No, we were not and there 43 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole has been a requirement for some additional money because of the security requirements. We were able to get some federal airport improvement program money and to use some additional passenger facility charge money with the airlines' approval to cover that additional cost. So at the moment we are not looking for any additional money. We believe that we will finish the building on budget.
I appreciate that. I was not anticipating that you were going to announce today that you were asking for more money. That certainly wasn't the purpose of the question. Is it possible for you to forward to us through the Chair a copy of the application for this project in order to utilize the passenger facilities charges? We are at $4.50. That's the maximum, right?
And you had to file 21 an application with the FAA in order to fund the project with passenger facility charges?
And does that application list the project costs associated with 44 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole this project?
Yes, all the costs that would be paid for or financed with passenger facility charges would be listed on that.
And would those be the same as in the Code of Federal Regulations, Section 14, Subsection 151.41 under "Project Costs"? Those are listed as making field surveys, preparing plans and specifications, accomplishing or securing the accomplishing of the work, supervising and inspecting construction work, requiring land or an interest therein in any casement through or other interest in air space and administrative and other incidental costs incurred specifically in connection with accomplishing a project and that would not have otherwise been incurred? Are those the criteria for eligibility?
That sounds correct to me. I don't have the number of the regulation, but it sounds to me like you are quoting the correct regulation.
In your application for the use of the passenger facility charges for the international terminal, under what category was it listed that there would be any use of the bond proceeds or the passenger facilities charges, which are in essence the debt service for the payment of the bonds, where was the issue of either a grand opening or a party or celebration? Where would that be listed in the six eligible items?
We would not be using the passenger facility charge portion of the budget for the promotional event that we have planned for this Thursday.
That would come out of the airline rates and charges portion of the financing and there was a budgeted item for a grand opening and other promotional items in the original project budget. That would not have been submitted as a PFC application.
So when you responded to Councilman Cohen and you did give the 46 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole breakdown between the PFC portion and the airline rates and charges portion, you gave it as 75/25 I believe, but it was not clear -- is that correct?
It wasn't clear which was 75 and which was 25. Which is which?
Now, explain the 11 airline rates and charges component. How does that 12 work? 13
That's the portion of the 14 debt service that is funded out of the rentals, 15 terminal rentals, and landing fees that are paid by 16 the airlines for the use of the airport. 17
Those payments are made to 20 the airport, to the aviation fund, and essentially 21 that is how we self-sustain ourselves. 22
So the grand opening 23 event, money is being taken from that pool of 24 dollars or that reserve of dollars? 25
The dollars that we are talking about would have been used also for potentially debt service for our capital program.
And you are saying those dollars are being then diverted for the grand opening event?
No, the grand opening event is considered part of the capital budget of the overall terminal expansion project, so it is not a diversion. It's really a piece of the overall project which we think is quite legitimate. It comes out to about four one-hundredths of one percent of the total project expansion costs, a very low number for promotion of a $550 million building.
I understand that. We don't have to fight about the cost. It could be lower; it could be higher. I'm sure it will be a nice event. I guess the question is whether or not distribution --
And these are charges. The airlines generate these dollars from their tickets. At this time from their general revenues at the 48 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole airport the airlines pay us monthly charges for their use of the airfield and for their rentals for their space that they have in the terminal building. That budget also is partially made up of revenues that we have from concessions as well such as the shops, restaurants and parking, rent-a-cars, that type of thing.
And you are saying that this event was listed as a part of the overall application for the overall budget?
And is this fairly standard practice, or is this the kind of thing that you might, in order to keep the costs directly associated with construction and the like, is this the kind of thing that private fund-raising might be better utilized for?
I think that was one option that we looked at and, in fact, we have received some donated services. The vendors, for example, from our concession program have donated all of the giveaway items that are going to be used, the promotional items. We have gotten a couple of other things donated. It is a difficult time to be asking 49 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole the private sector for donations and contributions. They are hurting in many respects the same way the rest of the economy is, but as far as whether this is a normal practice or not, I would like to just say that every time we have opened a new facility at the airport in the years that I've been there, 8 there has been an event that dates back to the 9 opening of International Terminal A in 1991. There 10 was a two-day event that included a luncheon one 11 day, a reception and dinner the next night. I 12 believe they spent more on that activity in 1991 13 than we are going to spend this year in 2003. We had an airport day when we opened and completed a project to upgrade Terminals B, C, D and E in 1994. It was a day-long extravaganza. In 1998 we had a three-day event that cost approximately a million dollars for the opening of the B-C food court and retail mall, and in 1999 we had an event at the Marriott Hotel observing the opening of our new runway 8-26.
All of these events were paid for in the same fashion?
Yes, and in every case, as far as I know, there was some donated services or 50 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole materials from vendors who had participated in the project and we have tried to emulate that, but rather than a million-dollar event, which would have been I think reflective of the type of three-day event we had in 1998, we have reduced the event budget now below $200,000, so I think that we have done a pretty good job of being as frugal as we could be without having an event that would be less than appropriate. This is a milestone for the regional economy --
-- and we think it is appropriate to bring people's attention to it.
Who makes the decision about the size of the event, dollar expenditure and how the costs are covered?
In this particular case we worked with U.S. Airways because they are the developer and construction manager of the project and they of course wanted to have an event. They have invited over 600 people, many of whom include regional salespeople from around the country, travel agents, international press from both Europe and the Caribbean, so they wanted to have an event, but, 51 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole again, as a company emerging from bankruptcy, they wanted to have a tasteful and frugal event, and so we worked with them to conserve the cost as much as possible.
I understand the response, but my question was who actually made the decision on --
A joint decision between the airport and U.S. Airways in this particular case.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Cohen.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want you to know I appreciate very much the personal responses you have made to the questions I raised with you concerning my personal use or some problems I have had with respect to representation of people who have had some problems with tickets and I appreciate your personal involvement very much, but in that area there has always been one question that has troubled 52 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole me a great deal and that is that to so many Philadelphians our local airport is a luxury that they do not avail themselves of but use the Baltimore Airport or the Atlantic City Airport, probably a number of other airports I have not heard about, and I'm very concerned about Philadelphia becoming a business for others but not for Philadelphians like I'm concerned about the high price of Eagles tickets to the point where very few Philadelphians -- maybe no more than percent of 12 spectators are Philadelphian. The rest come from 13 other areas where the income is higher. 14 Is that why the airport is in better 15 shape because it charges more and gets customers mainly from the business or from the more affluent suburban areas than Philadelphians? Is that why the Philadelphia Airport is in better financial shape than apparently other airports are from what I gathered from your earlier statements and the gentleman with you?
I think that is a part of the overall picture. We do know that two-thirds of our passengers are business travelers as opposed to leisure travelers, so there has clearly been an 53 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole evolution over many years of our airport to become oriented towards serving those passengers which are essentially our clientele. We also have tried though, in recent years especially, to encourage and recruit some low-fare competition and to date our most successful efforts in that regard have been with Air Tran Airways to provide some low-fare opportunities for families and individuals to fly to some of the leisure destinations in Florida. Air Tran also recently announced that they are going to fly starting in May to Pittsburgh for $59 each way -- I'm sorry. Boston. I'm sorry. I apologize. Philadelphia to Boston starting in May at $59. In the past they have not been successful competing with U.S. Airways for business traffic such as their efforts to fly low-fare flights to Pittsburgh a couple years back, but we hope that they will be able to succeed and get a foothold in Philadelphia. I did want to respond to your concern about BWI by bringing some good news that we just got from our air service consultants. We completed an exhaustive study to identify leakage from our airport to our two nearest competitors, Newark and 54 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole Baltimore/Washington, and we were somewhat surprised to learn that the leakage to Baltimore is essentially offset 100 percent by leakage back to our airport from people in their metropolitan area. So concern that we have, which continues, about Baltimore taking low-fare traffic from our metropolitan area and encouraging those people to drive down to BWI to take Southwest Airlines has been somewhat relieved by the results of this study, which we would be happy to share with Council. We presented it about ten days ago to our airport advisory board. And our concern now more than anything is really with competition from the Newark and New York area for international passengers. So we will be focused on trying to continue to develop some low-fare service here as an alternative for leisure travelers and Philadelphians who want to go to Disney World and the Caribbean and places like that, but in addition we want to be aggressive in trying to offer more opportunities for international flights in conjunction with the opening of our new building and our sense that U.S. Airways, as they emerge from bankruptcy with a CEO who used to lead 55 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole the continental international development up at Newark airport, he's now on our side and he wants to develop an international hub in Philadelphia similar to what Newark became back in the '80s, and we think that would be a great development as well.
I think anything in that direction would be helpful. Incidentally, on the Baltimore, did the study indicate that the prices in fact were as low in Philadelphia as in Baltimore, or was the leakage back to Philadelphia from Baltimore related to other circumstances?
It was a combination. It was in many cases the destination served. You can't get to as many destinations through Baltimore as you can through Philadelphia so a certain number of people from their catchment area have to come up to Philadelphia to use our airport if they don't want to fly a one stop out of Baltimore, but in fact we have also noted in the last six months or so during the bankruptcy period U.S. Airways has become very aggressive in price competition with Southwest Airlines because they were aware that they were losing passengers, so they have recaptured some of those people by becoming more cost competitive. 56 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole
I would certainly welcome, and I think Philadelphians would, any efforts that would make the Philadelphia Airport more amenable to Philadelphia travelers. And I assume that the report is going to go to the president for dissemination to other Members of Council?
I will look at that. Now let me go back to one item raised by Councilwoman Tasco and that is the question of minority employment among custodial workers and in your reply to her you refer to background checks being a cause for -- one of the causes at least for eliminating so many people from potential jobs at the airport. Do you get the details of the background check in the airport, or do you depend on the police department or some other department for their ultimate evaluation? I raise that question with you because in the days when I was freer to practice private criminal law, I learned, as most people do in that practice, that minorities get arrest records very easily in Philadelphia and elsewhere and that they 57 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole have to be looked at very carefully or you easily run into a situation where large numbers of people are eliminated for arrests that were relatively meaningless and might not have occurred except for the fact that the person was a member of a minority, but without dealing with that issue, I'm just wondering, like assault is a very common charge, often not substantiated when the matter goes to trial. The dismissal rate on assault charges is extremely high. The same applies -- so I would like to suggest, and I don't want to take the time now, but I think that is one area that has to be looked at hard and you have to find good reasons for finding somebody not eligible. In addition to the fact that minorities are often chargeable with crimes that others don't get, one has to take into account too the fact that many minorities have never had a chance to work and I wonder whether the turnover rate is due to the fact that you are often dealing with the population that is getting its first chance at a position. And it took me a long time to learn that you have to come to work on time, that what may be a good average to you of coming to work once or twice a 58 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole work on time is viewed as a capital offense generally. Generally if you are late once or twice during the year, it's considered too much, and it takes a while to learn that, and I was wondering whether the airport ever thought in terms of having some preliminary classes to acquaint people because most people that would be applying for custodial work, it might very well be their first trip into the world of work and something like coming to work on time, being appropriately dressed, being appropriately well-mannered in your relations with other people sometimes takes some experience. So I would like to suggest more work in those areas because I think it's just very important that we not write off people. Even if people do have a minor record, say, of guilt on an assault case or something like that, that we can't just afford to write Philadelphians off that easily, and I think that the airport would be doing a great deal for itself and for the City of Philadelphia if it could take the lead in establishing strong, positive records for employment of minorities, for learning that you have to maybe prepare a population that wasn't previously prepared for work habits that are 59 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole essential to the effective operation of the airport and to make a determined effort. I was impressed by the answers that you gave to Councilwoman Tasco in the way in which you personally involve yourself in the reporting with respect to vendors as to whether or not the prime people involved really did their job and you inserted yourself and I think that is very important to achieve success. So I'm just urging that in your thinking about minority participation it would be great if the airport could really lead the way by developing new approaches to make it possible for Philadelphians to be placed in custodial work and in contractual work and in every area of the vendors and the other facilities or workloads that exist at the airport. So I hope you will give thought to some new mechanisms.
You're an independent body largely and I think you have a high degree of employment. How many employees do you have at the airport?
About 675 City employees. All told about 21,000 people work at the airport for all the different entities down there.
Of course what I'm 60 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole saying applies I guess predominantly to the City employees, but should not be limited to them. We favor fair employment practices at every stage and every level and it would be great if the airport could be cited as the number one example of progress in Philadelphia. Thank you, Madam President.
I was going to say in response to the first part of your last question, the criminal history records are sent by the FBI to the Philadelphia Police Department as you suspected and then they are reviewed and we get the results after they are reviewed by the police, and I believe the City Solicitor participates in that review. You are right. They do not come directly to us, but we work with the Philadelphia Police Department in that process. And in response to the second part of your last question, we have just recently completed an RFP for training services for our custodial unit because that was identified. We have been doing what we call a re-engineering government initiative with the custodial unit over the last couple years, and the need for training, some of which is very 61 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole basic, as you indicated, was identified as a priority and we are just getting ready to enter into some agreements to bring some training services into that unit, which we hope will stabilize the unit and reduce the turnaround.
Thank you. They seem like positive steps. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Isdell, let me first congratulate you and your staff for the great job you do down at the airport especially right now. It must be a very trying situation with the levels of security and the changes, the many changes that have occurred down there, and I want the rest of my colleagues to be aware. I know people who work at the airport and you are one of the first directors of aviation that has a policy where anyone who worked, those 600-plus people that work at the airport, if they want to meet with you, that you will grant them time to come and sit down with you and discuss any issue that 62 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole affects the operation or their employment at the airport. That is incredible that you make that available to them.
The other issue is that since I have friends that work at the airport I know that recently we have had some criticisms of the various equipment that may be at the airport and I understand there is some pressure to take some equipment that you may need away. Could you assure me that that is not going to occur?
We have a meeting scheduled with the managing director to go over our fleet needs and requirements and I'm hopeful also with the help of our commerce director, Jim Corado, who is going to sit in on that meeting, that we will be able to keep the equipment that we need.
I would be interested to know because I know if you had something that you didn't need down there, you wouldn't have it. Thank you, Mr. Isdell. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Are there any other questions from Members of Council? 63 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole Thank you very much, Mr. Isdell. Thank you for the hard work you do at the airport. We appreciate it.
Mayor's Office of Information Services. This department was requested for a return. There are questions from the Members of Council. Good morning.
I guess I have a question similar to the one that I asked Mr. Isdell regarding the contracts that you give and the minority participation on those contracts. First, can you describe your minority participation goals and were they received and, second, can you describe the types of contracts that minority vendors received and the budgets fully expended? Do you contract with an individual and then not really use them? I guess that's the question.
We have approximately $5 million in purchase of services through my department. As the Council is aware, we do not have a centralized purchasing of all IT services, but from the central office we purchase approximately 5 million. Of that, many of them are maintenance for operating systems such as our mainframe equipment. We do bid many of our contracts. We are currently out with our desktop support, which has an, I believe, or 27 percent minority participation 13 requirement on that. We are also out for contract 14 on our software procurement. We have -- 15
If you have 25 to 16 27 percent goal, did you fulfill that goal? 17
That contract is currently 18 in negotiation and with either of the two finalists 19 they will meet their participation requirements. 20 Our contracts will vary. MBEC office we work 21 closely with in reviewing our contracts. They set 22 anywhere from a 10 percent to a 27 percent goal 23 normally. 24
Let's go back to 25 the contracts that you are not presently negotiating 65 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole but contracts you have negotiated in the past. They may have awarded a contract to a minority vendor. Were those contracts fulfilled? Did the individual vendors do the work, or do you just have on record that you have contracts with minority vendors?
I can speak for the last two years that I've been in office and the only area in which we have had those occurrences has been in training. MOIS does the training, all IT training, for across the City. We coordinate that. We work with the departments -- each department has a trainer coordinator -- to determine what the approximate training will be. With the tight budgets we have only seen about 50 percent of the training dollars expended particularly this year. Last year was about two-thirds. So in some cases where we thought we would have a half million dollars in training, we have only had -- I believe this year to date at about 200,000, 250,000. Last year we thought again it would be closer to 600,000 and it came in around 430,000. So there have been cases where based on initial budgets in the proposed budget that we have gone out and done contracting and IT training where 66 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole we have not issued those contracts. I am not aware of other contract areas in which we have submitted or gone out for contracts and then not used them. Occasionally if we get asked to reduce budgets, then we would have to eliminate some contracts and we have had that happen a couple of times.
-- in your budget. And then you would award the contract?
We would encumber the contracts based on estimated training amounts, but the departments then sign up their staff to take those classes and we bill as the departments use those resources. When we get to the last several months of a contract period, if we realize, I guess about a quarter before the end of the year, we will unencumber certain contracts if we have not used those services. Training is by far the one area where we have the least amount of control on.
So if I subcontract with you for -- if I receive a contract from you, does the contract say up to a certain amount or that 67 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole I will get $600,000?
I'm Jacqueline Henry. I'm the administrative services director. We usually allot a certain amount in the contract for each vendor. We do not guarantee that they will use any of it; however, we monitor it to make sure if there is training requirements across the City agencies, that we allot it appropriately across all of our vendors if they do the same type services. We don't guarantee the dollar amount, but from past experiences we generally base it upon their uses from the previous year, so most of them do use what we put in the contract.
So if we wanted to talk about minority participation and the dollar value they receive from your office, could you give us a figure on the number of contracts you let and the dollar value that has been appropriated or that was used by the minority firms? Because you can have them on paper but they not receive any money. So you may have a percent contractual 23 participation, but you may have 5 percent dollar 24 participation, and that is what I'm interested in, 25 what is the dollar value and how much are minorities 68 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole and women in terms of your contractual relationships with them.
We would like to have that. Pass it on to the Chair. Are there any other questions from Members of Council? Thank you very much. Mayor's Office of Community Services. We call on our Council members, if they are listening on their intercoms, if you asked any of these departments to return, we would appreciate if you would come forward to City Council to address your issues to members of these departments. The Chair recognizes Councilman Nutter.
Thank you, Madam Chair. In response to one of the questions -- actually it wasn't even my question, but I looked in the responses. This is a letter dated March 31, 2003. The question was "Provide a list of the names for the companies that hired the 261 workers placed in the jobs through the welfare to work training 69 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole program and what has been the length of stay in these jobs?" It was actually asked by Councilman Ortiz. There is a listing, Madam Chair, of 5 companies that people received employment from. 6 The second part of the response was "The 7 average length of time a customer retains employment 8 is six months." My question is, based on that, what 9 does the, quote/unquote, customer do at that point 10 and why is the average length of employment six 11 months and is that an acceptable employment time 12 period based on the training and the cost of the 13 training? 14
Ralph Blakney, executive 18 director of the Mayor's Office of Community 19 Services. 20 The six-month period is an acceptable 21 period. The contract that the Mayor's Office of 22 Community Services has with the Department of 23 Community and Economic Development stipulates that 24 we are to find employment for one-half of the people 25 enrolled in the program. The amount of period that 70 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole the state gives as acceptable is actually one day, believe it or not. The goal is to find employment, not to necessarily keep the people employed. However, MOCS has gone beyond --
What I'm saying is according to the contract. It is a goal of --
I don't really care about the contract at that point. I'm glad we have a contract and I'm glad that we have a goal of trying to get people employed. What's our goal?
Our goal at this time is to keep the people employed for six months. We have been working to --
Well, what we have done recently is work to keep the people in employment for a minimum of one year. We have expanded our own internal goals and objectives in terms of maintaining employment for the people enrolled in the program.
How do you do that? 71 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole
Well, there's a number of things that are done. We do hire retention specialists and their job is basically to maintain contact with the employers. The employers know that they can notify the agency when an employee is having issues on the job. The retention specialists actually, as a result of information that we receive, do contact the employees to try and work out whatever problems which may be causing them not to be as successful on the job as possible. Also, prior to employment we have a number of case managers who actually work with people enrolled in a program to help address issues that people come into the program with, issues such as child care issues, issues such as mentioned earlier in previous testimony, people not necessarily having good work habits in terms of reporting for work, for example. All of these kinds of issues are addressed to actually help ensure that the person, once they achieve employment, actually maintain employment, and right now we are looking at one year as being the goal that we are targeting. And I'm saying that in terms of tracking.
I understand that, 72 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole but your response was you have these companies. The average length of time a customer retains employment is six months. You are not able necessarily to influence how long those companies keep the person or the customer, are you?
So where does the 9 one year come into play and what does a person do 10 after they have gone through training, they are 11 employed for six months, now they are out of a job. 12 What do they do then? 13
For more information on 14 that question I would like to bring up Leon Simmons, 15 who is the director of the Mayor's Office of 16 Community Services supportive work program. 17
Customers that are 24 enrolled into the workwise program receive 25 employment retention. Basically that is supplied to 73 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole all customers upon them entering into employment. The goal, of course, for the retention services is to try to lock them in and work with the employer and the customer to sustain their employment for up to a year's time. Contractually with the state it is for a six-month period, but we view ourselves as a successful program with the City of Philadelphia and working with City residents, we extend that to a one-year period.
Last year's statistics we had over 55 percent -- I'm sorry. For a year, one year?
I'm sorry. We had a 35 percent one-year job retention rate for our customers enrolled in the workwise program.
The people who were able to stay one year, were they out of this pool of 74 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole people that were hired by the companies? 3
So tell me again 5 what happens to the six-month person or the average 6 length-of-stay customer. They come in. They get 7 training. How much does the training cost? What is 8 the cost of training each person? 9
So they come in. 11 They get the training. They work for six months. 12 Then are they fired or do they resign or how do they 13 end up only staying for six months? 14
Well, I think the scenario 15 that we are talking about would be someone who 16 received employment and for whatever their reason if 17 the employment did not last longer than six months, 18 they have the option of returning to the Mayor's 19 Office of Community Service workwise program. 20 One of the ways that we kind of view 21 ourselves in working under MOCS is if they are a 22 City resident and if they are seeking services, 23 there is no way in the world we would turn them 24 away. So even though they may not be enrolled in 25 the program by way of the state, they are eligible 75 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole to return to MOCS and obtain additional services to get themselves reemployed.
How many people have gone through training more than one time?
Would it be the balance of your nonretention for the year? You have 35 percent being retained for a year. Does that mean that the other 65 percent are coming back through the program?
No. Possibly they could either return back through CAO, which is what their initial referral source is, or they may opt to receive other services from other programs.
So the state contracts with us and their requirement is six months, but where is -- how do we seek to achieve the goal of a year or where does the year come in?
We are actually trying to influence the state right now to take a look at a year's retention. One of our internal analysis, we found that applying six months of retention services is not enough time to adequately move someone from 76 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole unemployment to employment successfully and also try to reach the agency's goals of self-sufficiency. And even, to be honest with you, some of the barriers that our customers actually face, even one year's retention is not enough. So at a minimum for what, of course, the state is allowed to give us for our efforts and for our contractual purposes, we applied the one-year internal stipulation of retention services. By the way, that has been met with a lot of enthusiasm by the state to the extent that the state recently allowed the Mayor's Office of Community Services to enter into Bucks County to employ the same type of services.
Mr. Blakney, as a part of your responses from the earlier hearing, there is an Attachment C which is a list of MOCS employees by name, title, department, funding source, zip code, date and position, date of hire and their salary. Is it possible to rearrange the order on this? It appears that this was grouped by work -- it appears that it was grouped by department. Is that the key to this document?
Job site more or less or 77 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole program.
Is it possible for you to reorder the listing such that it would be in a zip code cluster so, in other words, all the people -- take if there were 19103, all the 19103 people would be together, all the 05, all the 06 and then list all the same information, the name and the title of the department?
We could furnish that information. We can furnish that chart.
Within the zip code cluster for people that find themselves in the same zip code, if you could put the employee's name alphabetical by last name within their cluster, that would be helpful.
Thank you. Lastly, there was a fair amount of discussion last time about the Frankford Family Development Center and some truancy services up in the Frankford Cluster. I had also asked the question about who provides truancy prevention 78 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole services in West and Northwest Philadelphia. There is a very long answer here. It seems to be primarily DHS driven. I had two questions: One, what is the DSS staff? That is an acronym used in this response.
Got you. Okay. And I could not figure out from this response, is there a specific place similar to what you have at the Frankford Cluster where truancy prevention services are being provided? They appear to be being provided by a variety of organizations, but is there a central location for these services?
That question would be more appropriately handled by DHS if you are speaking about centralized location for truancy services.
I thought this was operating under MOCS similar to the Frankford Family Development Center.
Right. If your question is regarding Frankford, then that would be a question for MOCS. I thought I heard you say that 79 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole you were asking about truancy services provided in other areas of the City, and, as we had said in previous testimony, MOCS --
Okay. I understand the distinction. Mr. Fair, are you going to tell us something?
My name is David Fair, director of prevention services for the Department of Human Services. The truancy prevention effort that is supported by DHS at MOCS and other agencies is a citywide effort that is organized regionally by the areas that are served by the regional truancy courts. There are now ten regional truancy courts that are geographically located. The truancy courts occur mostly in public school buildings. There are a couple that are not in public schools. That's where we generally identify families that we will serve with our truancy prevention services, so it varies depending in the part of the City what schools the truancy courts are held in, but the agencies that provide the services are all identified as agencies that are active in the 80 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole particular community that they are serving. The Frankford situation is the only place, I think, where we have what we call a family center and the truancy program happening in the same facility. Often they are the same providers, but that's the only place I think where they have been in the same facility.
Is there any thought or discussion going on that would lead to similar types of models in other parts of the City?
Not really. I think because the truancy service is pretty much of a home-based service that's visiting the family at home and helping the family deal with its issue there is not as much a need to have a facility for people to come to. We do have family centers in all of these areas and the same services that are provided at the Frankford Family Development Center are provided to the families of truants in those other areas.
I think we had some discussion about the family center issue last time as well.
And I think we 81 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole determined that there was not one north of Market in West Philadelphia. What are we doing about that?
There is one in Mantua but not one further up in West Philadelphia.
Our request to the state for next year includes adding two new family centers and we sort of are dependent on whether or not that funding is awarded.
The original plan was actually to place one in the Frankford area of the City further east from where the Frankford Family Development Center is. There is a whole area of the City, Port Richmond and those areas, that we don't really have a program. The other places that we were thinking about having a family center was in the area around 25th and Allegheny, but none of those decisions are final, so we could still have conversations about that if the money comes in. We have initiated some conversations with Overbrook High School after the recent incidents there about developing some services that 82 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole are based in that particular high school for the community.
I appreciate the thought. What's driving the decision-making process here and why wouldn't there be one in the northwest section of the City?
The family centers are all based in neighborhoods where we have the highest number of reports of abuse and neglect and so that is generally where we have tried to target any new resources, in the areas where we don't have community-based resources for families that might help divert them from our system.
I understand that and I'm certainly not -- at a certain level I'm pleased if that's one of the criteria, that the numbers may be relatively low compared to other places. On the other hand, generally we want to be in the prevention business, and to the extent that we can provide services at a relatively early stage even in areas that are not showing signs of possibly a growing trend, and I don't know that to be the case, it would seem that we would geographically and strategically place them such that there is 83 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole well-rounded service throughout the City whether the numbers are high or not. We do have police districts and police officers patrolling in every section of the City regardless of whether crime is up or crime is down and certainly we shift the officers around as needed, but we don't leave anyone completely without service because they don't have that much problem.
I agree with you. The two challenges that we have is the money we are using and its restrictions, which is mostly TANF surplus funding from the state, which is specifically to be targeted to what is called placement prevention as opposed to the general primary prevention that you are talking about I think. And it is also supposed to be targeted to helping families reunify after they have been through our system. The other thing to keep in mind is the family centers are not the only kind of investment that we make. We do make a significant investment in after school and Beacon programs including in the Overbrook section of the city. In that area of the city we have a couple of intensive delinquency prevention programs that are targeted in that area 84 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole and we do this year have either a full or a part-time provider case manager who is assigned to all of the schools in that area. So there are other programs that we do that are more effectively distributed in that citywide than the family centers themselves.
You raised the Beacon issue and you are not here for DHS at the moment. You are trying to respond to a question that came up in MOCS, but I have a fair amount of questions to ask about one of the attachments that came with the response to some questions we asked DHS, so we can talk about that at that time. But I would be interested to see your statistical analysis plotted against a citywide map showing the location of these family centers and the rates in the different areas, which would possibly help better explain the site location decisions around the issue of abuse.
There is such a map. I don't have it with me, but we can make sure you get a copy of it.
I'd appreciate it. Thank you. 85 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Are there any other questions? Councilman Cohen, do you have questions?
Thank you, Madam Chair. The truancy work you described used to be done by the school; isn't that true? Is this the City performing the service for the School District?
This is David Fair again from the Department of Human Services. I think the service that we are providing is not what you are referring to. The School District used to and now this year has resumed having what they call truant officers who do identify kids who are truant and try to make sure that the parents are aware that their kids are truant and encourage them to come back to school. What we are offering really is a much more intensive family intervention that helps the family address whatever the issues are that may have supported the child's decision not to go to school. 86 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole So it's more of a social service or counseling service, case management, than it is what the School District previously provided.
About how many children does your service provide for in the course of a year?
For citywide we have about 2000 children that are served by the truancy services provided by DHS. There's an additional 2000 or so kids who are served by other parts of DHS, usually with services to children in their own homes, and then there are about 25,000 children who don't get referred by the School District for services that fit the same profile.
And about how many employees does all of that servicing involve?
I need a second here. Actually, it is in my other document. There are about 70 social workers. They don't work for the Department of Human Services though. They work for community-based provider agencies.
Community-based provider agencies that are funded through an RFP process. 87 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole They are not DHS employees specifically. They are working for an agency that exists in that community.
I'm just having difficulty in understanding why MOCS is involved.
MOCS predates my arrival at the Department of Human Services. There are two MOCS offices that sometime in the distant past had developed a relationship with DHS in this area and so they continued to provide their services. I think in Frankford the specific challenge was the lack of other organizations that were willing to provide this service when we originally started it there, but I was not here then. That was quite a few years ago.
I think I will leave the balance of that to Councilman Nutter. I just had difficulty in adjusting my thinking of MOCS and the services it renders. With respect to the other functions we talked about on MOCS, how many employees -- I heard your figure and percentages, but that means one thing if we are talking about a hundred employees and means something else if we are talking about a thousand or two thousand. How many employees do you 88 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole place under either the six-month program or the year program in the course of the year?
Last year there were approximately to 30 employers that we worked with 6 and the number continues to go up or down based on 7 the economic indicators right now, companies that 8 are actually -- 9
Does each employer 10 have a number assigned to him as to how many 11 employees he might involve? If you took those 25 12 employers that you had as of January this year, 13 how many employees would they be employing? 14
We could find that out for 15 you for sure. That would not be a problem. 16
Would you have any 17 idea in general as to the number? 18
The lowest it could 19 possibly be, of course, would be one and it could be 20 as high as maybe 10 to 12 employees per one employer 21 for sure. 22
Could you get that 23 information in the course of this hearing? 24
Yes. And that would be 25 effective January 1? 89 1 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole
Yes, as of any given date. I would just like to know how big the program is and I would like to know the nature of the employers, the kind of work they do, are they labor organizations, are they employers, do they have anything to do with any construction industry, do they have anything to do with apprenticeship programs, or are they just separate standing corporate employers.
And I would like to know the numbers we are talking about and how many MOCS employees it takes to service them.
And an idea as to how 19 many more could be serviced that are not serviced 20 because of lack of ability on the part of the City 21 to come up with enough service time.
We actually canvass the 90 4/7/03 - Committee of the Whole business community very aggressively both in Philadelphia and also outside the City of Philadelphia.
And then how do you pick the employees that get referred to them?
We do an internal screening based on our case management efforts within the program.
And do you get information with respect to the relative rates they pay?
Oh, most definitely. Of course there are bench marks that we have to meet with the state in order to qualify a natural program participant as being employed.