportunities for our members as well as a training ground for apprentices and journey workers. Over 2,000 union workers have already been employed at the project site with the total projected to be over 20,000 at full build. Opportunities for site work will accelerate with the pace of development, which is one of the many reasons that Local 420 supports this legislation. HRP Group, which is the developer of the Bellwether District, is committed to diversifying and expanding the labor workforce pipeline which is a commitment we also share at Local 420. Through their Economic Opportunity Plan and participation in voluntary workforce development programs, HRP is facilitating pathways for local students to get exposed to careers in the trades and the pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs that we offer. Virtually all graduates of our apprenticeship program stay in the trade and enjoy a fruitful career. The sky is the limit for graduates of the Educational Local, as we like to call ourselves. Local 420 is proud to partner with HRP to bring the Bellwether District to life with local union labor and urges the Committee to favorably recommend this legislation today. Thank you for considering the testimony of Steamfitters Local 420 in support of Bill No. 240655. I'm happy to answer any additional questions that the Committee may have. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Snell, for your testimony. Happy that I had the opportunity to hear it. You know you're talking my language when you talk about pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs and ensuring that our young people have a pathway and a pipeline to family supporting- and sustaining-career opportunities because these are not just one-time opportunities. It really sparks and spurs a career in the construction and building trades. So thank you all so very much for being here. Are there any additional witnesses for this panel to testify? You can state your name for the record and then proceed with your testimony and then we'll take questions for this panel at the end. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chairperson Gilmore Richardson, Vice-Chairperson Bass and members of the Committee on Finance. Thank you for considering the testimony of the General Building Contractors Association in support of Bill No. 240655. My name is Erin Dwyer Harvard and I'm the Director of Public Affairs for the General Building Contractors Association. GBCA represents nearly 350 members of the union construction industry in Philadelphia. Our members are the companies that will build and are building the Bellwether District. The Bellwether District redevelopment provides an immense and exciting opportunity for GBCA members to transform over 1,000 acres within Philadelphia city limits. Firms of all size, from the largest GCs to the smallest, diverse and highly- specialized construction service companies will benefit from the billions of dollars in investment projected over the life of this development project. And you will hear from one of the contractors today from our organization as well as someone who's working on the project. City Council's support for this measure to responsibly increase the speed of development means more opportunities for local businesses that we represent, which is one of the reasons that GBCA strongly supports this bill and urges City Council's Committee on Finance to favorably recommend this legislation today. Additionally, HRP has demonstrated a strong commitment to expanding and diversifying the workforce pipeline in Philadelphia, a commitment we share at GBCA as well. From providing direct educational opportunities for local Philadelphia School District students at the Bellwether District to funding CCP scholarships, to sponsoring pre-apprentice programs with the Building Trades, HRP is a partner for positive trade in our communities. In addition to these individual initiatives, HRP has joined GBCA as a collaborative partner with Everybody Builds, an organization dedicated to diversifying our construction industry in Philadelphia. I want to thank each of you for your time and consideration of this testimony. Happy to answer any questions as it pertains to GBCA's involvement in this. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Dwyer Harvard, for your testimony and thank you all so much again for being here. Are there any questions or comments for this panel? (No response.)
Thank you. Thank you all so very, very much for being here. We will now proceed with our next panel. Will the Clerk please call Panel 6.
Okay. If you all could please approach the witness table. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
You can state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, Chairperson Gilmore Richardson, Vice-Chairperson Bass and members of the Committee on Finance. Thank you for considering the testimony of the Finishing Trades Institute of the MidAtlantic region in support of Bill No. 22 240655. My name is Erin O'Brien- Hofmann and I serve as the Director of Training and Education at FTI. The Finishing Trades Institute runs the Women In Non-traditional Careers, WINC Trades Readiness program, a workforce development initiative committed to empowering women in the trades and diversifying the industry. FTI and WINC work diligently to prepare women from diverse backgrounds for sustainable careers in the Philadelphia construction industry through providing education, training, mentorship and job application assistance. HRP has been a committed supporter in FTI's efforts to diversify Philadelphia's workforce and increase the representation of women in construction through the WINC program. As a key workforce partner, HRP Group has been instrumental in providing opportunities for WINC participants to engage at the Bellwether District ensuring that women play a critical role in Philadelphia's construction future. We are deeply committed to expanding and diversifying the workforce pipeline in Philadelphia and HRP is an important partner in this effort. Thank you very much for hearing the FTI's testimony in support of Bill No. 240655 and we are happy to answer any additional questions that the Committee may have.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Bernard Stromberg, Center for Employment Opportunities. Good afternoon, Chairperson Gilmore Richardson, Vice-Chairperson Bass and members of the Committee of Finance.
Pardon me. Please speak directly into the mic for our stenographer. Thank you so much.
Sorry about that. Bernard Stromberg, Center for Employment Opportunity. Thank you for allowing me to testify on our behalf in support of Bill 9 240655. Center for Employment Opportunity provides immediate, effective and comprehensive employment services to individuals with criminal records. The program is geared towards one goal, to reduce recidivism and provide employment opportunities for people returning from prison. We provide paid employment, skills training and ongoing career support. Through our partnership with HRP, it is opening doors for returning citizens at the Bellwether District. The partnership provides second chances and creates pathways for long-term sustainable employment for Philadelphians who have faced barriers to workforce entry. Through our partnership, dozens of returning citizens have gained work experience at the Bellwether District. HRP's commitment to inclusive hiring practices has made meaningful differences in our participants' lives. Thank you very much for hearing my testimony and support of Bill No. 240655. Happy to answer any questions that the Committee may have.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Are there any questions or comments for these witnesses? (No response.)
Okay. Well, seeing none, I just wanted to thank you, Erin, so much for being here and for all your work with FTI and with WINC and just all the wonderful work you have done to really open up this world to so many young women who are now thriving in careers and construction and in the Building Trades. Thank you very, very much and thank you for working with individuals who are re-entering society and really wanting to do the very best for themselves and for their families. This work is the work that matters. This is work that's important. These are the folks that we want to get connected to these opportunities. So I thank both of you so much for the work that you do each and every day, not just today. So thank you for being here. All right. Are there any other witnesses to testify on Panel 6? (No response.)
Seeing none, I just wanted to notate for the record Andreina Perez, Executive Director of Everybody Builds, has submitted written testimony for the record. We will now proceed with Panel 7. Will the Clerk please call Panel 7.
Okay. Will you please approach the witness table. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Okay. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you for your patience with the Committee. You can state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Sure. Good afternoon. My name is Ismail Shahid. I'd like to say good afternoon to Madam Chair Gilmore Richardson and the rest of the panel. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to hear us on this case. I'm 100 percent in support of Bill 240655 in regards to the KOZ zones and just want to speak about the work that we're doing down at the HRP site --
Hold on. Excuse me. Thank you all so very much for your patience. I apologize for the interruption. I'd like to ask everyone to please silence your cell phones for the duration of this hearing. Please proceed with your testimony.
No problem. So I'd like to speak on behalf of the work that we're doing down at the HRP development site with Hilco on all of the infrastructure work we're doing to bring work and opportunity to South Philadelphia as well as South Philly. And we just want to come here at City Council and speak on the record as one of the businesses that are doing business on the site to let you know that we are committed to making sure that we get the minority participation up to the goals and requirements that the Council President and the District Councilperson has set out, Councilman Kenyatta Johnson.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your work. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon. My name is Angelo Perryman. I'm the President of Perryman Construction. Good afternoon, Chairperson Gilmore Richardson, Vice-Chair Bass, Councilman Thomas, Councilman Driscoll and members of the Committee on Finance. Thank you for considering the testimony of Perryman Construction in support of Bill No. 240655. My name is Angelo Perryman. I'm the President of Perryman Construction. Perryman Construction is a family-owned construction business that has been serving the Philadelphia region for over 30 years, providing construction services with a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion of diverse businesses and their growing workforce. Perryman Construction strongly supports Bill 240655 and urges City Council Committee on Finance to favorably recommend this legislation. Perryman Construction is currently serving as a part of the construction leadership team for the first building at the Bellwether District. HRP group has been a great partner in our mission to increase Perryman participation in minority- and women-owned businesses in the construction industry. Through this collaboration with Perryman, HRP has provided opportunities for minority contractors to work on the project like the Bellwether District, furthering their economic growth and diverse businesses in the marketplace. Thank you for hearing Perryman Construction testimony in support of Bill 240655 and we are happy to answer any questions you may have.
Well, thank you, Mr. Perryman, for your testimony for all of your great work, and congratulations again on the business highlight we were all so happy to see on 6abc. Are there any questions for this panel? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, we thank you both for being here this afternoon. We thank you for your great work and for your testimony. Have a wonderful day. The Clerk will now please call the roll for Panel No. 8.
Michelle Armstrong and Denisha Taylor. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Okay. Thank you all so much for your patience. Always good to see our partners here from the School District of Philadelphia and our Career-Connected Learning students. So you can state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, City Councilmembers, Finance Committee Chair Gilmore Richardson and everyone listening to the hearing today. My name is Michelle Armstrong and I'm the Executive Director of Career and Technical Education for the School District of Philadelphia. I'm here today to testify regarding Bill No. 10 240655. The School District of Philadelphia has outlined a potential pilot program to provide drivers's education to our CTE students in partnership with the City Council and Hilco partners. I want to quickly note that this work can begin only once the Board of Education has approved the new KOZ being discussed today and appropriates the funding to this work. Due to instructional needs of high schools to ensure that all students are on track to graduate, it is often the case that not every high school is able to offer driver's education so that other required course applications can be met. Funding constraints have also greatly limited the ability of the School District to provide driver's ed. to students. This partnership would serve our CTE students and other high school students by equipping them with an essential skill to join the workforce after graduation. Licenses and certifications show that a person has the specific knowledge or skill needed to do a job. As a result, these are associated with higher employment and earnings. A driver's education license has value in the transportation and construction industries as it has become a criteria for employment. With this partnership, the School District of Philadelphia would be able to offer driver's education to the students participating in these aforementioned CTE programs in the spring following the administration of the NOCTI exams. A driver's license is critical for students to enter a transportation-based career with a life-sustaining wage. Technicians, mechanical or collision, must be able to move vehicles around a shop area, align vehicles and lifting equipment, conduct diagnostic procedures and complete necessary quality insurance checks. These students need a Class C license before they can pursue a CDL, which is critical to making progress in this field. Thus, a driver's education needs to be accessible to these CTE students and all high school students in preparation for a future career. The School District thanks City Council and Hilco for proposing funding to make a driver's education accessible to all students. In order for this program to be successful and sustainable, the School District also recognizes the need for continued funding over time and we look forward to engaging this partnership to make that a reality. The Board of Education must approve the KOZ proposed today and appropriate these funds before the work can begin. Again, on behalf of the School District of Philadelphia I would like to thank City Council, Council President Kenyatta Johnson, Chair Gilmore Richardson and Hilco for their support of our students. And I am happy to answer or provide written follow-up on any questions.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony and for your work, particularly of your entire unit of the CTE team and everyone at the District and Hilco, particularly Council President Johnson and his team for this work. We know that for some time we have heard a number of complaints from industry-based partners stating that young people are not prepared for a variety of reasons, right, but I think the driver's license issue has been one that we have been all working on and working towards. And so, I just want to uplift the work of Council President Johnson and Hilco for your commitment and the School District for working together to ensure that we're able to see this to fruition. It'll be a really important skill, an industry-level skill for our young people. And I do hope that we could expand beyond the CTE students so that we can move more of our young people into the pipeline, so really just wanted to say thank you. I have to mention a couple people who have been just working on this issue. Michelle Armstrong, of course. Thank you, Dr. Dawson, Melody Jackson. Also, Jonathan Jacobs. If you don't know Jonathan Jacobs, I'm biased, I think he is one of the best CTE teachers that we have in the District. And he has always been talking about the importance of this as a part of connecting young people with meaningful career opportunities. And so, many of the young people from the school where he works which is Mastbaum, they've gone on to work at our utility companies, they've gone on to work with the City of Philadelphia and so many other entities that they could go directly into their workforce placement because they already had their driver's license. So I just wanted to give them all a shout-out because they've also been a part of this work and ensuring that we've been moving this issue forward. So thank you all so very, very much. You can now state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Okay. Hi. My name is Denisha Taylor. I graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School. I was an intern for Perryman for two months. It's been an excellent experience. I loved it. I'm interested in learning more. They taught me well and, um, I'm into other programs like Rosie's Girls. That actually starts this week which I will be there. I've been into construction since I was little. It's been my dream job, and I also want to become an electrician as I grow up. I got nothing else to say.
Well, we thank you for being here. Is it Denisha Taylor? Let's give her a round of applause. (Applause.)
I will tell you it takes a lot of heart to provide public comment in a City Council session and for you to be so young and doing this work, it's truly commendable. And so, I just want to congratulate you --
-- not only on your presence here today but for sharing your story with members of Council. And knowing that you'll be going into the Rosie Girl's program, I am so excited. I don't see TJ Lepera still here. Is TJ still here -UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: He left.
-- and IBEW? Okay. We'll make sure we'll do the appropriate follow-up and continued connection so that we are being supportive of you in the next steps in your career. But we thank you for sharing your testimony for the work that you've done with Perryman Construction team and we know that it will be valuable to you as you move along in your career. So thank you all so much. Are there any questions or comments for these witnesses? Councilmember Driscoll.
I just want to congratulate this young lady and keep up the great work. Congratulations. Thank you for being here.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you all so much for being here and for your testimony. Just giving a brief shout- out to the Commerce Department. I see both of you here. Just if you could come briefly and just state your names for the record so that we know that you were here just so we have it on the record.
Thank you. Thank you you both. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
And also while they're approaching the witness table, is Mr. Papa here from the Carpenters? Is Mr. Papa here from the Carpenters? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, we just want to notate for the record that we did receive written testimony from Mungu Sanchez, Deputy Political Director and Director of Community Organizing for the Eastern Atlantic State's Regional Council of Carpenters. Thank you for that submission. That would have been for Panel 5. Just state your names for the record. I just want to ensure that you all are notated as here on the transcript, particularly because we can't do the Career- Connected Learning work without you all in the workforce development part of the Commerce Department.
Thank you, Chairperson Gilmore Richardson. Dawn Summerville, Deputy Commerce Director for Business Development. Happy to be here.
Thank you, Chairperson Gilmore Richardson. Gianna Grossman, Deputy Commerce Director for Workforce Solutions.
Thank you. I truly appreciate you. Dawn and Gianna both, I mean even when things were just so tough in the workforce development space after the onset of COVID-19, you all walked us through that process hand-in-hand and we would not be here with the Career-Connected Learning work without you all. So, Dawn, thank you, thank you, thank you.
And, Gianna, thank you so much. Thank you both. Okay. Thank you, Commerce Department.
Excellent. Okay. We will now proceed with those who have signed up to give public comment. As I stated at the onset, if you could please submit your written testimony for the record so that we have it. And you'll state your name for the record and then proceed with your testimony. Please seek to summarize your testimony as much as you can if it differs from your written testimony. Okay. All right. So we'll now recognize the Clerk to proceed with those who are here to give public comment.
Tiffany Green, Betty Beaufort. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
Okay. And if we could just call the first three witnesses who are here to give public comment so that they are ready to go. As --
-- you are approaching the witness table, you're going to state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. Oh, how are you doing? How are you doing?
All right. State your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Tiffany Green, Concerned Citizens of Point Breeze. I'm here on behalf -- we're part of the Coalition United South Southwest Coalition, okay, which comprised of approximately about 7 or 12 groups who are in the 8 affected zip codes that are 9 surrounding the Hilco property. 10 We have been meeting for three years. Okay. Hilco has been very cordial and we've been cordial towards them. We were patient. They needed to get set up in order to go through the process and we did that. And even to the point that the reason why you don't hear a lot about this project in the media is because they asked us to not say anything negative about them in the media while we go through the process. And many of the groups agreed to that because we felt that they were at the table and they were willing to work with us, and we're not saying they're not still willing to work with us. However, after three long years of meeting what they propose at this point is not acceptable. And you received the letter from our attorney at this particular point that you said you were going to share with the rest of the staff -- I mean, rest of the Councilpeople. And at this point, the Coalition has decided at this point that they're not going to support this particular bill at this particular time. All right. And so, I'm going on the record to say from our organization we're asking you to put the bill on hold, to put the bill on hold and not move forward with this. Okay. And because of the fact that we feel -- not we, I'm speaking in terms of my organization and my community Point Breeze. Okay. Hilco is double the size of the 76ers, all right, at this point. And at this -- where is my book. I'm sorry. I left my notes over there. Can somebody pass me my notes? All right. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Okay. We're double the size of 76ers. And at this point, City Council is practically bringing forth a $50 million CBA agreement. All right. At this time we have this project which is the old Sunoco. The old Sunoco is as Amelia stated, the largest -- 1300 acres, one of the largest refineries in the country. This is a very large property that can go into many different directions. It is right now a light industrial. I think it's an I-2. But the problem is that we see down the road which way this can go. They're saying that they want to bring in pharmaceutical companies. On their website it states that they want to do life sciences, manufacturing but, more importantly, e-commerce. And when we talk about e-commerce we're not sure which way -- they state at this point that they may not bring in those companies, but they could. And so, we have a concern regarding Point Breeze area. I can't speak for -- I'm not going to speak in terms of the Coalition. We sent our letter in and it states our reasons why we at this particular point do not support it. But I just want to -- just give me a minute. I just want to find my notes. I want to ask you do Black lives matter, does Black lives really matter, because this property here is large enough to go in many different directions. And one of the things is that we've been meeting with them for almost three years and we just heard about this bill. This bill was never mentioned to us regarding the KOZ bill. We didn't know anything about it. We found out about it two weeks ago when Councilman Johnson introduced it. That's when we found out. Nobody knew that they were coming forth for this type of bill, number one. Number two, we feel at this point -- I feel that this is unfair treatment at this particular point, that we're asking City Council to hold this bill. If you can guarantee a $50 million Community Benefit Agreement for the Asian community, and I know that the Asian community is not necessarily happy with it. I don't know what they're going to do. We feel at this point that we should be equivalent, the Black communities that surround this property, should be equivalent to that.
That comes down to equal treatment for all. We want equal treatment for all and we're asking you to hold this bill and ask Hilco to come back to the table with reasonable -- I understand about the construction. We hear about that and the apprentice, you know, these construction jobs. They're temporary. They're going to move on to another project. We understand the school situation. But let's talk about the impact of gentrification and displacement. We're asking for anti-displacement funds to help, committed funds. We have groups at the table who have to do the work, who have to help keep these people in their homes. When we look at Hilco -- not Hilco. When we look at the property, it can turn into Silicon Valley. Now, let's take a look at Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley came in similar to this. They talked about the construction jobs. They talked about how they're going to help with the schools. They're going to do this and do that. Silicon Valley wiped out San Francisco and Oakland to the point that the President of the NAACP Jeff Moore moved three years ago to Atlanta because he said the housing prices had gotten so high and the cost of living was so high. We do appreciate City Council with the LOOP and the Homestead, but we must look at gentrification from a housing cost. You're increasing the housing cost where people are not able to reinvest back into the community. When I looked at Merck, Amelia and I had a conversation and she said they're hoping to bring in companies like Merck Pharmaceuticals and all that. When you look at Merck, Merck is bringing in high-skilled professionals. These jobs are running $70,000 to $100,000 or more. They want to live in homes that are equivalent to that. Okay. And so, when they come in they can possibly build out million dollar homes in our area. It's not just Point Breeze because we're right there near Center City. This can move out to Southwest and further out to the Parkway. Let us not look small. We have to look at this from big. What happened in Silicon Valley was that the techies started coming in and they came in at $70,000 and $100,000 and really started increasing the rents in the area. Gentrification and displacement is not just about housing, taxes and what -- it's a totality of making the environment too expensive to live. You have our low-income families that will go to school. You have kids who have emotional problems. According to the CDC, gentrification brings in mental health issues, anxiety, stress and everything. Why? Because kids hear their parents arguing or not being able to pay the rent. They have to move away from their family and friends. This is the totality. We're trying to explain this to Hilco. We're saying to Hilco that we need you to come back to the table and be good partners. We're not -- this is not bad-mouthing Hilco. We're saying look at the ramifications of where we're coming from and what it could possibly be. And so, at that particular point we're saying if you could just hold the bill, we need leverage, because this is right now considered a by-right. So we need leverage for them to come back to the table and talk with the groups and see if we can work out something a little bit more because like I said in the end -- I'm going to sum it up. If you can guarantee the Asian community $50 million, then you need to be able to help us guarantee something, the Black community. From an image standpoint that does not look good. When it gets out all over, you know, WURD and all that, it doesn't look good. Okay. So, therefore, at this point we really need you to understand where we're coming from, see the potential of this property, see what it can come into, because this thing could really become something like we said a Silicon Valley and we don't want to lose our Black community surrounding this. Okay.
Thank you. I want to thank you for your testimony. It's certainly good to see you. Continue in the --
Thank you. Congratulations on becoming Councilwoman and everything.
I've been working with you since you was the lawyer for Blondell Reynolds and --
-- everything. So upwardly mobile and everything like that. Sure.
But I want to put on the record so that you know that every member of this Committee does have a copy of your letter. That's what I was going through just to make sure that you knew that it is in each of our folders. We do have the information that you've submitted. We have reviewed that information and working closely with the legislation sponsor, which is Council President Johnson. Don't look at this as the end of the road. Look at this as a part of the process, and we just want to uplift and appreciate the work that you do, which is hyperfocus on your local community. We need people like you to lift up communities. So I just wanted to thank you --
-- thank you and let you know that we received and hear your testimony and we have received the written version of the testimony as well.
I just want to make one statement. That is from the Coalition. I'm speaking from our particular community Point Breeze who we feel is right next to the property and what we see far as what might be an interest for us. But our Coalition has sent in their own letter to state the position of the overall team. So I just don't want to confuse that.
Okay. Understood and received for clarification of the record. We are going to take all of the witnesses who are here at the witness table. If you could state your name for the record. Please summarize your testimony as much as you can, and then we will take any questions or comments for this panel.
Please speak into the mic so that the stenographer can hear you.
My name is Betty Beaufort. I'm speaking on behalf of the community. I have a question for Councilperson, Councilman Johnson. I'd like to know why we never had a community -- with this project coming into our community why, we, the community, never had a community meeting to know about this huge project coming with displacement and gentrification and environment and all these other problems that's coming into our community? We never had a community meeting. And I want him on the record to tell us why we never had a community meeting. That's my concern, because the community needs to know what's coming in their community. They are the first ones to know, not the second. They should be the first ones to know so they can be aware and take whatever measurement they need to take, and that's my concern. And that's all I got to say. I drop the mic.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Sir, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, Chairperson Gilman Richardson, Vice-Chairperson Bass and members of the Committee on Finance. My name is Steve Kuzmicki and I serve as Economic Development Project Manager of the Southwest Community Development Corporation. Since 1987, Southwest CDC strives to offer compassionate care to improve the quality of life for the people who come through our doors. We work to ensure that Southwest Philadelphia is a vibrant, safe and engaging community in which people have pride in where they live, work, worship and play. We make a difference to more than 1,200 households a year. I represent Southwest CDC on the Bellwether District Community Advisory Panel known as the CAP, which is made up of 11 registered community organizations, 12 community development corporations, 13 nonprofits and other South and 14 Southwest Philadelphia 15 stakeholders. 16 HRP engages with the CAP on 17 a regular basis, holding frequent 18 meetings to provide opportunities 19 for input and engagement. 20 Additionally, HRP has worked with 21 the CAP to develop a community 22 benefits commitment since the 23 spring of 2023. The process to 24 develop this commitment has been 25 transparent and inclusive. In addition to making significant improvements to the former refinery site, benefiting the health and quality of life of local residents, HRP has consistently supported workforce development and educational programs for Southwest Philadelphia's youth as well as investing in community nonprofits. We are deeply committed to lifting up the Southwest Philadelphia community and providing educational and job opportunities for our young adults, and HRP is a valuable partner in this endeavor. We will continue to engage with HRP and the other CAP members to ensure open, transparent dialogue as we work together to bring economic investment and community opportunity to our community. Thank you very much for considering this testimony on Bill 25 No. 240655.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Any questions or comments for the witnesses here? Councilmember Thomas.
Yes. First of all, I want to say thank you all for being involved in your neighborhood. Thank you all for taking the time to come down to City Hall, be patient listening through all the testimony and communicate your opinions. And just for the record, I think this is really important, we have not voted on anything as it relates to the Sixers Arena, number one. And number two, the $50 million community agreement based on the briefing that we had yesterday, that is not all for Chinatown. So I want to be very clear. That community agreement that is proposed, it's still a proposal, does not offer $50 million for Chinatown. The Mayor has what she would like that 50 million to be allocated for and it's a plethora of different things, but it's definitely not all for the Chinatown community. So I just think that it's important to put that information on the record because we know that that's a hot topic discussion button right now that a lot of people are talking about, and we don't want people to have information that's not accurate. So again, thank you all so much for being here today. We appreciate your advocacy. We appreciate you fighting for your neighborhood and watching your government in action. Thank you, Madam Chair.
-- a question. I just wanted to put it on the record because I didn't want people to think that there was a $50 million community agreement specifically for Chinatown. That's not the case and that's not what's in the Mayor's proposal as it relates to the community agreement.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Thomas. Briefly I need to recognize the presence of my colleague Councilmember Young is here for the record. And now, we will recognize Ms. Green for final remarks for this panel.
Sure. No 12 problem. The reason why we are somewhat comparing that to that, we don't know all of the details specifically. But if you look at the Bellwether District Community Investment Fund, they say $100,000 per year base commitment. $100,000, okay. Then it goes and says increasing to $150,000 per year after $3 million in lease square foot, an increase in $200,000 per year after $6 million lease square foot. We're talking about -you're talking about $100,000 to start. Okay. So once this project starts to go on and on and on at this particular point, where is the commitment for the community to do -- I'm not talking about sponsorship. I'm not talking about the little health fairs and all that other stuff, because we get confused in that and we think that sounds good. It helps the community but it's not what you call anti-displacement funds. And anti-displacement funds, we need commitment. For example, real quick when you have -- the reason why you have a lot of violence on the street, you have to commit to an afterschool program. You can't do a lot of things on volunteer. An organization can't run a program based solely on volunteers. You have to have workers who are willing to do the work. And if you're going to fund a $5,000 -- nothing against activity grant, but $5,000 does not help an organization go and do continuous work in terms of anti- displacement, helping with what -- and so, we have to get into the fact that we have to fund our organizations on a consistent basis. You cannot sit up here and you're going to do grant writing or grant support and that you going to help that. Library has grant support. La Salle has grant support which is in this. Okay. You can get a grant writing support. We're talking about committed funds to the organizations who are ground zero and doing the work and going to help with anti-displacement. That's different than just little health fair or whatever the case may be. So we're saying that the commitment here is not reflective of the widespread five zones, five zip codes that this property is attached to. That's all we're saying at this point. Thank you.
Thank you, and thank you very much for the clarification. (Applause.)
Appreciate you so much. And for the record, I just wanted to notate the written testimony that was not notated for the record. We have written testimony here from the Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Bartram's Garden, Brownstone PR, Community College of Philadelphia, Natalyn Dennis, former summer intern Career- Connected Learning at the Bellwether District, Jemilah Agara, former summer intern Career- Connected Learning Bellwether District, Kemar Johnson, former summer intern Career-Connected Learning Bellwether District, Unity in the Community Anton Moore, New Options More Opportunities, NOMO Foundation, Ricky Duncan, Universal Audenried Charter High School Principal Anderson, Regina Hairston, President and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Will the Clerk please call the final panel of witnesses that we have to give public comment today.
Hailey Dervinis, Shamar Pitts, Mark Clincy and Victoria Wylie. (Applause.)
Thank you all so much. I ask that you please approach the witness table. Thank you all for your patience. Thank you all for being here from the beginning and for journeying with us through this hearing. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)
I ask that you can please state your name for the record and then you can proceed with your testimony.
Good evening, everybody. Afternoon turned into evening. My name is Shamar Pitts and I'm from South Philadelphia, and I'm Co-managing Director of an organization in our community called Philly Thrive.
Thank you. You can proceed with your testimony.
Okay. Yes. I'm going to be quick. So first and foremost, as our Councilman Jones said we want to say when people do things right. So the first thing I want to do, I don't want to be ungrateful for the things that Hilco has done right because they've done some things, right, in our community. They have. But now myself personally, when I look at this project and I look at how big it is, right, and it's the biggest redevelopment in the history of our city. And I look at my community and I look at all of the things that affect my community, and I look at this project and I see -- and from the testimony of everybody being here, right, it sounds really good, right, about the jobs, the construction, the equity and inclusion and all of those things, right, sounds really good, right, and the apprenticeships and stuff like that and we're not against any of that. We applaud that, right. But those things have been around in my community before I was born and we're still suffering. We're still doing bad, because the system that's set up they run circles around equity and inclusion and 50 percent of -- you going to put minorities to work and all that, they run circles around that kind of stuff, right. And we always get promised all kinds of stuff like that, right. And, you know, I don't want to go into all of that because we don't have that much time. But trust me when I say maybe I need to put written testimony in too so that people can really understand, and it's not just a summary of what goes on when it comes to equity and inclusion and work and stuff like that, right. Because if it was like it sound, my community wouldn't be suffering because we got people that went through the apprenticeship, we got people that went in the union and all of that and they still can't get no work, right. So that's just one thing. Then on the other hand, right, the years that we've been trying to negotiate a CBA, right, and I don't know why it's like holy water to a vampire to get a CBA, man. I don't know why we can't get a CBA. To this day my mind is just spinning on how we sitting here to pass a bill and we ain't even got a CBA, man. Like, I don't understand how we doing this. And that's tantamount to the City and the culture of the City. That's not Hilco fault. Because when Hilco come in and all the money on the table, they supposed to take as much as they can. That's their job. They are in this to make money. They supposed to get as much as they can, so you can't fault them for trying to take all money off the table, right. That's what they supposed to do. But when we saw them do the groundbreaking and everybody had shovels in they hand, right. I'm looking at who representing us up there with them shovels in their hand. Who advocating for us? Because everybody up there with a smile and a shovel and Hilco get ready make a lot of money and we ain't got no CBA. So where do we stand. We ain't get nothing but promises, right, because I was there. I went to Hilco and they nice people. And we sat there and I talked to the CEO Mr. Roberto Perez, and he told me right to my face, that tank farm is gone. We ain't talking about the tank farm being gone today. We talking about how much if you rent it, if you sell it and somebody use it to store petroleum products and all of that. When we was here before Hilco got the bid on that land and we advocated for Hilco to get the bid, we wasn't advocating for Hilco to keep no tank farm in our community because that's what's killing us. The benzene that's coming off of it been killing us for years. So now, we sit here, promises, promises, promises. You know, jobs, jobs, jobs, right. But I'll believe it when I see it. I'll believe it when I see it, and it don't look like we going to see it because we can't even get a CBA. We can't even get a CBA. This is just tremendous to me. It's tremendous. And like I said, everything ain't Hilco. Everything ain't Hilco fault.
I just don't understand the culture of you can come into the city, you can get legislation passed. We in this city and we can't get legislation passed. We born and raised in this city and can't get legislation passed. So that's, you know, where we stand. We don't stand against any of the good things that's been done. But like I said, those things been around and my community still in the state that it's in because those things don't help us. And I'm trying to get things that's going to really, really change and help us. That's what I want to see out of this big redevelopment. The biggest redevelopment in the history of our city, I want to see it cure a lot of ills in our community. That's what I want to see. And sometimes people think I'm a little bit too ambitious, but I think that we should be that ambitious. We should be able to get that. That's what I think.
I just want to thank you for your passion and for your commitment to the community, and I remember working with you all as a part of the work that we did with the advisory groups for the Committee on Environment last term.
And I just want to thank you for your robust advocacy. I remember you coming in before. I have to say that I think one win that we did talk about all those years ago is that the site is no 25 longer a refinery.
That's one big win because, remember, that was the crux of the conversation all those years ago. But again, we know that there's additional work to be done, right, that that was a step in the right direction. But we know more work is to be done. We want to thank you for your passionate commitment for being true to this work, not just showing up when it's convenient or when the cameras are around, but really doing the grunt work. So thank you so much. Just want to appreciate you and the heavy work that you did as a part of the Advisory Council work with the Committee on the Environment. Sir, you can just state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Okay. My name is Mark Clincy and I am a resident of the Environ -- a member of the environmental justice community that has been impacted by the refinery for generations. I have personally been impacted by the refinery's pollution and know others in my community who are still sick with cancer and respiratory illnesses. The City and state have said they are going to prioritize environmental justice and to priori -- yeah, and today you have a real life opportunity to be true to your word. Passing more tax breaks before the developers have addressed this community's concerns, and I'm going to repeat that again, the community's concerns is not environmental justice. I ask that you pause this decision until we have held a City Council hearing so these issues can be discussed in the detail they deserve. Issues, our community has been raising the following concerns for four years with no progress: One, we want a monthly inperson public meeting about the project. We want a public input process on the land use plan and we want a City Council hearing on the redevelopment. Paving over contamination is unacceptable to us. As the people who have been getting sick from this pollution for decades, decades, adding this much pavement will worsen temperature increases we're already experiencing from climate change. Flood protection, we are very concerned about Hilco's flood plan, which does not consider impacts in our neighborhood. Fourthly, public health. Hilco's 12 million square feet of warehousing now could bring 10,000 diesel trucks to our neighborhood per day and this is a major pollution concern. We have asked to partner on a renewable energy plan that would include all electric vehicles, but Hilco has refused. Five, gentrification and displacement. Life service jobs on Hilco's site will expand the high earning industry in South Philadelphia and we need Hilco's investment and legislation from Councilman Johnson to provide structural housing protections for our low-income community, lacking effective governmental leadership on environmental justice. Myself and other Philadelphians have formed the People's Environmental Justice Enforcement Agency. As long as you all are letting developers steamroll us, we will be holding you accountable and serving you violations of environmental justice until corrective measures or actions are taken. We, community members, deserve a seat at the table. Nothing about us without us. And I thank you for your time today and I am completing. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you very, very much for being here and just for your testimony and all of your work. We appreciate you. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. Before you begin, is there anyone else here to testify on this matter whose name has not been called? (No response.)
Good evening. My name is Victoria Wylie and I'm the Founder and Executive Director of the Dante Wylie Foundation, a nonprofit organization that operates in South Philly. I'm a lifelong resident of South Philly Point Breeze to be exact. And I'm here and I'll keep it brief because I think we've heard a lot today, but I'm here to just talk about the economic investment and opportunity that Hilco has had. Amelia did speak to their pilot program where they are doing early exposure into internships at a school. That school is Delaplaine McDaniel. That school was recommended to Hilco by me. That was something that we learned in our focus group when we were telling the community about this development project and that was one of the things that members of our community felt was important, the early exposure to career opportunities so that young people will have a life-sustaining career. So I did want to mention that that is one example of how Hilco has heard feedback from the community and implemented it in realtime to make happen, because I think what I was going to say here speaks to what everyone else has already said. But I do think it's really important to know that they are working with organizations every day to ensure that some of the issues that we're talking about. When we talk about living in the poorest big cities, we know access to opportunities is through education and employment and they are providing that. So I don't want to take up more of your time with just repeating the stuff that has been talked about all day, but I am in support of it. And I'm in support of it because with that constant work, things are happening with Hilco. And one example is that early internship in middle school with Delaplaine McDaniel Elementary.
Well, thank you very much for your work and for your testimony. And we have your written testimony for the record, correct?
Okay. Please submit your written testimony so that we can attach that to the formal record of this proceeding. Is there anyone further to give testimony on Bill No. 240655? (No response.)
Okay. Seeing none, again we thank you all so much for being here. Sir, sir, are you good?
Okay. Thank you. I wanted to make sure because you were just sitting there. All right. I thank you. I thank you so much for being here. We will now recess the public hearing on Bill Nos. 240660, 240663, 240655 to go into a public meeting to consider the action to be taken on these bills. Clerk, will you please call the roll to take attendance. Members that are in attendance will please indicate you are present by saying your name when called.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. A quorum of the Committee is present. We will now proceed. The Chair recognizes Councilmember -- pardon me. The Chair now recognizes Vice-Chair Cindy Bass for a motion on the amendment to Bill No. 240660.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I offer an amendment to Bill No. 240660. A copy of the amendment has been circulated to all members of the Committee and I move that the amendment to Bill No. 11 240660 be approved. (Duly seconded.)
The Chair notes for the record that Councilmember Thomas seconds the motion. It has been moved and properly seconded that the amendment to Bill No. 19 240660 be approved. All those in favor will indicate by stating aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. The Chair now recognizes Vice-Chair Bass for a motion on Bill No. 240660 as amended.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that Bill No. 240660 as amended be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council. (Duly seconded.)
The Chair notes for the record that Councilmember Thomas seconds the motion. It has been moved and properly seconded that Bill No. 240660 as amended be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further resolve that the rules of Council be suspended as to permit the first reading of this bill at the next session of Council. All those in favor of the motion will signify by stating aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. Bill No. 240660 as amended will be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation with a request that the rules of Council be suspended as to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council. The Chair now recognizes Vice-Chair Bass for a motion on Bill No. 240663.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that Bill No. 240663 be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council. (Duly seconded.)
The Chair notes for the record that Councilmember Thomas seconds the motion. It has been moved and properly seconded that Bill No. 240663 be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended as to permit first reading of this bill at our next session of Council. All those in favor of the motion will signify by stating aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. Bill No. 240663 will be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation with a request that the rules of Council be suspended as to permit first reading of this bill at our next session of Council. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Vice-Chair Bass for a motion on the amendment to Bill No. 16 240655.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I offer an amendment to Bill No. 240655. A copy of the amendment has been circulated to all members of the Committee and I move that the amendment to Bill No. 24 240655 be approved. (Duly seconded.)
The Chair notes for the record that Councilmember Thomas seconds the motion. It has been moved and properly seconded that the amendment to Bill No. 7 240655 be approved. All those in favor will signify by stating aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the amendment to Bill No. 240655 has been approved. The Chair now recognizes Vice-Chair Bass for a motion on Bill No. 240655 as amended.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that Bill No. 240655 as amended be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council. (Duly seconded.)
The Chair notes for the record that Councilmember Thomas seconds the motion. It has been moved and properly seconded that Bill No. 240655 as amended be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended as to permit first reading at our next session of Council. All those in favor of the motion will signify by stating aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. Bill No. 240655 as amended will be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation with the request that the rules of Council be suspended as to permit first reading of this bill at our next session of Council. Thank you all so much for being here today. Truly appreciate Council President Johnson and his team, Vice-Chair Bass and all of our colleagues who have joined us for this Committee on Finance today. We thank you all for participating and we look forward to continued conversation in the future. Council President, would you like to be recognized for last remarks?
Thank you, Madam Chair, for chairing such an important Council hearing. Good job.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Council President. Thank you, colleagues. There being no further questions or comments from members of this Committee and no other witnesses to testify, this formally concludes the business before this Committee on Finance today. Thank you all very much for your attendance. Have a good day. (Committee on Finance concluded at 4:40 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL