I think you have an angel behind your shoulder. (Witness approached witness table.)
Madam President, the Clerk did indeed present that to us. We have agreed to have continuing conversations. I thought it was 112 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. important for her to get out on the table what her needs were, and what we said we would do is sit down and try to figure out something and work together to get there.
Thank you very much. Ms. Miller, you talked about -- I think the detail shows that you have ten vacancies?
No. We're asking for ten more. Right now we currently have 77. We are --
We have 77 clerks at the present time, although our budget calls for 83.
I'm sorry. I'm asking how many vacancies do you presently have? According to your detail, at the end of December I believe you showed ten vacancies. How many vacancies do you currently have? 113 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc.
Good afternoon, Madam President. My name is Tom Christmann, Budget Officer for the Clerk of Quarter Sessions. In December we did have ten vacancies in that category. Presently, in the entire department we have eight vacancies, one of which was filled yesterday. We have --
So that means you have seven vacancies presently?
No. We have eight vacancies now. We had nine going into yesterday. We have eight vacancies presently, five of which are court clerks, one is a laborer, one is a clerk typist I and one a payment processing I.
The court clerk list is taken off of the City's clerk III list. We get our candidates, 114 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. interviewees, from that particular list.
And for laborer I would think that there certainly is an existing list.
That vacancy just occurred and we just put the request in the workforce request system as deemed appropriate. So we're waiting to hear on that being approved before we can go forward with interviews.
Very well. Thank you. Are there any questions from members of the Committee? (No response.)
I assume the Administration will be meeting with you and trying to work with you to see how you can best be served. Thank you. 115 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc.
Thank you very much. MR. McPHERSON: The next department is the Register of Wills.
You're welcome. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony
Ronald R. Donatucci, the Register of Wills and Clerk of the Orphans' Court for the City and County of Philadelphia. To my right is Anthony DeRose, my Finance Officer, and to my left is my Chief Deputy, Ralph Wynder.
Thank you. Good morning. I submitted a 116 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. written testimony basically, Council President. We're basically maintaining our present staffing level and all we're asking for and I think our difference of what the Administration wants to give our department and what we're asking for is a the difference of $96,448, and it's basically in the area Class 100 and Class 200, approximately 70-some thousand in Class 100, which we have an aggressive program scheduled for this summer to correct our archives and we may have to relocate a number of our files for some repairs in our department downstairs due to a deteriorated condition of our indexing room and our research area. We anticipate -- and as we do every year, we study our fees and we have an analysis being prepared right now that we're looking for to raise our fees an additional approximately $175,000, which will cover that 96,000 and give another additional surplus to the City of Philadelphia. 117 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. I'm glad to announce in our continuing effort, Council President, that starting Monday, our office hours will be now starting at o'clock to 6 4:00, but we will still be open until 7 5:00 to process and to help finalize the 8 day's work. We're doing this as a result of polling the Bar Association and the public, that we feel that it's an opportunity to expand our service, because a lot of lawyers feel that it's a more opportune time to come in before the day starts. So we will be open for business 8 o'clock, the Register of Wills and our Marriage License Bureau. I'm also glad to announce that our Marriage License Bureau will still be open on Wednesday evenings. So it's going to be a long day for some of our employees -- well, supervisors from 8:00 to 8:00 on Wednesdays. We're the only office in the five counties that offers the opening of a Marriage License Bureau on an evening. 118 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. I'm glad to say as a result of our computerization, which this Council was so helpful to help us, that we are able now to work in conjunction with a number of departments to better correct and make sure our probate clerks are accessing the data from the Board of Revision of Taxes, so when people come in to apply and create an estate, we are able to determine the true value of some of the assets. Also, we're working very closely with the different investigative agencies to help alleviate the fraud that we've been reading about where the transfer of assets in some of the more disadvantaged communities, we're able to track down and give our records, open our records to different agencies to immediately retrieve it as a result of computerization in the office. I'm glad to say that as of today if you walk into our office, you'll be able to get your short certificates, 119 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. or anybody that's familiar with the practice of law, within 48 hours -- approximately a year ago it was, our turn-around time was seven days -- as a result of our computerization. We also are implementing other changes that will further improve our service to the public. As you know, we are the only office -- I believe one of the few offices in City government that we don't have voice mail. We don't believe in it. My employees answer by their first name. So I believe the public is entitled to that. I'm not condemning voice mail, but I think it's so frustrating when you call a department and you get a message that the mailbox is full. And also I feel it's important that they identify themselves when they're dealing with the public. So if there's any issues, we address them immediately. I thank you.
I 120 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. totally agree. Thank you. Have you spoken to the Administration --
Well, that's their numbers, but I told them I would get creative and try and raise additional fees, and I'm pretty sure if we can implement these fees, I can't see -- as you always said, sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
If we keep our present staffing levels -- which I want to point out I've been the Register for over 28 years now. When I came in, we had 78 employees. We're down now to 70, and we're probably doing 30 percent more because of court-mandated programs, which was never under my watch.
Right. How many employees do you 121 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. anticipate hiring with the 96,000 additional dollars?
Well, there will be summer temps. Approximately we usually hire, I think -- basically to keep some of our summer temps, it would be summer temps. 9
Very 10 good. 11 Any questions from members of 12 the Committee? 13 (No response.) 14
Whoa. 15 I can't believe my ears, eyes. 16 Thank you. 17
Thank you very 22 much. 23 MR. McPHERSON: The next 24 department is the Sheriff's Office. 25
College students. Okay. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Good afternoon, Sheriff. Thank you for your patience. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony. SHERIFF GREEN: I'm Sheriff John Green, and to my left is Tyrone Bynum, who is our Finance Director. To my right is Inspector Mark Stipa. Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon to say that the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office has worked in conjunction with the Administration and we have identified our level -- our funding level that is needed for Fiscal Year 2009, and that amount is $15,271,619. So I come before you requesting that amount of money. 123 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc.
I believe that's your proposed Fiscal 2009 Operating Budget? SHERIFF GREEN: Yes.
So I understand you're saying that is sufficient to allow you to meet your mandated requirements? SHERIFF GREEN: That's correct.
That's wonderful. Thank you very much. Any questions? Councilman Jones.
My relationship with the Sheriff goes back more years than I care to actually acknowledge on the record when I was a young man, a young activist involved in trying to make the community different. Side by side in some of those protests, some of those rallies is, on the record, Sheriff Green, and I want to say that throughout the whole issue of sheriff's sale moratoriums with my colleague, 124 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. Marian Tasco, who started to fight the subprime fight some years ago way before I got to Council, I want to acknowledge on the record that Sheriff Green was bold enough to have one of the only moratoriums on sheriff's sales when he realized that the City of Philadelphia had hit a record point of sheriff's sales, and his concern, not the court's concerns, not Council's concerns, but his concerns as to the process drove him to a voluntary moratorium. And I want to say on the record that I thought that that was bold then. What you've done now is bold and provides a lot of leadership and recognition of the constraints you have as a manager of a process, as a manager of a process, that your heart, your head are in the right place, and that is on behalf of the people. I look forward to working with you and your very capable, competent staff that always provides us information 125 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. in our office to give us a true understanding of what is going on. I also applaud the Administration for working in conjunction with you and this Council on not just temporary solutions, not just moratoriums, not just diversions, but seriously looking into the cause of some of these problems. Ed of your staff has given me an education on the sheriff's sale process, which I think was important as we start to architect the solutions. The Administration is working very hard to do its part, along with the courts with C. Darnell Jones, to look at how we can prevent this crisis in the future. It is good that the President of the United States and one of the future Presidents of the United States is interested in this worthwhile issue. The Senate is interested in it. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is interested in it. But the most important thing, while the calvary comes over the 126 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. hill, that this Sheriff decided to do something about it right now, and I just wanted to thank you on the record for that. SHERIFF GREEN: Thank you very much.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Green.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I echo Councilman Jones' comments, and I think all of us on Council were very pleased by the action you took with respect to the foreclosure issue. I also wanted to commend you for being one step ahead on an issue that recently I called for hearings on, and, that is, it's my understanding that your department has agreed with Women Against 127 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. Abuse to provide Protection from Abuse service delivery at no charge. SHERIFF GREEN: That's correct.
Well, I want to commend you for that, and I want to say I do not think that that's widely publicized or known by people who are receiving Protection from Abuse orders, and I was hopeful that you'd be able to work with the First Judicial District and Family Court in order to make sure that maybe there's some sort of instruction given that they could come to you as an option to have that done for free if they feel that they are in any kind of jeopardy rather than currently what they're told to do is to go to the Police Department, go to a district, sit and wait until there's an officer free, or sometimes they call on an emergency basis to have the police come out and help them do it. And in terms of tying up resources of the police, it's not a very efficient way to do that, and only half 128 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. of the orders are delivered by police, the other half by citizens themselves. Do you have any kind of statistics on the number that you're delivering per year or serving per year out of the 13,000 that are served? SHERIFF GREEN: I don't have those numbers with me, but I can provide them to you. Just in responding to your question and concern, a few years ago the Sheriff's Office entered into an agreement with Women Against Abuse and the City of Philadelphia to not only serve Protection from Abuse orders at no 17 cost, but we agreed to visit the homes of people who were identified to have weapons available to them that could be used against the complainant or the plaintiff in the Protection Against Abuse order. We did that. We were actually stopped by the courts because of some legal concerns around confiscating weapons without having a court order that 129 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. addressed obtaining the weapons. So we worked with Women Against Abuse, and we look forward to doing even more. We're in the beginning of a conversation with the Philadelphia Police Department to assume some of their responsibilities so they can put more people on the street, on the front line fighting crime. So we will include that in the discussion.
If you could provide to the Chair how much it would cost you in additional manpower if we were to mandate that people who are seeking Protection from Abuse orders not be given the option of delivering it themselves but required either the courts or the Sheriff or someone to do that delivery so we have a sense of what that would cost. SHERIFF GREEN: Very well.
Thank 130 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. you, Sheriff. Are there any other questions from members of the Committee? Councilwoman Tasco.
Good morning. SHERIFF GREEN: Good morning -- or good afternoon.
Thank you so much for working with the Coalition to come to a resolution about whatever we're going to call it, moratorium or the stay. Anyway, the help that we're going to try to provide to homeowners who occupy their homes in terms of the foreclosure. So I want to thank you very much. SHERIFF GREEN: Thank you.
Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon, Sheriff Green. SHERIFF GREEN: Good afternoon.
I too 131 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. just want to thank you for helping out too with this mortgage foreclosure issue. You know better than I that this is an important issue to many, many Philadelphians, and I just too want to thank you for your support. Thank you. SHERIFF GREEN: Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.) SHERIFF GREEN: Madam Chair, if I may just say one thing, that many times people, especially people who are elected and people who are in administrative positions, are given difficult decisions to make, and, that is, if you are going to go out and unilaterally do something without having the support, input or interest of other people. I can tell you, I was never prouder to be an elected officeholder than the Thursday when City Council passed the resolution calling on 132 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. the City of Philadelphia to seek a moratorium. It was through City Council's support, City Council's concern that we were able, we had the undergirding that was needed to go forth and postpone the May sale -- or the April sale and to closely look at succeeding sales. So thank you very much to City Council. Thank you for your fortitude. Thank you for your assistance, and we look forward to continuing our work with you. Thank you.
And we thank you. Thank you very much. This Committee will stand in recess until 1:15. Thank you. (Short recess.)
The Committee of the Whole is now back in session. We will now hear from the City Commissioners. Are they here? Please approach the witness 133 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. table. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
I'm Bob Lee. I'm the Voter Registration Administrator for the City Commissioners. With me is Fred Voigt, Deputy City Commissioner for Chairwoman Tartaglione, and Robin Zerbib, our Budget Officer. Good afternoon. I'm Bob Lee. I'm the Voter Registration Administrator for the City Commissioners, and I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to present our Fiscal Year 2009 Operating Budget request. The proposed spending level is currently $8,995,597 for FY09. It's broken down into Class 100, $5,345,789; Class 200, $3,048,011; Class 300, $491,764; Class 400, $64,695; and Class 134 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. 500, $45,338. We would like to request additional funds for the department, and we've tried to lay out specifically where we need those funds and what they are for. There's a spreadsheet attached to the back. First, in Class 100 we're looking for an additional $447,000. That's to hire ten additional trade helpers. It's also to fill two administrative positions in Commissioner Clark's office and to fill a position in our Fiscal Budget Office. The additional trades helpers are needed. As the years go on and every time we turn around, the federal government is increasing the responsibilities and mandates on the Commission, and we just don't have sufficient full-time permanent employees to handle these large elections. This year, just to get done on this statewide system, our employees were 135 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. working from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. seven days a week, including Saturday and Sunday. The last day of registration we got 30,000 applications. We got another 7,000 that came in through postmarks and another 3,000 from other counties in the state. We had a total of 40,000 applications to process in eight days, and our people were required to work 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. The six-day cutoff for the street list, there's about 15,000 applications that didn't get in to get on the street list. However, fortunately, we kept pushing and we were able to get them all in, so that those individuals will all be in the poll books when they go to vote. But we just don't have enough full-time permanent employees that we put on the statewide voter registration system. The state's promise was that this system would reduce costs as far as hardware and network and software costs, 136 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. but the problem is that it's drastically and substantially increased our labor costs. We have a lot more steps involved in processing of voter registration records, and we would ask that we be given funding for ten additional full-time employees. We're also asking for additional funds in Class 200. We would like $1,905,980. That's quite a bit of money, but the bulk of that money is something we had asked for in prior years. Back in 2002, the state Legislature passed a bill and the government enacted it that would allow us to raise the pay that we pay our polling place officials on Election Day. Currently, they're paid $95 for working a 14-hour day. The state law would allow us to double that amount or increase it up to $100 per person per election, and we are asking for funding to do that. It would cost 1.7 million to raise their pay to approximately $190 or $195 for the 137 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. day. That would be probably what someone would expect to pay in a large jurisdiction. However, in places like New York, they pay up to $300 a day for some of their poll workers.
Yes. So as far as a major jurisdiction, 16th largest county in the country, our poll workers are far, far underpaid and haven't had a raise in quite a while. The state law allows us to do it, but we need the appropriation in order to do that. The other cost involved with the Class 200 is based upon a lawsuit from the Justice Department and upon the advice of the Law Department, we now distribute a cell phone to every polling place so that we can provide telephonic language interpretation services at the polls for anyone who doesn't speak English. The cost of putting those cell phones out at the polling place is 138 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. $109,400 a year. It was unbudgeted in our budget. We had to install new telecommunication lines for the voting system. The ongoing annual cost is $28,000. Election Day technicians, when we got the system, we knew we were going to reduce our outside -- our reliance on outside technicians in machine set-up and preparing for election. We have done that. The City saved money. It was taken out of our budget years ago when we got the new machines. However, we've increased the number of outside technicians we use on the street. Basically, we increased it from 50 to 56 to put more personnel on the phones that handle calls from poll workers on Election Day. That cost us $77,220 for the November election, and we'll need an increase in funding to help cover those costs. There are some other issues that -- basically, postage. The 139 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. statewide system, every time you do something to a voter's record in there, it generates a new ID card for the voter, and the reason it does that, because of a federal requirement that every applicant be notified of the disposition of an application. And we're getting a lot of increased costs as far as other mailings that are generated out of the SURE system. So we're asking for a total of 1.9 million in Class 200, addition to what's already in the proposed budget. Class 300 and 400, we're asking for an additional $415,000. Basically it's for equipment, PCs, copiers, printers. All our large printers had to be replaced. Copiers, the copier in my office is seven years old, and, in fact, when I went to copy this revised testimony, the first page jammed and then I walked away from it. The breakdown of these requests is on the spreadsheet in the back, and 140 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. it's probably a little bit easier to understand what we're asking for. The bulk of the request and additional money, though, is to finally give our poll workers a pay increase and bring them on board with other major jurisdictions.
Thank you, Bob. Did I understand you to say that the street lists will be up to date?
Well, the street lists are up to date, except that there were 15,000 applications that we got on the last day that were not processed by the time we cut the tape for the street list. By law, we have to begin distributing the street list yesterday, 15 days before the election. We normally give the vendor a tape on Monday morning of last week. I held him off one day, which was not unusual, it happens during holiday -- years when there's a holiday. But he does need six days to print those 141 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. street lists. It's almost a millionjob, and they got to correlate them, staple them. And even when we get them, we have to do some correlation work with them. So we had to cut the tape no 8 later than Monday night. When the employees got done at o'clock Monday 10 night, I cut the export jobs between 10:00 and 12:00 midnight Monday night so we would have them Tuesday morning. So there are 15,000 recent applications that are not reflected on those street lists. If it was a duplicate application, if somebody that was already registered and everything matched, they're going to be on the street list. However, if it was a change of party and it wasn't processed at that time, they'll be on the street list in the party that they were registered of prior to getting that app. Now, like I said, we had another cut-off date for export for the poll books. That was Thursday night last 142 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. week. And by Thursday night, we had entered everything. Everything in the building was in the system. It was either in there and approved or it was declined and rejected for missing information and the voters notified. But everything was accounted for and finished. So everybody will be in the poll books. The ones that were rejected because they didn't put their driver's license number on there and maybe their date of birth or they just didn't sign it, they had until last night at 7 o'clock to appeal, and any of those that came in after I cut these poll book tapes last Saturday or the weekend, they'll be on supplemental poll book pages. When the polling place officials come to pick up their materials, they're given an envelope and they're told these are a supplemental page of eligible voters and make sure you check both. And the issue is, if a voter comes and they're in the 143 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. poll book as a republican or democrat or independent and they think they should be something other, they should ask to check that supplemental poll book page, because the update would be on that page.
Whoa. You have a lot of work to do. Bob, let me ask a question. Have you discussed this with the Administration?
I thought -- this request basically came out of our last testimony when we were asked if we had requested money to give them a raise, and our response was, yes, we had, the first three years after the bill passed, and it didn't go anywhere. And I don't know if it went any further.
Is the Budget Director in the room? Oh, there he is. (Witness approached witness table.)
Bob, 144 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. you have an angel on your shoulder. He heard your testimony and I know he's going to work with you closely.
Madam President, Steve Agostini. Yes, indeed we will work with them. I believe we have portions of this, and I'm trying to check exactly how much more they have requested, but we're happy to sit down and discuss this and work through this with them.
That's fine. Thank you. And you'll get back to us before we pass the budget bill, Steve?
Bob, I'm 145 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. sure I speak for a whole lot of people. Thank you for all those years. We won't talk about how many years, but all those years you've helped us in very many ways. So we appreciate that very much. Just a couple questions. First, just for my own interest, in the registration and all the new registrations, was there still a certain percentage of people that registered non-partisan? Did that still happen?
There were people that were registered non-partisan, although the new ones coming in was a lot lower than normal. Although in our files, we still have about 82,000, 83,000 people who were not eligible to vote for a candidate in the primary election. They'll only be able to vote for ballot questions.
I'm sure we'll all hear some of those complaints, people who swear that they should be able to vote. 146 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc.
I'm sure. I'm sure. Just one question on the machines just so I'm clear. I know we had that one year where there seemed to be a lot breakdown. I know it was something with how bolts were tightened or whatever. Have there been as the machines get a little older -- were these new machines when we got them?
They were brand new, yes. The contract required the machines and all parts be totally new.
Okay. Have there been much, except for that one year, increases in breakdowns?
It's been pretty much running the same. The most prevalent part that we replace on Election Day is the printer, because it's mechanical and it's inclined to have an issue. We may replace 20 of them in election, 25. 147 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. Batteries is another issue that we replace. Although everything is pre-tested in the weeks before the election, it's like any other equipment, it can go at any time. But, no. The major issue that we had with the '06 primary was the printers and it was a set-up issue done at our warehouse by an employee. And we did a lot of regression testing and interviewed every employee at the warehouse and found the source of the problem, changed the management at the warehouse and made sure that that doesn't occur again.
Just one last question on the poll workers. You're recommending they be increased to what now? What would be the --
Give or take some. It's possible that you may want to go to 148 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. 180 and add an extra $5 or $10 to the training to encourage them to come to training, and we'd like to have that leeway to do that with it. We probably in a high peak election, we get maybe 5,000 to 6,000 poll workers each election that attend the training out of the 8,500, but we'd like to get them there each time.
Right. I'm sure that would make a lot of people happy if they could get up to that, because we all hear a few complaints about that, I think.
The more we get them to touch that machine before the election, the better off we are election morning. Most of the problems we have with machines are operator issues or voter issues.
I would guess so. All right. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Madam Chair. 149 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jones.
I just wanted to also thank the Commissioners' Office for decades and decades of good, quality service. The young man next to you, Fred Voigt, participated in a study a couple of decades back on the election process in the City of Philadelphia, and I had an opportunity to work with him some six months back then, along with Congressman Fattah and now Governor Rendell and a host of other people, Gene Cleate (ph) who worked on that study, and it really -- as I look at the changes in the Commissioners' Office, we had earmarked some of those changes that needed to occur way back then and it's just good to see the consistency over there with a face like that. I just wanted to get a sense of what the new registrations and how they 150 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. impacted Philadelphia County by way of the last-minute activity and whether or not things are on track for everyone for Election Day.
Well, they're all in the system and they're all going to be in the poll books. Naturally, when you're having employees work from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and they're on a computer, there's going to be human errors in them. We have a crew right now that's going through auditing all our work, and they audit it by checking what was entered and what was keyed, and they'll make any corrections they find before then. But we feel pretty good that for the bulk and the great majority of all of that work has been in there and it's in there right and it will be in the right election district poll book.
My question also goes to Election Day itself. Are we taking into account that we may have, based on the amount of participation, 151 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. some of the largest turnout ever and are we prepared with extra machines to avoid some of the lines that may ensue based on this level of participation? I think 70 percent some people and better are predicting by way of this primary election, and I wanted to know to what degree are we preparing for a record turnout.
We haven't assigned any additional machines to polling places, and the reason, currently every polling place gets two machines regardless of the number of registered voters. State law requires you have to have 350 registered voters before we assign the second. Any division with 875 registered voters will have three machines. There's one division in the City, I think it gets four, one or two. These machines are a lot quicker in voting and they're similar to the mechanical machines. But the issue is, if we started assigning additional 152 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. machines, we wouldn't have enough to put any out there. And the second issue is, some of them would not fit in the existing polling places that we're using. Some of our polling places, we may have two or three divisions or four divisions.
My concern and caution is, not since the Bowser election -- and I bring that election up specifically -- has there been such a contested election. I believe the democratic primary between Hillary and Senator Obama is going to be something this City hasn't seen in quite some time, and it would behoove you to kind of worry a little bit about long lines, about where we can have extra machines, where we can make sure that mechanical breakdowns are attended to quickly, because what everyone is going to say is that, no matter who wins, there was something wrong because there was a slant one way or another towards one candidate or other, and it always winds up back at 153 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. the City Commissioners' Office. So if we know that we're going to have record turnouts, if we know that the participation levels are going to be through the roof, what things can we do to prepare for that?
Well, this is the same configuration that we used in the 2004 presidential when Pennsylvania was a battleground state and it was a hotly contested election and more than 672,000 Philadelphians voted on our voting machines, and the system and process, for the most part, worked well then. Many divisions there were little or no wait at all. I went and voted in the middle of the day and didn't wait at all. I was in and out of there. Naturally, in any jurisdiction if you vote before going to work or you vote after work, there's going to be a line and you may wait, and some jurisdictions are going to have lines, but for the most part, this configuration 154 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. we have set up for this election is the same that we had then, and we had 674,000 people cast vote on these machines, and I don't expect that we're going to go over that number this year.
Percentage? The percentage is something that -- it's like apples and oranges, because it depends on the number of inactive voters that are in the file. So if you're taking the voter turnout percentage of the total file, you're not getting a true picture. Right now we have a million and 31 thousand voters in the file.
I would -- and this is on the record. I would say to you, whatever that turnout was then, this one will be larger. That's my guess. Fred, remember I said it. (Bell rung.)
I'll hold it to 155 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. 674,000. I think if we approach that, I'd be shocked. I think there's a good chance we're going to have between a half a million and 600,000 people vote in the City. Many of the republicans may not be there. They don't have a battle.
Well, there wasn't very many of them. There wasn't very many of them. I think since November we've had probably a total of -- the last time I checked, it was a report I gave the Commissioners at the weekly meeting last week, and it didn't include everything we processed, but we didn't have more than 20,000 change of parties.
It's remarkable how few there were. We anticipated a much greater change. We still have 83,000 and we started with 89 in the last couple months. And, again, you have to consider primaries and generals. We've had 156 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. generals that -- I mean, Goode/Rizzo, we did how many registrations in the last day?
The '83 primary, Goode/Rizzo, we had 60,000 applications the last day, 300,000 in six months, five months.
And those were mechanical machines that tended to be a little bit more troublesome. So I think we're well prepared to handle this. The key here is the key in any system and in any election, poll workers. Poll workers. Now, the poll workers got to remember when voters come to vote this time, they have to select their party first, then hit the office control, the machine is ready to go. The most prevalent call we'll get on Tuesday morning is, the machine won't let them vote for candidates because they're only hitting the office control button. They 157 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. have to select the party in the primary, and in November, you only hit the office control. So from one election to the other, it changes, and for the first half hour, that's the bulk of our calls.
Well, I have confidence that you've anticipated some of the demand, but, again, I think you haven't seen what we're getting ready to face in the last --
One of the big problems we're going to have is people going to the wrong polling place and demanding provisional ballots and all. They have anticipated -- every meeting the Commissioners have had in the last four months where currently the Chair said, does anybody got anything else that they think we have to anticipate, is there anything else we ought to do. And that was broadly cast, and we're down to the point where we've anticipated what we would do for a general election or general presidential election. That's 158 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. the level of preparation that's gone into this.
Thank you. Mr. Lee, with the additional appropriations that you're requesting in Class 100, they're all civil service positions; are they not?
The ten are, yes. There's also a mention of six HAVA employees in there. Those are people that we brought in --
Six HAVA, Help America Vote Act. And we only call them HAVA employees because that's who is paying for it. It's grant funds that are paying. And the grant funds are enough to pay for them through FY09, but we'll be wanting to pick those people up next fiscal year in our regular budget. So we're asking for ten trades helpers now. 159 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. We're using federal funds as seed money to keep these six on so that we can bring them on next fiscal year.
Currently, all our employees are coming in as trades helpers, voting machine technicians, and they bring them in, I believe, for six months as a temporary employee and then they go from there.
Okay. And would you have to take them from a civil service exam?
No? So you take them on as temporaries. Smart man.
Smart. Okay. The Chair recognizes Councilman Green. 160 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to reiterate what many have said about how effective the Commissioners have been in running elections with the limited resources we provide to you, and how you can motivate and maintain so many poll workers with the funds that we're paying them, it's an amazing feat that you're able to fill those slots. I just spoke with the Budget Director and he said most of the additional monies that you requested are not currently in the Administration budget. So that I hope that you can work out something so that our poll workers can be fairly compensated relative to our peer cities. I was going to ask a question just about provisional ballots. Do we have enough provisional ballots printed for this election, and, more importantly, are they appropriately distributed among 161 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. polling places based on where we've run out of them before, et cetera? And I think what Councilman Jones is alluding to is an extremely high African-American turnout compared to previous presidential primaries, which is his specific concern.
Yeah. We have 60 democratic provisional ballots going to every voting division in the City.
I mean, are the demands going to be such in certain areas that that's not going to be enough and are there some in reserve? Are people trained to call when they have only 15 left?
We print these ballots on demand. We print them in our office. And if need be, we will deliver additionals. We've never run out of provisional ballots at a polling place. 162 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. Never.
We've had calls in the '04 presidential from outsiders, Election Protection and people like that, said you need provisional ballots. We ran them off. We went out and delivered them and we delivered them. The poll workers said, We still have left. We 11 don't need anymore. 12 Every case where we've 13 delivered additional provisional ballots, 14 they've been returned unused. But we're 15 printing 60 instead of 45. The key here 16 is not to get them to vote on a 17 provisional ballot. The key is to get 18 them to the right polling place where 19 their name is in the book and you do it 20 the old-fashioned way, you vote on the machine.
These provisional ballots could do some franchise voters if they don't fill out that declaration 163 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. envelope properly. State law requires they sign it twice. They have to have all their information on there in order for us to validate that they're qualified. So the key element is to get them to the right polling place to vote on the machine, but we know that that's not going to be the case in all times. We've increased it to 60 per division.
Terrific. I just have a question that relates to something that -- the last filing day of the campaign is often a burden, and, that is, is there a reason we have to go to Delaware Avenue to file 18 finance reports rather than being able to drop them at the Commissioners' Office in City Hall, or is that something we can change?
You can drop them at the Commissioners' Office at City Hall as long as you get there prior to them closing, and they'll clock them in and 164 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. send them down to us.
Is that true? Because that's not -- I guess that wasn't our understanding.
So we can drop them at City Hall without taking them to Spring Garden?
They have a time clock in any one of their offices. You can drop them at the County Board of Elections in Room 142, City Hall, and we'll take it from there also.
Okay. Great. That's all I have, Madam President. Once again, thanks, and it sounds like you're prepared and I hope things go well. Thank you very much.
Are there any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? 165 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. (No response.)
And I would suggest that perhaps on your way out -- the Budget Director is sitting there -- maybe you could make an appointment for a specific time and date. MR. McPHERSON: Our next department is the City Controller's Office. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
I'm joined here today by Deputy Controllers Harvey Rice, Al Scaperotto and John Thomas, and with our Administrative Services Director, Andrea Rose. We have prepared testimony 166 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. which we've previously submitted. If it is your pleasure, I could read it or we could dispense with the reading and --
If you can simply abbreviate, we'll give the stenographer a copy of your testimony, which will be transcribed in full.
Okay. Well, first of all, I want to welcome Councilman Jones and Councilman Quinones-Sanchez and Councilman Green. It's been my first official opportunity to welcome them. And I want to thank this Council as an institution for the very strong support we have received in our budget and in our ability to expand the performance audits that we have been performing. We are requesting that the Council appropriate to us the amount submitted in the Mayor's budget proposal, $8,254,796, for the 140 budgeted positions in that allotment. Last year, the Controller's 167 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. Office issued 34 reports, which included departmental audits, eight performance 4 audits and seven entity-wide opinion 5 audits. Contained in those were 317 6 recommendations to safeguard City assets, 7 enhance financial management, strengthen 8 internal accounting controls and improve 9 City operations. The direct financial 10 impact to our City government was a 11 savings of over $842 million. 12 To summarize some of the 13 reports we've worked on and that we are 14 particularly proud of is the one that we 15 did entitled "Barriers Facing Minority, 16 Women and Disabled-Owned Businesses in 17 City Procurement and Contracting," a 18 proposal for a revamping of the MBEC 19 operation; the report we did on Project Ocean, Riverview, cell phones, and what I think was our most important work so far, the study of the Emergency Medical Services branch of the Fire Department. As a matter of fact, our office has received a national award for the report 168 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. on EMS. One of the criteria is whether action is done at the back end of that, and the very aggressive conduct of Councilman Krajewski on that issue and the embrace by Mayor Nutter in committing himself to an immediate start on the problem were certainly factors in that. There are a number of specific Councilpeople that I would like to thank for their work on issues that have been highlighted by our reporting. As I noted, Councilman Krajewski for her very strong leadership role on the emergency medical system. I would also like to thank Councilman Kenney for his pioneering work on the 3-1-1 system, Councilman Rizzo for his work on Project Ocean, and Councilmen Greenlee, Clarke, DiCicco and Kelly on the illegal signage issue. Our pre-audit unit provided oversight for over 150 projects totalling more than $300 million. Our inspections resulted in a half a million dollars 169 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. worth of cost savings to the City in the form of credits for work not done and overbillings. The unit also achieved a 100 percent improvement in the processing of terminal leave payments from eight weeks to four weeks. The unit also uncovered errors and overpayments and duplicated payments, realizing a total savings to the taxpayers of $2.3 million. We are currently in the process of conducting a number of important performance audits. These will include a review of the SEPTA police and security system, police deployment generally, recreation and school facilities, a review of the health center pharmacy and patient visit operations, and we are waiting agreement from the Governor's Office on a scope of an audit for review of the Parking Authority. So thank you very, very much.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilman 170 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. Jones.
One of the things that I have done in preparation for a lot of the departments' budget hearings is, I have a book, which is, as a rookie, needed. My senior colleagues don't need that. They use their memory and things like that, but I have a book which highlights what the departments said last year, what the departments' testimony is this year, but the third leg of that is usually the City Controller's audit so that I can know somewhere between what they say and what the truth is. So that has been very helpful to me and it has added a different perspective, dimension on most departments. My question comes, how do you pick which departments you're going to actually review as opposed to others, and 171 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. what is that process like?
It's just a lot of grassroots input. We read the newspapers. We're out in the community all the time. If we get recurrent types of complaints -- I mean, for example, in the paramedic services area, there were a lot of anecdotal complaints that came in from paramedics for a very long time and there was some documentation by the Daily News and other media about the problem. There was the President Rotan Lee's tragic death. So that we convened with the top people in our office, and that was one of the items that we agreed because it was so important in terms of life and safety and because there was enough corroborating anecdotal evidence coming in, that we thought it was worth an investment. We put in about 3,400 man hours on that audit. It was one of the largest investments we've made because of those criteria. 172 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. So there are a number of things that you have to weigh. We have to, on a continuous basis, be popping up all over the place unexpectedly, because if any department had the idea that they were never going to be scrutinized, that would become a risk area in itself. But after that, it's a question of how many dollars are involved there, if there are important community complaints about responsiveness, such as we get a lot of that on Licenses and Inspections, so we've been over to look at L&I in a variety of respects, and at the top of our list are life and safety issues. So Fire Department, Police Department are life and safety issues. Tomorrow we're releasing an audit on the Health Department, because we think issues implicated there are also life and safety issues. And then people can make suggestions to us or tell us about experiences that they have, and if they 173 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. make a case, we'll try to vet it in the office and see if it sounds like the kind of thing that is substantiated. Because it's a significant investment, if we're going to do eight or ten performance audits a year, when we decide to commit to a performance audit, you're turning a battleship around. It's a major -- so you can't get in and jump out. And Al Scaperotto's people are very, very experienced at doing this kind of thing, so they can kind of game plan it with us and point out the holes and some of the pitfalls that we might -- sometimes I might come in a little enthusiastically about something and we really have to bounce it off the people who have a lot of experience doing this.
I just wanted to commend you on the level of effort, thought, intellectual property that is given to these reports, because I actually read them. The other report that I read of 174 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. yours is your economic forecast for the area, and wanted to know if in fact some of those resources -- as we struggle with moratoriums or sheriff's sales, that we're trying to develop what is an economic indicator that would be put into some body of legislation that would serve as a trigger that -- for example, if unemployment went up X percent, if sheriff's sales spiked Y percent, then that means that we should look at what some of the overriding causes are. But we don't know what those economic indicators should be. We would like to use some of your intellectual property to add to that.
Well, thank you very much for the compliment. On the economic forecasting, it's largely a compilation or pulling together of our office of data that the Federal Reserve and other established -- we've really put it in one place. So we would be happy to talk to you about either how you could 175 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. reconstruct that yourself or how you could get it at the same time that our office gets it.
We appreciate that. One other request while you're in a generous mood with your staff and budget. We are also looking at the economics of a project called Community Courts and we're looking at just a Readers Digest version of that. It costs $31,000 to incarcerate someone. We're looking at alternative sentencing that might take half of that and put some combination of a punitive punishment, whether it's cleaning lots, whether it's removing graffiti in an orange jumpsuit, but the other half of the day might be house arrest with a requirement that they complete their GED, that they go to job training, that they -- so that we reduce the cost of incarceration, but also mandate some type of preparation so that they can better themselves and not be in 176 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. the same place this time next year. The other component of that is making sure that it saves the citizens money, that whatever that treatment, whatever that punishment is, that economically you wind up at the end of the day benefiting taxpayers as opposed to the year of incarceration. And, finally, that if they don't complete the pre-described prerequisite treatment, that that year of incarceration still looms over their head if they don't complete the sentencing of the Community Court. But we'd like to work with your office to try to put our arms around the economic impacts of such an alternate court system.
Well, you've put your finger on one of the major both social problems in the City and cost drivers. I mean, both the City and State's budgets are being very hard pressed by the rapidly escalating 177 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. inflationary costs of building and maintaining prisons, and there is a substantial question about whether a large number of people in the prisons are needlessly there or it's not the most effective rehabilitative tool. (Bell rung.)
The problem we have is when we evaluate programs that don't yet exist. If we can find a comparable program around the country, that would help a lot. Because the analysis usually starts with the historical information about what have they been spending, what have they been doing. Now, if you have a new concept that's going to replace -- I think we could probably easily figure out what you could save on what's being eliminated out of current practice, but then there would have to be a good basis for estimating what the costs are in the new proposed program. 178 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc.
We as legislators tend to come up with these great ideas, but don't put price tags on them. We'd like to avoid that and work with you, the Administration, C. Darnell Jones in the Judge's Office to do something that also is a win-win scenario to the public, the taxpayer and to some of the people hardest hit with the recidivism issue.
As I said, if you have a model, if you've learned that this has been done in another city or state, that would help.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilman Green.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Based on the questions that I'm 179 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. going to ask you, some of which you're familiar with, you're going to think that Councilman Jones and I prepared his questions and then my question. My question is something that you and I have spoken about on a number of occasions and, that is, fiscal impact statements. One of the things my office is working on is legislation that would require with any bill introduced by a Councilperson, that they, prior to final passage, receive a fiscal impact statement or the impact of that item on the budget over the next five years so we can apply it to the Five-Year Plan so that we know what it's going to cost the City in order to perform that function or change this thing. I have a two-part question for you. One, is that something that your office is capable of providing to us in a timely fashion? In other words, we're not going to hold up legislation to allow it to happen and we often do things as 180 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. quickly as three or four weeks when there's a real need for it. And the second part is, would you have the resources to help us with that or would you require additional staffing and resources to be able to provide us with fiscal impact statements that tells us what our legislation is costing us?
Well, first of all, I think it is a very thoughtful proposal. As you well know, the state Legislature does that on bills that are reported out of the Appropriations Committee before there's a final vote. The questions for us would be, first of all, we would need to estimate the volume of the work that would be required, because this is something that would be handled by the unit that currently handles the tax increment financing fiscal statements and is generally our think tank. So we probably need at least another person in that unit to do this. And the second element of it, 181 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. what would be happening is that we would, for these purposes, be functioning as an arm of the Council, the way that the staff of the Appropriations Committee does in the Legislature, and the question that I have is whether the Administration will respond quickly to us in that capacity to the same extent that they would to the legislative body directly. There's already -- and I'm going to talk to the professional staff in the Legislature to see how they work that out, but there's a process in Harrisburg where they know there's a certain turn-around time. You have particular Appropriations staff assigned on a permanent basis to reviewing certain departments, so they have contact people over there and they have a way of collecting that information very quickly. Now, we don't have a one-to-one correlation that there's somebody in the Controller's Department that is permanently following the Recreation 182 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. Department, so our people would have to be versatile and would move around. So we might need some help in assuring that the departments are going to help us answer those questions quickly. But I think it's an exciting idea. I'm interested in making it work, and I think it is part of the trend we've seen here of kind of a 21st century approach to local government.
Thank you. So one additional staff person would really be a budget request for that?
Our initial -- the comment from my unit was, they thought probably one more person, but I don't know what the volume is of legislation that you vote on here. I talked to your staff and they said obviously it wouldn't involve zoning legislation and there would be whole categories of things that the Council invests a lot of time in that would not be included in this proposal. So when we 183 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. can tell is it 3,000 bills a year or is it 500 bills a year. And I'm assuming that you would follow the state legislative example of only requiring this for legislation that's coming up for a vote by the full Council, not on every bill that's introduced.
So I need more -- we're all numbers driven, so it depends on what the numbers are. But it's a great idea.
Well, thank you. I look forward to working with you on that. Do you happen to know what your forecasts are for the City's budget? I mean, for the growth of -- are your forecasts for the growth of the economy locally similar to the Administration? Have you done that comparison?
Generally, over time our forecasts tend to be more optimistic than the Administration's. I 184 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. can't tell you what our forecast is for the coming year. I mean, we have noticed problems, as everyone has now, with the real estate transfer tax. A lot of the other questions about how the business taxes are going to be coming in are still very speculative. I don't think we have -- we follow it on a month-to-month basis and, therefore, we're able to start to chart trend lines, but there's not any real magic to it, except that you can tell that there's a decline by a certain percentage compared to last year. So I think it's probably the same raw data that you have.
Okay. Thank you very much. As has been mentioned, your staff does a tremendous job with limited resources. And thank you for your testimony.
The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Blackwell. 185 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc.
Thank you, Madam President. We wanted to thank the Controller for his work with the Darfur Coalition and certainly with the divestment of our Pension Department. It's very, very important that -- Angela Davis said many, many years ago during her time that if they come for me in the morning, they'll come for you at night. And it's very, very important that we realize that in this world, we have to do what we can to protect those who are suffering, and you've done a great job in that regard.
Thank you, Councilwoman. And as we all know, Councilwoman Blackwell has been the leader in this Council on that issue. A lot of people think that this is something very far away about people that we know very little about, as Neville Chamberlain once said, but it's the only 186 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. genocide going on in the world right now and it is important for the entire world as a world citizen to stand up on it.
Actually, what I'd like to do is get a cumulation of your published works sent over to my office. Sometimes getting them is a little difficult.
So if we could have a by department list of them, that would be helpful.
187 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. You're welcome. Are there any other questions or comments of the Controller? (No response.)
Thank you very much. MR. McPHERSON: The next department is the Board of Revision of Taxes. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Good afternoon. Welcome. Please identify yourself --
-- for the record and proceed with your testimony. And, Ms. Meade, we do have a copy of your testimony. So if you would like to abbreviate it, that would be fine with us. We will give a copy to the stenographer, and it will be transcribed 188 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. in full.
Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman, President Verna. Thank you so much. My name is Charlesretta Meade. I'm Chairman of the Board of Revision of Taxes. With me today are various Board members and members of our staff. To my left is the Vice-Chairman of the Board of Revision of Taxes, Mr. Harvey Levin. Coming in now to my right is our Executive Director, who everyone here knows, Mr. Enrico Foglia. We also have Board members with us, including our Secretary, Mr. Joseph Russo, and we have Mr. Robert N.C. Nix, who is seated in the back, and Judge Alan Silberstein, former President Judge of Municipal Court. We're honored to have him with us today. Also we have Mr. James Dintino, who is a Board member. And Justice Russell Nigro was not available today, so he is absent, but we know he's with us in spirit.
Fine. 189 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. And we certainly welcome all of you. Thank you for coming.
Thank you. You have our written testimony and the PowerPoint presentation, and I understand that you will move that into the record. If I can be allowed to give a brief synopsis of this testimony, but included in that will be basically a list of the accomplishments. We have had a tremendously daunting year with a number of projects that were in the works, and so we'd like to give you an update on those.
First is the move. We moved from 34 South 11th Street in August to our new location, which is the historic Curtis Building at 601 Walnut Street. First, on behalf of the entire Board and our staff, I'd like to thank City Council for all the work that you put in to help us to accomplish a move to 190 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. that location, and also I'd like to thank personally, on behalf of the Board, Commissioner Joan Schlotterbeck of Public Property. They did a tremendous job. It was so much to move in terms of files and computers and equipment. We had to do it over a period of almost a week, with a broken freight elevator, but they really rose to a wonderful level in assisting us. So thank all of you tremendously. I'd like you to know that we've received various comments from the public. It's a more comfortable space, of course, for our staff and it's wonderful for the public. It's allowed us to expand our Citizen Service Unit. It's also allowed us to provide a more accommodating hearing room. We've also been able to add employees to the Citizen Service Center to man the phone bank and also to have an area where we can bring employees during critical periods where there's an overflow and that we can 191 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. handle that overflow. So, again, thank you so much. And many of the attorneys on the Philadelphia Bar Association and Tax Board have commented that when they bring many of their clients to the Board, they find it's a very professional area, and they feel that that professional area is consistent with the professionalism of our staff that's there. So thank you for that. We also had an imaging project that went along with that move. That imaging project we do plan to continue. Basically, the imaging project was to move to -- to begin to move to a paperless BRT, and we imaged through a Macken system our property record card, which is the official file of record for all properties within the City of Philadelphia. We managed to image all of those prior to the move, and we hope to continue imaging other documents as we go forward. 192 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. The advantage of that imaging was to solidify that the official record ensures its permanency with the Board of Revision of Taxes and with the City of Philadelphia go paperless and it allowed us to downsize the amount of space that we needed for our files. We instituted also for the first time an automatic time management system, which records by way of a swipe the comings and goings of our employees. We think that that not only allows for a more professional staff, but it also freed certain staff members up from having to do the handwritten time sheets. It also allowed for increased productivity of employees as part of having that time management system. That was something that took a little longer than we thought to implement, but we were able to get the union agreements to that and go through the process. And so that's working and it seems to be going well now. 193 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. Our Customer Service Center, which I alluded to, by virtue of the move, we've been able to expand. What we added -- this is the second full year of operation, and we provided in the PowerPoint and in the testimony basic statistics in terms of the walk-ins and the number of calls that are received, the number of inquiries that have been turned around. What we added for the first time the last half, starting in September, was an interactive voice recognition system, and what that IVR system does is, it allows taxpayers who don't have access to computers to call, and without benefit of web, they can receive the same basic information that would appear on the website by way of telephone. As you all know, one of our big projects for last year was the 2008 valuation project. We had not had a citywide reassessment for a number of years. That was the first one in four 194 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. years.
Part of that valuation project, it was tremendous because it was going on at the same time as the move. As a function of that, we were able to start playing catch-up, in a sense, with the changes in the markets, which hadn't been reflected in our values in over a four-year period, and we also used that as an opportunity to try to address the issue of the equity and uniformity at that time. We did make a decision as a Board to cap those values, and it was simply because it would be too much at one time to do for the average taxpayer, and that's when we proceeded to do that. The 413,000 notices that were sent out in that citywide assessment resulted in appeals to us, but we were surprised the number of appeals came to just under 6,000. At this time, it's, I think, approximately 5,714 appeals that we received as a result of that. And in handling those appeals, we believe that 195 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. some of the appeals were handled by having the Citizen Service Center, where people could call and get an understanding of what happened and then they determine not to appeal. With this appeal season, we did try to professionalize as well not only what the staff does but what the Board does and to ensure not only a level of transparency for everyone, because the hearings are open, but also to ensure that we're receiving the appropriate information, so that we made sure to request for properties over a million dollars, we asked that all of those properties provide us with acceptable appraisal reports, and our resident appraiser has been very helpful in reviewing those and assuring that they meet the level of quality and quantity of information that's required, so that if there is a challenge to our value, that we know that we have the information upon which we can rely to be fair and 196 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. impartial to the taxpayer who is appealing, as well as to the City. We also started to request leases and income and expense information on our mixed-use properties, and this will help us in terms of making sure that the value, again, that's assessed is correct. We've continued our CAMA project, and that's our mass appraisal system that we've come and talked to you about for so many years. Again, we have to thank Council and the previous Administration and the current Administration for their assistance with that project. We had projected that that project would have been completed, as you well know, by 2007. Unfortunately, it was not. We were able to go live with the project on March 11th of this year. The going "live" was in a partial manner. We still are required to use our old VSAM system as well as the current CAMA 197 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. system, and it's basically parallel use at this time. We are going through an intensive integration period now, which we hope to be completed by the end of May, and we project that we will be close to the timeline that we gave you last year, and, that is, that after six months to a year of testing, that last year we believed that by the late fall of this year we would be in a position to provide you with the statistics from that Realware system. Now we believe that it will be close to that time, but it may be, instead of December, between January and March of 2009. As part of the CAMA project in terms of the recognition that the Board wants to give, we've had a very difficult time with that project. We'd like to thank the CEO of MOIS, Mr. Terry Phillis, who has been very instrumental in assisting us with that. We found after last year that there were certain 198 4/8/08 - WHOLE - BILL 080022, etc. problems that existed with that system. I contacted Mr. Phillis directly, and he began to have a hands-on activity with that. He got us a new statement of work that assisted in getting a lot of the things that we needed done done, and he's continued to provide support and staffing for that.
Basically, that's the analysis of our accomplishments and where we are as a Board. You have the written testimony. If you have any questions, I'm ready for them, I hope.