COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC UTILITIES - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, April 28, 1998 10:15 a.m. - - - RES. 980125 - Calling on the Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities to conduct hearings to explore transportation-related initiatives to help Philadelphians make the transition from Welfare to work. - - - PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN HAPPY FERNANDEZ, Chairlady COUNCILMAN FRANK DiCICCO, Vice-Chair COUNCILMAN DAVID COHEN COUNCILMAN MICHAEL A. NUTTER - - - VINCENT VARALLO ASSOCIATES, INC. Registered Professional Reporters Eleven Penn Center Plaza, Suite 600 Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 561-2220 I N D E X RESOLUTION 980125 Robert Borski, Congressman--------------------- Denise Goren, Deputy Mayor, Transportation----- Donna Cooper, Deputy Mayor, Policy & Planning-- 36 Richard Voith, Vice-Chair, SEPTA Board--------- 42 John K. Leary, SEPTA General Manager----------- 51 Faith Williams, Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition--------------------------- 63 Selena Legette, Reverse Commuter--------------- 75 Marylou Werneke, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission------------------------- 88 Jill Welch, Executive Director, Delaware Valley TMA---------------------------------- 101 Peter Quinn, Executive Director, Greater Valley Forge TMA----------------------------------- 112 Beth Palubinsky, Public/Private Ventures, Bridges To Work Program--------------------- 121 Donald Wilkerson, Citizen---------------------- 137 - - - 3 RESOLUTION 980125
Good morning. I would like to call to order a public meeting of the Transportation and Public Utilities Committee. I am the Chair of the committee, Councilwoman Happy Fernandez. And other members of the committee who are here are Councilman Frank DiCicco and Council Michael Nutter. These hearings are a topic of reverse commute. What are we doing and what do we need to do to assist people who are on public assistance and need to get jobs, and those jobs are in the outlying counties? How do we help these people get to jobs in the counties, and then also to jobs that are available here in the city. As many of us know, in the City of Philadelphia, there are 65,000 people who have been on AFDC, the old AFDC, Aid to Families and Dependent Children, and whose new name under the Welfare Change Act is Temporary Assistance To Needy Families. Those 65,000 people, primarily mothers, do need these kinds of jobs, basically, by the next year in March, and all Welfare benefits 4 RESOLUTION 980125 within five years, and that clock stops ticking. So these 65,000 people who had been receiving Welfare benefits will need to be in the job market by March of 2002. This is a gigantic task. And all of us know that one the major ingredients for people to move from Welfare To Work includes good transportation, good child care, good job training, and good job retention. So today we are focusing on one piece of this big puzzle, this big issue, and that is transportation, moving people from Welfare To Work, literally moving or transporting them to their jobs. As we will see in these hearings, a number of both public and private agencies have already been taking initiatives and doing very serious planning in testing out pilot projects, but there is much to be done so that we are prepared to assist people as they move from Welfare To Work. Could I also add, many of us already know that in the City of Philadelphia, we have a fabulous transportation system, and it is needed by citizens for all kinds of activity. 5 RESOLUTION 980125 And, in fact, 40 percent of the people in the City of Philadelphia do not have automobiles, and use public transit as their major mode of transportation. Among the people on Public Assistance, 94 percent of those people do not have a car and must use public transportation to get to their jobs. So we can see how important, and we'll hear that all morning, how important our public transportation system is in helping this city and region meet this problem. The resolution that we are holding hearings on this morning is Resolution No. 980125. And the official title of that is Resolution 980125, calling on the Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities to conduct hearings to explore transportation-related initiatives to help Philadelphians make the transition from Welfare To Work. S. House Transportation Committee, and is also on the Senate House 6 RESOLUTION 980125 Conference Committee that is currently stitching together the final parts of the renewed Iced Tea or federal transportation bill. So we are very pleased to have Congressman Borski with us this morning to tell us what's going on in Washington and what kinds of implications it will have for us here in the city as we address this issue of moving people from Welfare To Work. Congressman Borski. CONGRESSMAN ROBERT BORSKI: Thank you very much, Chairwoman Happy Fernandez. Let me thank you for inviting me today, for your leadership on this issue not only today, but through the years as we have worked together to try and improve the transportation network of our city. And the importance that transit and transportation takes in our form of government is often taken for granted until or unless there is a problem that something doesn't work right. The tire fire on I-95 comes to mind, where we take I-95 and our transit systems and everything for granted, until we can't use them.
7 RESOLUTION 980125 And then, all of the sudden, folks are up in arms and understanding how important transportation is. I think if we go back in history, we also know that Philadelphia became a great city because of its transportation network. At that point it was with the river. Today it is a great mass transit system, an airport that is rapidly gaining in ridership, and in our roads network. I wanted to give a little bit of perspective about what is going on in Washington. I am on the Congress Committee, which you had mentioned, and we are busly trying to reach a May 1 deadline, which is when Iced Tea expires. Unfortunately, in my view, I doubt very much that we will meet that deadline. But I am hopeful that, with a lot of hard work, that we can complete our business before the Memorial Day recess. There are some very important differences of opinion in Washington, and I wanted to share them with you and your colleagues today so that perhaps there would be a little better understanding of where this situation lies right now. 8 RESOLUTION 980125 We are currently fighting, those of us who support transportation transit, to do something novel in Washington, and that is to use the trust fund, the gasoline tax that people pay into and are told that when they buy their gasoline and send some of these dollars to Washington, that it will be used on transportation. 80 percent of all the gasoline tax money in Washington goes to highways, percent by 11 law goes into transit. That is something we have 12 been very successful with over the last couple of 13 years, in really taking on the highway lobby who do 14 not like to share that money at all. But it is part 15 of the law, and we are able to keep that mix alive 16 and well. 17 We have problems with the 18 Administration, among others, who get used to using 19 the transportation trust fund dollars for other 20 pieces of government, and they don't like to let that go. For instance, if you spent all the money that's coming into Washington for transportation, you would spend about $32 billion a year, which is what our attempts, certainly in the 9 RESOLUTION 980125 House bill, are right now. The cap that we're under, due to the Balanced Budget Act a few years ago -- mindless as though that Act were in this view, we are stuck with it -- the cap is for 27 billion. So even though we are taking in $32 billion a year for transportation, we are only allowed to spend $27 billion because of this artificial cap that's put on for the balanced budget. As you can see, more than $5 billion a year is then borrowed and used for the rest of government. Our legislation insists that we spend all that money on transportation. And we are then stuck with the ordeal of trying to find the ways to offset that $5 billion. Not easy. Not easy when you come from a city like Philadelphia, where if we're taking $5 billion out of domestic spending, it is going to hurt the city in some way, shape, or form. We have not come to the conclusion yet as to how to do that. But, again, it is difficult. 10 RESOLUTION 980125 We are trying to get the money that's put aside for transportation to be used for transportation. And, again, I am hopeful that we will be successful. Some of the things that that bill 7 does, Iced Tea, as we are calling this, could stand for Buddy Schuster, who happens to be the Chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Efficiency Acts, keeps all the good things that were in Iced Tea. We keep the enhancement program. As I said, there is the percent of the dollars that 14 go for public transportation. 4 billion. And we in 19 Philadelphia and SEPTA does very well by that. 20 There are a couple other differences in the bill. The Senate, which is often the case in Washington, what you see is not always what you get.
But we have contract authority in Iced Tea, and we are proposing that over the life of 11 RESOLUTION 980125 that bill, that $37 billion goes to transit, and 36 billion of that will be contract authority, which means we would spend it, guaranteed. The Senate bill has 441 billion for transit. So it looks better than the 37, but only 31 billion of that is guaranteed or contract authority. The other $10 billion would need to be appropriated. And history has shown us that only about percent of the funds that are not contract 12 authority eventually get appropriated. 13 So my best guess is that the Congress 14 will work out these differences in transit, that we 15 will come to a conclusion that will be satisfactory 16 to all. 17 The bigger question, again, remains 18 as to whether we can find the offsets to that $5 19 billion that will not hurt the rest of government 20 too much, but that we can do and use that money, 21 again, for what it's intended to. 22 Now, the purpose for today's hearing 23 is to talk about the little bit about the reverse 24 commute and the Welfare To Work provisions. So let 25 me tell you what is in the bill at this point in 12 RESOLUTION 980125 time. The Senate version of Iced Tea had a $250,000,000 pilot program for ten Welfare To Work pilot programs throughout the country. The president originally had called for $100 million to be spent. In the House bill, in the original version, we had I believe it was $42 million. And on the floor, there was a floor amendment to increase the Welfare To Work provisions from 42 million to 150 million. And even though the House, as you well know, has a majority of Republican members, that bill passed and passed overwhelmingly. And I was very encouraged by that. I think the final vote was 242 to 175. So it shows that a number of things are happening in Washington that I think are positive. The increase in transit spending that our bill would get, if we are successful, is really important to the entire network here. I know I have been working for years on the Frankford Elevated, and trying to get that finally resolved. We have met at several different 13 RESOLUTION 980125 times on El stops along the way as they are being rehabbed. There is a beautiful transportation center that will take place in the next year or two at Bridge Street, that I think will be enormously important to the economic development of the Frankford community. And I believe that we will pick up a whole lot more riders to SEPTA that is very important, in my view, particularly if I-95 is ever going to be rehabbed. It will serve us very well if that new, modern Elevated is alive and working well. And also, as I pointed out this Welfare To Work provision, I am really encouraged by it. We are now at 150 million, the Senate at 250. And I am hopeful that we will move more towards the Senate number. And this is high priority money. Most of the time when we fund programs, if it's not contract authority, you really get a license to go fish. It means then you have to get in line and you have to go to the Appropriation Committee, 14 RESOLUTION 980125 and the Appropriation Committee is held to these caps. And it is very difficult to get money, even though you have this fishing license. This money is such a priority, that it would be used first. That the Welfare To Work reverse commute position here is so strong and so encouraging, that that money would be guaranteed to be drawn down first and not have to go fish, if you will. I know, as an elected official who represents the city, how hard all of us fight to try and keep jobs in our city and to attract new ones. And I give our Mayor just enormous credit for the work he has done on this, but we are still flat. We are not gaining jobs in the city. And if we are, we are only gaining them marginally.
6,600 last year. CONGRESSMAN BORSKI: The suburbs are still gaining. And, again, I think it is our first responsibility to try and keep what we have and attract new jobs. 15 RESOLUTION 980125 But I think there is also the reality of the enormous number of people who we have who are without work, who are on Welfare and who will lose benefits soon, and the jobs that are available in suburbia. And I think we need to look at new ways to get people from where they are, and to where the jobs are. As you pointed out, only 6 percent of the people who are on Public Assistance have cars. 94 percent don't. That long-term unemployed people, people who are on Welfare, people at the lower end of the economic status, do not have cars. And it's not likely they are going to in the near term. We need to make sure we can get people to, again, where the jobs are. There is a program that has worked in Chicago, that has been a pilot program for a number of years. And this year they expect to move about 86,000 people from the City of Chicago to suburbia to work. And the statistics, they tell us, are for that every thousand people that they move from 16 RESOLUTION 980125 Chicago to the suburban work site, the city picks up $25 million in wages and benefits that people are bringing back. So, again, the best of all worlds, we fight and we track and we keep and we get new jobs. But where that is not possible and where the job exists, I think it is time we get our mass transit systems, our public transportation systems to get people to where the jobs are. And, as I said, I am hopeful this bill will get passed in the next month or so -- the sooner, the better -- and that this Welfare To Work and reverse commute provision will move towards the Senate in the higher number, and it will be something that the President will sign into law. Thank you for having me today.
Thank you, Congressman. It is good news that there is this even more money in the Transportation Bill for reverse commute pilot projects. And I am also pleased to hear that it is money that's at the top of the list, quote, guaranteed, rather than money that will have to be 17 RESOLUTION 980125 fished for. But one of the questions I had was, of, let's say, the money ranges somewhere between 150 and 250 million dollars across the country -- and at one point you mentioned one of the bills was to fund pilots -- will the money be designated, 8 and what do we need to be doing here in the city to 9 make sure we get at least our fair share? 10 CONGRESSMAN BORSKI: That's not been resolved yet. That's something that needs to be worked out in the conference. Let me point out first, if I may, that if we lose the battle over the transportation funding, that transit will lose dollars. If we don't get the full funding, if we don't get to spend all the money that we are generating for transportation, and we lose this fight by some several billion dollars, transit will lose accordingly. So I wanted to make sure that was the point.
That's the big picture. CONGRESSMAN BORSKI: That's the big 18 RESOLUTION 980125 picture. This has not been resolved yet, and that's what I am in there hopefully working towards. The Senate had pilot programs. We 7 might get better served if it went by formula. 8 SEPTA does very well by the national formula, so it 9 could be that we are better off in that vein. 10 We don't know. We don't know the pure dollar amount, but, again, we will be working to make sure Philadelphia gets its fair share.
Or maybe it can be a formula by numbers of people needing to move from Welfare To Work. I would think we have a pretty high concentration here, too. CONGRESSMAN BORSKI: I don't think there is any question on that.
I would like to welcome another member of the committee, Councilman David Cohen. Are there any questions or comments from our members of the committee? If not, thank you very much first for the work you are doing for all of us in Washington, 19 RESOLUTION 980125 and your leadership on the Transportation Committee, and then thank you again for coming today with this package of perhaps good news. CONGRESSMAN BORSKI: Well, it's my pleasure. Delighted to be here. Let's keep transportation and transit on the higher level. It is very important for all of our people. Thanks for having me here.
I have noticed on the radio they had some ads about urging our Congress people to support the fuller transportation, and using all of the gas tax money. CONGRESSMAN BORSKI: Yes. That's largely what I am involved in. The transit people should be out there talking about it, as well.
Thank you, Congressman. Our agenda today calls for four panels looking at different issues. The first panel will deal with access to jobs in Philadelphia, the role of transportation. 20 RESOLUTION 980125 The second panel, we'll hear from our transportation authority, SEPTA. The third panel will talk about local initiatives and pilot programs. And the fourth panel will look at larger policy issues from a regional, national perspective. And I would like to thank the member of my staff, Nicole, who has done an excellent job putting these hearings together. And if there is anyone who now or later decides they want to testify and they are not on the list, do talk with Nicole, and we'll also have time to hear from anyone else who has either sudden inspiration or did not get on the list to speak. So our first panelist, a panel of one, Denise Goren who is the Deputy Mayor for Transportation here in the city.
Panel of two. Oh, Donna Cooper, Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning. So formally you can identify 21 RESOLUTION 980125 yourselves for the record and proceed.
Good morning, Councilmembers and Nicole. My name is Denise Goren, Deputy Mayor for Transportation. I am delighted to be sitting here with Donna Cooper, Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning, and the woman responsible for coordinating all the city's Welfare To Work policies, agenda, and dollars. Let me start off by making a statement that's really very plain. " I think that it simplifies a very complex issue and confuses a question of directionality with what in reality is an issue of accessibility. And as I testify this morning, I hope you will share with me that by making this phrase the buzz word that everyone uses, we lose some of the questions that each of us must ask as to whether or not we are providing, in this region and throughout the country, access to jobs for all sectors of our society. Accessibility is an issue that includes affordability, the trip length, 22 RESOLUTION 980125 connectability between home and child care and your work site location, utilizing -- and this is the phrase I prefer -- a nontraditional commute pattern. The traditional Metropolitan commute for Metropolitan areas like Philadelphia fell into two simple categories: You worked where you lived. And we know in Philadelphia, if you look at our neighborhoods, that was a very traditional way of commuting throughout our neighborhoods. They worked and lived near the factories, right in their own neighborhoods. Or another traditional mode of commuting was that you came from the suburbs or from the outer reaches of the city, into the downtown urban core for working. Access to jobs as a national issue really speaks about the spacial mismatch that's occurred post World War II between where jobs are and where people live. And it deals with that suburban sprawl, that land use issue that really changed the face of the Metropolitan area as people started to move out from the cities and jobs started to move 23 RESOLUTION 980125 out with them. In the years between 1970 and 4 1990, for instance, in Montgomery County, they 5 gained 200,000 jobs; population, just 50,000. 6 In some of the other counties, the 7 distinction was different, maybe more jobs than 8 people. But you can see the reality of the 9 traditional commuting pattern instantly change with 10 this demographic change. 11 In Philadelphia, we lost both jobs 12 and employment, -- I mean jobs and residents, but 13 many more residents than jobs. 14 And I think it is important today 15 that we continue to remember that the single largest 16 concentration of employment in our nine-county 17 bistate region remains Center City Philadelphia. 18 And that remains, of course, the heart of our 19 transit system. 20 Nonetheless, as we listen to all of the needs to get people to the new jobs, to the new demographics, we have to temper the reality of what priorities are, what funding resources we have with what can we do with the infrastructure and resources that we have. 24 RESOLUTION 980125 Particularly, people affected by the 1996 Welfare Reform Law face tremendous access and mobility problems. The reasons are several, and you noted them in your introductory speeches. One is the disproportionate use and ownership of automobiles among this population. Second, of course, is the very disbursed nature of entry-level jobs. And third is the fact that we have to bear in mind that over 90 percent of the Welfare parents that we're going to be talking about today are, in fact, single mothers. And their transportation needs change dramatically once they begin working from what they were before, in terms of dealing with child care, and access to just shopping and getting into their life all the things you need to do when you start having to commute, and perhaps commute a distance away from your home to work.
The Mayor's Office of Transportation has been collecting data from all of the various pilot efforts nationally about Welfare To Work initiatives, also about the spacial mismatch between jobs and workers on the more global level. 25 RESOLUTION 980125 And the issue is not one solely of the socio-economic class of people looking for jobs who do not have them, but in fact the entire issue of access to jobs in our region for all of our population. And it is important for us to bear in mind that in terms of the sustainability of investments we make in transportation, we must think about the entire population. Because from an economics point of view, those investments must be able to generate enough ridership and revenues to continue for many years into the future. The deconcentration of employment locations often is, by the way, characterized solely as a suburban/city paradyme. And I wanted to note for all of you that that's really not true, that nontraditional commute patterns affect people in the city, as well as the suburbs. It is as difficult for someone who worked at the soon-to-close Defense Personnel Support Center in South Philadelphia, who lived in South Philadelphia, to now commute in Northeast RESOLUTION 980125 Philadelphia, where those jobs are going to be relocated, because their traditional transit system does not easily help them make that move. " Does an existing transit service give you direct access to employment within a reasonable period of time, and at a reasonable cost, with no more than, say, two transfers? If your answer is no, then obviously you have an access issue, and the question is how do you close this gap. The city's been working on three different levels of responses to that question. And the first is our continuing role to monitor SEPTA's annual service plans and its long-range capital plans because there is directly not a need for new money, but a need for constant new thinking to come to a conclusion that rerouting a bus two blocks off its existing route changes the question of whether or not a job is accessible or not. And we have done that, for instance, as recently as this year, with the new interim Regional Rail Station at 84th Street in Eastwick, and having a bus brought from PNC to that new rail 27 RESOLUTION 980125 station that created what had been inaccessible mass transit, an accessible job site. Second effort, the Mobility Alternatives Program. This is the City of Philadelphia's congestion reduction initiative. And it is one that is in all of the counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania that works directly with employers, asking them to get involved in educating and assisting alternatives to the single-occupancy vehicle. Here in Philadelphia we provide to our businesses information about Share A Ride programs and flex time, and employee transit fares, and telecommuting because it is often information that's the accessibility gap, not necessarily the transit system itself. Knowing how to use the transit system, where it goes, is often the first issue of whether or not a job is accessible to an individual resident. MAP, or the Mobility Alternatives Program, in just this year has been working with employers relocating in Philadelphia, including PNC Bank, the IRS, Cardone Industries, Defense Personnel 28 RESOLUTION 980125 Support Center, and the new Amtrak Reservation Center, not areas or job sites you traditionally think about the simple question of reverse commute, again often thought of as a pyridine between a city and suburban job site. The third major effort, and the one we are focusing on today, is the city's own Welfare To Work program, which is a partnering with SEPTA and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, which will be providing a transportation benefits package component of the Greater Philadelphia works effort of the city, which is part of our Welfare To Work strategy. Design of this program started with something very important, and that is mapping.
We have looked at the concentration of TANF recipients within the 17 local county-assisted district offices in the city, and then we made a transit service interlay. What we found, that within the city is almost everyone of our affected population is within a quarter of a mile of transit. But what we also found is that absent targeting employment sites in relationship to where 29 RESOLUTION 980125 you live created questions or problems of great difficulty. From some neighborhoods it was easier than others, obviously, to get a job in King of Prussia or in the Airport Business District. And, really, one of our challenges is going to be to try to focus people's needs, in terms of where they get a job, with what's the easiest for us to do in terms of matching the site of residence with the site of employment. We're going to be specifically looking at two employment corridors, the Airport Business Center, which is both a city and suburban area -- and you will hear later on from the TMA representative from Delaware County about this -- and Valley Forge, and work with providing a package of information that includes not just changes in bus service -- but that's part of the component -- but also some subsidy, decreasing over three months, to help the initial Welfare recipient pay for that transit service until they start getting that paycheck in. That helps with the program providing the guaranteed ride home. So that if the transit 30 RESOLUTION 980125 service in the middle of the day does not provide the frequency that if you get a phone call, as I too often do, from school saying my child is sick, you can respond to that. So this transportation benefits package deals with the reality of what we think the challenges will be to get these people to work, but, more importantly, to keep them working at those jobs. As I said, what has been found is that it's more than the simplistic, you can't get there from here. Often you can get to the job, but you can't get there on weekends, never for the second shift, you can't get home at midday with a sick child, maybe not at the price that the employee can pay, and maybe not with a seat for a very long commute. And, also, maybe you can't get to the bus stop. One of the things we are finding, particularly at suburban work sites, is there is a bus across the street from your job, but there is five or six lanes of highway, no way to cross that street, no bus shelter to stand in. 31 RESOLUTION 980125 So the question is more complex than whether or not there is simply a transit route there. We will be looking at many employment sites as we place people, and working in conjunction with a program that provides, hopefully, a package of benefits that deals with all of these issues. There is one other component to our Welfare To Work initiative, and that is a secondary demonstration program, where we are going to focus on a single employment sector, which are nursing homes in the region, to see if we can identify clusters of jobs with substantial transit inaccessibility, and work on a separate program focusing on a van system for that area. That sums up, basically, what our program is. Our goal is not to compete with city transit services, but to make the investments necessary to keep all of us moving in the next century, and also to keep a few of us out of grid lock. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Donna Cooper, did you want to testify? 32 RESOLUTION 980125
Well, I need to change the name of the hearings, then, from 980125, hearings on nontraditional commute patterns in and around the city and the region for all kinds of people.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Do you plan to recess these hearings to go into the newly titled hearings and change --
Ms. Goren, thank you for your testimony. I just wondered, are you aware of any studies or evaluations that have been done over the past couple of years on, I forget the new title, so unfortunately --
Nontraditional 33 RESOLUTION 980125 commute programs, and what has come out of those programs, what the results have been for people?
There is a lot of literature in its very infancy out there. There are major questions as to job retention, as to the long-term viability of investments in new transit services. Those are issues that we are following. We are looking at what works and doesn't work. We know occasionally that there have been instances here in our own region where we subsidized an extension of a bus route in a SEPTA 200 bus series. And at first there were people on it, but eventually those people either moved or bought vehicles, and slowly it became just not economically feasible to continue running that route. Our goal is to make sure that we work on the job retention issue, and also work with the employers to involve them early on so that they have a stake in the transportation of their employees, not just government, as time goes on.
Would you be able to compile not necessarily a war-and-peace type 34 RESOLUTION 980125 novel, but some information, and get it to the Chair, of these various studies or maybe a series of executive summaries that would tell us what the literature is that exists out there?
My other question has to do with, out of these various studies -- my only real concern about any of this is, I guess depending on where the nontraditional program is operating, is, in the long-term, whether any significant number of the people participating in the program eventually either stay long enough in the job, and then possibly move up, and begin to wonder for themselves or figure out that rather than commuting the hour or so, if that's the average amount of time it takes, out to wherever, that, why don't I just move to wherever the job may be, or near the job? I'm not saying that many of the people who participate in these programs are necessarily going to take up residence in Villanova or Radnor or places like that. But there are nearby suburbs where a person who is now employed might be able to spend 35 RESOLUTION 980125 100 or 150 dollars more in rent, versus what they're paying in Philadelphia, move closer to the job, have the opportunity, for whatever reason, to send their children to a different school system based on whatever perceptions or beliefs they may have about our system versus some system in Montgomery County, and almost pick up, you know, close to a 5 percent raise? Do we know anything about whether that kind of stuff happens, and is it significant?
Councilman, you have now basically verbalized what is the most difficult public policy issue surrounding this whole phenomena, which really responds to a reality. And I share that concern. And over time I have just tempered it with basically the crisis we face today, particularly because of the Welfare Reform Act. But as we face that crisis, I think it is critical that we continue to make sure that we don't disinvest in our transit system that serves the people who are here now, that we continue long term to look at issues of making as many job opportunities available within the city. 36 RESOLUTION 980125
And I don't mean to suggest that in any way, shape, or form that these efforts don't have merit. Because, I mean, the challenge I think for many of us is that the job today somewhere always beats no job tomorrow in the city. And so, I mean, if you have the opportunity to get a job, wherever it may be, in the short term that benefits that person, it benefits us as a city. I mean, at least they are working. I am, as the long question laid out, I am somewhat concerned about the long-term prospects of us holding onto that person. And, as I said, everyone is not moving. I understand that. I am just interested to know what anyone has experienced over time with that kind of phenomenon, and what eventually happens.
Donna Cooper, the Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning. The largest reverse -- or access to jobs program in the country, interestingly, is being 37 RESOLUTION 980125 funded by HUD, as opposed to DOT. And it is called the Bridges To Work program. And, in fact, the outcome of that program is not always a sustainable transit route, but it is the placement of somebody in a position of personal self-sufficiency and income stability. So there are serious conflicting goals. And HUD at the same time is operating a modest demonstration called Moving To Opportunity, where they are actually physically moving people. And those are both programs that are only two years old. But by and large what's happening in Bridges and what happened in Philly when it began a van service about nine years ago, and is happening to some of the DOT Access To Work projects is, people are not necessarily moving. Because even in moving to opportunity, there was a resistance to the moving, although I think that is short-lived because of the issues you raised. People are buying cars. And, you know, that raises another set of issues. And so, you know, five years from now we may be sitting here saying, we couldn't sustain 38 RESOLUTION 980125 those reverse commute routes. On the other hand, we might have attached people to good-paying jobs and they are moving up. So it is a very tough debate to be having within the framework of the two-year deadline on, you know, receiving Welfare benefits without working. It's not a great way to go about making a cup of tea.
And Donna and I actually debate this with some frequency from our respective vantage points. I remain extremely concerned over larger issues, in terms of congestion and single-occupancy vehicle use, and disinvestment in the core of the transit system, and maintaining development in jobs in transit-served corridors, which is really where we want to focus new jobs and new development.
Well, I am sure the Chair will not allow the two of you to fight during the course of her Public Hearing, so you will have to do that down on the second floor. Thank you.
I was thinking as you were testifying, Denise, I remember about ten years ago I was doing a survey of parents regarding what they were using for child care. And it was an individual random sample phone survey. I remember one of the mothers had an infant, a 4-year-old, and like a 7-year-old. So before we could get off to work and use some kind of transportation, she had to drop her three children at three different places, and they were in different directions. One was a family daycare home, one was a Head Start Center, and then one was a pre and after-school program. So she also needed transportation to get her kids placed early morning, and then picked up at night, in addition to getting to a job. So it really is a complex issue. And it reminds me -- again, I'm pleased, Donna, that you and the Administration are really doing your very best to take a holistic view of this and, through Philadelphia Works, trying to integrate job training, job placement, job retention with child care and transportation issues, because they are all 40 RESOLUTION 980125 wrapped up into one. We hope people to get an initial work experience, and then hopefully retain a job, and then finally come to a wage with self-sufficiency, which for many people would be a long ways off.
Right. But in that regard, Councilwoman I'm not certain that it is a realistic expectation for somebody who hasn't worked in maybe the last five or six years or ever before to be able to juggle in a period of 12 months that dramatic lifestyle change, because our daycare system is so decentralized, and so is our transportation system. And --
I was not thinking of that time frame. I was thinking five to ten years, it will take most people. And, again, even people, as you all know, people with good incomes, if you are a single parent or even if you are a parent in a two-parent household, it is incredibly stressful.
So it is stressful enough with income, and it is ten times more stressful without a decent income. So I have serious fundamental problems with the whole thing, but it is a reality that we have to deal with.
Any other comments? Thank you very much for your testimony, and, again, for the work you are doing to try to be proactive on this issue. Our next panel is from SEPTA. We have Jack Leary, who is the General Manager, and Richard Voith, who is the Vice-Chair of the SEPTA Board and one of the two city representatives on the SEPTA Board. Richard Voith also, in his paid work time, works for the Federal Reserve Bank, who does a lot of very interesting research. So we welcome you here this morning. And would you officially identify yourselves for the 42 RESOLUTION 980125 record and proceed.
Good morning. My name is Richard Voith. I am the Vice-Chairman of the SEPTA Board.
Whatever you would like. And if you will the mike way up.
Is that good? I don't want to squeal. Councilwoman Fernandez, City Council members, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak on this incredibly important topic. At the outset, let me preface my remarks by saying that I know that the SEPTA management and the SEPTA Board recognizes the important of accessibility to jobs, not only for Philadelphians that are moving from Welfare To Work, but also for the hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians who are currently employed in the city and throughout the entire region. 43 RESOLUTION 980125 SEPTA's actively developing strategies with the city to link city residents with jobs both in the city and in the suburbs. But because job growth has been most rapid in the suburbs and because access to these jobs is frequently poor for those without cars, most of the accessibility discussion is focused on how to improve accessibility to suburban jobs. And this issue is of great concern to make those making the transition from the Welfare To Work. And, Happy, as you said, these people simply do not own cars. And given the large number of people leaving out of Welfare, I believe it is absolutely crucial that we, and SEPTA as an organization, work to make special innovative efforts to assure job accessibility for Philadelphians making the transition from Welfare To Work. I can't underscore that more. However, in doing so, we must be careful not to undermind job accessibility for the hundreds of thousands of low and moderate income Philadelphians who already have jobs. And we have talked a little bit about 44 RESOLUTION 980125 this already today. Let me explain what I think. Providing efficient, attractive public transportation service to disbursed employment sites is a very difficult proposition. Buses and passengers have to travel long distances from one site to another, often resulting in very unattractive commute times for our patrons, and also it's expensive because the buses are empty for much of the trip. And we have had some innovative successes. Our Breeze 12 bus service has been well received. And there are many suburban areas that have dense employment concentration, like Horsham or King of Prussia, where SEPTA with provide good service for city residents. And we have to maximize our efforts to deliver service where we can be really good at it. And there are probably many areas. And we are in the stages of trying to improve our suburban accessibility. Still, there are no areas in the region that have even remotely the density of Center City Philadelphia. There are 116,000 jobs per square mile, over a quarter million jobs total. 45 RESOLUTION 980125 No other community in the region has an employment concentration of over 15,000 jobs per mile. That's one-tenth the density of downtown. And moreover, employment density and population density in most of the city is greater than suburban employment centers. And these differences have a profound effect or our ability to provide additional transportation services to sites, efficient transit services to suburban sites, relative to when you compare them to how well we do in the city. The typical suburban bus route -- and this is by no means to denigrate our suburban services -- but a typical suburban bus route carries about 15 people per hour of operation, and this requires a subsidy of about $3 per ride. We are the regional transit authority, and we need to provide services throughout the five-county area. Even our relative heavy, very heavily used routes like Center City to King of Prussia, Routes 124, 125, when compared to city transit routes, they have relatively few passengers per hour, even though they are on the bus out there. And the reason is, they are very long 46 RESOLUTION 980125 trips, and you only get one person for the whole trip, and they are sometimes not full coming back.
Let's compare these numbers to a typical city transit route that I use regularly, the Route 23, one of my favorite topics in life, Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy, South Philadelphia, I go from Germantown to Broad and Erie. The Route carries 60 passengers an 10 hour, about four times as many as, five times as 11 many as a suburban route, or four times as many, and 12 subsidy for a passenger is probably one-fifth of 13 that of routes serving less dense suburban areas. 14 Over 20,000 rides are taken a day on 15 this 23 alone. And if anyone is counting, that's 16 about one-third of the entire frontier ridership. A 17 lot of people are dependent on these things. 18 On the 23, we're often packed in, 19 often unpleasantly. And prior to service 20 improvements, I think my Board membership had a 21 little to do with that, buses routinely passed up 22 passengers while waiting at the stop because the 23 buses are too full. So why am I raising the issue of service on the 23 and, indeed, issues of service on 47 RESOLUTION 980125 other routes in the city transit system, when the hearings are focused on job accessibility? Well, first and foremost, routes like the 23, the 17, the 33 are currently key to job accessibility to an extremely large number of people in North, Northwest, West, and South Philadelphia. But with the expansion of jobs in the suburbs, there is now an increased desire for public transit access to these jobs sites, as well. And when you have a fixed budget, this naturally sets up a competition for transit services between our heavily traveled city routes and the new services and disbursed destinations. Now, with regard to reverse commute routes, I am delighted that we are actually receiving some new money from the federal government, and the prospects for increases, to actually try to provide better services for reverse -- well, for nontraditional commutes, Denise, excuse me. And, in fact, I think that these can do a great deal to help us actually address this really crucial problem of the Welfare To Work transition. 48 RESOLUTION 980125 I would be remiss if I didn't point out at the same time we are getting new money, federal operating systems for transit in general has been falling for many years in terms of operating assistance. So you give with one hand and take away with another. But as Congressman Borski said, those figures are improving as well. And, in fact, we are very grateful for the reversed commuting money and the improving financial picture in general from the federal government. Let me just talk to you one second about the pattern service changes over the last eight years. On the city transit division, service levels fell about 8 percent from 1989 to 1997, while in the suburban transit frontier division, service rose 54 percent. It is a big increase, but they didn't have very much to begin with. But there is a move to provide services where there are growing needs. But the picture gets a little bit ugly, in a certain sense, when you look at what happened to the city's 15 top-performing heavily 49 RESOLUTION 980125 used transit routes over the same period. Service levels on these routes, these big, heavily-patronized routes over the period declined over percent on average during the 6 period. 7 So basically we have been trying to 8 expand our geographic reach. But we have a fixed 9 budget, and perhaps it is hurting some of the depth 10 of our transit system. 11 Perhaps not that. We have not been 12 able to maintain the depth of our transit service in 13 our core areas. 14 And let's think about the 15 consequences of skimping on our highly patronized 16 core routes. 17 If we say to businesses, we are going 18 to reduce the quality of your service transit to 19 your commuters to your city buildings, that's just 20 another incentive to leave the city. Everyone here understands that issue. And I think that that's a real concern. Some will tell you that transit is not an important consideration in a business' location.
But everyone will tell you that parking 50 RESOLUTION 980125 is important, and parking is just a reflection of the fact that transit is not good enough to compete with the car. That's why people want the parking, it has become out of their mindset. And despite the Daily News's recent coverage of parking in the city, it really truly is at a competitive disadvantage with respect to parking. As long as the city remains healthy, land will be expensive, and so will parking. Transit is an incredibly important element to maintaining the attractiveness of our dense residential and business communities. Now, in my testimony, it is not my desire at all in any sense to diminish the importance of job accessibility problems for city residents, especially those that are making the transition from Welfare To Work. And we have to develop innovative solutions quickly to address those issues. Rather, I just want to remind people that job accessibility is not only about getting people to suburban jobs, which it is, but it is also about getting people to city jobs and encouraging 51 RESOLUTION 980125 city job growth. So we are now confronted with serious accessibility problems with people making the Welfare To Work transition. And we need to do all that we can to ease this transition issue, including creating links from our existing services to job sites that are currently unserved, hopefully with the support of private employers, as well. And we also should look to innovative programs, like providing trans passes and trail passes, for people leaving Welfare to ease the financial burden of commuting among low-income workers. So I will end my testimony there. And thank you, once again, for the opportunity to address Council.
Thank you and good morning. Councilwoman Fernandez and members of the Council, I thank you for the opportunity to appear this morning before this committee to speak about the critical issues relating to the Council's 52 RESOLUTION 980125 resolution exploring transportation-related initiatives to help Philadelphians make the transition from Welfare To Work. Passage of the federal and state Welfare reform legislation in March of 1996 established a very close time frame to implement sweeping changes in Public Assistance programs. The thrust of the plan, taking Americans off the Welfare roles and returning them to work roles, requires a complex infrastructure of support services to ensure a successful transition. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has some 470,000 Welfare recipients, of whom approximately 65,000 reside in the City of Philadelphia. And among the barriers most often cited to making a successful transition, the lack of transit service or direct links to the work site, high cost of transportation, and lack of information about transportation options. As you pointed out earlier, nearly 40 percent of Philadelphia households are without private vehicle transportation. So SEPTA service is vital to bridge the gap between employment 53 RESOLUTION 980125 opportunities and the need for ready access. SEPTA is proud to provide critically needed support to this effort by offering transportation to jobs in Philadelphia and surrounding counties. Today the authority operates 28 different routes, including the 100 Norristown High Speed Rail Line, that served predominantly the suburban commute market, city to suburban travel, to growing job centers outside the city. This base of bus and rail transit enables SEPTA to take a proactive role and work with agencies involved in reform implementation, to provide service and travel information tailored to meet the needs of our constituent riders. Today the SEPTA services provide approximately 25,000 daily rides for city residents seeking access to key businesses, big business centers, including the Philadelphia International Airport area, King of Prussia, Fort Washington, Horsham, and Chesterbrook, as well as growing shopping malls, including Franklin Mills, Granite Run, Willow Grove, King of Prussia, and Plymouth Meeting. 54 RESOLUTION 980125 The Routes 124, 125 bus service to King of Prussia and Chesterbrook are just two examples of critically needed travel access provided for Philadelphia residents from Center City to new employment centers. This fall service was extended on these lines to a new terminus point at 13th and Market Street. The proximity of this location, now at Market Frankford, on 13th Street, and the Broad Street Subway at City Hall Station, and the subway surface lines at Juniper Street service, and major bus routes along Market Street, create easy access for rides and riders transferring from other transit modes. In addition to these current SEPTA routes, the outcome of the recently ratified suburban union contract will enable us to put new service, such as the Route 123, out on the new street. This new business link will operate between 69th Street and King of Prussia, and further support city-to-suburban commutation for Philadelphia residents. 55 RESOLUTION 980125 The availability of routes and service to employment centers is only one aspect of SEPTA's plan to support Welfare reform. Over the past year, SEPTA worked with the Department of Welfare on a number of information and outreach initiatives to support employment opportunities for Philadelphia residents. This past October, a Transit Pass Partnership Program was established. Initially designed as a pilot program with five assistance officers in Philadelphia, the Authority has provided over 2,000 passes each month to individuals participating in job-readiness training and job-search programs. Plans are presently being finalized to expand this service to the remainder of the Philadelphia offices.
Furnishing program participants with passes only addresses the issue of travel cost. Concurrent with this effort, we initiated a comprehensive information dissemination program focusing on how to use the system, and specific routes and schedules to work locations. And I have copies just to display the 56 RESOLUTION 980125 kind of information that's available. SEPTA has also created a train the trainer program to educate approximately 150 job-training placement professionals and caseworkers on how to access SEPTA's system, including route, service, and fair information. Additional training sessions are planned for early this summer to meet the demand created by recent job access program expansion. We published and distributed to assistance officers and job training and job placement centers these How To Ride guides printed in both English and Spanish. And these brochures provide travel instructions for specific areas of the city, like Huntington Park, Northwest, two employment centers down at the airport, and Horsham, just to name a few. SEPTA is also now operating a toll-free hotline, 1-888-SEPTAWK, or SEPTA W-K, that offers customers detailed travel instructions for reaching designated employment centers. To ensure the Authority remains responsive to regional transportation needs, SEPTA's 57 RESOLUTION 980125 Five-Year Plan for strategic change identifies initiatives to develop routes and service in response to new and growing work locations. Through the establishment of financial partnerships with private-sector businesses, services can be tailored to support hours of operation and trip origin locations for city residents travelling to jobs in Philadelphia and the suburbs. The Authority will continue to monitor and evaluate existing service to meet changing customer demand in growing employment centers. We applaud the Mayor's recently announced Greater Philadelphia Works program and its mission to find employment opportunities for some 15,000 city residents currently receiving Public Assistance. SEPTA strongly supports the Mayor's efforts. And we are working closely with the city to develop new and improved service for two critical employment corridors: The Airport area and King of Prussia. And I think Denise spoke about those efforts. 58 RESOLUTION 980125 We are also permitted work with the Private Industry Council to support the program implementation process. In addition to its role as transit service provider, we have partnered with other organizations to develop two pilot employment opportunity programs. The first, the Construction Skills Training program, is a joint effort between SEPTA, PIC, state legislators, organized labor, and the construction industry. The program offers pre-apprenticeship training, providing classroom and on-site instruction, to develop basic construction skills and knowledge. In February, TOP/WIN was engaged to run a 16-week course of classroom instruction offering general employment proficiencies and an instruction to building and trades craft skills. In mid June, trainees will begin a ten-week on-site training course at SEPTA's Crescent Street Viaduct Rehabilitation Project. 50 an hour for their field education. 59 RESOLUTION 980125 The second program, the Welfare To Work Paratransit Driver Training Demonstration Project is a job readiness and training program. And it was created as a partnership between PennDOT SEPTA and PIC. And the program teaches the job readiness skills and specialized training necessary to qualify as a paratransit driver. Individuals successfully completing the program will have the opportunity for employment with SEPTA's contract carriers. The future viability of our region depends upon its long-term economic growth and stability. We all have a vested interest in ensuring that the Welfare reform efforts of the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have a positive outcome.
I come here this morning to pledge our support and that of SEPTA's 9300 dedicated men and woman to work in partnership with you to provide the services and opportunities needed to ensure the success of the Welfare To Work programs. Again, thank you, Councilwoman, and 60 RESOLUTION 980125 members of the Council, for the invitation to join you today. And if there are any questions, we would be happy to try to respond. Thank you.
Well, thank you very much for your testimony. Just to clarify, looking at some of your brochures, would the most expensive Transpass for the region be, what? Is it $84 a month?
What would be the most you would have to pay to go to any of these outlying areas from the city?
It is $104, I believe, a month for the most expensive pass on the regional rail system.
So I think what I was trying to figure out would be if the Welfare department, as it is trying to really assist people get to jobs, if there is a way that they subsidize all or part of the cost of transportation, and maybe link that, also, with employer subsidies. Because when you stop to think, it is 61 RESOLUTION 980125 a big chunk of money if you are making a low-wage salary, let's say $7 an hour or $6 an hour. It is next to impossible to still feed your family and pay out, you know, a huge chunk for transportation.
When the Department of Welfare bought Transpasses for you, was that for like just the first or second month, or were they going to provide these to people like for a whole year to subsidize that first rough year of job placement?
I don't know what the answer to that is. My understanding is that it is going to continue for a while. I don't know if it has an outer term limit on it. They have been providing them now to people for several months, intending to expand it, expand it thousands more. But I don't know what the total time program of it is. I can get back to you on that.
It seems, one of my fundamental issues with the Welfare change 62 RESOLUTION 980125 proposals and agreements were, it feels like in many ways it is going to cost more, it is going to be costing more to get people good job training, good transportation, and quality child care. Like yesterday you noticed in the paper, for the School District to give a young child quality child care, it is like $11,000 a year. So add a thousand to 2,000 for transportation to an outlying job. And then if it's paying 6, 7 dollars an hour, you know, it doesn't make too much sense. I didn't add job training costs to that. So we really have a serious, you know, economic problem. But I am glad to hear that the department is trying to work with you and also work with the caseworkers who are trying to now, there are supposed to be job coaches to assist people how to get the jobs. So your kind of information, I think, would be very useful. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Thank you, Councilwoman 63 RESOLUTION 980125 Fernandez. COUNILWOMAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you for continuing to work with all the parties on this tough problem. Our next panel will talk about local initiatives and pilot programs. Faith Williams of the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, and Selena Legette, who is going to share with us her experience. And then ML Werneke from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. We will do a panel on local initiatives and pilot programs. So thank you for coming. And would you please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good morning. My nature is Faith William, and I work for the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition. And I am happy to be here to share with you my experiences that I have had being the Director of the City to Suburbs Commuting Project for the past nine months. As everybody knows, the economy in Philadelphia has remained static over the few years, 64 RESOLUTION 980125 while the surrounding suburbs have gained about 32,000 jobs. And I want to give you, as a result of that, the United Way awarded the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition a one-time one-shot grant to place and transport 145 Welfare clients to job out in the suburbs. With that $300,000 we have purchased three 15-passenger vans, we have set aside $30,000 in transit subsidies, and we set up emergency ride home procedures for a guaranteed right home in the case of emergency. To date, our goal for the United Way contract was to place 145 people, with jobs paying at least $7 an hour, with a 70 percent retention rate. 06 an hour. We have met those goals. One of the issue that I will discuss later is a retention issue, which is one that has been a tough one. For most of the people here, with the exception of you, I always start my presentation out with my K-Mart story because of the huge success, my 65 RESOLUTION 980125 first success. Just to give you a little background. In October, when the Big K opened up in Center City, there was a huge 5,000 people lined up for 300 jobs, or some inadequate number of jobs for people. We took our van out to do a job search, which is what we do. We put our clients on the van, we take them out to do independent job search. We put ten clients on a van. We took them out to a K-mart, which is in North Whales, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb about miles north 15 of here. 16 Out of the ten clients that were on 17 that van, eight of them got hired. Five of them still remain in their positions. They have all been promoted into management. 75 an hour, and they do have full health care benefits. I have with me Selena Legette, who is my legitimate K-Mart success story. I figured I would bring somebody with me just to prove that that does work. 66 RESOLUTION 980125 So the jobs are out there, and it is just a matter of accessing them. Some of the main points that I wanted to cover, things that make the reverse commute a success, and some of the things that are needed, I would like to talk about what the agencies need from SEPTA in order to make this continue to work, what the clients need by way of support services to help them retain the jobs, what the employer deserves for hiring the clients and helping us with this, and some of the outstanding challenges that still remain in reference to reverse commuting. Reverse commuting requires a lot of innovative and creative things in order to make it work. One of the key things that needs to happen is that we need to build better partnerships with SEPTA, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the Transportation Management Associations, and the City Planning Commissions, so that we can pool together and get some sort of a geographic information system that combines all of the data that we have available, so that we can integrate the things that are needed in order for 67 RESOLUTION 980125 the clients to retain their jobs, things like child care, housing, and where the jobs are in reference to where the clients live. One of the other things that's needed by SEPTA, and I was glad to see that John Leary brought some of the packages and the information with him, is transit training. A lot of the providers that look for -- the job developers that provide these services for clients need to understand where the clients are going, they need to understand transit maps.
It just doesn't have to be a paper brochure; it has to be actual field experience, where they actually get on the train, go out to the suburbs, see where the bus drops them off, and make sure they are not standing in a pile of dirt, next to a pole with a little sign on it. They need to experience these things so they know what their clients are doing. One of the things that job developers also need are cars. It is very difficult to do job development in the suburbs without a car, unless you are going to take the bus yourself and see where you 68 RESOLUTION 980125 land. It is better to go out there, map out the area, and figure out your routes from there. One of the biggest problems I have seen with some of my clients, in the heavy areas of poverty, is actually getting out of their neighborhoods and into a major transit hub. We do maximize the use of SEPTA in our reverse commute project, but a lot of the clients have to come out of South Philadelphia or North Philadelphia -- not necessarily North Philadelphia, that's a good one -- but come out of South Philadelphia to get to 30th Street. Sometimes it takes them up to 30 minutes just to get to 30th Street, and then from there they have to catch the train out to the suburbs, and then pick up the bus or van. So if we could shorten the time it takes them to get out of their house and to a major transit hub, that would be a great help. Some of the cross-county metro discussions that they have had about providing a perimeter service that services the counties outside of the city would help to link some of the suburbs together. 69 RESOLUTION 980125 So, for example, in Northeast Philadelphia, if a client wants to go to the Norristown area, they have to catch the train all the way, they have to come into the city to get on a train to go out towards the Norristown area. So better connections need to be made in that access. Just to give you an idea of what our typical day is like with the reverse commute project that we run. m. from Broad and Olney. And basically what we do is, we pick up the clients that have to be at work by 7 o'clock. In most cases public transportation doesn't run out to the suburbs that early in the morning, so we do provide the van service early in the morning for them to get to work. What we do at that point is, we develop our jobs within a to 2, sometimes a mile radius of a major transit station. The clients will leave out of the city in the morning, they will take the train out to perhaps the North Whales train station. And the van goes to the train station every half an hour, picks 70 RESOLUTION 980125 up clients, takes them to work. And it does that from about o'clock until about o'clock, when 4 everybody is at work, and then they will go back out 5 and pick them up in the evening. And we do also 6 have evening shifts that we do, as well. 7 What the clients need as a support 8 service, primarily, is transit subsidies. The 9 transportation, the cost of a transit check, is a big issue. And I heard you ask that question earlier. The maximum Transpass is $140 for a monthly. A monthly pass to a Zone 5 is $140. And in providing the transit training that I do for all the agencies that I work with, I do explain how to read a train schedule, how to purchase a pass, and the fact that if your reverse commuting, which means you are leaving the city and going out to the suburbs, you don't have a spend $140 on a pass. The maximum they have to pay is $109 a month. And I think that is a very important piece of when you provide transit training that people need to know, so they are not spending $140, when they only have to spend 109. 71 RESOLUTION 980125
Because if you are reverse commuting, which means you are coming out of the city in the morning, or at a an off-peak time, you don't have to pay full price for a ticket. And it is only $109. And some people don't know that. I didn't until later. So that's an important piece of the transit training. Again, and that helps with the clients with their transit subsidies. Also, the guaranteed ride home in case of emergency. Again, we have to keep in mind that a lot of people that are coming off the welfare system are women with children. And they do have concerns about going outside of the city to work and not being able to come back in if their children are sick or if there is an emergency. So that's a supportive service that needs to be provided. Mentoring from the employers is also important, and housing issues and housing support is also a very important issue for clients. The job developers need cars, the clients need support services. 72 RESOLUTION 980125 The employers, which are a very important part of this picture, also deserve a client that's been assessed by the agency. And I just say that because a lot of the suburban employment is processed through employment agencies, and that's something that we really can't get around. A lot of the major employers are using employment agencies because the employment agencies screen their clients before they send them out. So I think it is very important that the employers get -- that the agencies provide a client that has been screened effectively, drug tested, manual dexterity, and whatever it is that the employer needs in order to have a good client. Some of the outstanding challenges that still remain in the aspect of reverse commuting, primarily, is the skills mismatch. There are lots of jobs out in the suburbs, there are lots of people in the city who need to work. The transportation is being provided, it is being worked on. But there still remains a 73 RESOLUTION 980125 big skills mismatch. It is a very large amount of clients that are on welfare, and the City of Philadelphia number is as high as 416,000, have no high school diploma. So I think funding still needs to be made available for basic skills and literacy so that we can get these clients to these jobs. It is very important that they get to work, but they have to be prepared to do the work at the same time. One of the other challenges is child care. Very early on in our project, after about six months, we called all of the clients that were placed in jobs and found out the ones that didn't retain the jobs, as to why they didn't keep their jobs, and the number one issue was child care. In a perfect world, an idealistic world, everybody works from 9:00 to 5:00, and everything is basically set up around those types of hours. One of the things we found out very early in the reverse commute project was, there were nontraditional hours. Clients started as early as 6 o'clock in the morning. We had women who started at 74 RESOLUTION 980125 o'clock in the morning, o'clock in the morning, and child care was just inadequate. It wasn't a matter of -- it wasn't just traditional care care; it was the nontraditional daycare of their cousin took care of the baby, and then all the sudden she had to go through the eight-week job readiness program, and she couldn't watch the children anymore. So that's always been a big issue. Unstable housing, where the clients move from house to house, there is no telephone, the telephone number changes, we can't find them. Drug addiction was a big issue. We had a lot of clients who would not pass the drug test, either before or after they were hired, and a criminal background check. Again, the employer would do the criminal background check after the client was hired, and then they would lose the job at that point. So those are some of the challenges that still remain with the reverse commute project.
But I think the creativity and innovation still needs to be there, and the agencies need to be 75 RESOLUTION 980125 flexible. SEPTA, if they possibly can, need to be flexible. And I think that to coordinate services and integrate the services would make it a lot easier and it would be a lot more successful because it eliminates a lot of the competition that you see in this. Thank you.
Thank you. Miss Legette. I am sorry to mispronounce your name earlier. Would you like to make any comments and maybe share with us some of your perspective particularly around the transportation issues?
Yes. And I would also like to touch on some of the issues that you or maybe other panels had no mention about, that I could give you a little bit more insight on. I have been on and off Welfare for about maybe 20 years in and the out my life, for one reason or another. It's been maybe, basically, social problems that kept me either in sickness or this that and the other that kept me going back and forth 76 RESOLUTION 980125 on. My social skills, as far as getting a job, were something that the Greater Philadelphia Urban Coalition had helped me to not only be able to get the job because I had skills, but how to maintain the job once I got there, how to get along with other people even though I may not agree with what they may want me to do or whatever like that. It was just basically, I am only there for eight hours, you don't have to live with them type thing. One of the problems that we had, you know, once I started going out to K-Mart was transportation. I was one of the first persons, like Faith said, that was hired out there, so I knew the beginning of the ins and outs. The first problem I came across with the times, the time frame of getting off the train and catching the bus, they didn't coordinate. And by the time I would get to the job, I would be late, even though I had left my home maybe an hour, hour and a half just to get at work on time. Then shortly after that, we received the van services for the van, and the van was a 77 RESOLUTION 980125 great help. It was a lot of relief. Because you just didn't know what your next step was going to be once you got off that train, and that was very stressful, getting to work. The other thing that I, like if you had an emergency, you say, well, I have a very sickly child, she has Down Syndrome, and I have to make sure that all her needs are met before I can go to work. And through the Greater Philadelphia program and the transportation, they met those needs for me. They were able to bring me back and forth if I have an appointment with her, and bring me back to work, just as what I am going to do today. I am going to work after I leave here.
Moving to the suburb area for me I would not want to do because I have family here that can help me and support me with the Down's Syndrome child. Moving out there would just regulate me from them getting close to me or being able to 78 RESOLUTION 980125 act in the place where I can't, because I am already in a suburban area, and that's something that, you know, I wanted to express when there was mention, you know, why wouldn't we want to move out in those areas. There are other reasons. Well, I think I illustrated on that enough. When I went to K-Mart, I had customer service skills. And I didn't know those skills were going to be something that I wanted to carry out, you know, throughout my whole entire life. And once I stayed there on the job and I was given, you know, the opportunity to have benefits, long-term goals, benefits beyond my beliefs -- I mean, I just never had a job that had so many benefits in my life -- and I started taking advantage of those investments and things that I can have, you want more. You start saying, I want more, I can do more, you know. And the challenge for me right now is to be, perhaps with the customer service skills that I have, is to maybe get a job working for AT&T with customer skills, things to that nature. With the right training I can do it, too. And that's setting my goals. And 79 RESOLUTION 980125 that's one of the things keeping in contact with Faith, she encouraged me that, you know, I always can do better, you know. She pushes us. You know, you can do it. Child care, I just wrote it down as it came to me, so I am just going to jitter around a little bit. Child care, when I first started the program and we was going to school, the child care was provided right then and there. You know, they was ready for us. And I don't think that they was completely ready for us to jump from the school to employment as we did with transportation. It was like everything is coming all at one time, attack, attack, attack. Because we was ready. They had geared us up so much, we were ready. And I know with me it was God sent that I got the job real quickly, you know, and I was ready with clothing, and things like that. And so now we are challenged with child care. And, you know, from making that one transition, because from the schooling to actually 80 RESOLUTION 980125 being on the job, and the Welfare system, their program was a little bit more lengthy in being prepared for that. And I think that's where a lot of us fell in the hole from actually going to school, and now actually going to work. The Welfare system had a little gap there, whereas they should have been able to pick us up right after we got out of school, the very first day we went to employment, or maybe within that week time frame, or something like that, that they would have contact with the daycare that would say, hey, the money is there and da, da, da, da, da to fill in that gap, so it wouldn't be too lengthy. That's where I think one of the problems came in at.
Did you find child care in your neighborhood, or is it a center or a family home or a relative? What child care are you using?
I am using both. I have also my family, but I also have to use help outside of my family, as well. And the reason I'm glad you had mentioned that, because I wanted to touch on that. 81 RESOLUTION 980125 With the Welfare program, you had to have, you know, limits as to, you know, if someone can help you inside of your household with child care. And take for example myself, my child has Down'S syndrome, and she is legally speech impaired. So I would not want to take my child outside of my home. I would want to have someone that I can trust, such as my mother, to watch my children, my child, and the others, too. I would not want to take my child outside the home. But because of the way the program is set up, that relative cannot do it. It would have to be a provider outside the family household or membership. And I think some of those issues like that needs to be touched. Whatever makes us feel comfortable so we can go work, by all means necessary do it. /*.
Can I just ask, how many children do you have and how old are they?
I have four children all together. I have blessed to have one in college, he is in Lincoln University, he is 19 years old. Another generation without Welfare, 82 RESOLUTION 980125 hopefully. I have a year old, she is in 4 Farrell Elementary her and Kayon, he is 9. And 5 Kenisha is the Down's syndrome baby, which is at 6 Spruens. 7 So I am hoping to bring quite a few 8 generations in there without depending on Welfare. 9 But I need the backing that I need in order for it 10 to happen. 11 I don't blame anyone else for the 12 things that have happened in my life. I am just saying, I have gotten over that, you know. Just give me the things that I need to continue on.
That's the energy that I put into the job. 83 RESOLUTION 980125
And the van that takes you to work -- and, again, I hear you saying it is also there available when there are family emergencies.
I think about somewhere about eight. It's about room for eight people. Yes, about eight people. And then they have other shifts that start like about 1:00. I know I have two night shifts. It just depends on what time of work that you have to come in that particular day, that you may have, you know, more or less.
So, Ms. Williams, have you found it more cost effective, then, to have this van, particularly for people needing to get to work at odd hours, but then also do you have some kind of limits, like minimum numbers of people you need in order to make a van worth it.
It is always more cost-effective to have more clients on the van, 84 RESOLUTION 980125 especially if we are going to transfer the cost or have an employer subsidize that. The way it is set up now, we have a lot of clients that are going to different areas, to different employers. But, yes, it is more cost-effective the people on the van. But the service that van provides is really the gap service, where the public transportation is not provided, early in the morning, and then the late night shifts, and then again for job search trips and an emergency ride home.
And of the 185 people you have been able to assist, how many of the people are using just public transit and how many are using van --
I don't have an exact number, a very large breakdown. But I would say out of all the clients that are using public transportation, I would say about 65 percent are using public transportation alone, and we are using that subsidy. And that's really been where the successes are. 85 RESOLUTION 980125 Not knowing where the funding was coming from next, I didn't want to find people jobs in areas where they would never get to work as soon as the money ran out. So we do focus very heavily on jobs that are accessible by public transportation and by providing the public transportation subsidy that allows them some flexibility in budgeting their money for transportation.
And when you talk about subsidy, is it for the full cost of the Transpass.
It actually varies depending on which program. For the United Way program, we used to start out with 50 percent subsidy. Again, with the reverse commute, the maximum you would pay for a weekly pass is $30. We encourage them when they are in their eight-week job readiness training program, they do have a stipend of Public Assistance of 17.50 to cover their city pass.
Yes. And we provide a $15 subsidy per week for that Zone 3 pass. So they 86 RESOLUTION 980125 are actually saving $2.50 by buying the weekly pass. We do encourage them to buy monthly Transpasses or Trailpasses because it is more cost effective. And as much as we like to see them, we don't have to see them every week coming in to pick up their transit check.
I think I understood that this United Way grant that enabled the Urban Affairs Coalition to do this pilot project, hopefully some of the federal dollars that the Congressman referred to, hopefully we will get, and I am at least after our fair share, could be used to continue and expand what you have been piloting with. Is that what your understanding is?
Yes. That's the goal, to, again, gain additional funding, once the monies are available, to continue this project and to expand it further. And again, we focused on the corridor of Eastern Montgomery County and 309. We do want to expand a little bit further and go more out into the Bucks County area and the King of Prussia area, as well. 87 RESOLUTION 980125
When I heard about this United Way grant, I thought it was a very important proactive step for our region to take so that we would be as well prepared as possible to say to the federal transit agency, hey, we know, we have piloted with our own money, we are ready to effectively use some of these federal dollars that the Congressman referred to.
I think the project allowed us to see where the gaps were, where help was needed. I think one of the key things that people fail to realize, again, is that skills mismatch between the Welfare client and the jobs. Most of the jobs that were developed in the suburbs are data-intensive business services that require computer-literacy skills and some basic education. And again, those gaps need to be addressed. So we want to provide transportation to work, but we want to make sure they are prepared for the work that we have for them.
Any other comments? Thank you for your testimony. 88 RESOLUTION 980125 And why don't we go on to ML Werneke of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
My name is Marylou Werneke. And I am with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, and I thank you for the opportunity to testify today. The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, or DVRPC, is the federally designated Metropolitan planning organization that, in a region that includes Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties in Pennsylvania, and Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and Mercer Counties in New Jersey. My testimony today will briefly summarize our current activities on access to jobs, which is our, I think, alternative phrase to nontraditional commutes, and, in addition, offer an overview of two very different approaches to the issue that are being pursued on the Pennsylvania and New Jersey side of the Delaware River. Although DVRPC has previously completed a number of projects concerning commuting patterns, employment centers, and jobs workers 89 RESOLUTION 980125 skills mismatch, our involvement with the issue intensified in July of last year, which was both when our Board policy committee met, and it was also when some of the implications of the Welfare reform that had been previously passed were becoming clearer, I think, to a number of people. Participants on our Board Policy Committee included federal, state, city, county representatives from the worlds of transportation, labor and human services, from both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. There was clear recognition of the importance of the issue, and we were given the marching orders to proceed in four areas: First, to work to educate human services providers, job trainers, and Welfare recipients about transportation issues, which is to support some of the transportation training activities that Mr. Leary and Faith mentioned. Second, to work with a broad-based constituency, including job trainers, community-based organizations, employers, child care interests, the idea being to get out of our somewhat normal world of transportation-oriented issues, and 90 RESOLUTION 980125 people who work in that arena, to a broader arena, recognizing that all of these players are important in the Welfare To Work situation. Third, we were directed to target specific job centers and corridors, and to try to respond to opportunities as they were presented to us. We worked with the City of Philadelphia, the Private Industry Council, SEPTA, and several TMAs to develop a proposal that was ultimately unfunded, but that has been now turned into Greater Philadelphia Works, and the transportation component that was described by Denise and Donna. Sort of ironic that it was the proposal was not funded by the transportation, the Federal Transit Administration, but now it is looking like it will be funded through Department of Labor dollars, which gives you an idea of the importance of these partnerships in Welfare To Work activities. Finally, based upon all of these efforts to prepare a regional access to jobs strategy, which I expect to release a draft of it in 91 RESOLUTION 980125 the next month or so, I have the good fortune that this work, we are continuing to fund this work into the next year -- not that this means that I will delay the release of any report by a year -- but it allows me to take that as step one and to move on to step two in Fiscal Year 1999. In addition to these activities, we received a small grant from the Federal Transit Administration to focus on bistate commutes and bistate coordination. The goal of this project is to improve communication and coordination on Welfare To Work issues between stakeholders in New Jersey and Pennsylvania portions of the region, which would include the three major transit providers and key state and county agencies that are involved in access to work.
As a first analytic step, we looked at target populations in three course cities that are feasible for bistate commutes, Philadelphia, Trenton, and Camden, that are located within a reasonable distance of a bridge, and, therefore, jobs on the other side of the river. We looked then at commute times and 92 RESOLUTION 980125 broke them into three tiers: Under 30 minutes, 30 to 60 minutes, and over 60 minutes on transit. We looked at existing transit lines to determine which employment centers were accessible under the existing transit systems with no further improvements, and tabulated and mapped these results on our GIS system. For Philadelphia residents, we were able to identify 29 employment centers in Southern New Jersey, primarily in Camden County, but not exclusively in Camden County, that are accessible by transit, that one of the key links being the New Jersey transit bus routes numbered 400 to 419. Many of these people would also be commuting on SEPTA or Patco and connecting to the New Jersey transit route. Although some of these were the kind of preferrable under-30-minute commutes, the bulk were in the 30 to 60 minute range. The good news is that collectively in these employment centers, the 29 employment centers, there were an estimated half million jobs back in 1990. Now, not every single one of these 93 RESOLUTION 980125 jobs is on the bus routes. And I am actually unable to see what proportion is on the bus route. But the number is compelling enough to let you know that Philadelphia should be looking on both sides of the river in looking to get access to jobs placement. In addition, support the local across the river. And that's because Pennsylvania and New Jersey are taking two different approaches as far as the transportation portion of Welfare To Work. In the State of New Jersey,, their framework argument is relative for two reasons: First, we want to place all possible workers, and so we should look on both sides of the rivers; and, second, New Jersey has established a statewide planning process that includes several different kinds of activities that are not currently being pursued on this side, in the Southeastern Pennsylvania or by Pennsylvania state government, but could be and may pay off some good results. New Jersey is one of only two states that have created a statewide transportation planning coordination process to address access to job issues. This process was launched on the 94 RESOLUTION 980125 state level by three different state agencies in New Jersey: The Department of Human Services, the Department of Transportation, and the New Jersey Transit, which unlike our SEPTA, which is a regional agency, New Jersey transit is a state agency that covers all counties in the state. 8 And it was critical having leadership 9 at the state level in order to be able to make 10 things happen down the road. 11 Meanwhile, while you are traveling 12 along the road, most of the work is being done at 13 the county level. 14 Each county was asked to create a 15 steering committee consisting of, at a minimum, 16 members from the Work Force Investment Board, which 17 is New Jersey equivalent of the Private Industry 18 Council, county planners and transportation 19 planners, county welfare agencies, the United Child 20 Care Agency of each county, and other local 21 stakeholders that make sense in particular situations. We participated in this process in Burlington, Camden, or Gloucester, Mercer County. I wrote, primarily limited by staffing constraints, 95 RESOLUTION 980125 which means my ability to be in multiple places at the same time. The state hired a consultant to help each county produce a transportation coordination plan, and the state also provided GIS background information, the kind that Faith was asking for, that included employers, transit lines, child care locations, and other features that are important to this kind of work.
As of January of this year, New Jersey could report considerable progress in initiating the planning process in of 14 counties. 15 Every county has identified a leader 16 to deal with the issue, and 16 have established 17 working steering committees. 18 By July of this year, each county, 19 with the help of their GIS and the help of their 20 state-paid consultant, is to prepare a plan that 21 would include a look at demand for transportation services, supply of existing services, the gap between the two, and how you might close the gap. Very kind of practical approach to the situation. Why did counties participate in 96 RESOLUTION 980125 this? Probably not because of any great patriotism, but they have a strong incentive to participate because the state made submitting a plan a prerequisite for being eligible to any future funds from state or federal access to job sources down the road. So if you didn't participate in this phase of the process, you wouldn't be rewarded at a later phase. There is no guarantee that these plans, that there is available funding to implement the plans. But you want to get your plans together in the advent of funding in the future. And the state is hoping to put together at least a $2 million pool to fund some of these initiatives beginning in September of these years. Two other statewide initiatives I want to note quickly. First, New Jersey Transit created a work pass program, and this is during the job search and training phase. The state will present, will provide a pass on New Jersey Transit to travel to and from those various kinds of activities. 97 RESOLUTION 980125 While this represents an important improvement over daily travel allowances, DVRPC would like to see the program modified, so that instead of it just being a New Jersey Transit pass, it could be a transit check that could be converted into Patco or SEPTA or van-pool-type situations, as well. Transit checks are transportation vouchers that can be redeemed from services from a variety of carriers. That applies for before you get the job. Once you get the job, New Jersey is planning to initiate a program that's aptly named Get A Job Get A Ride. And this provides one month of free travel on New Jersey transit to any work force New Jersey, or that's New Jersey's Welfare participant, for employment opportunities. While this initiative is somewhat limited, in that it only covers one month of travel, its significant because it represents that crucial period of trying to make the transition to work, and addresses in at least some way affordability issues. 98 RESOLUTION 980125 To the best of my knowledge, there is no parallel program on the Pennsylvania side that covers after you get the job, that's funded by the state. Now, Faith's program is obviously an exception to that statement. In contrast to New Jersey's state-initiated planning and coordination framework, organizations in Philadelphia have been focusing on project-by-project approach, trying to advance specific projects as they can line up the funding and the players to implement them. There is no Pennsylvania equivalent to the statewide county transportation coordination planning process. And while it is too early to really judge the bottom line results of this process, two things are already evident: First of all, the process in and of itself of, putting together the steering committee and learning to work with the other members of the steering committee, is encouraged invaluable face-to-face contact and relationship building between these different parts of the universe that have to converge in order to 99 RESOLUTION 980125 forge an access to job situation. Second, counties that successfully complete this process will have, in effect, laid groundwork that should give them an edge for competing for state and federal transportation dollars.
Last September, at a conference that was sponsored by the FTA, our Region 3, the Deputy Secretary for Income Maintenance from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare spoke to the issue of what the department's philosophy towards access to jobs initiatives would be. She said very plainly that people in the audience should not wait, sit on their hands and wait for the state to tell them what to do or for the state to make something to happen, but, instead, they must initiate projects from the local level. She perceived the state's role as providing resources and removing obstacles, but was clear in the fact that the leadership behind any efforts must be locally derived. Given this directive, it is up to all of us, including elected officials, program managers, transit providers, and even planners from 100 RESOLUTION 980125 this region to organize and initiate contact with DPW about how to channel other sources of state and federal funds, including TANF block grant dollars, into new initiatives.
Thank you very much for your testimony, and thank you to the whole panel. And we will move on now to our fourth and last panel. And we also have one other person who has asked to testify. For people who have come into the chambers for a Committee of the Whole, which will follow this committee, this is a Public Hearing of the Transportation and Public Utilities Committee. And it is on a resolution that can be described as dealing with reverse commute, or nontraditional commuting patterns, or transportation access to jobs, whichever politically correct or incorrect kind of label you want. So for our last panel, could I call forward Jill Welsh, Executive Director of the Delaware County Transportation Management Agency, or TMA; Peter Quinn, Executive Director of the Greater Valley Forge TMA; and Beth Palubinsky of 101 RESOLUTION 980125 Public/Private Ventures and the program that was mentioned earlier, Bridges To Work. And if I could, for the sake of time, again, we're not too far behind schedule, it's very helpful if you can focus your key salient points for the record. And then if you have longer testimony, you are very welcome to leave it, and it is incorporated into the record. So Jill Welsh, do you want to begin.
Thank you, Councilwoman, for this opportunity to address you. And I will be brief. I only have two pages of notes. First I want to start out by saying and admitting that I am not an expert in job training. I am not an expert in the placement side of the equation. But I think what I bring to you today is maybe getting inside the employer's head and what employers who are out in the suburbs are thinking when they are looking for Welfare To Work and trying to attract and retain their own work force. We have always called it Access To 102 RESOLUTION 980125 Jobs, by the way, so there is no conflict there. When I look at Philadelphia's plan to move people from Welfare To Work and put them into Access To Jobs, two important commitments that deal with two of the biggest concerns that we have heard over and over are addressed. And we are extremely pleased to see the priority placed on both transportation and daycare. When we meet with our employers throughout Delaware County, in our case, it has been a difficult road to get them to look at dealing with the transportation needs of their work force. There are serious liability issues. Historically how you got to work was your own concern; it was not an employer concern. We have seen that change, particularly as the market has changed in that employers' need to attract new employees to their labor force. So I wanted to make that point, that we are up against a changing mindset in terms of getting employers to look at this issue. And the one thing that they are even more hesitant to look at than transportation needs 103 RESOLUTION 980125 of their work force is the daycare needs of their work force. When we sat around a group of employers at the Airport Activities Center, as we call it, they were willing to talk about transportation issues, willing to look to SEPTA, willing to look to van pools and car pools. But looking at the daycare needs, that was a big obstacle that they were not necessarily willing to jump into. So the question is, how do we effectively deal with these two challenges. And I think the answer is partnerships, creative partnerships, regional partnerships, and regional solutions coming from the people who are dealing with daycare and transportation on a day-to-day basis. It is clear that SEPTA is the common denominator in all of this. Unless we are going to go to huge expenses of getting people out into suburban areas not necessarily served by transit, SEPTA has the best system, and it is the backbone of our getting people to jobs in the city and in the suburbs. 104 RESOLUTION 980125 We can build on that network with ideas like station cars and ideas like van pools that move people from train stations, out to the employment center, that last quarter mile. But I am convinced that the SEPTA network is the backbone of this effort. There is a fundamental difference between how we deal with employers from the transportation side and how we work and how case managers work. And that has come across in a lot of our meetings. The biggest difference is, case managers work on an individual basis, with providing individuals benefits, individuals case management, individual training; whereas, transportation solutions, for them to be viable into the suburbs and other areas, need to look at masses of people. That's why it is mass transportation. And so one of the ways that we can bridge that gap, and I think start talking the same language, is to look at data collection and GIS systems, where we can pool people and program where they are coming to and where they are going, where they are coming from and where they are going to, 105 RESOLUTION 980125 and build the daycare component into that mapping component, so that people can drop their children off at daycare that is right near the transportation center, and we can promote those kind of transportation, daycare, and job linkages.
Mercy Health Corporation, who is one of our Board members, is developing Mercy Health Wellness Centers at 69th Street, at Eastwick, in Darby and other areas throughout the city, as well. And the daycare component is one of those things that they are looking at putting as tenths into those centers. So I know that those are concerns, and that's one way to address that. We work with employers on those very issues, in trying to get people to work from a pool, you know, and through a GIS program. So we work in masses of people. Caseworkers work on individuals, and so we need to start talking the same language, I think. A little bit of the airport activity center component of the city's programs, which Denise had mentioned earlier, we had done a survey in 1995 of airport employers, and we just recently 106 RESOLUTION 980125 followed that up with a new survey. In '95, there were about 1500 to 1600 new jobs expected over the course of two years. Just recently we completed a survey, and that has now changed. We surveyed about ten employers down there, which is hardly the entire network. And they are projecting to add 4,000 jobs over the next two years. It is a significant number of jobs being added in that area, and it is a significant area to focus on. In addition to getting people to those jobs, some of them, and a good many of them, especially UPS, are part-time jobs. So the key for the transportation system is to become a circulator route that enables people to work at a job that may be part time, that may have full medical benefits, tuition reimbursement, but then have a circulator system that links them to other jobs that may also be part time or may be a full-time job, so that they can have that full-time experience with benefits. And that's a key component I think of the program down in the Airport Activity Center, to 107 RESOLUTION 980125 have that circulation network built. The Hog Island Road, Tinicum Road, depending how you call it, is a critical highway improvement down there to make that circulator happen. So that's a little bit about how we work with employers. Another niche that we see in our area are the nursing homes. We have nursing homes that are just beyond transit's reach, and we are working with extending SEPTA's lines at the Media trolley, which does have access into the city, to meet their shifts. And they are almost all, they are 24, 7, they almost all start around the same time, so that they can coordinate their schedules. But the key is to get people to talk to each other and get employers to work together. With that, what do employers look for? We're right now at a wonderful opportunity because employers are providing training, and they are providing benefits because they need to to compete for the workers and the work 108 RESOLUTION 980125 force. We should take full advantage of that. Employers are not necessarily looking for somebody who is able to run the entire computer system that they have, they are not looking for highly skilled trained employees, necessarily. They are willing to do some of that training in order to develop those workers and retain those workers. So this is an opportunity to build on. Employers look to partnerships with other agencies to share costs. If they are going to run a SEPTA bus, if they are going to run transportation out to their site, it sure makes sense to look at their neighbor so that they can share some of the costs of that to make that cost effective. And they are also looking for coordination -- and this is perhaps the biggest challenge and biggest suggestion that I would make -- there are so many agencies who have people, there are so many people that need jobs. And an employer may be bombarded by a lot of these different agencies coming at them. The whole philosophy behind one-stop 109 RESOLUTION 980125 shop is to have this become a coordinated network.
And I agree with Faith, that we need to develop those coordination links and those one points of contacts, otherwise the employers are going to be very, very frustrated by the whole system. Transportation ideas that will become sustainable, and I would like to conclude with some of those. Again, mapping daycare sites that are in proximity to transit, or even putting them in transit stations. I guess that's not a novel idea. Station cars is an issue that I am being persuaded on, as that next link, that once they take transit, that they can take that station car out to the work site. If it is electric, it doesn't pollute our air. I would propose station vans, I think, so we can still get some of the economy of people car pooling together at the end of the site, and link it to emergency rides home. The tax credits that employers have access to from both the state and the federal level are monies that can come back into the employer, come back to the employer so that they can, if they hire Welfare To Work or TANF clients, a proposal is 110 RESOLUTION 980125 to work with employers to create a transportation and daycare trust fund that comes out of those tax credits that they receive, at some percentage of those tax credits, maybe not all of them, maybe 50 percent, maybe 30 percent. But to use those funds to help fund the sustainability of some of the transportation networks and the daycare networks. And to have a one-stop shop for the employers to be able to apply for those tax credits is the prerequisite, I think, to that. It may be just one sheet of paperwork. But when an employer sees another sheet of paper to fill out in order to get these benefits, believe me, it is a challenge and a hurtle. Chicago has a system that we visited in the fall, and it is a wonderful system. Their transit network and their transit provider in the suburbs is PACE, and PACE operates several advance into the suburbs. I don't know all the details of it. But their subsidy rate that they provide on those vans is much, much lower than SEPTA's subsidy rate currently is in the suburbs. 111 RESOLUTION 980125 So thinking of new vehicles to cut the costs of service in the suburbs, and yet increase service in the suburbs, is one way to deal with that. And another issue is perhaps developing some kind of regional health care network to provide benefits for this pool of people who are coming off of welfare, because there is strength in their numbers, and for them to use that strength to negotiate for such benefits. Finally, I would just add a word of caution, that in looking through the city's plan, in the desire to find the highest paying and the best job for these individual candidates, I would caution that we don't overlook jobs that give valuable experience that may be part time. I know in my years of experience, I have had ten jobs in the last 15 or 17 years. And while I might say that one of them was better than the other, they have all given me a great deal of job experience. And if there are employers out there who are willing to offer part-time jobs with benefits as job experience, that that's a valuable 112 RESOLUTION 980125 experience for these employees. So thank you.
Thank you for your testimony. We will move on to Peter Quinn, Executive Director of the Greater Valley Forge TMA.
Good afternoon. Time flies when you are having fun. I will try to stay on the point, but I do want to congratulate you and compliment you on work that you have done for transportation over the years, not just for the City of Philadelphia, but as a regional presence. We know it, and we admire it and respect it. Also I would like to signal the fact that Donna Cooper's office, the Mayor's Office of Community Development, and Denise Goren's office, the Mayor's Office for Transportation, have done a lot of good work with you. And we have been working with them 113 RESOLUTION 980125 now for about two years on the placement of welfare recipients in jobs in the King of Prussia area. I should, for the record, state that I am the Director of the Greater Valley Forge Transportation Management Association, which services an area from City Line Avenue to Pottstown and Great Valley and Chester County, to Upper Dublin and Montgomery County, basically transportation corridors. And in placing those people without any additional funds, the Mayor's Office has been very successful in placing literally hundreds of welfare clients in jobs in the King of Prussia area, to their credit. It is not done without a lot of hard work and a lot of real solid job development. But as we go into the next iteration of access to opportunities, or Welfare To Work, I think it provides us with an interesting mix of both policy and programmatic issues that you all are addressing and I hope that we can support you in. Sure, we have heard it all. I mean, the barriers. The successes start with coaching and monitoring, with adequate training. 114 RESOLUTION 980125 And I would just for 30 seconds stroke the fact that there are institutions in this town who have been enjoying very effective job training for 15, 20, years. 6 And they are really, I think, to be 7 supported in their efforts. Because they have been 8 successful where there was really no much by way of 9 recourses to help them out. 10 The Job Development Employer 11 Identification Program, the job client match, the 12 skills matching, the jump start subsidies that are 13 necessary for clothing, and the big one, of course, 14 child care. 15 And I really do need to think -- I 16 will make some recommendations, but we do need to 17 bite the bullet on this one, on what constitutes 18 acceptable subsidized child care, with or without 19 certification or some sort of other kind of 20 certification. 21 Sustainable income, as others have 22 mentioned, a living wage, one that is truly able to 23 provide the subsidy necessary to serve and to have 24 kids, as well as a parent, live. 25 And, finally, transportation. I 115 RESOLUTION 980125 mean, we should thank Disney for reinserting the word Herculean back into our vocabulary. Because we have really taking on a Herculean job in trying to put all the links together in this chain of services, which will give people dignity and employability. I think you are absolutely on target. When it comes down to dollars and cents, we're going to spend as much money for this effort as we ever spent on welfare. And the hope is that in so doing, we will be able to deliver on a promise which welfare was not really able to deliver on. And that is that people will have dignity, that they will have the opportunity to work and be proud of themselves in a way that makes sense. However, for us to walk toward that goal and not look at the right in the face of these major, major barriers, would be just not very wise. And so we can't repeat a debacle by promising and creating expectations among a population who have really been ill served by our system anyway, to begin with, have been hurt 116 RESOLUTION 980125 multiple times. And to create the expectation that at the end of this process, there is something really good and healthy and welcomed and sustaining, and then not deliver yet once again, I think we would have created worse than a void in that situation.
And I think we have a very serious responsibility to our people, to our people in these towns, that we make sure that we strengthen each link, whether it be training, whether it be child support, whether it be transportation expansion and subsidy, that those links all are strong and that they are seamless. With regard to transportation, which is, of course, all our strong suits here, Jack spoke very well this morning about the expansion of SEPTA's services on both sides of that major suburban/urban commute. And we are finding on both ends of it, while there is more service on the city end, yes, on the urban end, there still is a great lack on the suburban end. And it really is incredibly important for us not to drop people off, strange to an area, 117 RESOLUTION 980125 on a pile of dirt, on a road that's being rebuilt, as so many of them are, and say, now go find your place of employment. We need familiarization tours. We need jump start transit subsidies so people are actually, as soon as they have an interview, they should be able to get on a bus or train and actually be able to get there with subsidized Transpasses and Trailpasses, and literally go out there with counselors maybe in groups showing them that the suburbs can be friendly, that they can be user friendly, as well as socially and economically friendly. These experiences, we think, are essential, just as an overlay on the deeper training that needs to take place. Again, you have heard mention that, the emergency ride home. But I cannot stroke enough the need for a policy change on how we subsidize and fund mass transit. Thank God Iced Tea is about to be reauthorized, with some dance and some negotiations going on. Hopefully there will be sufficient funding in that formula, in the final formula, to 118 RESOLUTION 980125 allow for some of this activity to take place in a responsible way for transit. I know that you support that. We would very much want to help you in whatever way that we can. We have a couple of recommendations, a few. One, we would like to really recommend wholeheartedly that we look at a redefinition of what constitutes acceptable child care for subsidy purposes. Easy EG zoning. Why not, if we are going to strengthen neighborhoods, have child care zoned in neighborhoods, even in our R-1 residential areas. In Councilman Nutter's district, not too long ago a child care license was not given on the basis of the zoning. And I know because it was my neighborhood. And the point is that this woman was going to be taking care of children in the neighborhood. She wasn't importing anybody. I mean, it was a natural thing. You walk your little child up by the hand, put them in a house that's familiar, with faces that are loving 119 RESOLUTION 980125 and caring. It doesn't get better than that, other than being home with your mom. Also, we would like to recommend the development or the recognition of community support clusters. We know that it takes a group, it takes a village, it takes a community. One of the things we are finding in the suburbs is that people who are not on time, people who are not showing up, are not doing that for a very good reason. They have problems at home, they have difficulties the like of which some of us can't even fantasize. And if you have a cluster out of your church, out of a community-based organization, out of a city, whatever, that can supply you with that fall-back position that you absolutely need to matriculate in these kinds of jobs. We talked about the provision of long-term subsidies for transportation, familiarization tours, and also that the expansion of SEPTA services must meet the actual needs of the commuting employers and employees. Literally, then, and finally, a cautionary note. I think we should not assume, but 120 RESOLUTION 980125 be prepared to negotiate very carefully with employers.
I think it would be a mistake for us to assume that these entrepreneurial types, who have been so successful wherever, are suddenly going to become terribly philanthropic and sensitive and humanistic in the way that so many of you are. And I think we need to sit down and assume that they are going to have to negotiate with us or we are going to have to negotiate with them. That transit subsidies coming from the employer are not a given in this scenario. I wish they were. Humanly it would be so much easier and so much better. But I think we are going to have a harder nut to crack than we thought. Thank you very much for having us here today. I appreciate your time and your ears.
Thank you. I know you were one of the early TMAs to be out there trying to make transportation work. Our last witness for this panel is Beth Palubinsky of Public/Private Ventures and Bridges To Work program. And why don't we also have Mr. Donald 121 RESOLUTION 980125 Wilkerson come up, who also wanted to add a comment at the end.
Thanks, Councilwoman Fernandez. My head is swirling with things that I want to tell you, and I understand that there is not very much time. So what I want to do is briefly explain to those who don't understand why you invited me here today, how Bridges To Work is largely central to these conversation s. Not that we invited that centrality of Public/Private Ventures. But like it or not, we have become, in the Bridges To Work program, the model, many tell us, for the now burgeoning amounts of federal dollars that the Department of Transportation has proposed to put into the Access To Jobs program. The irony of the focus on the Bridges To Work project, the ironies, are numerous. Bridges To Work is a four-year, five-site demonstration experiment exploration of a variety of reverse commuting strategies, none of which, unfortunately, is underway in Philadelphia in the Bridges program, but which are underway in 122 RESOLUTION 980125 Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, and St. Lewis. With $8 million of funding from HUD, rather, the largest irony in the Bridges To Work demonstration is that neither the Department of Labor, nor the Department of Transportation, wanted to support the Bridges To Work demonstration early on. We're very pleased, therefore, and as are all of you here, and gratified, that the Department of Transportation recognizes the utility of what we are learning in Bridges To Work and the importance of exploring and expanding the range of reverse commuting strategies that we have undertaken in the Bridges To Work program. But there is so much that's been said here today that resonates with me and with Joe Tearney, who is my colleague at Public/Private Ventures. We are the national directors of the five-site effort. We are delighted because Public/Private Ventures is a Philadelphia-based company. We are very, very pleased to have been brought into these conversations. 123 RESOLUTION 980125 And one thing that I would ask you to do is to determine if there is a way that we can expand the conversations that have just barely begun today. I think the thing that frustrates me as I sit here at the end of this hearing is that we have hardly scratched the surface of the interest in reverse commuting and the expertise in the Philadelphia area that's clearly available in Philadelphia to begin to really isolate and identify the crucial issues in how we can promote and plan and implement a reverse commuting strategy that works for the Philadelphia region. If I would say one thing to you that you would listen to today, it would be, however, that if we focus exclusively or largely or predominantly on transportation as the solution to the difficulty that poor people, whether they are welfare recipients or others who have not been in welfare, face in achieving access to opportunity and employment, if we focus overwhelmingly or predominantly on transportation, we will be back in this room in five years trying to figure out what we missed. 124 RESOLUTION 980125 We can't, from the perspective of Bridges To Work, overemphasize an issue that I think has received very little attention in the past couple of hours. I recognize, Councilwoman, that you asked us in these hearings to focus on transportation. This is the Transportation Committee. But I would like to lift the mantle, the burden, a little bit from your shoulders and from the shoulders of your colleagues in the Transportation Committee and say, it is not your problem.
If we have learned anything in Bridges To Work in the year and a half in which we have placed about 500 people so far in the 16 months that we have operated Bridges at our sites, if we have learned one thing, we think what we are learning is that the transportation aspect of Bridges To Work, which is a three-part program -- it involves transportation, it involves new ways of getting poor people and employers to find out about each other across city and suburban boundaries, and it involves also a very small range of support 125 RESOLUTION 980125 services. It we can say one thing that we know with fair certainty at this point in the Bridges demonstration, it is that whatever the mode of transportation any of our five sites has adopted, the transportation has turned out to be the easiest part of the Bridges To Work program to find, to implement, to manage, to tease and to massage through these months. 11 What I would say to you in a 12 different way is, if we think that we can solve the 13 problem by using mass transit solutions, before we 14 have identified and trained and found out how to 15 support a mass of riders, we are very, very 16 mistaken. The biggest challenge that we have discovered in the Bridges To Work effort in these 16 months, and that we believe will continue largely unabated over the remainder of the demonstration, is that there are many, many people who are not ready to go to work. And we can find all the vans and all the buses and all the routes. And you have got Jack Leary. We have a two-part relationship with Jack 126 RESOLUTION 980125 Leary. Bridges To Work began in St. Louis on Jack Leary's watch at the Bistate Development Agency, which is the St. Louis regional public transit organization. In St. Louis we have a transportation mode of Bridges To Work that involves private and public forms of transportation. In some of our sites we have purely public, in some of our sites we have purely for-profit private vendors providing the transportation. So it is wonderful to see Jack here. We have longstanding relationships with SEPTA and others in this room on the Bridges To Work project, but it isn't only about transportation. Somebody has to fill those seats. Obviously if the Best T, Next T, whatever they call it currently, passes, there is going to be an enormous amount of federal money. And it is very safe to say a good chunk of that we can attract here in Philadelphia. There is interest, there is expertise, there is real strength. And there seems to us, to me and Joe, 127 RESOLUTION 980125 to be something building in Philadelphia which we found very hard to build in our Bridges To Work sites. Many of those testifying today have told you that we need to build partnerships. I think that's a terrific ideal. Our experience in Bridges To Work, however, Councilwoman, will tell you that those are very hard to build around a transportation, mobility, anti-poverty strategy. The volume, the intensity, the competitions and strains have been complicated enormously by TANF. There are organizations shuffling, scrambling to place their people. There are people grabbing for public transit subsidies, grabbing for support services, grabbing for the involvement of employers. So while partnership is a terrific notion and a great ideal, it is much harder, we believe, in the Bridges To Work project, anyway, to achieve than we would like to think. But there is something going on in Philadelphia. We hear everyday, even though we are 128 RESOLUTION 980125 not directly involved in Philadelphia in Bridges To Work, there is a tremendous buzz on the street. And the people in this room today are evidence of that. So I go back to what I said to you a few minutes ago. We would love to be part of a more in-depth, ongoing set of conversations among others in the Philadelphia area to really lay out many of the issues that people have thrown on the table today. And what I would like to do, I know you are anxious to conclude.
So if I may just react to a couple of things that were said today from the perspective of the Bridges To Work demonstration. Nobody else may adopt this gospel. And, in fact, as we conclude our research over the next couple of years, we may change some of the chapters and verses ourselves of this gospel. But at this time and place in Bridges To Work, these are some of the things that occurred to me as others testified this morning. There is a lot of conversation today about employers, about inviting employers to subsidize and support. Peter Quinn, I think, said it most explicitly a moment ago. 129 RESOLUTION 980125 Employers don't want to be social workers. And I think it is unrealistic of us to expect that they will. The value of an employer in a Bridges To Work like program, or any effort to place the poor in better jobs, stronger jobs, more secure jobs, is that they provide a decent wage and benefits. You can strive for a full-time job, you can strive for a part-time job; that's up to the program or the operator. But I think it is unwise of us and possibly unnecessary of us to expect employers to do anything more than that. Our experience in Bridges is that employers, when provided with talented, soft-skilled, people who come in with a soft package of soft skills -- not hard skills, as others have said today -- but the ability to come to work, on time, dressed, ready, with a smile on your face and a strong handshake, employers think their correct response to that is to provide a wage and provide a benefit. We might even go so far to say that we correctly think that employers' response to 130 RESOLUTION 980125 efforts to get them to subsidize transportation or child care is, that's not my job. My job is to run my business and support my employees and pay my taxes, whether they are city or suburb. Another thing that's been said today, Councilman Nutter asked about concerns that people might leave the city, residents might decline in the city from programs like this. We have not seen any evidence of that in Bridges To Work, although, as we admit, Bridges is a very young program. I would offer the Councilman, though, the experience that HUD gained from the Gatrow experiment, in which residents were moved with significant and very exciting subsidies provided by HUD to suburban opportunities for better schools and better housing. The learning that we have from HUD, Councilman, is that while participants in the Gatrow experiment said they fared better in their work, their children fared better in school, overwhelmingly those adults said, I don't want to move. And given the opportunity to work in 131 RESOLUTION 980125 the city and to live my life successfully in the city, I would stay there. As Selena said, the woman who joined us today from K-Mart, I don't want to move out of my urban neighborhood. I have a support system. I like my neighbors. I like my family. I know where I want to shop. So that may not be directly relevant here, but I don't think it is necessary that we fear any sort of reverse commute program is going to draw people out of the city, in addition to which, even as good as jobs in the suburbs are, it is going to take a long time for anybody to build the kind of nest egg that it takes to buy a house in the Philadelphia suburbs. So I don't think we have a lot to fear from that. I need also to correct the record, something that Deputy Mayor Cooper said. She cited the Bridges To Work program and said that there is evidence that one of the things that's happening in Bridges and other programs is that people leave the program because they are buying cars. Just to correct the record, there is no evidence in Bridges To Work that people are 132 RESOLUTION 980125 buying cars and leaving the program. There is a growing interesting array of reasons we find that there may be attrition from the Bridges To Work program. And our familiarity with other programs suggests a range of reasons in those programs, as well.
But it is not correct that Bridges To Work participants are buying cars and abandoning the Bridges To Work transportation systems. There has been a lot of talk today about child care. I submit to you, as ardently as we possibly can, that an effort to use transportation to assist the poor in gaining access to jobs needs to focus on its mission, which is providing transportation. It can't provide child care. It can't provide support services. It's unfair to ask a transportation program, which is complex and tricky to manage -- it can be done, as we are learning, but it takes attention, and it takes focus. The kinds of jobs that you are going to be able to identify and in which you will be able to place persons transitioning off of welfare or 133 RESOLUTION 980125 people who may not be on welfare, but are looking for better jobs, those are often going to be second and third shift jobs. They are going to be jobs that require unexpected overtime. You cannot tax a reverse commute program with the obligation to respond flexibly and quickly and affordably to changes in schedule and reasonable but unexpected demands on the part of employers, and as well expect that program to manage the regularity of filling seats with kids who need to be dropped off at daycare. Obviously we believe very strongly in Bridges To Work in the need for better systems of daycare, subsidized day care, more widely spread daycare. Whether you believe that that daycare should exist at the resident's end of the ride or the destination end of the ride, that's not for us to say. But, again, we would like to take the burden off the shoulders of those attempting to do transportation to say, put your demands on other systems to provide day care, substance abuse, housing subsidies, all sorts of things that indeed, 134 RESOLUTION 980125 as others have said today, poor people may need in achieving better opportunity.
I fully agree with you. And, actually, this is the third in a set of hearings, different committees. But I have initiated hearings around job training issues, around child care issues. And today was the focus on the transportation part of that.
I understand that, and we are aware of those hearings. I want to reinforce what we think is the wisdom of have a series of conversations and say that you are absolutely correct, there have to be many more conversations than this, and others have to be brought to task on what the can and should be providing in the way of enabling the poor to get access to work.
I would just add I think we are fortunate to have a transportation system and fortunate to have one of the best public transportation systems in the country. Unfortunately, there basically there 135 RESOLUTION 980125 is no child care system. It is a total nonsystem. And we do have some good public/private partnerships around job training. So that is a key issue, but today I did want to focus on the transportation system and be, again, thankful that we at least have a system to work with and to tweak and to improve. So I hear you saying perhaps the transportation piece is more manageable than some.
We believe that it is more manageable. And, finally, I think what we would say is, in undertaking any effort to give the poor access to jobs, wherever those jobs may be, we want not to underemphasize, as we fear that we often have in all of our and the poverty efforts, employment training efforts, and something that's becoming increasingly clear to us in the Bridges To Work program, and something that we ourselves underestimated when we planned the program, is that access depends not just on the ride, and not just on having good daycare, and not on having good housing, but on having a very, very solid set of employability skills. 136 RESOLUTION 980125 And as I said a moment ago, we can have loads of seats, we can have loads of rides made available by those $250,000,000 a year over the next six years in Philadelphia and elsewhere. But what employers are going to tell us, and are telling us resoundingly through our experience in the Bridges To Work project is, we cannot hire people who aren't ready to go to work. And you can't fill your seats in those vans and buses with people who aren't ready to go to work. So, again, while we understand that the emphasis here today is on transportation, that's why we say to you, if we don't pay attention to these other elements, which are more complicated and more taxing and more troublesome, then we believe in our experience transportation turns out to be, you will wonder what happened a few years from now. And we'll be back talking then about the issues that we really, really hope that people will begin to talk about now.
Thank you very much. Let's turn to our last witness before we conclude these hearings of the Transportation 137 RESOLUTION 980125 Committee. Again, for anyone who is waiting for the Committee of the Whole, this is the Transportation Committee, and this is our last witness. Mr. Donald Wilkerson.
Good afternoon. Thank you very much for having me. My name is Donald Wilkerson. I am Executive Director with the Greater Knights and Socialization Program. I am only going to be a few minutes. We have an employment system workshop. We currently have secured four vans, tonight we will be securing four more. We are talking eight vans for our program. We secured services from employers from the suburbs. They are on our Employment Assistant Advisory Board. My question really is, because we are very small organization, and you are talking about pilot programs, we have all the components that you are looking for, but we don't have the necessary resources and funding. 138 RESOLUTION 980125 I would like to bring to your attention, what do you do for organizations like that? We have the proper training. We also, in New Jersey, we are dealing with a gentleman in Cherry Hill who also will hire people who have records. We have employers that will take people from our program and from the neighborhood and hire them all on one shift. We will also have two of the eight vans that will deliver child care services. Now, an organization like that, we are sitting out here, we are waiting with eight vans, we are waiting with employers, and we are stuck. We come to you to address the question, what about these organizations? We're not the big organizations that I have been hearing. We have a very good track record. And this is one of the problems, that in our community, we are dealing with our churches who will volunteer to give the vans. 139 RESOLUTION 980125 We also believe in self-sufficiency for the welfare worker, for the welfare person to work. But we also believe in self-sufficiency for the community to help that welfare worker get to work, and that's the process that we are doing. At the same time at child care we will be developing two dare care centers right next to these churches. We have all the components in place. And our major concern -- and basically we are dealing with North Central Philadelphia at this particular time. Our main concern is how do we get involved, and do we have to sit around and wait for two and three years. They'll tell you, well, you don't have the track record, or you don't have a 501C-3. You go get a 501C-3, they tell you you don't have a track record. How can these organizations get track records? They are ready to serve, and what do they do? And I think that's a very important issue that needs to be dealt with, especially when 140 RESOLUTION 980125 it is also a proven fact that the small organizations are very determined. Like I say, we're not big; we're little. We have done a couple of jobs. For instance, City of Philadelphia -- presently we even just got a letter from an employer that is going to hire three to four hundred people by the end of the year. We are dealing with a gentleman out, I think it is, King of Prussia. And they said if we can provide the transportation, they will provide the jobs. But because there is no funding sources. What do we do? And that's just my question to City Council.
Well, I want to thank you for coming, Mr. Wilkerson. I think probably we need to know more about your organization and who you talked to. I mean, you have raised a lot of interesting issues. Probably the best thing I could suggest is Nicole on my staff could talk to you and make sure you know who some of the people are who are here today. 141 RESOLUTION 980125 And, also, the very first person to testify today was Congressman Borski, who talked about the possibility of if the transportation bill 5 gets through at the federal level, there may be some additional funds available for our region regarding the transportation piece of helping people get from where they live to where the jobs are. So without knowing more, I couldn't respond specifically. This is basically a hearing to hear what some of the issues are. But on your specific issue, probably you should talk after the hearings to see if there are any people we could hook you up with.
As we conclude these hearings of the Transportation and Public Utilities Committee, I do want to thank each and every person who testified and who was here. And also, Ms. Palubinsky, in response to your suggestion, I see public hearings as a way to get these issues out on the public record. And I do intend this summer to convene a round table with some folks here, really 142 RESOLUTION 980125 following up on your idea. Because I think that's where we have more of a working session. And see perhaps the report that ML Werneke will have released by then, an update on some of the progress. And then certainly your experience with Public/Private Ventures and Bridges To Work would be important to those discussions. So I do intend to convene a roundtable discussion probably in July. So this is a conclusion to the public hearings on this resolution regarding reverse commute, nontraditional commuting patterns, and transportation options for access to work. Thank you very much. (Hearing adjourned at 12:40 p.m.) - - - 143 C E R T I F I C A T I O N I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Tuesday, April 28, 1998, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of same. RE: COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC UTILITIES _____________________________________ DEBRA A. WHITEHEAD, RPR