COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA FY26 BUDGET City Hall, Room 400 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, April 1, 2025 10:00 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYETTA JOHNSON COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE-RICHARDSON COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILMAN CURTIS J. JONES, JR. COUNCILMAN NICOLAS O'ROURKE COUNCILMAN JEFFREY YOUNG, JR. COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS HELEN LOUGHEAD, CLERK - - -
Good morning, everyone. This is the public and -- it's the public hearing and public meeting of the Committee of the Whole regarding Bill Nos. 250195, 250196, 250197, 250198, 250199, 250200, 250201, 250202, 250210, 250211, 250212. And resolution No. 250214. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the role to take attendance, please?
Councilmember Thomas. Councilmember Harrity. Councilmember Ahmad.
Present. The quorum of the committee is present and this hearing is now called to order. Ms. Loughead, would you please read the title of the resolutions?
Bill No. 250195, an ordinance amending Chapter 19-1500 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Wage and Net Profits Tax by revising certain tax rates under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250196, an ordinance 8 adopting the operating budget for fiscal year 2026. Bill No. 250197, an ordinance 11 to adopt a fiscal 2026 capital budget. Bill No. 250198, an ordinance 13 to adopt a capital program for the six fiscal years 2026 through 2031 inclusive. Bill No. 250199, an ordinance 17 amending chapter 19-2600 of the Philadelphia Code entitled "Business Income and Receipts taxes" to revise certain tax rates and end certain exclusions from the tax on receipts, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250200, an ordinance amending chapter 12-100, the Philadelphia Code entitled Traffic Code to revise the fee for the use of parking meters all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250201, an ordinance 7 amending Chapter 19-1800 of the Philadelphia Code entitled School Tax Authorization to provide for an increase in the tax of the Board of Education of the School District of Philadelphia is authorized to impose on real estate and amending Chapter 14 19-1300 entitled Real Estate Taxes to establish an equivalent reduction in the tax rate for the city real estate tax, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250202, an ordinance 20 amending Section 19-1806 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Authorization of Realty Use and Occupancy Tax to eliminate certain exemptions all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250210, an ordinance 3 amending Section 101001 of the Philadelphia Code entitled "Fees of Commissioner of Records" to increase the portion of fees for the recording of deeds and mortgages in relating documents we use for housing trust fund purposes under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250211, an ordinance 12 amending Chapter 19-1400 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Realty Transfer Tax by revising the rate of the tax all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 250212, an ordinance 18 to amend Chapter 19-4400 of the Philadelphia Code entitled Development Impact Tax to end in position of the tax under certain terms and conditions. Resolution No. 250214, resolution providing for the approval by the Council of City of Philadelphia of a revised five-year financial plan for the City of Philadelphia covering fiscal years 2026 through 2030 and incorporating revisions with respect to fiscal year 2025, which is to be submitted by the Mayor to the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority pursuant to an intergovernmental cooperation agreement by and between the city and the authority.
Today, we will hold the public hearing of the Committee of the Whole to consider the bills read by the clerk that constitute proposed operating and capital spending measures for fiscal year 2026, a capital program and a forward-looking capital plan for fiscal year 2026 through fiscal year 2031. This morning we have scheduled testimony from the Chief Administrative Office, Office of Human Resources, Office of Innovation and Technology and Procurement. Given the overlap in these departments responsibilities, all departments will be available for questioning following testimony from Miss -- from Chief Administrator Officer Camille Duchaussee. Okay. This afternoon we have scheduled testimony from the Department of Human Services and the Mayor's Office of Education. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the first witness to testify from the administration?
Camille Duchaussee, Chief Administrative Officer. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Good morning. Is that good?
Yeah. Good morning. Just state your name and please begin your testimony. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Good morning. Members of -- Council President Johnson, members of City Council and colleagues, I am Camille Duchaussee, Chief Administrative Officer. Joining me today from the Office of the CAO are Rose Smith- DiFrancesco, Chief of Staff. Melissa Andre, Executive Director of the Office of Administrative Review. Adrienne Moore, Director of the Office for People with Disabilities. Andrew Buss, Deputy CAO. Stephanie Reed, Deputy CAO. Carol De Fries, Executive Director City College for Municipal Employment and Workforce Planning. Shakeya Foreman employee Ombuds person. Danita Reese, Director of the Philadelphia Service Design Studio. Tracy Bryant, Deputy Director of the Office of Talents and Employee Success, and Sandi Ramos, SEPTA Key Advantage Program Manager. I'm also joined by commissioners of CAO's cluster departments. Candi Jones, Chief Human Resource Officer. Melissa Scott, Chief Information Officer. LaShawnda Tompkins, Deputy Procurement Commissioner, and Ronald Hovey, Procurement Commissioner Day 12. And James Leonard, Records Commissioner, who will provide testimony as well. The FY26 budget for the office of the CAO is critical to fulfilling the promise of our office and realizing the efficiency, innovation, and transformation necessary to make Philadelphia the safest, cleanest and greenest big city in the nation with access to economic opportunity for all. Through strategic investments in workforce development, service delivery, accessibility and operational efficiency, and in support of departments with whom CAO partners to provide enterprise-wide administrative support, which are again, OHR, OIT, procurement records, we are committed to strengthening city government and ensuring it works effectively. In the past year, we realized a first in the nation and significant initiative, the City College for Municipal Employment. CCME is a crucial driver in the city's workforce development strategy, coordinating internal and external training programs and resources to access and develop the talent of Philadelphians and city employees. Remove barriers to employment, create clear pathways to municipal careers that offer family sustaining wages and build workforce capacity and economic mobility by ensuring that Philadelphians are equipped with the skills needed for the jobs of today and the future. By investing in CCME, we not only strengthen our city's workforce, but also foster economic mobility for residents across all communities. The work of the Service Design Studio and the Strategic Direction and Transformation Units will continue to prioritize the assessment development improvement and innovation of resident services and the operations of every department. The ongoing work of Executive Order 224, prioritizing and improving resident service delivery as well as the successful implementation of CRMs for the Office of Neighborhood and Community Engagement, the Office of Minority Business Success, and the Mayor's Office and the creation of lactation space finder app are examples of the improvements and work of this group. Employee Engagement and Infrastructure Unit and the Office of Talent and Employee Success are dedicated to fostering a workplace culture that supports and engages our employees. Through target internal communication and professional development, like the Elevate Leadership Excellence Program, these units have worked to improve alignment between city leadership and our workforce, ensuring that employees are informed and empowered in their roles and operational decision making is informed by engagement with city -- with the city's workforce. In FY26, we will expand initiatives that support employee well-being, professional development and workplace inclusivity.
The Office of -- for People with Disabilities will continue to build upon the city's commitment to accessibility, ensuring that Philadelphia is a city where all residents can realize their potential and take advantage of Philadelphia -- all that Philadelphia has to offer. An example of their work being the creation of the assistive device tagging program, which ensures Philadelphia residents are able to retrieve their needed devices when separated from its owner during medical emergencies. And the Office of Administrative Review has improved hearing times and will be able to further modernize with FY26 budget commitments, making it easier for Philadelphians to navigates administrative hearings with fairness and efficiency. To ensure that the city government operates with efficiency, accountability, and fiscal responsibility, the FY26 budget request includes the resources necessary to establish an internal control and optimization unit to focus on identifying operational inefficiencies, improving accountability and implementing compliance best practices across departments. By strengthening internal controls and optimizing workflows, we will enhance service delivery, reduce costs, and improve the overall effectiveness of city government. I am proud of the work of the CAO and its partner departments and ask that City Council support the proposed budget. Without question, the work of CAO, OHR, OIT, OPD, procurement and records, supports every department and directly impacts the efficiency, transparency, and effectiveness of city government. We endeavor to strengthen operations, invest in our workforce, and drive innovation needed to make Philadelphia a model of public service. With the necessary resources, we will continue working toward becoming an employer of choice and a government that residents can truly see, touch, and feel. One that is responsive, equitable, and built to serve every Philadelphian. I appreciate your time today, and along with my colleagues, welcome any questions you may have. I also invite and ask Carol De Fries, our executive director of CCME to provide some opening comments on CCME. Sorry.
Just testing. Okay. Great. Good morning, Council President Johnson, members of City Council, staff, and colleagues. I'm Carol De Fries. I'm the executive director of the City College for Municipal Employment and Workforce Programming. The Mayor's vision and standards for the City College for Municipal Employment are clear: To be a first in the nation workforce model that will increasingly open pathways to training, development and career opportunities that poise all Philadelphians to work, serve and thrive in all areas of the economy, particularly critical areas of need within our city. In a short time, CCME has leveraged resources and partnerships with the Big 4: The City's Community College of Philadelphia, the School District of Philadelphia and Philadelphia Works, all to bring opportunities for economic mobility to its residents. Understanding CCME as a broad umbrella, combining CCME and commerce's OWD, the Office of Workforce Development, within CAO, to ensure coordinated strategy, knowledge and resources is very important. The FY 2026 funding and position allocations will allow our combined team to shift our lens on workforce across the internal and external landscape to an enterprise wide workforce leadership strategy and implementation unit. The Mayor's vision for the -- for the City College for Municipal Employment, includes a well- coordinated workforce ecosystem that is poised to understand the vast needs of the city enterprise as the third largest employer in the city of Philadelphia, the broader workforce needs of Philadelphia's economy and the major initiatives and investments that the city brings to bear that can drive workforce needs across key sectors. The unit will be able to identify shared resource opportunities and gaps in strategy. It will continue to foster and grow partnerships essential to maximizing internal and external investments in workforce development across Philadelphia. I assure you that the work of the Office of Workforce Development in commerce will continue. OWD is dedicated to supporting employers and their talent needs and will continue to manage those efforts and more, including supporting Commerce's Fair Chance Hiring Initiative, the Workforce Development Professionals Alliance, a network of quality workforce 9 organizations in the city and the 10 C2L-PHL plans for employer 11 engagements. 12 The unit will also support 13 the deployment of 10 million in 14 workforce funding, which will be 15 focused on external workforce 16 initiatives and investments and 17 removing barriers to opportunities for 18 life sustaining jobs in the 19 construction and building trades, the 20 life sciences in STEM, and grow both 21 existing and new partnerships with 22 external workforce partners such as 23 WIPSI, SAM State and Senior 24 Pre-Apprenticeship, SEIU, the Center for Black Educator Development, among others, and employers across Philadelphia, particularly those receiving KOZ benefits. The significance and impact of delivering on the Mayor's promise on workforce is why I joined the Parker administration and cannot be overstated. We, the full team, look forward to working with City Council and our many partners to strengthen and grow the city's workforce, which supports all aspects of realizing a safer, greener -- cleaner, greener city with access to economic opportunity for all Philadelphians. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your testimony. I just want to get an idea regarding the transferring of the Commerce Department for the Workforce program under the Office of Chief Administrative Office, just to get an idea of the reasoning behind the transfer, and then how are you integrating that workforce program or other workforce programs throughout the city of Philadelphia that's going to be under CAO? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So the idea as Carol mentioned, is really for CCME and it's the office of CCME and Workforce Planning, right? And it's to capture all workforce development work that's being done across the city. One thing that we very early on recognized as we were trying to stand up CCME and make sure that workforce development work was moving as efficiently as possible, was that there were a lot of great work that's being done across the city in departments, that if coordinated, I think would have improved outcomes. We have great outcomes with a number of our partners. You know, Streets Department and their future track program, what's going on with Fleet. There are a lot of great programming that's going on, but the consolidation of it, definitely the centralization of it without impacting its current effectiveness was a significant goal of CCME. Now, when you pull back and you look at the work that was being done in commerce, in coordination with, you know, their external partners, a lot of external partners, we were tapping a number of the same external partners. And so the idea behind pulling the Office of Workforce Development into the CCME and Workforce Planning Office was just to change the perspective, to make sure that we are taking a higher level view. We are seeing where there are opportunities for partnership, we are seeing where we can -- where the economy of scale can be employed and also we can recognize where there are gaps. We certainly have a very bold vision here of making sure that all Philadelphians have an opportunity and that we are creating economic mobility across the city in all communities, but there are gaps in that. And in changing our focus and putting the two together so that we can see across all of the work that's being done, not only in the city, but in our partnerships external to the city, I think we have better outcomes.
So now it'll be housed in the CAO. And in terms of Commerce, because I know when Commerce just came here last week when we kicked off the five-year plan, they talked about their role with workforce development, making sure we are addressing the vacancies. Going out into the community, doing the job fairs, having the mobile -- they have a mobile employment bus that goes throughout the city that hopefully we'll have 5 of them in each councilmatic district 6 so we can kind of speed up erasing 7 poverty here in the city of 8 Philadelphia. But I just -- so are 9 there two tracks they're going to be 10 moving or are you going to be over top of all of it now under CAO? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Right. So we're over the top.
Okay. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: But there are two tracks, right?
That's where I'm going. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: The work of the Office of Workforce Development that has typically and has been housed in Commerce, that work continues. We're a client of theirs, just like there are a number of other parties, Commerce being one of them is a client of that unit. And so that work doesn't change. I think the -- the benefit here is that we can blend resources. We can, again, leverage its multiplication by addition, right? Where you're adding to a department and you're leveraging across that entire department all of the resources that we have.
Okay. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I don't know if, Carol, if you want to say anything else here.
I'm happy to. I think that I just would say from personal experience and since I started, I've been working very closely with the Office of Workforce Development basically on a daily basis. And so the workforce ecosystem is very tied to one another. So everything that we're -- we would be doing internally is also tied to what happens externally. And so it was very clear through that process, that we had to be in constant coordination regarding any investments that we were making internally in the city to support the hiring needs of the city of Philadelphia, in addition to what was going on externally. And in fact, like one of my first experiences was how we could work across multiple departments and the external partners to submit a proposal to William Penn grant -- William Penn Foundation, because there were multiple of the same needs that we needed to coordinate in that submission. So it was very clear that their work needs to be at a higher level looking across both internal and external employer needs, plus the city as an employer and what our needs are as well.
Okay. Now, part of the budget process for this year for CAO is $300,000 for software for your databases. Can you just give us an idea? That's your largest actual request so -- and I think upgrading technology is a good thing, but just give us an update for the record on how that's going to be utilized, please. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Absolutely. So less an update of technology, but a continuation of the technology that we're -- in this contracts that we're using right now, which are Qualtrics, which is a kind of a survey platform that allows us to engage our employees in a multitude of ways. Our Quickbase program is the program that allows us to take manual processes within different departments and digitize them. And over the course of FY25, I believe there were different 5 projects that we took on to include 6 some of the ones mentioned in my 7 opening testimony to create apps that 8 are better utilize and take in 9 information in a more efficient way 10 for different departmental partners. 11 And then lastly, we have 12 Envisio, which is a project tracking 13 tool that we have used to, again, 14 gauge the work that -- an ongoing work 15 track and hold accountable ourselves the work that we're doing in service improvement. So any project that we have relative to service delivery improvement is put in Envisio and it allows us to track, and communicate with our partners -- our departmental partners.
Okay. Thank you. That data also shows that minority women, disabled businesses, participants rates dropped from 40 percent in FY24 to 27 percent in FY25. So can you give us update on the reasons for the declines and also measures being taken on to make sure we are addressing equity when it comes to contracting services because you know, obviously we are the largest poor city in America. In order for us to erase that moniker we have to make sure we're building generational wealth and making sure the process is equitable in terms of everybody having a chance to participate. And it also reflects what the city of Philadelphia looks like in terms of our business practices. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I'm going to turn to our very new procurement commissioner, Ronald Hovey, but before doing that, I do want to kind of share your sentiments, right? That we have some work to do. And one of the things that we are very much keyed in on is the work that we've been doing in concert with Majority Leader Gilmore-Richardson's office, in terms of improving the way we -- the procurement process works. We are very clear that the administrative burdens of contracting with the city of Philadelphia has a disparate impact on some of our smaller and minority owned, disabled enterprise owners have with the city of Philadelphia. So we are working very diligently to make sure that -- to the extent that across the board, we are creating easier systems, less administrative burden, less costly -- taking less of a toll on working with the city of Philadelphia, that we are making improvements in that space. I'll also say that by and large, the work of monitoring and assessing and prescribing participation rates, is not the work of the Procurement Department, but under the Office of --
OEO. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: -- Business Impact, yes. OEO rests within the Office of Business Impact and Economic Growth. And so that is a space where we partner with them. And I don't believe that there's anyone here from that office today to speak directly to the participation rates, but I will turn it over very briefly to --
But you would know practices in terms of what you're doing to improve them, correct? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I'm sorry, sir.
I said, but you would -- you would have practices on how you're going to go about improving them, correct? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yes.
Because OEO would just monitor the number, but I would think if you-all are talking together -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Absolutely.
-- I would think they would be a game plan and say, hey, these numbers aren't increasing for black and brown women. We are actually going backwards. And I would think an alarm was set off and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're not moving aggressively forward -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yeah. So --
-- in this area. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yeah. And I agree. And I think one of the things that I'm particularly aware of is that we've taken a step back and looked at, hey, what are -- have been our challenges, our successes relative to our movement in that regard? And I think that was a major impetus for -- not I think, I know that was a major impetus for how we've structured that space. And so right now we do have, again, a fairly new appointee to the Office of Business Impact and Economic Growth. That person will drive our efforts and making sure that we --
Okay. Got you. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: And if that is Nadir Jones. I actually think that I've seen him in the -- in the hearing room today, but again, he started yesterday, so.
Okay. All right. Understood. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So, but he will have a very particular role in driving our efforts in that regard.
Thank you, Camille. So I'm Ron Hovey from the Procurement Department, I'm the new commissioner. Today is my 12th day.
Thank you. And I come here also with my colleagues, LaShawnda Tompkins, she's my deputy for administration and Janira Barroso, she's my deputy for services, supplies and equipment and public works. So an answer to your question, as Camille said, OEO it's my, you know, it's my understanding and the way the operation is set up that it's a separate organization. And by the way, Nadir just -- Nadir just called me this morning. We've met a few times now and he's -- he and I talked about getting together to discuss this very issue. So, you know, based on my sort of time in the seat, I don't have direct prescriptions today. But I can tell you, you know, it's important for those two organizations. And historically, sort of the outward facing -- the outward facing business diversity function is either within or very closely adjacent to procurement organizations. So I think historically it may have been more at arm's length, but I would like to see that work much more closely. Also, you know, there may be some variation in terms of reality versus data captured because I've seen that there's a fair amount of sort of manual effort in collecting and aggregating this data. So I'm looking forward to some of the new systems that are coming in place to increase the veracity of the data so that we, you know, we can make more much -- I'm very data driven, so, I want to make much more sort of data informed decisions. That's basically it at this point.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much. We will definitely find time in the near future as you get your legs under you to readdress this issue as well as with the new appointee for, I guess, it's the Office of, you'll call them Diversity and Business Impact, or, can you say it for the record, the new position. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I'm sorry. Business Impact and Economic Growth.
Economic Growth. So there is no more Office of Equal Opportunity. OEO will be -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: The Office of Economic Opportunity will build -- will be built underneath, will be folded into the broader umbrella.
Okay. Cool. I think I'm familiar with that. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: It's not going away.
Okay. That approach is cool. Just because the climate right now that we are in, right? And some folks trying to roll back the hands of time, and so we are not on the front line addressing this in a diligent manner and being very, very intentional. But I also have to be quite frank, even if we wasn't in this climate, right, we're the poorest city in America, largest city. And the only way we're going to address the disparities that we see in the city of Philadelphia is by being very, very intentional by making sure that black and brown and women owned businesses have a seat at the table. So however we can be partners in that mission, we are here, but I just want us go on the record and say we need to be laser-light focused on eradicating poverty by providing opportunities for small black and brown and women owned businesses. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I agree.
Last question -- last question before I go to my colleagues. Very popular program here in City Council, which is the SEPTA Key program. Their program is going to be moving from -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: It's a lot of money.
-- the CAO Office to the Office of Human Resources, but at a different funding level. And so, I want to get an idea of, over the last two years, the program cost the city $9 million and now it's costing $5 million. So I want to kind of get clarity on, if this reflects the change in number of employees served or service level? Or does it better reflect the actual need of the actual program? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So I would say, first of all, the move makes a lot of sense, right? Our Office of Human Resources does a phenomenal job with managing our employees benefits and their total rewards package. And this is very much in alignment with that, making sure that the benefits that our employees enjoy, are sitting within our benefits unit in OHR. Right now we are still in conversations with the -- with SEPTA. The funding, again, I think is commensurate with our need. And as we move forward, we will continue to provide this very, very necessary benefit, very worthwhile benefit to all of our workforce. That has not changed. Our commitment to that has not changed. Again, we do understand and appreciate the ability to put more dollars in the pockets of our workforce and we are committed to that.
Okay. Because the interns and City Council, this is a very, very popular program. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Across the city it's a very popular program. Yes.
No, on a serious note. And then I'm just going to take a matter of personal privilege for Councilmember Harrity or O'Rourke or Jones. Any points of information at this moment regarding the SEPTA Key program before I start calling on members? Member Jones? And this was actually your baby, sir. So Member Jones.
It's our baby. And I would -- I would want to know, does it just deal with city employees now and does it deal with quasi-governmental employees as well, such as, the Defender's Association? Is that included? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I will ask Sandi Ramos, our program -- SEPTA Key program manager to come up in response to specifically who it covers. But the SEPTA Key Program is specific to the city's workforce, employees within the city of Philadelphia to make a distinction between the Zero Fare Program, which is a program that our city residents can benefit from.
So the defenders -- I'm sorry. The defenders have to go back and forth to state road to defend citizens that are accused of crimes. One of the -- and they're underpaid. And I said that, I know she's watching somewhere. They're underpaid. One of the perks is that they can get to their clients back and forth. And so the distinction between them not being a proper city department and being a non-profit, is one only made in our structure, not in the minds of the public. So I wanted the specifics of that.
Good morning. Sandi Ramos, Project Manager, SEPTA Key Advantage. So to answer your question, councilman, contractors are not currently participating in this program. There are a number of contracted agencies who work alongside city employees. The Defenders Association is one of those, but there are few. And so because of that, we would be opening the door to a pretty significant population. And so at the moment it is limited specifically to city employees.
Well, that's something I think we should address. The Defender's Association takes on 44,000 accused, you remember that, right? Forty-four thousand accused individuals a year, many of them who are incarcerated up on State Road. And with the different -- differential between what they make versus the DA versus the city solicitor's office, it's a small perk for them to not have to go in their pockets to see their own clients. So I would -- and I know that's not your decision, but I'm encouraging my colleagues to think about that. That if justice is to be done, we can't price out the Defender's Association from being effective at their jobs. So what other contracting agencies are not included? Do you have a list of them? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So I think it's easier to flip it. The benefit right now is availed to city employees, not contractors. And so any agency organization with whom we contract, that support the work of the city of Philadelphia, we are not currently availing the SEPTA Key Advantage Program to that group.
Okay. So we need to take a look. We need to do our job and take a look at who is not included, who we consider essential partners. Essential partners. And I don't know, I remember quasi-governmental agencies, is it the Redevelopment Authority or PHDC, people that we partner with that go out into the communities everyday to provide those services. That might be the difference between someone losing an employee because, you know what, this isn't just worth it to me. In light of all of the vacancies we have, this is a perk, this is a benefit that I think should be expanded to maintain our workforce. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: And we're happy to continue having conversations, again, as -- I mean, we're sitting here because it's a budget conversation, right? And to the extent that we are able to leverage the budget that is made available to us to improve the efficiency and partnerships that we have, we will. But at the same time, we understand that this is a benefit that has a substantial cost associated with it. And we are doing everything in our power to make sure that we can continue to provide this very necessary, very worthwhile benefit to our workforce.
So some years ago we subcontracted out DHS's responsibility to CUAs. These individuals perform the same basic services that social workers used to perform, but now are quasi- contractors. It does not make sense to me. We are being penny wise, and in my opinion, pound foolish, if we don't recognize the high degree of turnover that can happen when the little things, not the mountain you have to climb, but the pebbles that get in your sandals on the way up the mountain. So we might want to take a look at all of those subcontractors to see if it makes sense in order to reduce turnover to include that benefit. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you. All right. Let's rock and roll. Member O'Rourke and then Member Harrity.
Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you for allowing this moment just to clarify. I hear that there is the budget reduction on this point. I understand -- I think I understand why that's the case. Just clarifying, you are affirming that this key program and benefit will continue for all, at least currently eligible employees in FY26 and beyond? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Correct. For FY26.
Oh, but not necessarily beyond? For -- you can say for FY26. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: The intention is to continue it beyond.
Okay. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: But again, year after year, we --
Understood. Is anyone going to -- considering the budget reduction, is anyone going to lose or be cut out of this benefit? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Is anyone going to lose? I'm sorry, I missed the word.
Is anyone going to be cut from this benefit -- from this -- due to the budget cut, will anyone lose this as a result of this budget cut? Anybody at all? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: No. 11
Real quick point of information, Councilmember Bass.
Thank you, Mr. President. The follow-up on Councilmember Jones line of questioning. And as he was speaking, it dawned on me, you know, how so many folks who have the SEPTA Key card may not need it. You know, we have access to it, but may not need it, and there are some people who really need it and who do not have access. I would be more than willing to give my SEPTA Key card to, you know, a public defender. And I think, you know, my colleagues as well. But I think as you're looking at the program and looking at where to make cuts, you have to look at who's getting it and who doesn't need it and who needs it and isn't getting it. And even if they're not a -- if they're a contracted agency, like a public defender's office, they're doing a city service. They may not be a full city agency or full city department, but they're certainly doing a very valuable service for the citizens of the city of Philadelphia. And so there's got to start being some equity there and with other departments. So as we, you know, just look at, you know, how these funds are spent, I just think we need to be mindful of, you know, who's already got it and, you know, who really needs it. So thank you, Mr. President. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Agreed.
Member Harrity, and then we'll go into rounds.
Thank you, Council President. Just real quick, since you brought it up, Zero Fare. I mean, how many actual citizens are going to be affected by this? How many actually signed up for the program? And what was the cost of that? Because we really haven't even finished the pilot yet, and this program is being cut. And it's just one more thing we're taking away from people who probably need it the most. So if you could just give me some numbers just for points of information there. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So Councilmember, I would be happy to get back to you on that. Zero Fare is not a program that's under the purview of the CAO, but absolutely can get you that information.
Okay. We're going into official round one. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips.
Thank you, Council President. OHR has committed to collaborating with HR offices across departments to improve transaction accuracy and efficiency. What mechanisms will be used to track and enforce compliance with new process improvements, and how will accountability be insured across decentralized HR functions?
Good morning, everyone. Sorry. Good morning, everyone. Candi Jones, Chief Human Resources Officer. So great question. So the Office is responsible for that oversight. There are some challenges with the current structure. Each HR -- each department has their own HR manager. As a new leader for the Office of Human Resources, my goal is actually to centralize some of those functions, right? So taking a very close look at each agency, working with them to establish metrics, to establish different expectations, to have a higher level of oversight and accountability of those agencies. A part of the budget asks for the Office of Human Resources includes, I think $50,000 for HR University. And that is a significant step towards ensuring that the decentralized HR offices that there are -- there is a level of consistency and equity across those -- across those offices. So I say -- I tell the story all the time, right? The candidate experience in any department should be very, very similar, if not the same. And right now, we're seeing that employees that are hired may experience a very different process for HR. And so I'm looking to have that consistency. And I think to your point, that will allow my office, the Office of Human Resources, to have that additional oversight, provide resources and training to the decentralized HR managers so that we can really move forwards as one -- as one consistent team.
Yeah. Thank you. One of the reasons why I asked that question is that I'm a little concerned about certain positions that require some level of, like, innovation when it comes to hiring and providing support to those departments. For example, the city of Philadelphia has about a year backlog in tree removal. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we're trying to find the right people who are qualified to remove trees. And supposedly that's hard to find in the Parks & Rec Department. So the reality is that how do we begin, if we're going to do the -- you know, the community college route for training, what are you doing to help with, like, finding ways to maybe train people or come up with new innovative strategies to help us get to that level of service that people are looking for in terms of tree removal?
So two things. We do partner very specifically and intentionally with city departments for what we consider to be hard to fill positions. So part of that is recruitment, part of that is working with those departments to source those particular candidates. And then we also have a significant partnership under CCME, right? Because the goal of CCME is to lead individuals to city employment. But we work with them to identify these hard to fill positions, figuring out which pathways are, sort of, right for the CCME programming, and then working with Carol De Fries and her team to be able to then link those individuals seamlessly into city employment.
Thank you. I mean, I appreciate that. And, however, one of the things that I would also -- one of my last questions and comments was basically, it would be nice for us to get to our emails and also to the public to get more updates around where people -- where we are with hiring. You know, every couple months, you know, positions, letting us know, hey, we're struggling with this position. You know, maybe we can go out to our community and say, hey, here are the open positions that are available, you know, that you're still struggling to hire. I just feel, like, that innovation level has to be there. And I think it's -- your hiring process could -- is too closed for a very public, you know, the city is a very public space. But I just think we have to open it up a little bit better.
Agreed. And we're happy to increase our communication with council on the events that we're doing in the community's, current openings, for positions. But I agree that partnership is essential to be able to kind of increase our public facing approach with the community.
Yeah. And I would like to have an agreement between -- this is the last thing I'm going to say. I would like to have an agreement between your department and every District Councilmember this coming year, that you're going to have several bus stops where you -- or something. I mean, career fairs, like, that you organize, not that we organized. We got enough to organize. I'm organizing an emergency meeting about a rec center that just was shot up, unfortunately. So, but like I said, it's just important that you all organize it cause that's your role and responsibility.
We are happy to do that. We do have a listing of all of the -- so in addition to the 154 events we did last year, we do have a listing, and we're quite booked for this year as well. But that includes each district, right? And so we can share that information to let you know where we're going to be, whether that's a partnership with a school or a community agency. So we are scheduled to have the bus out in the community for the upcoming recruitment season. So we're happy to do that.
I didn't know anything about it, so we'll have to figure out how to communicate better there, too.
All right. Let's do it. Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Candi.
Thank you. The Chair recognize Councilmember Brooks.
Thank you. My first group of questions is for CAO. Your office recently led the administration's decision to end the Work from Home systems that were in place since the pandemic. And when this was announced, we saw surrounding counties advertise more flexible work from Home policies. The question is, how were these policies received by the workforce? And do you expect the decision to be revisited in the near future? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: How were the policies received? I think the policies were received, I mean, respectfully and candidly with some skepticism, right? Again, working from home is something that I would say a good percentage of percent -- 20 at least 20 percent of our workforce became accustomed to and had opportunities to utilize during the pandemic. And so there was a pivot that needed to be made. We want to make sure that we are creating spaces where equal opportunity is centered and having all of our teammates in person and able to talk, share, collaborate, take advantage of opportunities is very important to Mayor Parker. And just a sound HR practice, to be frank. So I think the conversation continues and we have definitely seen the settling in period. The contacts that we were experiencing in CAO have definitely decreased. And I think we have instilled and embedded in all of our processes better supports that allow our workforce to be able to come back to work. We've already had a significant conversation around SEPTA Key Advantage. The standing up of our wealthy benefit, our just in time -- just in case emergency care for dependents and elderly family members. We've stood that up. And so we will continue to assess what opportunities we have for providing supports to our workforce. That was going to continue regardless of whether our employees are on-site or off site. At the end of the day, our mission in CAO is to provide more engaged, a more supportive work environment. We want to be a model employer, and so we are going to continue to assess those opportunities and those supports that we put in place. Every year we go through a review of our benefits package. And Marsha Greene-Jones, who's the deputy -- a deputy OHR -- of OHR within the benefits unit, does an extraordinary job. I'm sorry. Yeah.
And I just have one part. So one of the justifications for the Work From Home policy was the impact on Center City businesses. And I was wondering, have you been tracking the impact of this decision on Center City business, traffic, and just overall quality of life? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So respectfully, that was not one of the factors for the decision in -- for the city's decision to return our employees to the office. Of course, the hope and the anticipation was that having more foot traffic, having more employees, whether there are employees or any other organization's employees in Center City and in the city in general, would have a benefit. I certainly can provide any information to you in regard to the impact it's had on safety and the economy within the Center City district.
Okay. Councilmember -- oh, he left. Councilmember O'Rourke.
Thank you, Mr. President, and good morning now. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Good morning.
I know we kind of got a jump start there, but I'm so grateful to have you-all here this morning. Thank you for being here. I want to start my questions today on the city's workforce. The lifeblood of our city services, as it were. These are the folks who answer our calls to 311, the folks who we pave our streets, the folks who maintain our parks, staff, our libraries, collect our garbage in some cases twice a week, a hat tip to the administration on that initiative. In order to provide the best services we can to Philadelphians, we've got to be an excellent employer. And I've heard you already mentioned this already. We've talked a lot in our first week of hearings about recruitment, getting folks through the door, upskilled hired up, but I'm also worried about retention. Keeping our dedicated public servants with us, particularly right now. So I have a few questions about the investments that we make in our workers and their employee satisfaction. Employees matter. President Johnson has already gotten us lifted on the SEPTA Key Advantage Program question. And I just want -- I did want to just verify and get on the record that it was a fact that they would all currently eligible employees and FY26 would still remain getting that program and there would not be any cuts. So that is very encouraging. I understand that last year as a part of a broader effort to assess employee engagement and satisfaction across the departments, an employee experience survey was conducted, which is great. And since we're over a year in this -- to this administration, I'm eager to hear what came up from that. Could you provide a little bit of background on this employee experience survey, who received it, when was it fielded? How was it designed? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Sure. So our employee engagement survey was launched in May of 2024. We had about a 29 percent participation rate, which from a statistical perspective, not what we were shooting for. So we understand that we, again, we have some work to do. Just across organizations, there's opportunities for engagement and survey fatigue, right? And so I do think that that played somewhat of a role. And unfortunately it was launched at the same time as the conversations around return to office. And I think --
Folks weren't trying to fill it out. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yeah.
Okay. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Right. And so I think that had an impact on the participation rate. What we found is that there was a high level of trust among our first line and kind of mid-management level. That there was a lot of positive information relative to questions that were geared around confidence with your manager, your supervisor, around having the equipment that you need to perform your job. Where we had an opportunity for improvement was in communication. And so we have contacted all of our department heads and we have availed to them within the Qualtrics system, which is the system that launched the survey. There is an action planning tool. And so we have been working with our department heads with -- in concert with our Office of Talent and Employee Success to create action plans, walk our department heads through what an action plan would look like for their department and what their expected impact of those action plans and strategies can be.
Well, based upon the feedback for my colleagues, Member O'Rourke, I'm going to move on to the next person and save your next question for the next round, sir.
I'm going to call on Councilmember Rue Landau.
Thank you, Council President. Thanks everybody for being here. I appreciate you. I'll run right into this. The Employee Engagement and Infrastructure Unit and the Office of a Talent and Employee Success uses internal communication and initiatives to support employee wellbeing, professional development, and workplace inclusivity. Since President Trump signed his anti DEI executive orders, we've seen major companies and universities concede and dismantle their DEI programs. Is CAO planning on suspending any DEI efforts for the city of Philadelphia? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So unequivocally, no. Right. We've heard the Mayor say this many times. Our mission has not changed. Our responsibilities to not only Philadelphia but to our workforce, remain laser focused. And so we continue to create programs, professional development training. We hired a curriculum developer to ensure that we are availing our workforce with as many tools and resources as needed to create advancement opportunities, take advantage of advancement opportunities, and ensure that we are reaching every member of our workforce and making sure that all opportunities and any potential obstacles to employment pathways are mitigated.
Thank you. I think the next question is for OHR. We heard in their initial budget briefing that there's a percent vacancy rate for hiring. Can you detail which departments have the highest vacancy rates.
Oh, 9 sure. You came prepared. Thank you. 10 That's good. You just drop it in the 11 five-year plan and here it comes. 12
So at this 13 current time, our public safety 14 agencies have the highest rate of 15 unfilled positions. And so that is -- 16 and these are estimates, but the 17 sheriff's office is around 30 percent. The police department is around 25 percent, and the fire department is roughly 20 percent as well.
And so -- we also have a list of -- so aside from the highest departments, we have a list of critical positions as well. And I can detail, and follow-up with that, the listing of those position titles with the specific number of vacancies. We also have action plans for each of those departments, right? So OHR is partnering with prisons very intentionally to increase their recruitment classes. We're partnering with the fire department, with police, and with sheriff as well. And so in addition to identifying that those are our kind of top departments, we do have action plans and then some intentional work being done with those departments.
Next question, a little tougher for you. The -- in every program within OHR, the deputy personnel director makes over $140,000, where most of the rest of the program makes significantly less down to 37,000 for some positions. I believe this goes kind of across the city as well. What is the city doing to create real wage equity and to fix the gaps between wages?
So we are -- a little bit tougher, absolutely. So we are intentional about investments and salaries. And so I think it's important to note, the Office of Human Resources is responsible for looking at pay equity across the city as a whole, across all of our civil service and our exempt job classes. And so in FY24, through the Civil Service Commission and those changes, we invested $5.3 million in salaries. And some of our hard to fill, hard to recruit classes. And year-to-date for FY25, we've invested $3.5 million in salaries. But it doesn't end there, right? Like, we are continuously looking at our roles, roles that are difficult to fill, making sure that there are career pathways, to your point. So although a lot of our positions are entry level roles, we certainly don't want -- we want to encourage that career trajectory. So identifying opportunities for growth, and then looking at that entire pathway because certainly we want employees to feel encouraged that they can certainly go from a management trainee level all the way up to the head of a department.
Before I call on the next member, we just want to acknowledge that we have students observing us, future leaders observing us from Science Leadership Academy. Welcome to City Hall. Oh, some Carvar kids as well. Okay. Students from Carver. Okay. Let's give a round of applause to students from Carver as well. Welcome to City Council, Democracy in action. And what we're doing right now, we're discussing our Fiscal budget. And so welcome to 13 the proceedings. 14 The Chair recognizes 15 Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad. 16
Thank 17 you, Council President. 18 I have a question following 19 up what the Council President asked 20 about the percentages of the MWDSBE 21 contract participation. I wasn't 22 clear what the answer was, why it went 23 down from 36 to 27. So that's one. 24 And the second question is about in your testimony, about the five largest contracts. These are all our fees were issued and the contract start date were all in 2024 and earlier. And I see zero participation for most of them except two, for the MWDSBE categories. So if you could respond to that -- those two, please. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Sure. So in regard to the overall number and tracking of our minority and disabled business enterprises, I certainly can partner with our director of economic -- I'm sorry, business impact and economic growth, and provide you some more information -- more detailed information on what we believe were the drivers for the -- the decrease in participation overall.
Just as a point, the OEO has still 35 percent as their target, so it seems to be not aligned across the city in terms of what is our target participation rate. So if you -- when you get into that -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Absolutely.
I would like clarity on why it went down and why is there differences in numbers across different city agencies. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yes. And then in regard to CAO's, five contracts, we acknowledge and identified that as a space where we can do better. I think the greatest weight of those contracts are in our search firm area. And we have RFP'd that and want to ensure that that gives us an opportunity to better leverage a broader spectrum of potential contractors.
I mean, zero is pretty bad. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Absolutely.
And for a searcher -- a search firm -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Absolutely.
I can guarantee you there are firms out there who are diverse firms to start with in order to be able to do the work. So I don't understand how -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I could not agree with you more. And so --
So what is the answer? I understand you agree, but why is it this way? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: The answer is the RFP. The answer is the RFP that we recognize that the need to create diversity within the firms that we're working with is essential, right, to achieve the outcomes that we're looking for. And so we have RFP'd for those particular services.
So just to be clear, you're saying the RFP process is why we have zero participation? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: No, I'm not saying the RFP process is why we have zero participation. The firms -- the contracts that we had were established well before my time here. It was recognized and identified at a space where we can do better and we put an RFP out to make sure that we can leverage all of the different types of firms to include our minority owned business firms to avail that service.
So why is it that on , we don't have any current contracts? Why is it everything 2019? Don't we have what would reflect what you just said? Do we have not any data from 2023, 4, 5? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I can provide that to you. Sure.
Yeah. Because that would then address -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Sure.
-- the data says that we are doing what you said we are doing, because I'm not sure why these data points are so old. Why would we be seeing such old data points and not current data points? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Okay. My understanding is those are our 2025 contract -- FY25 contracts --
So please -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: But I can provide you information on contracts prior to 2025.
So it's just that the contract start dates are all --
Excuse me, Dr. Ahmad. Point of information. Councilmember Gilmore- Richardson.
Yes. And please, Mr. President, I wanted to keep my time and place in the queue, but I wanted to ask a point of clarification based on Dr. Nina Ahmad's question. And maybe this will help the answer for her, is it that these contracts are four-year contracts each eligible for additional one-year renewals? Is that why it's -- I'm asking. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yes, these are contracts that are eligible for the additional renewals.
Meaning were they initial three and four-year period contracts, and then they were eligible for one year renewals of up to three additional terms? Is that why, as an example -- because I looked at that page as well, and I saw the contracts from 2019, 2018. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Right. Correct.
2022. So meaning -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: This is our first opportunity to -- yes.
Right. To her question, though, is it an initial three or four-year contract that had an opportunity for renewals that the city did undertake, which is why the contract start date is so old? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Let me get back to you on that question.
Okay. I just wanted to put that on the record. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Thank you.
Yes. Thank you so much, Council President. I have a separate question on the CCME, and I wanted to know just where we are on things. Meaning, I know it's very new. So do you have any stats on who you have enrolled, where they're from, which parts of the city they're from? And are we having to do remedial work to get them ready for things? So just a general snapshot of where we are with CCME.
Yeah. Great. Thank you for the question. We launched the program in October with a first initial cohort with two programs in technology and business administration. And that first cohort, we had about 74 people who enrolled. Largely most of the individuals who were enrolled were kind of in a core course that we call our CCME Power Skills, which is something that everyone has to take. And then there were enrollments in the -- in the two career courses. Those individuals have transferred now into the spring. So we have about 76 people currently enrolled in the spring across four separate career pathway programs, which include, additional programs in business administration and technology, but also we added healthcare and the skilled trades in the auto tech area. So we currently have the 76 individuals with the expectation that about of those individuals will be 16 completing at the end of this 17 semester. 18 Each program has a different 19 timeline, and individuals are given up 20 to 18 months to complete their program, because some programs are non-credit, some are credit. So they all have different requirements. In terms of the remediation, it depends on the particular program. And part of the model that we've built with Community College of Philadelphia is, if someone encounters a barrier into entry in any of the credit-based programs, they will receive developmental work or bridge programming that can help them then get into the college, into that particular program. The programs that we're looking at are in particular, like the shorter term, either non-credit, training or proficiency certificate because we want to get people into the jobs as quickly as possible. So that's the focus of where we're starting and what we've initiated. In addition, we've also begun to work with several high school populations to get them aligned with jobs that are in city government that allow individuals to come right out of high school into careers. So we're working with the Water Department, we're working with Fleet Management, Department of Public Property, Streets and the Future Track Program in addition to, we're hoping that we can build a model around neighborhood and community engagement. And then the last area is around the upskilling, where we've been working with various different departments on three separate programs. We have five cohorts currently running, and we've completed one cohort in electronic tech that's in partnership with Jevs Orleans Technical College. We have another cohort that we'll be graduating on the 8th. So next week, we're excited about that. We have two cohorts at CCP in the surveyor position with the streets department. And then we're also, currently, we just started a program around maintenance and mechanic with both, the Water Department and the Streets Department, in that particular area. We're in constant communication with the different departments about what their needs are and how we can address them both in terms of thinking about the entry level jobs that are available and have high volume need or hard to fill. And then we're also thinking about those second and third tier positions where we can move city employees up into those. And then that opens up more entry level positions for us to bring people in. So we're kind of trying to create a more cyclical and continuous cycle to get individuals into both the programs that are around upskilling and then also entry level.
And just concluding. So in these seven months since you've started, have you actually placed anyone in the chart?
Yeah. Wrapping -- last little question. Anybody we have actually placed?
We're still actively trying to place individuals. We only had three people fully complete as of this moment.
Okay. Thank you, Council President for your indulgence.
Absolutely. Dr. Ahmad, we're going to get to that second round. Majority Leader Gilmore-Richardson.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to go really fast because I do need to come back on the second round. I wanted to just say thank you to Camille Duchaussee, CAO, your entire team for all the work that we've done on the non-profit task. Procurement, welcome to the new procurement commissioner, and to all the team members. Real special shout out to Jim Leonard, commissioner of Records and Tracy Williams. They have done stellar work. Giovanni in her office, Candi Jones, Mike Cagney, for helping us with the CTE point preference, Janine LaBletta, who sends us all of the employment opportunities, particularly those for folks who are eligible for the five-point preference. Then I'll go from there. Really quickly -- and I want to also thank LaShawnda Tompkins. I had her down here too, because she was stellar during those meetings. I appreciate all the work that we did on the, the non-profit piece, and I'll come back to that on my second round. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Thank you.
Last week during budget hearings, I had talked about my concerns around the workforce development department and unit moving from under commerce to CAO. And I wanted to go back to that. I heard you talk about CCME, but I do have real concern around, you know, moving workforce development to CAO because, you know, under the pandemic, the department was slated to be eliminated. We worked really hard in council to keep it. So if you could just talk about how, you know, what that is? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: What the combination is -- the --
Meaning -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Or the commitment is to maintaining the Office of Workforce Development.
It's even in the budget documents where it shows that the workforce development is coming from commerce and going to CAO. Why? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So again, there's no -- first of all, no doubt or there should be no lack of confidence of the commitment to continuing that work. That work is essential. It is thread through every initiative, whether it's safer, cleaner, greener access to economic opportunity, building, economic mobility. Building our workforce is essential to all of it, right? So there is no version of this that we don't continue the work of the external contacts, and the work of the Office of Work -- Office of Workforce Development. My apologies. Again, I can't stress enough, we experienced this ourselves in standing up CCME in the Office of Workforce Planning, right? There was a lot of segmented work that was going on across the city, and it just -- it wasn't efficient in terms of the -- the outcomes were efficient and I think the work itself, but the management of it wasn't efficient in that there were opportunities for partnership that we lost because we had no idea of all the variety of offerings across the city of Philadelphia. Again, there's great work that's being done, but it's being done in departments specifically, so.
Okay. I'm sorry, I heard the bell, and I need to get this on the record and I hear that. But this is one of those times where what is happening is going strictly against the code that is in place. Chapter 18-600, Workforce Development Activity and Reporting. If you go to 18-602 under Workforce Development Activity Requirements it states that: "The division shall be led by members of Department of Commerce leadership. "The division shall promote workforce development in the city for the purpose of connecting Philadelphians with jobs and training opportunities, and for the purpose of connecting employers to Philadelphia's workforce. "The division shall serve as a point of contact for employers, including private, public, and quasi- public employers interested in hiring Philadelphians. The division shall collect data and supporting documentation as in -- as is meaningful and available to comply with the workforce development reporting requirements as set forth in 18-603. "The division shall work in collaboration with Philadelphia Works, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, other entities outside of municipal government concerned with workforce development. "The division shall coordinate with the Workforce Professional Alliance and with other institutional partners with workforce development." So -- and that part of the code goes on. So, again, my initial concern was that work is already supposed to be happening, and if it was not happening, we should ensure that it is happening. Because now what you all are asking us to do goes against the code of the City of Philadelphia. And it seems as if, just as this proposal was presented to council, you-all arbitrarily moved workforce development under CAO and are asking the members of council to be in conflict with the laws that are in place. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So the first thing I'd say is that it wasn't arbitrary, right? The office of CAO is the enterprise-wide administrative arm of the city of Philadelphia. All of the work that goes into workforce development, whether it's external or internal, hits all of the departments that sit in CAO to include OHR, OIT, procurement. All of those are essential to successful programs -- workforce development programs.
But I agree with you, I'm not disagreeing with you. What I'm saying -- I'm not disagreeing with you at all. But what I'm saying is, is that in the code -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I hear you.
-- in the Philadelphia Code, it states that workforce development is supposed to be under the Department of Commerce leadership. It doesn't say CAO. It says "Department of Commerce leadership." So my concern and my question is, why are we being asked to do something that technically is against the way our code and the current law is set up? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So the leadership of the Commerce Department is a very close partner to us. I understand the concern that you have very specifically in regard to the code, but the leadership of commerce plays a significant role in how our workforce development programming and functions move forward. That doesn't change. They are still an active participant in all of the alliances and the collaboration that goes into the work of OWD. Again, rather than creating spaces where there isn't full view of the work that's being done, the idea of placing OWD within CAO was to improve upon, I think what -- and I know we don't disagree --
And I agree with you. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: I know we don't disagree.
And I agree with you. The goals, we agree. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yes.
We agree. You know how much I care about this work. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yes.
I did the five-point preference. That's how we're hiring young people when they come from a CT program and work for the city of Philadelphia. We have young people in fleet, young people working in all departments. And I agree with you, you all know that we work very closely, but this has been a major concern of mine for five years since I've been here. This department was slated to be eliminated, and we put the money in council to keep it. But what I'm saying is, is that you-all are asking us to do something that is strictly against the code. That's what I'm saying, because in the definition, even in 18-601, it says that the division of workforce solutions within the Department of Commerce, and I hear what you're saying and I agree with you. We agree on the goals, but you all are asking us to be in conflict with the law. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So I hear you. And I don't want to take too much of your time, but again, the leadership of commerce still plays a significant role --
I would say this, ma'am. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: -- in the workforce development space.
Okay. Because I want to move on to the next person. However, I think probably the city solicitor, whoever does the legislation on behalf of the administration should at least get back with an official response. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Sure.
Because actually, the law actually says one thing and we are doing something totally different. So just for the record, transparency, accountability, committee 70 type stuff, we just want to make sure we doing things the way we supposed to be doing in proper, as my nana says, in proper decency and order. Is that okay, Madam Leader?
All right. Official response back from the city solicitor regarding the reorganization of this particular department. Oh, okay. So for the individuals who stepped out the room 8 and are back, so I'm going to call on Councilmember Isaiah Thomas.
I'm speechless. Good morning, everybody. First of all, thank you to everybody from the admin that's here. Thank you to all my colleagues, because you've asked some phenomenal questions. I'm like crossing them off one at a time. Let me just start with local procurement stuff. We passed a bill a few years ago coming out of the pandemic that basically said that the city of Philadelphia had to have a certain percentage of all city contracts go to Philadelphia based businesses. Based on looking at the admins, first year, last year, where did we finish, how did we do last year as it relates to following the law specifically around to keep it local legislation? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Sure. So I'm going to turn to our new procurement commissioner, Ronald Hovey, and also ask that LaShawnda Tompkins, Deputy Procurement Commissioner come to the table. MR HOVEY: So I'll start and I'll let LaShawnda pile on if she has anything to add, or correct me if I get anything wrong. So in '24, our goal was 47 percent and we actually achieved 54 percent. Our goal going forward in 20 is 56. And I asked for -- we don't 21 quite -- we didn't have the numbers 22 yet for a to-date percentage, but 23 we'll get that to you. But it looked 24 like we were doing well. And this is a rolling three- year average, by the way. So it has a little smoothing associated with it from a data standpoint.
That's amazing. Has anybody done any type of economic study to assess the impact that this has had prior to the legislation? Less than 30 percent of all city contracts went to Philadelphia based businesses, and now we're up over 50 percent. So from an economic perspective, how much does that help benefit the city? Because those businesses that we're invested in and pouring in those businesses get to grow to get to hire more people. They end up paying more taxes and it ends up being revenue back to us. So have we looked at the improvements from our local economy based on -- since the legislation has been passed in the law?
So I haven't spoken to Rob Dubow on the fiscal side of the business.
Can that be a homework assignment? Can we -- before we pass or vote on a budget this year, look at -- keep a local legislation and try to assess how much from a fiscal lens has it benefited the city? MR HOVEY: Absolutely. He has the relationship with the economists.
Amazing. Thank you. I have a lot of other questions. I'm going to submit them in writing, but one question is burning me up and I just -- I need to know. For OIT, we're looking at 10 million. And somebody asked us already. I did step out as the Council President says. I apologize if I missed it. There's been $10 million increase in the class 200 for OIT, which is about percent increase. And, you know, why? What are the new initiatives or new projects, or why are we asking for $10 million more in class 200, which is a percent 7 increase. But I haven't heard about 8 any new projects, any new ventures. 9 Just help us understand that line 10 item. 11
Hello. Melissa 12 Scott, Chief Information Officer. So we have actually many projects. And so that bucket could go to multiple places. We have the OPAL Project, which you're aware of.
OPAL Project. Are you aware of OPAL? Oh, okay. Let me get that out for you. Hold on.
No, no, it's a project that's currently, we've been working on for several years.
So -- because my time is up and I definitely want to move on, and if you don't have the answer, you could put it in writing, but I'm just -- I'm saying that if we're occurring million -- 9 if you're requesting 10 million new 10 dollars, one would think that something new is coming.
So we do have something new. Let me share that with you. I think you'll be really interested in that. So as you can see right now on the home page, if you go to phila.gov, you currently see a new home home page. We are in the process of re-platforming phila.gov. So now all of the pages will be new and modernized, which also would allow us for the capabilities of single sign-on for residents, I know that's something that everyone is interested in, as well as bringing in-house mobile -- in-house mobile development. So what that does is, you know, we have a lot of contracts and where the bleeding begins is, or which never ends, is the maintenance part where we have vendors that come in and you see the dollar amount on RFP, but what we forget to consider is the years of maintenance that -- and millions of dollars that the city spent. So by bringing in a mobile house development team, we'll be able to create mobile apps for different departments which will allow constituents to receive information quickly and ready -- more readily available. So that's one of a few.
Council President, I'm not going to go back and forth. I'm just going to ask that you submit this information in writing. But when you're talking about some of the changes in technology, that sounds amazing.
Listening to the idea of apps and new websites and things of that capacity. I know me and I know my staff, if I vote for this, that we don't have no new apps, no new technology.
And everything is just as archaic as it is right now. That would be extremely frustrating. So as I close out, I hear to do programs, I'm sure that there are way more -- I really don't want to monopolize folks time. I'm not going to come back for the second round, but I'm hanging. I'm not going nowhere. But I do want to -- yeah, I will submit my answers -- questions in writing. If you could give us a list of all of those things. And then including that, you know, you're talking about growing 7 positions when the office isn't filled 8 already. 9 So just help us, in writing, 10 just help us understand, you know, how 11 are you asking for more money for more 12 staff when you can't fill the 13 positions that you have. All right. 14 Thank you, Council President. 15
16 No, could you go on the 17 record and explain that now, just for 18 the record, please. 19
22 It's a legitimate question and it's in 23 my notes, but I've digressed from my 24 members, but it is in my notes as well. So I think we want to be fiscally responsible and make sure that we doing good by the PAC, taxpayers dollars. I think inquiring minds want to know.
So I have the unique advantage of working within OIT as well as leading a department. So I understand more than anyone that the culture of OIT needs to change. And I've been making an extra effort to make sure that we invest in our employees and skill up, which also helps retention as well as a collaborative department where employees can work together also with other departments. So I want to take a look at the numbers for a second. And as far as where we are, our vacancy rate is actually 80 that are funded by OIT. But I took a further look at where we are within the year, and we had 77 separations within this year. So I think we -- what we need to concentrate more so than anything is really on retention. How do we make -- keep our employees? Because I feel like I'm chasing my tail, if you will. I've been working very hard in order to create -- new positions are important because technology is constantly evolving. So we did have 93 new positions and we were able to fulfill 66 of them. However, we had 77 separations, people retired, but 14 zero of those positions were posted 15 for more than a year. So that just 16 gives you a little perspective of 17 where we are in the industry and how 18 we need to make a better effort in 19 making sure that we retain our talent 20 when we find them in this competitive 21 market. Because we do have in our staff the brightest and the best. So they're constantly being recruited.
Okay. I always keep it to being thank you for the Land Bank streamlining process in terms of the new program we have. So I deal with developers on a daily basis, and so I'm going to get credit with credit is due. So thank you and your team for revamping the Land Bank website.
The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jim Harrity, then Jamie Gauthier, then Councilmember Jeffrey J. Young, and then we'll officially go into our second round.
Thank you, Council President. Thank you everyone for being here today. Just a couple following up questions on some of the stuff that we just had. So as it goes for retention, because that apparently is even a more dire need than actually the hiring which I thought was a direr need. How do we make it more attractive for our employees to stay? I know when I first got here, I put 5 million alone into the budget for 6 bonuses for first responders and hard- 7 to-find positions such as building 8 inspectors where it takes a lot of 9 time to train them with a very 10 expensive cost. And then they end up working for us for a few months and go get paid double out in the county. How do we -- how do we face that challenge? How do we keep people here? Is it by extending benefits? For instance, you know, 30 years lifetime medical? I don't know. I'm fishing for answers, if you get what I'm saying. We need to fix. If we can't even keep up with the employees we're losing on a daily basis for whatever reason, retirement, leaving to go to another job, how are we supposed to fill these 5,700 positions? It makes a lot more sense now when you look at the number of people who filled out applications, which was something around 10,000 or so. No, it was -- I forget what the number was. But it was -- it was a lot more than the actual number we needed. It was extremely higher. But I just -- how do we keep up with this? Because this is going to be a problem.
So I can start with just a few, like, data points, I think would be helpful to set -- level set the tone. And I know that the CIO probably has a few comments for this. So just generally, the average years of service for city employees is 13 years of service. So we're doing okay as far as retention. And we are seeing that when we're looking at the change from FY23 to FY25, voluntary turnover is declining. I did send over some of the separations data in advance. And so we're seeing that voluntary turnover is going down, which is a positive thing for us. But I think it's a -- there's a couple of different things. I think benefits certainly, right? So the expansion of parental leave is certainly something that is going to return.
That would seem to me to be something that's kind of an easy fix.
No, absolutely. It's an easy fix, but it is huge. It has huge impact, right? And so, the deputy at the Office of Human Resources, Marsha Greene-Jones is constantly looking at the landscape of city benefits to figure out if there are opportunities for us to expand particular benefits like parental leave and other things in order to gain retention. We're also looking at -- we have programs like Credential Based Bonuses, Tuition Reimbursement, and so there's a variety of programs. I don't think it's a one size fit all, right? For retention, I think we need to sort of attack that issue from various angles.
Yeah, I've gotten -- I ask about it. You know what I mean? So I talk to the police officers when I see them and I talk to others. And to be honest, there's no, especially for police officers, once they get their 25, it's not really beneficial for them to stay here, which is kind of harsh. I mean, their pensions are capped at, I think 65 percent for the police, just -- and that's just the one I know off the top of my head. So why would somebody stay once they hit their time and they can't get anymore? Again, you know, maybe looking at that and also looking at our benefits and the longevity of our benefits, it is something that maybe we need to start looking to try to make it more attractive to stay here in the city. The fact of the matter is, the city is fairly a good job. You know, people -- you can -- you can survive, you can raise a family a lot of times on the city wage. But, you know, people do these jobs for a long period of time and they get good at it. And then other people want them. And so they leave and they go get more money. We just need to figure out how do we attract employees? Like I said, when I was a kid, I remember a city job was it. You know, you got a city job, you were set for life. You know what I mean? I always give the example of my father was a port authority cop, and my uncle was a sanitation worker, and their house always had more than our house had because he got all this overtime, you know, which I don't believe somebody should have to work overtime in order to make a pay that should be optional if he wants something extra. But for me, it's about how do we retain the employees that we have in order so that we can actually catch up on the employees we need. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: And I think we have been - this is a question that has been at the forefront of all of the work that's been done across the administration. I know that you-all are very much aware that the home initiative also includes incentivizing or creating affordable housing for very specifically members of our workforce. There are a lot of different kind of innovative things that we're trying to work through to get to a place where --
I get -- I'm sorry to cut you off, but I get that. But since you mentioned it, that program's really not doing like we thought it was going to do either. From what I understand, talking to employees again, is that they actually can't afford the houses. These are supposed to be work for houses for our employees. Again, we mandate that our employees should live in the city, but we don't pay them enough to live in the city. And then we're trying to start a program to help them to live in this city, and they can't afford the program that we started. You know, for me it's different. I was in the administration. So I was in the Street Administration. I've seen a lot of things go on before I left there. I seen him do a lot of things. I learned that government does not need to make a profit. We get subsidized on these housing things. Remember when John Street was building houses, Council President? A few people were here. Some of those houses cost us upwards of $260,000 to build. You know what we sold them for? 65,000. People could think because we don't have to make a profit. Subsidized. Most of it wasn't actual city money. It was federal and state money. My thing is, we -- why you brought it up and we need to get that program -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Yes.
-- on steroids as the Mayor says because I believe that it can be a good thing. We just have to make it affordable for our employees. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Oh, absolutely.
We know what we're paying them, so why can't we make it so that they can afford it on their pay? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Right. And I believe we are aligned there, right? And so the experience that I've had working in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for some odd years was just 12 that. 13 You'll find that retaining 14 employees in the prison system in 15 particular is a prickly and difficult 16 challenge to crack -- not to crack, 17 right? What we found was housing was 18 an incentive, right? Where we had -- 19 where we built correctional 20 institutions and provided staff housing, that was a very significant incentive where we provided other supports, where we got out into the community and understood what were the things that were specifically important to the folks who were moving to those areas was the work that improved our retention and recruitment in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. That's exactly the work that's being done here. I will tell you a lot of the work around return to learning, the work around CCME upskilling, creating different pathways so that, yes, you get into the city's government and you decide I want to pivot to a different path, making that available, making it less difficult, creating more conversation around exactly what you just said. The importance and the pride in working in the public sector, right? There -- we have created within CCME an entire class program that's built around understanding the importance and the value of civic engagement and public service. And so all of those things are pieces to the issue that you've raised. How do we attack retention? I think all of these things and all of the work that's being done is geared towards that.
Thank you very much. I will hope that -- and we want to be partners in this, because we are on the front line right now, right? Local government is really the last option of resort for a lot of people. And as we see people being laid off on a federal level, and I have people in my neighborhood who have been laid off and they're looking to us. And this is just a prime opportunity to really go hard and recruit as many people as possible to fill these positions as a result of the policies that are coming down from Washington, D.C. having an impact on our community, too. So we would like to be partners in that and really address it with a sense of urgency, right? Because even as we build and preserve 30,000 units, if people don't have good paying jobs, right, then we'll just have 30,000 --
-- preserved vacant units that people won't have the opportunity to move in. And so we want to be partners from that aspect. And anything that we can do to address this with a sense of urgency, I'm sure members of council -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Absolutely.
-- will join you in your efforts. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jeffrey J. Young. Oh, it was you?
It was Jamie Gauthier. See what happens when you-all leave? It was Jamie Gauthier, then Councilmember Jeffrey J. Young, and then we'll officially go into -- one second. Councilman Lozada, do you want to wrap up this first round before we go into the second round?
Okay. All right. Just before we go into the second round, if you would like to ask a question, ma'am. Councilman Jamie Gauthier.
Thank you, Councilman President. I have questions for the tax review board. Good morning. The biggest issues my constituents have with property appeals are unclear timelines and communication. When folks submit their appeals, they typically do not receive confirmation that it was received unless it's submitted through our office. They also do not know who their reviewer is until they receive the decision. What steps can the review board take to improve communication and give people updates at every step of the appeal process? And what can the review board do to improve transparency for how long the process will take? The five-year plan reads that it takes five to six months, but most cases really take up to a year.
Good morning. My name is Melissa Andre. I am the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Tax Review Board. And unfortunately, I believe you're -- some of these questions are for the board of revision of taxes which deals with the assessment of the appeals. The tax review board takes care of -- or can help petitioners deal with the interest in the penalties that have accrued. So two different boards, but I think the questions that you asked were more for the board of revision of taxes. However, the tax review board has a very -- we hold very fast to a three to six months for the initial appeal. So if you come into our office and you file a hearing, it takes approximately three to six months. We do have a backlog in one category, which is license and inspections for the bills for those taxes. But that is being controlled. So generally we are at a three to six-month window for a petition and for a hearing.
Thank you. I apologize. I'll just -- I'll move on to a different set of questions so I don't use all my time. But thank you for coming up here.
I have a question for OIT. I know that in 2020 the city released a digital equity plan with the goal of getting everybody online. Is that -- we are in a new administration. But I wanted to ask, is that still a goal of this administration? And if so, where are we with that?
Thank you. So, yes, this is a goal continuously through the Verizon Franchise Agreement. We are placing free Wi-Fi broadband services in all 183 locations. Right now we have 50 of those locations lit up. But what is really exciting is that we just launched the new Wi-Fi finder. So right now you can go online and identify what locations where you can find free Wi-Fi here within the city, which includes the recreation centers as well as the libraries. And as each location gets lit up, it gets added in the -- in the finder so constituents can use that today.
And are we tracking how many people are connected through these efforts and which areas of the city still need the most work?
Yes, I'm glad you answered -- asked that question. What we want to do is find a way to have more lasting transformative relationships with constituents. So we have hired our -- we are bringing in-house our digital navigators where they'll start to work with individuals in -- as far as distributing devices, but providing them digital skills training, then identifying, are we being impactful in their lives, right? So I want us to really develop a relationship with the constituents and make sure that they get the digital training as well. So, because when you think of the three tiers, Wi-Fi is just one layer. Then you need the device, right, to get on. Then you need the skills that you need in order to actually take full advantage. And then we could even take it even further where you think of how is it that an individual could qualify for some jobs here in OIT, right? By us starting and building on those blocks, we would then be able to start training individuals to qualify for the positions. But with the vision that I have is really, imagine that every single rec center in the city of Philadelphia, and instead of a young girl or a young boy getting a football in their hand, you give them a computer. A computer is a job just as well, right? Esports. And there's so many other things that we could be teaching our youth.
Thank you so much. It would be great if at some point when you all are ready, if you could just send us a progress report on where we are with that. I think this is a very important goal for the district, my district and for the city as a whole.
Just a point of information regarding Esports to the gentleman, Councilmember Thomas.
Thank you, Council President. You read my mind. I -- we have been pushing for Esports in a lot of different spaces and places, especially in our rec centers and our libraries. Wasn't going to ask this, but you brought it up. I mean, are we talking about the initiative you have where you're talking about distributing 50 computers in each council district?
So -- and let me talk to you a little bit about why that came about. We were contracted with a company called PCs for People. And PCs for People, they do the refurbishing of the computers, but then they charge the constituents for the computers anywhere from 50 to 175. I didn't think it was fair. I feel like we should be giving the computers away for free. So now what we -- we've changed the program around a little bit and what we're doing is going in each council district distributing the computers. But we also have an extra effort in order to repurpose the computer labs within the rec centers. Then we are creating a program for digital skills training right there in the rec centers. And Esports is one of them. As a matter of fact, I have an appointment with a school somewhere in Delaware, and they have a very elaborate Esports center and we're going to take a trip there to see how they built theirs out and get some more information for ours.
So just to continue, how much like that initiative -- that's going to cost us about $1.6 million? Is that accurate?
No, I don't have a funding source for that exactly. So what I've been doing is taking the funding that we currently have in digital equity and figuring out a way. But there's also -- we get grants all the time. There's always different ways to do it. But the digital skills training specifically will be -- we'll start off with -- we are hiring six new individuals who will do the digital skills training just to start out for FY26 in the rec centers. And then we will start a volunteering program as well for individuals like myself who would like to go in and do some training as well.
So, Council President, I'm just going to ask that we have a coordinated effort with our office throughout the course of this initiative, specifically around gaming. It seems like we're meshing digital access with gaming, which are two totally different things. And if we were really talking about promoting and pushing gaming, and if you talk to the people in the gaming industry, they'll tell you they'll rather be in the libraries than the rec center. So if we can have more of a coordinated effort moving forward so we can figure out, because some of the places that you're talking about going to in Delaware, we have a whole task force that produced a report that has all of these recommendations for the city of Philadelphia specifically around gaming. And maybe we could share that and bring some of these people together so we can be able to move in a way that's a little coordinated.
Thank you. Thank you, Council President. Sorry about that.
And I just want to say in terms of just bridging the digital divide and as we address the issue of AI, because that's also a space that I expect that we'll be in, in the future as well, when our chair of technology has been working on this issue. And also as a Dad, I just want to say, right, and I blame Member Thomas in the event that it goes down this way with my little ones, right? As a dad, I just want to say that we are mindful when we are introducing them to technology, just making sure also we're protecting them.
You don't know who's on the other side of their group chat when they're inside the rec centers and they go on like Roblox or they go on Fortnite. And once they go into a chat room, we don't know who's over there talking to our young people. So making sure that education component is a part of it. And then also the mental health component that comes along with screen time. I recognize that and working with other parents, and I've been to other workshops that really talk about, I guess I call it screen addiction for children.
Right? And once you take their screen away from them, have an impact on their behavior because they want to still be involved in playing again, rather it's Roblox, Fortnite, and there's a thousand other games that are out there. And then also just making sure that they aren't spending their parents' dollars and cents on their credit cards on -- so those are just some of the things that as we expand and go into this space, I say it jokingly, but in my -- in my other life as a dad, I've been to workshops really around protecting my sons from, and the other students at the school they attend from when they go on these websites, particularly making sure when they go in them chat rooms, who are you talking to on the other side of room? And if you have rec centers where the ratio might be 40 kids to like two recs -- two recs leaders, they aren't monitoring everybody who's on the computers. They're kind of, like, free at place. So I think the education component goes a long way to it, but we are here to be partners with that under the leadership of Councilman Rue Landau and Councilmember Thomas. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jeffrey J. Young?
Thank you, Mr. President. You know, I just have, you know, just -- you know, in support of, you know, the e-gaming industry and the -- and the billions of dollars that can come from that, you know. And hearing from the experts who say they want to be in libraries which is why I am very supportive of increasing the capacity, increasing the square footage of our libraries in order to have these types of programs. Because again, our libraries are not equipped for 21st century ideas. And so I just want to put that out there on the record. And first question I have is for -- I guess it would be for HR. One thing that I do notice and that I see is that whenever I'm at a job fair and the city is there, the city's line is the longest line by far compared to any other prospective employer that's there. So it looks like to me that there is a lot of interest in still working for the city. And with -- but this interest doesn't seem to turn over into the actual job. So can you talk to us about what you are seeing? Like, is it only a specific type of job that people are applying to that have all this interest versus the level of vacancies that we see?
Sure. So there is definitely a lot of interest. When we're at -- so 60 percent of our recruitment events are community events where you're seeing us boots on the ground with or without the hiring bus. And so we're engaging over 4,000 prospective applicants, 71 percent of whom are residents. And so that spans across various career pathways. And so there are very particular jobs. So jobs that are open on an open competitive basis are the jobs that we are in when we're doing community recruitment that we're getting our residents into. So that includes custodial worker, a laborer, management trainee, some of our entry- level engineering positions. And so we do have a breakdown of what those applicants look like across all of those industries that I can follow-up and provide. But it is not in any particular job industry. When we are sourcing for candidates, it is really across all of these critical positions that we're looking for to recruit open competitively in.
Thank you. And so when the city -- years ago, the city had a need the clean vacant lots, so they created the CLIP program, right? The Community Life Improvement Program, which is based out of the managing director's office. And from my understanding, these members -- these workers are not civil service employees. But -- and I believe they weren't civil service employees and They were not civil service employees because that need was so critical, and the speed of getting those folks hired was critical. We're looking at a lack of -- a lot of my rec centers don't have staff, right? There's no staff there for events, for programming. And the community members, you know, you have to have at least two staffers there at a rec center. And community members cannot have events there with the lack of staffing. And so, because I feel like this is a dire issue, a dire need, is it possible to create a similar program to CLIP for our rec centers where we have, you know, these staffers that are under the Managing Director's office, but work directly in these rec centers to fill this critical community need?
Just a point of information. Member Young, we do have a program and -- we do have a program that will allow you a pathway to -- you won't be official RS1 rec leader, but you will be able to work under Parks & Rec. And remember this program under the cap of level I, because the barrier in our neighbors that you have people who volunteer day in and day out. They know the kids in the neighborhood, they work at the rec centers, and then they get the seasonal jobs, right?
But the issue is they don't have degrees. And because they don't have a degree, I guess, to be the RS1, right? And they also have to take the test. But there is a program, could you elaborate on, that will allow you a pathway into the system without going through civil service?
Yes, absolutely. So I'm going to ask Janine LaBletta, deputy for hiring services to come up to talk about that particular pathway and the work that we're doing with Parks & Recreation in particular. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: And while Janine is making her way up here, I would also like to say that it is -- it's this collaboration and the work that makes CCME so vital, right? It's closing that gap between the number of applicants that we have and the skills that they have to fill the jobs that are available. Sorry.
Hi, good morning. Janine LaBletta, deputy for hiring services. Thank you for having us. So we do have two titles in civil service that don't require degrees: Assistant recreation leader and recreation outreach worker. So we do post those and recruit in the community to fill those. And then to the Council President's point, that would be the role called recreation specialty instructor, which is filled directly through the Parks & Recreation Department. And we do direct candidates in the field or if they call our customer service, how to reach the Parks Department website, and they can apply directly for those roles.
And with those roles, and there seems -- there seems to be a disconnect from community members, right, who are at rec centers all the time, right? In programming, they're in friends of groups and actually getting hired by the rec department. And so I'm just trying to -- how can we bridge that gap? I'm thinking of three rec centers off the top where there are folks who are there all the time who would love to be getting paid for what they're doing, but they're there for the love of the community. So how can we bridge that gap if we have these programs, right, and they're -- and they're not civil service, right? Because folks -- everyone can't pass the civil service test for whatever reason. It just is what it is. But how do we bridge that gap between the community members who want to serve and getting hired by the department of rec in some capacity at that rec center to expand our capacity there?
Yes. So Parks & Recreation is having a job fair coming up. Hopefully all of the councilmembers have that at The Dell.
At -- yeah, we have that. That's fine. But again, these are -- I'm talking about how can we create a position -- positions, right? We have -- these fairs are there. A lot of those folks, you know, don't have degrees, so they're not going to be able to qualify for rec leaders as they created the assistant rec leader program. Like, how do we, again, bridge that gap? We got the seasonal program, that's seasonal, right? How can we, again, bridge that gap between -- we have folks who are there everyday at the rec center who are just there on a voluntary basis. What can we do to get them hired by the city in some type of role at the rec center. If they can pass, you know, all the child clearances, things like that, how can we get them to be in -- to be employees to actually carry out their duties that they're already volunteering to do?
If they have high school and I think it's three seasons, but I can have us send you that, they can qualify for permanent civil service roles.
Again, civil service. We're saying -- I'm not saying civil service, right? Because again, folks are not able to get over civil service for whatever reason. When I mentioned the example of CLIP in the Managing Director's Office, that's not civil service, but those folks work for the city full time, right? And they're out here doing these jobs. So that's the type of model that I'm looking for our department of recreation. A full-time position, not necessarily just something that's seasonal. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So I appreciate the question and we are very happy to partner with you on that because we've already had some preliminary conversation about just what your -- the model -- expanding the model that you're mentioning, creating where we can civil service roles, but also exempt roles to bridge the gap. I know CCME, I've said it a lot. It's not the panacea for all things, but it will allow us to create spaces to provide upskilling, training, qualifying experiential opportunities, to do exactly what you're suggesting here, which is bridge the gap between those who have either a penchant or have demonstrated the ability to do some work or the aptitude to do the work and get us from point A to point B.
The Chair recognizes the Vice Chair of Parks & Recreation, Councilmember Bass.
I -- you know, I -- what comes to mind from Jeffrey -- Councilman Young's questioning is Philly Future Track, which is a way that was used -CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Uh-huh. Exactly.
-- you know, to find a faster path to employment in the streets department and in similar departments. So something like that, if we did it for that particular agency, I think we can recreate it and maybe just -- or even expand future track so that it's not just the streets department, but that it could be for Parks & Rec and some other departments.
So where -- oh, sorry. So where there's a bridge, I hear you. Where there's a bridge and possibly an exempt opportunity that then leads to civil service in the future. Agreed. We should have that conversation.
Thank you very much. We are in the second round. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Brooks.
Thank you, Council President. I'm going to go right to my questions. One is, how many OIT staff are dedicated to maintaining the PVSSP camera network? And what percentage of OIT's annual personal -- personnel budget is consumed by the PVSSP maintenance? And my other question is, what is the estimated annual savings for a family enrolled in PHLConnectED and how does this free up income for other essentials like food or rent? Right.
Could you repeat the question? The first question, Councilwoman, was how many staff members are designated?
Okay. I'll have to get back to you on the exact number of -- and we will get a response back to the Chair for the number of staffs specifically.
And then part 2 was the OITs annual personnel budget. How much is that consumed by the maintenance of that program?
Just in case. I just want you to have the full question if you have to get back to us. Okay.
Okay. Yeah. So we'll get back to you about the number of how much specifically for the maintenance.
Okay. And then the other question was the angle savings for PHLConnectED.
I'll have to -- I don't want to just blurb out random numbers, so I'll get back to you about that as well.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilman Quetcy Lozada. Then we have Councilmember Gilmore-Richardson and Councilmember O'Rourke.
I just want to follow-up on a question that Councilmember Young was just referring to. If I'm not mistaken, I remember, I believe it was the Mayor that mentioned that HR would look at all of the jobs that were -- that we had that were open and available in the city and determine which ones of them had to be civil service, which one -- which ones could be exempt, which one didn't need degrees. Can you tell me if that assessment has been done and how successful it was and what -- if it wasn't, what were some of the challenges? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Sure. I'm happy to turn over to Candi Jones. But -- so what you're referring to is the executive order 0324. And it really was our economic opportunity executive order by which we were going to assess the entire universe of positions across the city, but specifically exempt roles for other pathways to qualification. And so that work continues. As you can imagine, there are a lot of exempt titles and exempt titles continue to be created. And that work is in full steam. A lot of adjustments have been made, and Candi will speak to that, where we have changed the qualifications to include pathways other than a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
We do that to those positions that are civil service. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: We're doing it for all positions.
And can you tell me how many thus far have been filled and how many are still vacant?
So to answer the first question, about 63 percent of the civil service job descriptions do not require a four-year degree. Those jobs, that 63 percent is occupied by about 19,000 employees. And so about two thirds of the workforce are in jobs that don't require four-year degree. The other one-third are your, like, medical classes, engineering, financial accounting, where the degree may be industry standard. We've changed -- in 2024, we changed -- we identified 15 civil 9 service positions where we could 10 include an alternate path, and so 11 where there were an alternate 12 education requirement other than that 13 bachelor's degree. We've had some 14 significant success stories there. 15 For example, the land administrator class, which is an IT title. We actually were able to add eight more employees to qualify for that by removing that degree requirement. For exempt titles, there are approximately 1,200 job titles for exempt roles. And then in 2024, about 10 percent of those job descriptions were reviewed and then alternate pathways identified. And so I can give you the -- we have the comprehensive list in the report on which job titles that we changed for civil service and exempts. We can provide that separately. But we have made significant progress in looking at those titles, identifying alternate pathways to employment other than the bachelor's degree requirement.
Can we as councilmembers receive a list of what some of those available positions are so that when we are out in the community and folks are asking us, you know, I want to come into the city's workforce, what is available? Some folks don't have access to phila.gov. Or sometimes, you know, there's a true digital divide in the city of Philadelphia. So is there somewhere where we can say, reach out to the office, here's a paper?
I know I used to get a paper copy back in the day, so I don't know.
We can. Absolutely. We can. We're happy to provide that information. Our recruitment team is also happy to partner because we're -- we've realized that hosting a set of information sessions is helpful for community members to talk about these opportunities that are available where bachelor's degrees are not required. And so we can provide you with a comprehensive list, but we'd be happy to do some more targeted outreach and provide that information one-on-one to community members as well.
And then I have a question around procurement. Do I have time still? I'm taking advantage that he's talking. At one of the Economic Opportunity Review committee's hearings, we heard concerns that vendors were not notified when they win or lose a bid. The guest speaker stated that the lack of communication leads to wasted time and resources for businesses, particularly small and minority owned vendors who rely on timely feedback to improve their bids and plan accordingly. Implementation -- or implementing a formal notification system could enhance transparency and efficiency in the procurement process. Are you guys aware of this? And what steps is your department taking to implement a solution that ensures vendors receive timely notification? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So we are very much aware of it and we have created templates for standard forms to be sent from our departmental procurement teams to vendors for just circumstances like what you've described and others, and have required that they be distributed within a certain timeframe.
Thank you. Katherine Gilmore-Richardson, then Councilmember Nicholas O'Rourke, Rue Landau down to Councilman Jamie Gauthier. But I just want to say one thing just in terms of sense of urgency. In this budget, we're spending $300 million more for FY26 than we spent for FY25. And so hopefully as part of your plan to hire folks and recruit folks, if we do maybe like a massive recruitment campaign like Power 99, WDAS. When you turn on the TV, the city of Philadelphia is hiring. We got, like, a portal, right? DC has something called like DC1, where you type in, you go to this portal and it's like pretty much everything that the city has to offer. And so again, we are addressing the issue of poverty by making sure that these vacancies we have, we're putting people to work. That might just be something to take into consideration in terms of your budget request, or if we are doing it, maybe I missed it in the process.
We do. So OHR has a significant communications budget for this current year and hopefully for the upcoming year. And so our Philly fully campaign, which resulted in our 40 percent of our increase in applications, so we're doing just that, right? So commercials, bus shelters, digital media. So it's having a significant impact. But also to your point, so we established two different websites over the past year. So one is work.philly.gov, which is that centralized hub, right, where you can see everything that we're recruiting for and currently have open. But then we also have employee.philly.gov, which is our external facing Intranet. And so anyone, current city employees and city residents interested in working for the city has access to that Intranet site. So it talks about all of the benefits of working for the city, our comprehensive benefits packages, all of sort of kind of what that experience looks like for an employee. And so both of those websites were also launched under our communications campaign. It's certainly --
So when's the last time you've been on -- it's not the Breakfast Club. What's -- Mikey Dread? We, CAO DUCHAUSSEE: We are -- we are --
I'm going to keep -- I'm going to keep -- CAO DUCHAUSSEE: -- diligently working on it
-- because we got to meet people where they at, right? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Absolutely.
So we get you a Frankie Darcell, Patty Jackson. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So we've been -- we are working very, very diligently in creating partnerships with all the media, WURD. If this face needs to be on media, yes.
Look, we're partners in this, and so we just thinking different ways to get the word out to people. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Right.
No, absolutely. We have this -- so this year I did engage with Patty Jackson. We were on the show.
And so we do have those relationships and we'll continue those partnerships. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Absolutely.
Yeah. We get on the radio like, oh, we hiring as a city. Here's the process to how you go about doing it. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: We hear you.
I just call it meeting people where they at. And again, we want to be partners in this. Majority Leader -- Member Thomas.
Just in the energy of the Council President, he just inspired me. Quick question. Have we ever thought about partnering with content creators? Right? That's a whole new thing out there. So have we ever thought about partnering with content creators to be able -- and just same energy as Councilmember Young. Just to be a little more innovative in making sure that we're meeting people where they are? Sorry, Council President. Sorry, Majority Leader Richardson. Just wondering if that's something that might be in the works.
Like if Waldo was going to say, city of Philadelphia is hiring then, you know, we probably, like, the vacancies would be done tomorrow.
So we -- I'm sorry. Yes. So a part of our communications campaign is digital media strategies, right, how to leverage the current technology. And so this current year, we're looking to kind of lean into our Instagram presence more because I think that that's a space for opportunity that we haven't. So to agree with you, we do have to meet the people where they are. And I think a lot of our recruitment efforts needs to be also on Instagram and on social media pages. Agreed.
You're welcome. Majority Leader Gilmore-Richardson, then Member O'Rourke.
Great. Thank you, Council President. And I neglected to say this earlier. We also want to thank our OIT commissioner, Melissa Scott. President, you mentioned the new Land Bank website, and I was actually on there this morning. And the mobile interface is even great. So we just want to thank you and your team for your work and for the excellent meeting that we had to talk about some of the work even in the recreation centers. So I just wanted to put that on the record. I didn't see you sitting up there and I neglected to say it, so thank you very, very much. I wanted to go back to something that we have been working on since last year. My colleague, Councilmember Harrity, sort of, alluded to this regarding the advantages of working for the city. And so I wanted to thank Vanessa Garrett Harley for the meeting that we had. And we continue to work through the process regarding the childcare study. You know, that was something that was important to me last year. And also paid parental leave which is something that we had worked through in the last budget process, and I intend to work through again this budget process. I just want to put that on the record. Because that was something that I thought we achieved that we did not achieve that I wasn't told until the last minute. So I'm just putting that on the record. But I wanted to go to the program when I initially asked about the childcare support. In doing the study, I was told that initially those dollars were transitioned to set up the program, Wellthy. And I will tell you, I think it's a wonderful program. I think it's a great program to ensure that our employees who need, you know, last minute support and help are able to get that during their journey. And it's not just for young people, it's, you know, for, you know, for their caregiver as well. So I wanted to ask how many city employees have taken advantage of the program thus far?
So for a number of signups for participation, we have 678. For cumulative days requested, 719. And then for the days used of that is 603. The average number of backup days that are being used by employees that are enrolled is about five days.
And then we have some additional data that I can send separately about the types of employees that are enrolled. The age of the dependents and things like that, we can share.
And they can use up to eight days, right?
But you can't carry over, but you can use up to eight days per year.
Okay. And then you could also self-identify a provider and then get reimbursed, right?
Okay. And I just found out about this yesterday, so I got to put this on the record. I just found out -- I think you know where I'm going. But the amended W-2s for those employees, I don't think anyone knew that when they signed up for the program, that the amount that the city subsidizes for them to receive the care outside of the co-pay is now added to their wages as a part of their wages, which may change the tax bracket for some of these employees. So I don't think people knew that when they signed up. And I don't know that you-all necessarily knew that. Maybe that's coming from the program. But I need to understand that because people signed up for the program thinking once they pay the co-pay, that that would be it. That because of the benefit it would be subsidized. But now folks are receiving -- I mean, it's almost April 15th, the tax deadline. They're just receiving amended W-2s, W-2Cs from the city regarding an increase in their wages and they didn't know anything about it when they signed up for the program. So I think that because the city probably didn't know when that occurred, that the city should not hold those employees. The 678 employees that you mentioned, those folks should not be held accountable for that this year. Because they signed up for the program under the pretense that once they pay the co-pay, that that was it. Now, let's -- I'll give you an example. Say if they use, you know, the average five days, and that was $2,000, you know, worth of subsidy that the city provided for that period, now that $2,000, say if they made 50,000, now it says they made 52,000. But they weren't aware of that when they signed up for the program. I get it moving forward, because you can tell them that, but I don't think that that's fair, and I think that that should be rectified for those employees.
I'd like to ask Marsha Greene-Jones, the deputy over benefits to come up to offer comment on the question.
And I just -- I literally -- this was not in my questions. I literally just found out about this yesterday. And I want to put on the record that I think it's a great -- like, I really think it's a great program, and I applaud the city for standing it up. But I just think that for this year, you can't hold those employees accountable because when they signed up for the program, they weren't told that those charges that the city would be covering for them would be added to their actual wage amount where it makes it seem as if they made more money than they did, you know.
Marsha Greene-Jones, deputy director of human resources responsible for health and welfare. Thank you very much for your question today. One of the things that the city did realize later on in the process is that because this was considered to be income, it had to be taxable income. We made a concerted effort upon us realizing this piece to actually get out W-2s, corrected W-2s to employees no later than February 19th.
And we also sent out additional communications to every single employee who was enrolled in a program, notify the -- notifying them of the fact, number one, that this was taxable income, and number two, that they would receive a corrected W2 no 24 later than February 19th.
Right. No, and I understand that. Meaning when they signed up for the program, were the 678 employees made aware that this would be taxable income? Meaning they thought, I believe they were supposed to pay the co-pay, the $15 or $20, whatever it is, and then that was it. You understand what I'm saying? Because it was a benefit. I don't believe that anyone knew when they initially utilized this program that it would be added as actual income.
I completely understand your question. The issue is, more importantly, is the fact that it was income provided by the city, and we are the first city in the United States. I don't know that anyone realizes that, in the United States to actually offer this benefit, so we're very proud of it. And one of the things that we are committed to is continuing to communicate more effectively with employees as we proceed with the program.
No, I agree. I think it's a great program. I want to underscore that. But is there a way to calculate how much that is for the city to cover that this year, and then next year moving forward or as of now moving forward, just when people use the benefit, when city employees use the benefit, to say this is to be charged as a part of your actual income. I'm not disagreeing with you. I think it's a wonderful program. I really, really do. And I think it was an important benefit, you know, as people were coming back to work full- time as well. But I don't think they knew in advance that this would be a part of their income. And for some people who don't have the benefit of making certain salaries, it changes their tax bracket. And so, you know, we talked -- I heard one of my colleagues, Councilman Rue Landau talk earlier about, you know, like, pay equity and how some employees were making 37,000, I think you said, in one department and others were making 140. And so for the folks making 140, it doesn't matter to them. But for someone who may be right on the cusp of, you know, their taxable income going from one percentage to the next, it does matter.
Sorry. I think we can work with finance on that piece to understand the total impact to employees for this past year and then make some considerations and decisions based on that. I don't have the total number, but I completely understand the impact. And I agree with you that understanding that it is part of income may change the utilization for some employees.
Right. And just to see how much it is, how many people, you know, were impacted in total, and then what we can do as a city to support those workers who utilize the benefit unknowingly that this would be added to their taxable income. That's all I'm saying. Then going forward, at least they know.
And we can follow-up once we have that information, I can share that with you as well.
Okay. I'll submit the balance of my questions because I have a lot more, but I'll submit them for the record.
Okay. Thank you very much. And thank you for making us number one again. Okay.
Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you for joining us. Commissioner Hovey?
Yes, sir. I want to acknowledge days in and you already happen to sit before the council. Courageous man. I thank you for your -- for your service already. I did want to say that it's important for both council and the public to know the vital role that administrative departments like procurement play in delivering public services and maintaining public goods. But the question I had has to do a little bit with prison procurement. Do you -- you may not necessarily know yet. Is the person who deals with prison procurement here today? They might better come and deal with this question.
We could certainly get you an answer if it's not something that my team --
No 6 worries. No worries. Could you provide us with a brief overview of how your team works with other departments to evaluate new and existing vendors and contracts?
Can you -- could you provide us with a brief overview of how your team works with other departments to evaluate new and existing vendors and contracts?
Okay. So I'm going to let my deputy talk a little bit about the existing process, and then I want to talk just very briefly about some of the initiatives that I have in mind.
LaShawnda Tompkins, Deputy Commissioner. Can you ask the question one more time?
Yes. Could you provide just a brief overview of how your team works with other departments to evaluate new and existing vendors and contracts?
New and existing vendors. Okay. So when we work with the departments on the contracts, we meet with them so we can understand what their needs are and what that assessment is. When we're looking at MWDSBE participation, we direct them to look at OYO's registry, do a -- just cascade a registry to see what vendors there are that can help with the needs that you -- that you are looking for. Also, when we are posting the bids and PHL contracts, they're going to post a bid and then it's going to be visible to all of the vendors that are certified with the city. So that's how they'll be able to pull in the vendors that provide the services that they're looking for. And if they have any businesses that need to get certified with the city, we put them in contact with our vendor engagement unit. If they're a local business entity, we educate them about the local business entity certification and kind of go through all the different things that they should be proactively doing before looking to participate with the City of Philadelphia.
Thank you, Deputy Commissioner. I'm going to ask the balance of my question because I just heard the bail. I'm going to get this out and then please respond if you can. I'd like to discuss this one contract that actually concerns me in particular for a moment. YesCare. YesCare previously known as Corizon has provided healthcare at the Philadelphia Department of Prisons for years. Across the country though, they have been sued more than a thousand times over claims of substandard care. Their current iteration appears to only have been created to allow them to pay pennies on the dollar for many of these claims. Locally, we're still seeing more deaths in our jails than in New York City, yet the size of this contract has increased by $140 million since 2022. While we are not here to discuss one contract, it is good reminder of the responsibility that we have to ensure that we are doing our best by our city. My question is, what range of options are available to the city when a contractor is not meeting their obligations?
So contracts could be terminated for cause or default. I mean for cause or at -- for convenience. Most contracts are written that way. And generally if you're going to cancel a contract, I've actually never engaged in a -- in a cancellation for cause. And that's just because of the hurdles that arise legally and the costs associated. But you always do have the ability to cancel for convenience. But that does mean that you have to go through the sourcing and be ready for the next -- the next step to replace what's going away. And one of the things that sort of answers the first part of your question and this one, too, is kind of how we'll be handling procurements in the future. And one of the things that I'm looking forward to to do here is really push the organization to a more strategic sourcing direction where we work very collaboratively with our stakeholders, not just in a particular area, but across sort of associated needs or where there's, you know, sort of equivalent needs across departments to leverage the community of vendors to the maximum ability and to sort of front load contracts and get them in place before needed whenever possible. But also to look at -- strategic sourcing also looks at all of these questions up front in terms of what are the performance standards, what are the risks associated with this contract that could come into play? And then you sort of measure that during the process. And that measurement is typically done at the departmental level by the stakeholders who are part of a scoring team. So actually when I came here, I was impressed the city does do some strategic sourcing. They have contracts in place across some sectors, but that's something that we truly want to maximize. That's sort of the state of the art in procurement. People are usually put to sleep by procurement content, but that's sort of state of the art for procurement in the private and the public sector.
For whatever it's worth, some evaluation about this particular contract, like I said, I'm not here to talk about just one, but this is very troubling to me.
That the folks who we are incarcerating in our city are getting substandard care by a widely known bad -- may be bad actor is a bad word, but certainly offering substandard care. And so if there's some way to be able to shift on that and do whatever we can do to find somebody else that might be in the best benefit of us as a city to make sure that we are treating people correctly, even our citizens who are behind the wall. I did have other questions I'll submit for -- to be sent in. But I did have some questions around hard numbers around attrition. If you could provide the city's attrition rate for the past three years, and if you've seen any significant spikes in departures following the return to office policy. If you could submit that, I won't have to talk -- I don't want to take time.
Three years. I'm sorry. I didn't hear the -- attrition for over the last three years?
Yes. Attrition rates for the past three years and if there were any significant spikes in departures after the return to office policy went into place.
Thank you, Mr. President and thank you all for your responses. CAO DUCHAUSSEE: We certainly can provide you that information, Councilmember O'Rourke. Thank you for the questions. I will also say that there is a mechanism within the procurement process for how we review performance of our contracted partners. Happy to have a more specific conversation with not only you, but of course the impacted department to make sure that we are understanding what that impact and how that vendor has been performing relative to the concerns that you've raised.
Thank you. So as we wrap up this round before we go out to lunch, I'm going off the queue. Councilman Rue Landau, then Jamie Gauthier, Young, and we will wrap up with the gentleman Harrity. That's the line.
And I just want to just also say just because we are on the timeframe for your break, that we want to be direct and a direct response, please.
I have a few HR questions, then some OIT questions. I've got a couple procurement questions. I'll just put on the record. I'll start with HR. I think you have all done a great job to start modernizing our hiring process. I worked for the city starting in 2008 and it was very different than it is now. There seems to be two different websites, work at philly or, and -- work at Philly and jobs. And I think it's really important that we streamline how people are thinking about what they want to do and how they get there. So most people want a job and when you Google that, it's going to bring you to the job site, which looks much more archaic than your work site. I love how your work site is connected into categories. If you want to work in public safety or public health, when you get to the job site, you might know that you want a city job. You might know that you want an entry level job at the law department because you might want to be a paralegal, but you don't know what to call it. Would love to hear your comments on how to fix that and how to interconnect both of these. I also want to put out two more questions while we're there. If there's any obstacles in the civil service system right now that is hampering your efforts to hire, like, how long the lists last when you do create a list to moving on to the next job. And three, I wanted to know about your successes with Fair Chance Hiring. I also have a couple of IT questions, but can we just get quick answers on that first?
Thank you, Councilwoman. I'll answer the question about the website. So part of our request in the budget is, and I mentioned earlier for the re-platforming what we will do is it'll allow for a more modernized look and feel similar to what you see on the landing page and similar to what you see in the work site. Right now, the platform that our engineering team is working on doesn't allow for those functions and features. But when we re-platform, we'll be able to work with departments such as HR in order to bring back -- bring that modernization, but also to organize the data so it's more user friendly for individuals to be able to click and get to where they need to go quickly.
Okay. And I think that addresses the beginning, but then there's also a piece when you go to the actual application part, right? And that's also -- that can also be a part of the barrier to the process. It's very lengthy, it's a little cumbersome. And so we are launching the new application track -- the applicant tracking system which was funded in this year's budget. And so that is, I think the third part. Not just the landing page for work, and then the jobs page. But when you're actually going through the process of applying for a position, that also needs to be streamlined. It also needs to be kind of user friendly, right? Agile. And so the new applicant tracking system in July will then cover that last piece, right? So once you engage the applicant, once they go on the website, that'll be a streamlined process. For time to hire specifically, that applicant tracking system will also assist that. So I did send the visual for time to hire and there's a -- no, so there's a component part that is -- that we talk about. There's, like, a departmental part, that section in the beginning -- in the middle of that when you're engaging candidates for interviewing. The scheduling process may take some time. That onboarding piece that isn't necessarily owned by OHR, but we are certainly responsible for the entire kind of body of work, right, from list to hire. And so the applicant tracking system will also take care of that piece as well, right? There's going to be scheduling components in there, there's going to be onboarding pieces and constant candidate communication. And so we're really looking at it holistically, not just the first thing you see when you're looking for the job, but the websites that shepherd you through the entire parts of the process. Sorry.
Thank you. I'm just -- can I throw in a -- just a couple of -- it's AI. You like AI.
You can ask the questions. She can provide them to you for -- in writing.
Okay. So I wanted to know the successes with Fair Chance Hiring to get people with criminal records jobs. To OIT, can you speak to the amount of funding the city spends on automated decision making systems or artificial intelligence and any plans or policies you have or developing to govern the use of AI within city governments departments? And then also wanted to dig down a little bit more into PHLConnectED that connects families with K-12 students to internet access. How many students or kids are signed up for PHLConnectED? How do you measure the impact of that program? Do you think there will ever be the potential to expand the program to help low income Philadelphia residents who don't have K-12 students at home? And also we know that internet bills strain household budgets. What's the estimated annual savings for families enrolled in PHLConnectED. How does this free up income for other essentials like food and rent? For procurement, I'd love to know how we're doing with OPAL, which is probably a mix here. And also following on Majority Leader Kathy Gilmore-Richardson's great work on our contracting process. Wanted to dig in deeper to hear about the RFP process in general. What changes you've made to make contracting easier, better, and faster with the City of Philadelphia. Thank you very much. I'll put them all in writing for you.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jamie Gauthier, the next, Councilmember Young and wrapping us up for today prior to our break will be Councilmember Jim Harrity. Just please be direct with your questions as well as your response.
Thank you. My questions are for the CCME. Thank you. I'm very excited that my council district will be home to the city's new state-of-the-art for forensic science center, and I'm heartened to hear that PPD will implement a comprehensive staffing plan to recruit, train, and retain highly qualified forensic scientists and support personnel, as well as to have a strong community engagement component to help Philadelphia students get interested in STEM. So my questions are: One, are we exploring a school or community college to forensic scientist pipeline? Can you speak to any plans to use these positions as a workforce development opportunity for Philadelphians in need of a stable income? And which workforce training providers do you plan to partner with? And what kind of budget will be dedicated to creating a training and hiring pipeline?
Thank you for the question, Councilwoman Gauthier. I've had some initial conversations with managing director, Michael Garvey about the expansion and the needs within the department as they move to the new location. In fact, at the five-year budget hearing, we followed up with some of those conversations. The -- in particular, the needs around technician, we've been talking to Community College of Philadelphia and adapting some of their programs that they already have in the life sciences for technicians to be relevant for the forensic technicians. The scientist level positions do require four-year degree. And but the issue is, is that there's no direct connection from the community college to those four-year degree program. So we've been talking about how we can get CCP connected to those local four-year degree programs so that there's an accelerated path from CCP into those four-year degree programs so that they can qualify for the scientists' roles. But yes, there are ongoing conversations. We're not yet at what I would identify on the CCME side of the equation about what the workforce development program or budget would be. But I know that the police office has -- and Michael Garvey in particular has been working on that and putting out an RFP for training as well in facilities around and in Philadelphia. So we can get more information about that for you.
I would love to see a serious effort in this area. I know that we already have amazingly skilled forensic staff, but I want this to be an opportunity for people who live here. And so, you know, I would love to see an actual budget, an actual plan that takes people from our school system all the way to forensic sciences and all of the jobs in between to go along with the expansion of our center.
One of the specific career pathways for CCME is in the STEM area, and this is a particular passion of mine as well. And in particular, I think one of the other aspects that we've been talking with the Science Center around is CTE programs in the life sciences and in the biosciences space. So that is also something that we need to connect to this initiative as well.
Yeah. And just to -- just in closing, I think one of the things that excited me most about having the forensics lab on the corridor of science is that there are so many partners that we can engage in this training, and I hope that we take advantage of that.
I just wanted to quickly follow-up on that comment. So OHR does work with the -- there's a CTE program for biotechnology. And so we use that for the fingerprinting. So that's not the title that requires the four-year degree, but perhaps we can bridge though that particular cohort with a future CCME program to your point, right, so that they can go from that program that requires high school into a four-year degree program, perhaps through CME as a -- as a conduit.
That'd be great. Thank you. Thank you, Council President.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jeffrey J. Young.
Thank you, Mr. President. Just two quick questions. One is for procurement. I met with a vendor of -- let's just say like swag gear, right? And we went over some numbers. And that vendor, a local minority vendor here in Philadelphia, cannot compete with some of the applicants who apply for this RFP who are, you know, have direct connects to China, essentially, right? So what are we doing about -- or what can we do to provide those more opportunities for local vendors where we have to compete in this global market, particularly for items like swag items that, you know, every department has -- uses and particularly in the industry that can provide jobs here locally.
I'll go first. So we give a preference to local businesses currently which advantages them in the -- in the bidding process. We still have to follow the bidding rules, but beyond that, I'm going to turn it over to LaShawnda.
Deputy Commissioner Tompkins. So we have the LBPI -- the LBPI initiative, which increases the threshold for LBE businesses. We also have the LBE preference that Commissioner Hovey spoke about. And also there are -- there are micro and SOPs, like small order purchases that these LBEs can take advantage of as well, which are more of an informal bidding process, which will allow them to work with departments, build a relationship, and also just do more business with the city through those smaller projects and kind of work their way up.
So this one vendor in particular had a relationship with the city, had previous contracts with the city. But again, because of how things are shifting globally, you know, the opportunity to compete just wasn't there. And so what are we -- or how can we increase those chances? Because I looked at the city's awards for that particular type of contract, and none of them were local. None of them were local. So I was just trying to figure out what can we do to increase that participation in those types of industries where we know that there are people in Philadelphia that can fulfill those roles.
One of the things that I saw in my last venture was that as soon as we -- and we raised it several times over the last few years, once we raised the small purchase or here the micro purchase threshold, we saw an associated level of participation of smaller businesses because things could be more easily directed in terms of awards to local businesses or small businesses. In that case it was small businesses.
So what I think, Mr. President, what I'll do is I'm going to share the information that I have in writing with you all with a couple questions that I have to see if you can answer that on how we can allow more opportunities for our local businesses to compete for city business rather than some business that is based in San Francisco, but really is based out of China, CAO DUCHAUSSEE: Councilmember, I appreciate the question and the sentiment. I will say that this year for the first time during our, kind of, budget preparation process, we embedded procurement in the departmental conversations, right? And so what this allows us to do, because similar to OHR, we do have a federated model for procurement, and you have departments with their own procurement teams. But what -- embedding Procurement, big P, the Procurement Department into those conversations allows us to do, is to identify those opportunities that maybe the departments are not aware of, right? So there's a component of education to this, not necessarily for the vendor, but for our departmental partners. And we're working very hard to embed ourselves in those conversations about procurement planning, contract planning, so that we can always lift up the opportunities for our local businesses and other businesses that are registered in the city.
Thank you. And just one more question just about the Bureau of Administrative Adjudication. I saw in the five-year plan. The goal was 120 days for some of these -- to review some of these cases. But FY25, it was 90 days. So why are we taking longer to review these cases than -- why we have a goal of a longer review period than a previous year? CAO DUCHAUSSEE: So we are trying to -- and I will ask Melissa Andre to come up to speak to the question. But what we've seen is a significant increase in some areas that are under the purview of the Office of Administrative Review. Such significant uptick that we do have to build in more time to hear appeals and so on. So while we appreciate and agree that we don't want that time limit to go up, we are also being very intentional about putting a specific performance metric to even exponentially increase number of hearings that we're experiencing in that area.
But similar to the line of questioning from Councilwoman Gauthier, you know, folks, when they file an appeal, they don't know that their appeal is filed particularly for like a parking ticket, right? They don't know it's filed. They don't hear anything. Everything is just online. They don't get to talk to a person, they submit it, and six months later they get a decision, right? So, like, how can we streamline that process?
So I think it really depends on what kind of hearing you're talking about. Oh, I'm sorry. Again, my name is Melissa Andre, executive director, Office of Administrative Review. So I really think it depends on what type of hearing you're talking about and what kind of appeal you filed. So if you filed an appeal with the parking authority for your red light or your speed camera ticket, you're getting notification that you filed a ticket and the timeframe it's supposed to take. If you are requesting an in-person hearing, then those time frames are much shorter than an online review because of the backlog of the online reviews. So I think if you could provide me with maybe a specific example of the type of hearing you're talking about, or --
It's not -- it's the hearings that the BAA would adjudicate, essentially, not the red light tickets, not those, not the camera tickets. We get that. These are regular parking tickets that folks would get.
Uh-huh. Yes. So I think because of the increase of just the parking tickets that are being issued, it caused us a backlog. We had kind of come up to a really good place after COVID because there was so many -- there wasn't any parking tickets being issued, but I think there's been a very -- a significant increase in parking tickets and that caused a delay. And so now we're trying to get ourselves back up to speed. And I think the problem occurs when the online ticket requests are being delayed because we're being in flood -- the boot and tows have gone up. So there are two different types of hearings. And so if you walk into the BAA today, you'll get a hearing on demand because your ticket -- your car has been booted or towed. But the -- that has taken a back -- that has been prioritized over the people with just a regular parking ticket because of the influx of the boot and the tows that are -- that we are experiencing. So we're trying to level it -- level it out. We've hired approximately six new hearing officers this past year and we're getting to a better place.
Thank you very much. Member Harrity, take us home, sir.
Council President, I'm going to make it real fast. You can give me all these in writing, and I'm going to read them off pretty quick though. Your testimony states that -- this procurement. I'm sorry. Your testimony states that department aims to reduce the average bidding timeline from 225 days in 2024 to 200 days in 2026. The public works bidding process, according to the testimony, currently takes an average of 140 days with the FY2026 target remaining 140 days. How does the timeline compare to similar programs in other cities? Are there any planned efficiencies that could further reduce the timeframe, especially for public works like Rebuild? So you know where I'm getting at. And does this timeline lead to a disparity between the initial project cost and the final cost?
Okay. Does the timeline lead to a disparity between the initial project cost and the final cost? And that's especially relating to Rebuild. And that'll be that for me, my brother.
Thank you. Do you want to give a brief response as well as provide the information in writing?
Sure. So comparing to other cities or agencies, the timelines are pretty consistent with traditional public procurement agencies that haven't gone through any sort of modernization and upgrade. Are there -- are there initiatives to decrease the cycle time? There will be. Through the implementation of OPAL, we'll be looking also at our business processes to see if we can drive that down. And also, as I spoke to before, the more we engage in strategic sourcing, the more we have pre-positioned contracts. And some of those can even play in the space of public works when it comes to the engineering design and planning.
The -- it gets a little more difficult in the actual work, work, the construction type work, but that can be --
Yeah, I was in the construction business my whole life.
And then the last one, does it create a cost disparity? Absolutely. The longer the solicitation period, that is one of -- that is a big driver to cost in both actualities at the end, but also cost built in into the bid price due to perceived risk.
Well, thank you very much. We want to thank all of you for your testimony. We will stand in recess until 2:00 p.m. And I'll ask everyone if we could be back to start at exactly 2:00 p.m., so we can get two full rounds in it. And I'd rather get -- before everybody start getting up, this is important. I'd rather get responses on the record as opposed to written responses. And so the only way we can do that if we start on time, and then you can ask as many questions you can within your timeframe as opposed to getting the information back in writing. So we want to be transparent in this budgetary process. Thank you very much, everyone. See you at 2:00. (Council at ease.)
Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, everyone. We will now conclude -- we will now continue. We will now continue our budget hearing. And with that being said, Ms. Helen Loughead, can you please call the next panel?
Yes. We have Kimberly Ali, Commissioner for Philadelphia Department of Human Services. We'd also like to call up Dr. Debora Carrera, Chief Education Officer for the City of Philadelphia.
And so, Members, we are going to have the two departments give their overview of their testimony, and then we'll go directly into questions. Based upon a request from members to have a level of input, this round will be two minutes, so everybody can get a chance to get their questions and comments in. And then we'll also going to go into our second round. And so I just want to state that, for the record. So to the distinguished panel, whoever wants to start first, just say your name and please begin.
Good afternoon, Council President and members of City Council. Thank you for having us this afternoon. I am Vanessa Garrett Harley, Chief Deputy Mayor for Social Impact and Strategic Initiatives. And the departments and agencies that are coming before you this afternoon are still under my portfolio, even though I'm now in the Mayor's office. I am joined today by my leadership team. The two major departments in the portfolio are the Department of Human Services, and I'm joined by Commissioner Kimberly Ali. And the Mayor's Office of Education, I'm joined by the Chief Education Officer, Dr. Debora Carrera. But also with me are Sean Perkins, who is the director of -- or the Chief of the Early Childhood Education, or our PHL Pre-K Program, as some of you know it. Dr. Christine Piven, who is the Chief of Children and Family Support. Many of you know that as the Office of Children and Family Prevention Services. And Nadine Perese, who is the Chief Financial Officer for both Office of Children and Family and the Department of Human Services. Both the Mayor's Office of Education and the Department of Human Services have submitted written testimony, for the record. Early Childhood Education, which encompasses our PHL Pre-K Program and the Children and Family Support Services, which houses out-of- school time and our summer youth employment or year round youth employment now, career connected learning program are found within the DHS budget for budget detail purposes. Before we answer, I'm sure, the many questions that you may have, I just wanted to share a few of the highlights of our work on behalf of the city's children and families. The Department of Human Services continues to make great strides towards keeping children and families at home and in their own communities. For the first time ever, the number of children in placement is close to 2,500, down from approximately 3,100 last year, and from a high of approximately 6,100 back in 2016. Almost half of the children in placement live with their families. We continue to offer an array of diversion programs to keep families out of both the child welfare and juvenile justice system. This year, the Mayor's Office of Education in collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia, local charter schools and the Division of Children and Family Support Services, launched the Extended Day/Extended Year program at schools. That's 20 24 school district-operated schools and five charter schools. This program added over 7,000 new slots for after school, before school and vacation enrichment type activities. For the first time ever, during winter and spring break, students were able to engage in fun and free activities so that their parents could work. In FY26, we plan to add an additional 10 district schools and another five charter schools. Our early childhood high quality PHL Pre-K Program is thriving. With a 92 percent enrollment rate, our 5,250 slots are placed throughout the city at 227 locations. This year, we launched a unified preschool search and enrollment platform by partnering with the School District of Philadelphia and the State Department of Early Learning to launch a universal enrollment process for parents to choose a publicly funded Pre-K program for their children. This process will allow the city to maximize its publicly funded seats and avoid wait lists for some programs while others are still carrying empty seats. We also invested $3 million to recruit and retain early childhood teachers for our youngest learners. Last summer, we launched the city's new youth workforce program called Career Connected Learning or C2L. We are pleased to share that almost 7,900 youth participated in this program. Students in the program earned a stipend while gaining valuable work-based learning experiences. Applications for this year's program will be launching in a few short weeks.
Additionally, we continue to offer a robust out of school time program across the city, where over 7,000, participated last summer, and over 8,000 youth participated in the first half of the school year. My team and I are here today to answer any specific questions that you may have. Thank you very much for all of your continued support.
Well, thank you very much. And so before we turn it over to members so we can get right into the questions. First and foremost, I just want to acknowledge Commissioner of DHS. She hails from that great part of Philadelphia known as South Philly. And so just always good to see Ms. Kimberly Ali in terms of work that you are doing and also part of education team. Debora, you have a very fine young man that's working under your leadership. He's worked in his field for several years. He goes by the name of Will Mega. And so I just want to acknowledge him for his hard work and his dedication because he truly has a heart and most important passion to help our youth. And so I just want to acknowledge you for your hard work and your dedication as well as the team. Vanessa, I already know that you're on the case in terms of the work that you have been doing, and so I look forward to working with all of you. I want to get into PHL Pre-K. Very, very successful program. It's a program that addresses the issue of quality education for our most precious assets here in the city of Philadelphia. And that's our children, right? And so I want to get an idea of how many Pre-K slots are funded for FY26 compared to FY25.
So our Pre-K slot funding is the same as it was for FY25. Is 5,250 slots.
Are we working to expand it? And if not, why not?
For this year, we did not focus on expanding. We wanted to double down on quality.
And ensuring that we have the appropriate quality for the number of slots that we have and the funding for that. You may recall, Council President, I'm sure some other members of council do, that we asked for an increase last year because the state increased the dollar amount per slot that they were charging from 10,000 to 10,500. And so we asked for an increase because we always try to match what the state pays for slots so that there is not that uneven level of competition or forcing providers to choose which program that they want to be in. But we have been really concentrating on the quality of the slots. I am pleased to say that the vast majority, over 95 percent of our programs, and I'll call up our chief of prevention, Sean Perkins, who could give you more specific details, but over 95 percent of those programs are what we call star three and four. You know for -- that is the rating system that the state uses to determine quality programming. And so we have been very intense about making sure that we work with our providers to ensure that while it is a free Pre-K program for three and four years old, that they are getting the highest quality possible.
And that was the follow-up question I was going to ask in terms of how many daycare centers or early childhood development centers went from, you know, two star to three star to four star, but you answered that question. When you talk about -- we talk about the Department of Human Services, when we talk about JJC, right, Juvenile Justice Center, all of my team here at some point in time have visited the Juvenile Justice Center. Give us an idea of how we have been addressing the issue of overcrowdedness. I know there was a crisis at one particular point in time, and then there was a role that the state had to play as well in terms of expanding more beds. And so give us an idea of where we stand in terms of the status of addressing the overcrowdedness and also the hiring of individuals to help with staffing capacity at JJC. COMMISSIONER ALI: Sounds good. Thank you for that question. Again, I'm Kimberly Ali, I'm commissioner for the Philadelphia Department of Human Services. And so as you indicated, Council President, in 2022 and 2023 and part of 2024, we were certainly in a crisis at the PJJSC, given the number of young people who were being housed there. As a reminder, our state license capacity is 184 young people. When I testified last year, we were at 193 young people at the PJJSC. I am happy to report today we are at 132. We have been consistently below the license capacity of 184 since June of 2024. So we continue our partnership with the state in order for them to promptly remove young people who have been court ordered to be placed at state institutions. As of today, we have 20 young people who are waiting for placement at the state. Again, when we were here last year, we were at 70.
Fifty young people less. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes.
Okay. What gets measured, gets done. Congratulations. Keep up the good work. So we have to like also celebrate when we are doing what works. So this is not just about coming and just criticizing, but we also want to -- well, we have to probe and ask questions from accountability standpoint, but let's celebrate our wins. And so I think that's great. And I also want to acknowledge Michael Scott, I'm going to ask him to stand up. He's over there somewhere. Give him a round of applause, please. I just want to acknowledge him because, you know, when you talk about the issue of juvenile justice, and I always talk about me being a graduate from Penn, me being a graduate from Mansfield, me studying at Harvard, right? But however, as a juvenile, right, I had my challenges with the system. My judge was named Reynolds as a young man. I was on probation as a young man, but it was some other thought leaders and community leaders who saw some things in myself that I probably didn't see as a young man. And so when you give us the opportunity to bring outside partners inside to the Juvenile Justice Center, to kind of show these young men that there life beyond just standing on the block, there's life beyond just carrying a gun. I think I just built a brand- new recording studio with Meek Mills, the Muslim young brothers get to do tiling services, so you let Imam come in and talk to the young men. And so I think those types of partnerships, right, and also coupled with job training and development opportunities, when they do come back out, I think that goes a long way for us helping our young men now so they don't arrive up in Phoenix, or they don't -- they don't arrive up in Coal Township because as a juvenile, right, they didn't have that opportunity to get their lives together. And so I just commend the team over there for the hard work that they're doing. With that being said, I know my members are really looking forward to asking questions. And so this gentleman wasn't here for the last two rounds, but I'm going to let him -- have him come start off with Councilmember Curtis Jones, then Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, then Councilmember Brooks.
Thank you so much, Mr. President, and all the work that the members of the body helped to do. Whether it was Jamie, us going to the Juvenile Justice Center in your district, or whether it was us suing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for derelicting -- dereliction of duty. Working with you to get that situation solved, I applaud you as well. Couple of quick questions, though. As it relates to -- well, first and foremost, I always told the two of you, I could never do your job. When I first met you, you meet people on their worst day and have to help them through it. I want to thank you again for the 100 shooter review. Where we discovered through a lot of the data that you had is that the young person that you wind up taking into custody or trying to assist early in their life winds up often being the defendant, please rise as an adult. We see this throughout the system. How much of your budget goes for preservation of a family versus taking into custody of a child? What percentage does that represent? COMMISSIONER ALI: While Nadine, our CFO, is trying to get a sense of the percentage, if you will. I do have numbers in terms of the funding -- the dollars that are spent, to give you an idea. And so when you look at the Juvenile Justice Services budget, $53 million of that budget goes to court and community services. And so when you talk about the diversionary programs, everything from our IPS, our intensive prevention services, to our Community Evening Resource Centers, to our evening resource centers, to our citywide diversionary programs, to the funding that we also provide for GVI for juveniles that is encompassed under the JJS budget. When I look at the total prevention spend, it's $173 million. That money also includes our child welfare diversionary program. So all of the services that keep families together. So that includes our case management services in the prevention realm, meaning no formal acceptance for child welfare services. So that's our rapid service response, in which during the course of an investigation, a social worker walks alongside of the family so that we can mitigate any concerns that cause for a report to be called in to the DHS system. We also have family empowerment centers, which is site- based services. Congreso is one of them, as well as Gemma. All of that is included in the child welfare diversionary.
So to what degree -- see, I knew that, that's why I wanted to hurry. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yeah.
To what degree is any of this a pass-through that might be threatened by No. In Washington? How much is -- of that budget is in jeopardy? COMMISSIONER ALI: So our overall federal budget, when you look at DHS, that's a pass-through, is 9 percent, which is $167 million. But 10 none of it is in direct jeopardy by 11 the federal government because the 12 federal government pays for core 13 mandated services. And so you -- that 14 is included our CUA contracts, 15 placement providers, and not 16 prevention and diversionary services. 17
And I'll stop on this because we have an aggressive schedule for questions. The CUA system, how many do we have now? How many are coming up for a contract? And how do we keep place with inflation so that we don't have the extreme turnover in these ranks? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. So we actually have seven CUA providers that oversee geographic regions. 4 And so it's the same regions as we 5 always had in terms of the CUA 6 providers. In terms of the turnover, 7 we did put on the website our CUA 2024 8 score card. And if you look at the 9 workforce domain, we have certainly 10 done a much better job in terms of maintaining staff, you know, at the community umbrella agencies. And so we are definitely pleased by the CUA 2024 score card versus the 2023 CUA score card. And one of the big investments that we made in terms of funding of our CUAs is we wanted their salaries to be in line with DHS salaries. And so the average CUAs salary case manager is $60,000. That's comparable to our social work service manager too at the Department of Human Services.
So I'll wait for the second round. I want to know about the placement in some of the foster care situations. So whoever has that information should tee it up. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you. Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, then Councilmember Brooks, then Majority Leader Gilmore- Richardson.
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER ALI: Good afternoon.
I want to add my applause on reducing the census at PJJSC. I know it took a lot of hard work. I want to get my questions on record before you answer, because we have a very short time period. So even though we did great work reducing the census at PJJSC, we also did see some really damning reporting by the Inquirer earlier this year, which found that Philadelphia incarcerates youth at four times the national average at a rate that is higher than any other large city in the nation. And that's true even when you control for the type of crime that we might be talking about. And your budget detail states that juvenile justice services will advance the reach of its juvenile alternative to detention initiative by adding contracted community-based alternatives and addressing disproportionately within the juvenile justice system. So I wanted to ask some questions about that. First, can you provide additional detail on how exactly we are addressing this disproportionality? Specifically, how are we working to increase pre and post-arrest diversion options? What are the community-based alternatives that we are exploring at this moment? How many kids will these efforts divert from the juvenile justice system and does the proposed budget amount meet our needs? And then lastly, I am in support of most methods of reducing the number of kids at PJJSC, but I remain firmly opposed to sending young people to Rite of Passage in Texas. So lastly, can you let us know if we have any more young people in Texas at this time, and are we still contracting Rite of Passage for future placements? COMMISSIONER ALI: Thank you for those questions. And I'll ask Gary Williams, who is the Deputy Commissioner of PJJSC, just to come up in the event I need his assistance. And so, yes. I am certainly aware of the Inquirer article that talked about the city of Philadelphia incarcerating or detaining more young people in terms of the other commonwealth -- counties and the other Commonwealth and in terms of the other state. And I don't have an answer for that. The reason why I don't have the answer for that is because DHS does not make the decision in terms of detaining young people. As you know, that the arrest of young people is done by the police. The charging of young people is done by the District Attorney's office. The decision to detain a young person is done by probation. So we view ourselves at the PJJSC is ensuring that we have a continuum of services at the PJJSC to meet the needs of the young people while they are placed there. We also view ourselves as the provider or the entity, if you will, that is responsible for providing a continuum of services, both diversionary as well as alternative to detention, so that the young person is not being held in detention. I talk --
Yeah, I think that -- just to briefly, I think DHS's role in expanding community-based options and alternatives has to be a key part of this. COMMISSIONER ALI: Absolutely.
And so I'm asking you to speak to that. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes.
And what we're doing proactively to change this dynamic. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yep. Absolutely. You want to talk specifically about the programs?
Good afternoon, Councilwoman Gauthier. Yep. good afternoon, counsel. Yeah. My name's Gary Williams, Deputy Commissioner for Juvenile Justice Services. So I want to speak a little bit about what we are doing in terms of specifically the JDAI initiative which we actually brought on a full- time coordinator. This coordinator works in conjunction with DHS as well as probation. The idea of JDAI is really to look at data to make informed decisions about expanding alternative to detention, as well as community- based programming. And specifically, we've actually opened a number of additional community-based programs that are focused on vocational skills training, as well as job readiness. Some examples of that, Councilwoman, is one, we have a YouthBuild program that we opened in South Philadelphia. This is a program that is based on vocational skills and social emotional learning. This particular program is open for young people across the city. It serves as a diversionary program, and it serves young people from to 18. They actually are paid 10 a stipend to actually learn a trade. 11 Part of their culminating event in 12 terms of that program is actually 13 contributing to community development by helping young -- helping citizens fix up home -- fix up minor repairs to their home. Very robust program. We're excited about that. It opened in fiscal year '24. Another specific program that is on that continuum is what we call Philadelphia Technician Trade Institute. It's a combination of a intervention as well as diversionary. We've entered into a contract with this trade school. They actually have opened and operate a, if you will, a satellite campus right at the Juvenile Justice Center -- Service Center, whereby young people are exposed to upwards to seven programs, bona fide trade programs. Some include carpentry, electrician, pipe fitting, et cetera. We really believe that giving young people that level of exposure could actually put them on a different trajectory to actually change their lives. Not only are they actually doing a satellite campus at the center, they also have a Saturday school whereby young people can actually attend when they actually discharge either from the center or from treatment and rehabilitation. So those are some examples of extended programming that we actually have invested in a significant way.
Is it your sense that we're moving forward with the community-based options that we need to change this dynamic? I don't think this is a distinction we want to have nationally.
Could I just add something to what Commissioner Williams just told you, Councilwoman. There are certain programs that are court-ordered programs that we work with the court on that are specifically court-ordered to avert detention. For example, the Evening Reporting Centers. There are four different entities at four different locations across the city where a judge can actually order a young person to attend there as opposed to detaining them at the Juvenile Justice Services Center. There's something called -there's also court-ordered intensive supervision programming and/or in-home detention program. So there are specific programs where we work with the court and the probation department as an alternative to incarcerating that young person, even though sometimes they may have been adjudicated, delinquent or determined or have already had their trial. But they're dependent upon what the charges are, we do try very hard to make sure we continue to have a continuum of services so that not every person has to be detained. We really only want to detain those people that is felt can only be maintained safely there.
Thank you very much. Next Councilmember -- COMMISSIONER ALI: Oh, Texas. I'm sorry. Texas.
Go ahead. COMMISSIONER ALI: So I'm happy to report that we do not have any young people placed in Texas. Yeah.
I will say this though, right? Because Texas is a little far, but if you grew up in Philadelphia, you know about Vision Quest, right? If you grew up in Philadelphia, you know about Wagon Train, right, with Vision Quest where children would travel all throughout certain parts of the country via a wagon train. Like it's literally a wagon train. But I do want to get an idea, and I'll wait until my round. And I know there was a study that says that children are more able to be rehabilitated within their own community, right, easier than being like back in the day at Caldwell Heights or Sleighton Farm. And I'll follow-up on this later, but you're also asking young people to get their lives together in an environment that if they don't have a support system and all they know is those streets, I would just love to see how we combating that. Because sometimes you come out your environment, maybe not Texas, but sometimes it's getting out of your immediate circle to see something differently, right? I'm speaking as our Mayor says, from my own lived life experience, right? I'm not a typical elected official. Like been there, done that. But also when I saw a Mansfield, I'm like, okay, there's something a little different, right? I'm not -- and it was a hard transition because all I know is everybody I grew up with. So when I come back home even on the weekends from school, I'm not ashamed to say I would still get caught up sometime because that's all I know, right? And still coming from a pretty good household, right? And so we could have that conversation later. Because I know the data shows based upon one meeting I had with y'all says in your home neighborhood it's better to rehabilitate easy than outside. But I would want to know how we also showing them something that's different than what they only know. Because some people never go downtown. And we know what we just experienced this past weekend, that is youth. Hey, young folks, right? So how do we broaden their horizon to see other than what they only know. But I want my members to really take advantage of this time. So with that being said, Councilmember Brooks, then Majority Leader Richardson, and then Member Young.
Thank you so much. I'm going to kind of follow Jamie's lead. I'm going to say all my questions, and then you guys can answer later. So my first group is for DHS. A few years ago after the investigations revealed that the city routinely took millions of dollars from youths in foster Care, this council took action and passed a law banning that practice. Can you give us an update on the implementation on this law and how many accounts have been set up for youth and what is the total amount of money in these accounts? And the second question is, a part of this important law concerning testing for benefits. Many of the foster youth are eligible for various benefits, including disability benefits or survivor benefits from other family members or previous guardians. Is DHS testing all youth for the benefits like disability? And if you're not, why? And the third is, DHS should also be testing youth for all these benefits as part of aging -- the aging out process. So what -- I mean, so that they can be set up for all the programs and the money they're entitled to when they leave DHS programming. Currently, what percentage of youth are tested for benefits as part of the aging out process? And can you commit to making sure you guys are doing that moving forward? COMMISSIONER ALI: Thank you for those questions. Nadine Perese will answer the questions around social security benefits.
Good afternoon. My name's Nadine Perese, I'm the Chief Financial Officer for the department. And so the social security unit falls in finance. And so what we have done thus far is internally we keep track of the youth that are in our care and that are receiving the social security benefits. And then we become the rep payee, as you're aware, while they're in care because that's what we're mandated to do through -- in order to receive our federal funding through the state. So that's a process that we're unable to change. So what we've done on the side is in conversations with the Law Department as well as OCYF at the state level, our funder, we've discussed matching the funds so that we can conserve all of those accounts for -- that money for youth on the side without causing any issues with our federal funding. So we're still the rep payee, but we're keeping track of that money internally right now that we're collecting for youth. So on a monthly basis we're able to report out on what we're collecting for youth in our care. What we're -- we haven't been able to do so far, we've released an RFP to try and find a provider to help us with the accounting and the conservation of these funds. That really falls outside of the valley wake of our department. We just don't have the skill set or the bandwidth to be able to manage that internally within DHS. So we're trying to find a consultant to help us -- to help take care of that for us. And in consultation with the Law Department, we just had a failed RFP process. So we couldn't find a provider. So right now we are reassessing internally. We're working with the Finance Department and the Law Department to try and rework the scope of the RFP and try. And we thought maybe that would be a better way to get at a good accounting firm that can help us and support us through this process. So that's where we are internally with conserving the funds for youth in our care.
So basically just the funds are being conserved. You're just trying to find a better system to figure out --
Yeah. So we're keeping track of -- yep. Huh-huh. And the best way to do that -- and we actually don't just want to disperse the funds to youth. We want to incorporate some sort of financial literacy for the youth to make sure that we're not just passing off large chunks of money to youth after they exit care and we can kind of support them through that process. So we're trying to make this a holistic approach to this programming, and so that's where we are right now.
Okay. What about the second part of the question about testing for benefits, whether it's eligibility or disabilities while children are in care? Do you have a system for that? COMMISSIONER ALI: So yes. Based on the needs of the young people, we will ensure that that young person receives an evaluation. And if in fact that evaluation speaks to whether or not that young person is eligible for benefits, then we will roll them in that process in terms of conserving benefits as well. Because as you know, in order for young people to qualify for social security benefits, they need to have an evaluation to make that determination. But I think it also is important, probably, Nadine, for you to talk about not the disability. That we don't collect the disability.
That's correct. So we are just -- so there's -- so we don't do the social security income, the SSI, we only collect the -- what's known as RSDI. Yep. The Retirement Survivor Benefits. Yes, that's correct.
And then I think the ending part is, what about when children are at the age of transition? If they come in close to age of transition, is there a plan to make sure they're transitioning into, whether it's out of SSI service to adult disability services, is there a system for that to make sure that they're -- they have a sustainable income or the services that they need once they transition out of the system, even with the financial literacy that you guys are moving towards, as well as giving young people lump sums of cash to run free with? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. And I will also say that it is -- it's expansive and not just for social security. And so all young people who age out of DHS, and when we say age out, they did not achieve, you know, they didn't reunify home, they weren't adopted or they didn't achieve permanent legal custodianship. We track in terms of whether or not they have a stable income and help them with that, whether or not they have stable housing, and also whether or not they have a life connection, someone that they are connected to. And so in terms of our reporting on that, we had -- FY24, we had 188 young people who aged out of the Department of Human Services, which was down from the 310 that we had in FY 2021. Yes.
Now, do the services still transition to children that are in incarceration? Like is it the same system for both or is it a different process for children that might be in JJ?
Brief response, please. Because we getting ready to move on. COMMISSIONER ALI: Excuse me. I'm sorry. I didn't hear you.
I said, brief response and then we're going to move on to the next member. COMMISSIONER ALI: So yes, we do reintegration work with those young people who transition out of the Juvenile Justice Services Center.
All right. You're welcome. The Chair recognize Majority Gilmore- Richardson, then Member J. Young, then member Jim Harrity, then Member Bass.
Thank you. Thank you, Council President, and thank all of you. And I know, Council President, that you stated Commissioner Ali hails from SP or South Philly, but she's also a graduate of the Philadelphia High School for Girls, which is why she is so thorough. And wanted to add -- and also Vanessa Garrett Harley because that's what Girls High Girls do. But at any rate, I wanted to just --
Majority Leader Richardson, there's a point of information from your District Councilmember.
You were giving out shout outs and you didn't mention that Will Mega was from West Philly.
Wynnefield. Thank you. I wanted to just say thank you to Commissioner Ali for all of your work with the Nonprofit Provider Task Force and for being really a shiny example of just the best -- one of the best departments in the Health and Human Service cluster. Your department is an example on how to do things the right way. And we appreciate that example, and it was exceedingly helpful for us in this entire process. So I just wanted to express my public thanks and gratitude to you. I only had one question for DHS and the other for the Education Department regarding the Extended Day/Extended Year. You know, this question that I'm going to ask, you already sent me the information, but I wanted to get it on the record because I do want to be cognizant of our colleagues in the Northeast, Councilmember Driscoll and Councilmember O'Neill, regarding the Community Evening Resource Centers. We have six centers across the city and we're very appreciative of your team. And Gary Williams is here and Catherine and the whole DHS team. They -- they're -- I'm telling you, they're stellar. They're a shiny example of how to do things right in city government. But we have the six centers in and throughout the city. So we have JJC in the Northwest, IDAAY Central, Greater Philadelphia Community Alliance in the South, Community of Compassion which I love in Southwest, and Xiente in East Division, and then Unique Dreams is technically covered for Northeast, but their zip code is 19124. And so I asked about the CERC centers, one, because we want to ensure that we have adequate coverage in the upper part of the Northeast. We don't have any footprint like up top in the Northeast. And I know that very frequently when we travel with Councilmember Driscoll, and when we travel with Councilmember O'Neill, everyone in the Northeast says, don't forget about the Northeast. And so I just wanted to put that on the record regarding a CERC Center for the Northeast. And then also the usage of the CERC Centers citywide. And if we're continuing to collaborate with PPD, because I do notice that we have more young people who are voluntarily -- COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes.
-- going to the centers versus PPD bringing young people to the centers. And I know it's our policy to, you know, try to reunite the young person and help them reunite with a parent or a guardian before we take them to the CERC Centers. But I just want to make sure that we're adequately using CERC. And that'll be a question I ask for your PPD as well. And then I heard the bell, so briefly, for Extended Day/Extended Year, for the summer specifically, will there be any programs that are focused just on reading? I will tell you that I love the program. Some of the providers that we have in the system now are providers that I used as a child where my parents place me, I should say, as a child. And they have done great work for many years. But we do need programs that focus on reading for our young people because a number of our young people are not reading on grade level and we need reading specific programs. You know, they have to have the recreation components and the other parts for out of school time, but we need programs that are focused on reading for our young people so they don't experience summer slide. And that would be in conjunction with the work that the district does. But because you all pick those providers, we need to have a focus on reading. So I wanted to put those on the record.
And also a good point of information, Ms. Debora Carrera, can you also just in the same vein, just also touch on what are we doing to address adult literacy?
And see if -- I think of something like percent adults are 11 like illiterate. And so that would be 12 great segue into those two parts. 13 COMMISSIONER ALI: Yeah. So 14 I'll start with the CERC data for the 15 Community Evening Resource Centers. 16 And so for FY24, so that was July of 17 '23 until June of '24, we had 1,378 18 young people who visited the CERCs 25,000 times. And so that is an indication that they love the CERCs. The CERCs are a safe space for young people between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. And then when you look at the FY25 data from July of until now, it was 1099 young people and they made over 18,000 visits to the CERCs. And since exception, since January of 2022, we service 2,614 young people for 50,000 visits to the Community Evening Resource Centers. And so they are much needed in our community. We will continue to work with the police department to ensure that they know that it is a resource for young people who are out past curfew violations. We do have one provider in particular at JJC, who does a much better job in terms of their interaction with the police. They highly utilize the CERC in Northwest at JJC. And so we will continue in that vein.
And so as a new leader -- as a new elected official Councilmember, and she said, listen, John Street created this model where we went inside neighborhoods and they were called curfew centers. And I want to create that same model 2.0. Right? And so we talked and she said, listen, this is the game plan. So I just want to say kudos to Majority Leader Richardson because this is actually government in action.
And so when you see how she built on it from like maybe one to two centers, and then the next year, three, four centers, and then you see the actual numbers and trying to impact our young people, I just want to take a moment to just acknowledge that in terms of the work you're doing. Member Richardson?
Thank you, Mr. President. And those are my exact remarks. I just really want to say thank you because this is like a dream come true in government in action. And the reason why we're sent here to represent our community and our neighbors to service over 50,000 young people in the short amount of time that we all work together to stand up the centers is nothing but remarkable. And I'm just so appreciative of the DHS team because you all did such a stellar job. COMMISSIONER ALI: Thank you.
And, you know, just working together for us to stand this up. So thank you, thank you. COMMISSIONER ALI: Thank you.
Thank you. My name is Dr. Debora Carrera, the Chief Education Officer for the Mayor's Office of Education. So thank you for your question, Councilwoman. I'm excited to report that we will be extending Summer Achievers in all of the Extended Day/Extended Year programs. So Summer Achievers is a collaboration that existed between the Office of Children and Families and the School District of Philadelphia, where to your exact point, in the morning students receive academic support in literacy and in mathematics. And then they're working with the providers in the afternoon. So we're excited that now Summer Achievers will also be expanded to the 20 Extended Day/Extended Year district operated schools. And we're going to have some programming -- summer programming in some of the charter schools as well. And then, Council President, to your question, that is correct. And so our office, the Mayor's Office of Education, we work with learners of all ages. And to the Mayor's vision statement of economic opportunity for all, adult education is really important because there are about 13 percent of Philadelphians ages 25 or 14 older who do lack a high school 15 diploma or it's equivalent. And so 16 that's something for us to really think about. And our office is working to make sure that we address those needs and those issues. And so in this fiscal year, year to date, we've had 2,203 learners enrolled in classes, which is exciting. And we have about 82 classes running simultaneously throughout the city. And these are classes that are offering basic literacy skills, numeral skills, as well as acquisition of the English language.
Okay. Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Member Jeffrey J. Young, Member Harrity next, and then Councilmember Cindy Bass.
Thank you, Mr. President. Just a couple questions for -- regarding DHS. Is there a funding discrepancy between kinship care and foster care? And if so, can you provide us with the rationale behind that? COMMISSIONER ALI: No, there isn't.
Okay. Great. COMMISSIONER ALI: We pay foster parents the same amount of money as we do kinship caregivers. So there is no funding discrepancy.
Great. Thank you for that. And can you tell us what, if you keep the data on the number of young people who are involved in the DHS system who have either become victims of gun violence or perpetrators of gun violence? COMMISSIONER ALI: I don't have that information readily available, but I'm sure I can get it.
Thank you. And there was a -- there was talk about a bunch of programs that the city has for these young people to get involved in, which is great. But, you know, there was no specific information on the capacity for these programs. So can you tell us, I mean, there's a number of programs that the gentleman mentioned about, you know, getting children exposed to the trades and paying them weekly stipends. But can you talk to us about the capacity because if these programs are working, then we will want to know how to expand these programs so more kids can have these opportunities as well. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes, we can get the information. Just give me one second because I have it. Just don't know where in this binder.
And, Councilmember, while Commissioner Ali is trying to find the actual data, I just want to point out -- first, thank you for the question because I think it's an important question. It's a relevant question about capacity. But one of the things that we do is continue to review and be willing to increase capacity. Because we try to determine what we scale up on. It's very rare that we get a program that is at full capacity that we will not go back and look at and try to add additional funding based on the ability. So it is very, very rare that I hear that our programs are totally full because the objective is not to turn a kid away, particularly if they can fit into one of those programs. But I'm sure they -- they're looking to give you the exact detail now. And if we can't find it at this moment, we can always get you the actual data back.
Yes. If I may, Councilman Young. Again, Gary Williams, Deputy Commissioner for Juvenile Justice Services. We will get that information to you. But I do want to -- I want to make mention of the one program that I did mention, PTTI, Philadelphia Technician Trade Institute. They actually started their work with our young people in March of last year. To date, they actually served 131 young people. Out of that 131, 89 completed the program and 28 was actually -- went on to actually have either part-time or full-time employment. It's just one example. And it's still a relatively newer program. When we talk about capacity with regard to intensive prevention services, which is a combination of case management and diversionary program, which is a highlight in terms of school diversion, as well as it is the major intervention that we have with the Citywide diversion and our partnership with Philadelphia Police Department. They're servicing at least a thousand young people every year. Just to give you an example. But we can certainly drill that down a little further for you.
Thank you. And just one brief question. Council President mentioned something about the environment for the kids. And I went to a boarding school where on the weekends my life was totally different than it was Monday through Friday. Because when I went home, it was -- it was literally night and day. So has the city ever explored opportunities to open up boarding facilities since we had the closures of Sleighton Farms and closure of Glen Mills and all these things? Have we looked at opportunities to expand on some of the short falls that we saw with some of those type of entities to try to change these environments to make it a little bit better for our kids to really get a different outlook on life? Because they're -- I mean, they got the ankle bracelets now and that's like a badge to them walking around their communities, right? So what can we do to really get them out of that mind set? And has the city really explored that opportunity to fill that gap, because it's -- instead of sending our kids to Texas, you know, we can purchase somewhere to really build on that capacity that we -- that we need. COMMISSIONER ALI: We have not, in terms of when you talk about the child welfare and the juvenile justice system, have not explored boarding homes, if you will. We actually had to sort of change that narrative to make sure in terms of child welfare operations, that young people who are in care are in care because we can't keep them safe, you know, in their particular homes. So we have not explored that. What we have done as an alternative is offer at least those safe spaces for young people. And so, as you know, our safe spaces are actually open on the weekends as well. And so they're just not Monday through Friday programs. So when we talk about the CERCs, when we talk about the evening reporting centers, when we talk about intensive prevention services, which is also site-based and case management, we do provide those services on the weekend, as well as -- opposed to just a Monday through Friday program.
Hold on. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Young. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Harrity.
Thank you, Leader. Thank you. Just a little note on that. I agree with Councilman Young. If something has worked, we should figure out how to expand on that. As the Council President said, someone whose lived experience brought them through the juvenile justice system. I believe that the programs that you're talking about, the trade programs and stuff like that. If we had more of that before they reached you guys, we'd win a lot more, you know. So definitely would like to know what programs are working so that we could try to expand them. Because we all know those of us who grew up in a neighborhood, everything operates around your corner or your little hangout where you're at. And, you know, sometimes, like, with programs like these, it may be easier for somebody to complete and go with it if maybe they could bring a friend. You know what I'm saying? Like a buddy program sort of thing where they can bring somebody else along with them to learn that trade with them, you know, because, you know, we're used to being around people. We're social people. And, you know, our corner and when we're young, our friends are our life. That's it. You know what I mean? So we need to expand those programs that are working and giving these kids training, because the bottom line is not all of us are meant for college. I wasn't. You know what I mean? So we got to give them opportunities earlier and teach them earlier so that they can actually have a trade or have something that they're able to do. When I went to Bartram, a lot of my buddies were in the automotive program and, you know, now they're all in their own shops or mechanics, but they learned that in high school and it stuck with them their whole lives. But my questions today is for the Mayor's Office of Education. How will the 43 positions being moved to the Mayor's Office of Education or MOE impact DHS operations and vice versa? And what is the reasoning behind this move? And are there specific programs that this aims to contribute to? I'm just trying to get a grip on this.
So Councilmember, thank you for the question. I'll start off and then I'll pass it over to Chief Carrera. But the positions that you're referring to are being moved actually equate to the moving up programs as we looked at and tried to better align where services were. Some of those positions, for example, are in the Adult Education Department. And so, now that we have a Mayor's Office of Education, they're better aligned in that department with those folks with the expertise around overseeing those type of programs could be. Community schools is where the bulk of those positions that you just described, the 43, I'm trying to remember, because all of this stuff was under me. I think it was 30-something of the positions where actually our community schools, again, better aligned under the Mayor's Office of Education because the community schools program is about a comprehensive program that is a direct partnership with the School District of Philadelphia and the Office of Children and Families and now Mayor's Office of Education. So it was about aligning those programs that directly went to education better there. So they will not hurt DHS if that was the question, how will it affect DHS? They will not. They were programs kind of more in the provisionary realms and particularly because all of this stuff is still coming under the same portfolio, right, because it's still under my portfolio, both with DHS and with Mayor's Office of Education. I'm able to make sure that the interaction is appropriate and they work very collaboratively together on many of these programs. And DHS, you will find in your budget line is still paying for some of the services, for example, the case management services at the community school because you want to make sure that those services stay in place. So they work together well.
That's great. Thank you. And then just real quick, how is the extended hours going to affect the --
I apologize for the interruption. If you could just wrap up with this question because we are way past time.
Yes. And they can give it to me and, you know, if you want, just relay it or whatever. This is just -- how are we going to deal with the maintenance of the facilities that we usually do in the summertime in the schools where they're going to be going year round now? That was all.
Thank you again. Dr. Debora Carrera, Chief Education Officer. Thank you, Councilman, Harrity. So we've -- we're seeing success. We work very collaboratively with The School District of Philadelphia. And as I shared in this pilot year, 20 schools were selected and we did work carefully with the district to make sure that we were also selecting schools where the facilities were at the center of that decision as well. So school buildings that could handle children there in the summer, children there in the winter, in the spring. So those are some of those same indicators that we're going to use. But we work very closely with Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill and his team to make sure that as we are expanding and hopefully expanding the program, that we will be working in facilities that can hold the programming year-round.
Thank you. Thank you very much. The chair now recognizes Councilmember Bass.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. COMMISSIONER ALI: Good afternoon.
So I have a couple of questions. So I want to just ask first, and I know we're short on time, so I'll try to go as quickly as possible, but I have a lot of questions. So the first is that I noticed that, you know, I was paying attention to the CUA score card, and it's something when I was the Chair of Health and Human Services that, you know, we talked about extensively. You know, I'm no longer the Chair, but I'm still very interested in that system because I don't understand how the city, you know, when we first implemented this, it's never made sense to me. That we think that we can pay less and get more for a vulnerable population. And, you know, the idea was really like a cost cutting measure and it didn't end up, you know, saving any money. We didn't cut any cost. We actually expanded costs. You know, probably, like, doubled our costs. And still not getting the results like the -- I don't know, the -- because we are getting some good results, but we're not getting the level of, you know, acceptable results that I think any one of us would want. And so I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about the CUAs and specifically the score card. And that was in 2024. We asked about the score card because it hadn't come out yet. And this was, you know, a year ago. And we were told, oh, it's coming out, and then it just came out, like, three weeks ago. Is there any reason why we didn't publish a score card -- a CUA score card in 2024? COMMISSIONER ALI: So actually it was the 2023 that wasn't posted. And so the CUA score card was posted for 2023, and then it also was posted for 2024. And so, because it is -- it looks at the entire year, so the entire fiscal year, right now, the data has to settle for fiscal year 2025, since we are not quite done, fiscal year 2025. And so it's always a year behind.
Okay. COMMISSIONER ALI: And do you want me to speak to -- in terms of the narrative around it being less?
Well, not yet, because I do want to -- COMMISSIONER ALI: Okay.
Because I know we're short on time. Madam Chair, do I have -- are there folks lined up in the queue?
Yes, but you can ask your last question.
okay. So let me ask this. When it comes to reviewing a score card, one of the things that I've always taken exception with, and I think Kimberly and Madam Commissioner, we've spoken about this extensively. And that is the fact that the Liberty Bell rating, in my opinion, should actually be a grade. And if you were to grade them, then we have, you know, like, a traditional A, B, C, so that people can really, you know, get it right off -- right off the top. And so if you grade it as it's -- as the numbers are provided, so 3 of the 10 CUA agencies right now would be C's. And I don't think a C is acceptable when you're dealing with a vulnerable population. And so, in 2020, out of the were C's. And 2021, 1 out of the 9 10 was a C. And 2022, 5 out of 10 10 were C's. And in 2023, 4 out of 10 are C's. So 40 percent, 50 percent, however, you know, how you want to look at it. And what's interesting is that of those numbers, for three of those four years, those C's include one consistent provider. And so my question is, is there a -- there should be a floor that says for any of these providers, if you're providing -- if you're not making this mark, if you're not an A-agency or a B-agency, you cannot be a C-agency in dealing with this population. And so, can there be a floor that DHS would mandate so that there would be no less than four bells or, you know, a B-grade? And is that something that you-all would be willing to do? And is there an improvement plan for any of these agencies that consistently come up? Because there's one, Bethanna, which consistently every single year is a low -- low ranking provider of services to the vulnerable populations. And so how long do they get to be? And I -- you know, I don't -- I don't have anything personal about -- against anybody here, but how long do you get to be in this position and deal with this vulnerable population and not make -- you know, not make the grade, not make the cut? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yeah. And so thank you for that question. And how I would respond is that we agree that children, youth and families need quality services, which is why we transparently do a CUA score card and we actually post it on the DHS website so that everyone can see how the CUAs are doing. And I would say the reason why -- really, the reason why we decided to do the bells really has to do with the fact that we are Philadelphia. But I do hear you in reference to that. And yes, when we have a provider who is a C or below, we certainly meet with the provider very regularly. When I mean, “me," my DHS leadership team, I have a performance management and technology department who oversees their plan of correction. And so, yes, they submit plan of corrections, but the other thing that they do is that we bring in the CUA leadership supervisory and above, so that they can learn from the other CUAs in terms of what are you doing well, what processes, what practices do you put -- did you put in place so that you can improve your score? You did reference Bethanna. You know, at one time Bethanna was at a bell 2, and so they have made some substantial progress in terms of their service delivery. But --
So they went from a D to a C. COMMISSIONER ALI: They went from a D to a C on the --
That's still not -- COMMISSIONER ALI: I get it. I get it. I hear you, you know, in terms of the young people and rest assure that we continue to monitor that. Our CUA score card is the most robust evaluation that we do at the department. We actually review over 2,000 cases that consists to close to 4,000 children, you know, in terms of their service delivery.
Just say -- just say this and I'll come back on a second round. So assume, you know, as you said, you have all the different, you know, resources that you bring to the table to CUAs that are struggling. But clearly in this case we have one that, you know, continues to struggle year in and year out. For three of the last four years, they're making what I would say is an unacceptable grade. And so, like, it doesn't feel like we have any, you know, like, is there a plan B? Can another CUA come in and sort of take over their case load that's performing better? You know, like somebody who's maybe a higher-ranking CUA could sort of provide some mentorship to a lower ranking CUA? Because, you know, it's -- this isn't -- it doesn't seem like there's a plan to lift them out of this situation because, you know, the numbers speak for themselves. I'll -- you can answer that later, but I would like for you to address what you said you would address earlier around -- oh, I forgot it. What did you say you wanted to talk about? COMMISSIONER ALI: Me?
I'm sorry, I can't remember. COMMISSIONER ALI: What did --
The results, yes. COMMISSIONER ALI: The results of what?
Right. Issuing the results timely. You said that you were -- COMMISSIONER ALI: Oh, yeah. So it's always a year -- it's always a year behind. And so now what we're doing since fiscal year '25 is not over yet. So usually it takes us about -- we usually -- we'll post it somewhere around January, February- ish. You know, really depending on the needs of the department. I do want to remind you in terms of the CUA score card is that when you asked about the -- you know, the RFP process, we did RFP, you know, some CUAs. And so some of these CUAs who are doing well is actually their first go-around, you know, in terms of their score card. And, yeah, so we will post FY25 somewhere around February, but it's usually a year-round. However, we do do quarterly reviews. And so in order to roll up into the annual score card, we do quarterly reviews. You talked about the mentorship, and so that's what I was talking about in terms of bringing the CUA leadership together because you do have higher performing CUAs who mentor CUAs on certain benchmarks if they're not doing well.
Thank you. Because we have quite a few in the queue and we have an evening budget town hall tonight, so I want to try to get to everybody else that's in the queue. We have -- the Chair now recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I actually am going to continue in the line that my colleague was questioning around CUAs. To first, help me just refresh my memory as to the funding of the CUAs. Where is that reflected in your budget?
Sure. Thank you for that question. So across the 10 CUA regions, we spend --
Can please state your name, for the record?
Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. My name's Nadine Perese, I'm the chief financial officer for the department. Across the CUAs, it's $114 8 million that we're investing annually. 9 That's for the fiscal year in the 10 budget. And are you asking the -- what the funding makeup is?
Class 200. Okay. So this is completely within your purview, not CBH? This is completely --
So my question is, when you went to the CUA system, did the staffing for your department change because a lot of the services were now going to be handled by CUA?
Councilwoman, I'm just going to try to lead off, and then I'll turn it over to Commissioner Ali because when we went to the CUA system, I was in a leadership position at DHS, and then ultimately was the one charged with having to stand up the last few CUAs. The staffing levels did not change at DHS because we did not want to go into laying off any staff. There are other jurisdictions who did models that are similar to our Community Umbrella Agency model, which was a model that was all about putting the services in the community where they could be more easily availed and hopefully would be utilized more frequently, making things more convenient, right? So that was a lot of it, but we did not lay off any staff. So, the staffing levels at DHS did not change.
So did they get allocated to different work or oversight of CUAs?
Yes, they got allocated to different work. The service array was slightly different. It was enhanced. We kept the front line services at DHS, which would be our DHS hotline and investigations, and where a large part of your staff is at is still there. DHS is still responsible for that. And so those workers remained in those fields. The workers that would've been what we used to call the backend or the ones doing more of the case management, that's what got moved to the CUA, was the case management services. But those existing workers at DHS went into other roles. And the commissioner can give you more details around that. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yeah. Primarily, the staff at DHS, they went into family team conferencing roles. And so we have a supervisor as well as a social worker who engages family so that they can assist with developing their own case plan so that they can reunify with their children or their case can be closed if they were receiving in-home services. We also put additional staff in our performance management and technology division, you know, in terms of monitoring and evaluation, you know, as well to ensure that the CUAs were providing services to families as mandated. And then we also beefed up our -- or put additional staff, if you will, in our front end. So on our hotline, as well as an intake in investigations, so that we could make sure that we were responding to calls that we wanted to enhance our expertise around doing investigations. And so we put additional staff there. And then finally practice coaches. So we had practice coaches, as well as senior learning specialists who are co-located at the CUAs to ensure that there was a transfer of learning in terms of the practice.
So that's exactly what I wanted to hear. Because to my colleague's point of improving CUA performance, you already have a system in place to assist and support. And I wanted to know how well that's been working in terms of elevating the services to be received from CUAs? It seems like there could be some improvement in that area of getting CUAs to really be leveled up to get better scores. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. And so as I indicated, we are -- we certainly monitor and evaluate them through DHS's performance management and technology and the staff that are co-located at the CUAs, primarily the CUAs that are not doing as well, because we do have CUAs that have five bell, and then we have some that have four bells, you know, as well that we have them co-located at the CUAs to do the transfer of learning. In addition, my supervisory team under the direction of the Deputy Commissioner Sam Harrison and Child Welfare Operation, as well as his operations directors, also meet monthly with CUA staff from supervisory above up to the CUA directors, again for their transfer of learning so that they can continue to learn from the Department of Human Services.
So they get a lot of good support from you. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes.
So hopefully in our next report card we will see a reflection of that. Just quickly, I know we are short of time. I just want to turn to , which again, has a sample of some of your contracts, professional contracts. Are any of these CUA contracts or -- I can't tell what exactly staff augmentation -- those are IT things. Is there any CUA contracts in there or not?
No. These are not CUA contracts. These are our top five contracts, the largest contracts that we have that are for profits.
And so, in that -- when I look at the time from an RFP to the contract start date, who controls that time? Because I see seven months, 10 months, 11 months, 11 months from issuance of an RFP. Who controls the time of the contract start?
Sure. So the contract start period -- the department controls the contract start --
So can you say why it takes so long? Because, you know, we would like things to move much faster.
Sure. So these are predetermined time periods. So oftentimes we'll go through the conformance -- the -- I'm sorry. Excuse me. The RFP process. And even though it ends, the plan is to not start work until a certain point in time. So for instance, with the first one, the Shine Early Learning for the quality supports for our PHL Pre-K, we needed that to start in July. So our goal is to start as early as possible, and there can be a lag time between the award, like, when we have decided and selected a contractor to the actual start date of the work. But, you know, the conformance time -- I mean, the RFP time can vary. I think it kind of depends on the nature of the contract as well. If we have to build in a time period for presentations, a longer Q&A process, so it is a little bit tailored based on the work as well.
It would be good as a city to be more efficient about this process in general.
So that's just a point. But very quickly last wrap up, is -- do -- can you share or send to us what is the CUA process of evaluation that you use to award these contracts? I would like to see what that looks like. And I mean, we don't have to do it now. I just want -- because this is a quality assessment issue that I'm concerned about. So if you could please send it to Council President for us to see. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes, we can.
Thank you, Councilmember Ahmad. So Councilmember Landau, you'll be the last Councilmember for round one. We will then move to a very quick lightning round two where each of the four members who are in the queue will have 90 seconds to put their questions on the record, so that we are able to end on time because we have a neighborhood budget meeting this evening and we all need time to turn around. Thank you for understanding. Councilmember Landau?
Thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you for all the work that you're doing to continue to improve DHS. This is where my questions are. Last year, I wanted to talk to you about aging out of foster care housing. And last year, I was asking you questions about how can we house the young people without relying on adult shelters. You talked about relying on OHS at that time. And you also said that we had -- you had a certain amount of family reunification vouchers and fostering youth to independence vouchers. It was about 137 slots altogether. It says -- and $2 million is allocated to this issue yearly. How has the allocated funding helped with placing youth who have aged out of foster care and have the slots been filled since last year? You know, I have a particular interest in this because so many of the youth are -- identify as LGBTQ. Thank you. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes, so thank you for that question, Councilmember Landau. I actually did speak about older youth in that -- this was the first fiscal year. Fiscal year '24 was the first fiscal year in which we had under 200 young people who fit the definition of aging out. That was the lowest that we had in 188 young people. Typically, it hovered around 300. In terms of the housing support, when I said last year in terms of relying on OHS, it probably -- I probably said PHA as well. I should probably -- not relying, if you will, with more of a partnership, if you will, in terms of housing. And so in terms of the Family Unification Program, there are 116 clients that we served. In terms of the Fostering Youth to Independence, there were 40 young people that we served and are serving, and that's between and 13 years of age. 14 We also have Generations Two 15 program through Northern Homes for 16 young adults. They have a capacity at 17 any given time to service seven young 18 people, Valley Youth House assist with 19 rental assistance. So we do rental 20 assistance, and we've served -- the -- 21 our annual capacity is 60 young 22 people. We are serving over 30 young 23 people now. We have rep for youth case management through Valley Youth House, 28 young people are being served. And then we have Congreso who provides rapid rehousing when reunification is an issue for families. We have slots at any 7 given time to help those families. 8
Does 9 that add up to your number of 10 approximately 188? 11 COMMISSIONER ALI: All 180 12 youth are not in need of stable 13 housing. So the reason why we got to 14 the number with our program, that is 15 the DHS Older Youth Rental Assistance, 16 which was 60, is because approximately 17 60 of those young people need 18 additional rental assistance. DHS 19 stopped servicing young people at the 20 age of 21 by law. 21 However, our older Youth 22 Rental assistance provide housing 23 support to young people as well as 24 case management up to age 23. So, they could stay an additional two years in a subsidized apartment.
And Councilwoman, I just wanted to say, as you know, the Parker Administration is very committed to the HOME, Housing Opportunities Made Easy, the 30,000 units of housing that the Mayor has committed to. And we will certainly be thinking about this target population as we think about, you know, there are different categories and different segments of housing as we move forward, but we'll certainly be also thinking about this target population.
Thank you so much. Quick follow-up, is just there was an Inquirer article that talked about some DHS under spending, which would be a savings. Is there any way in which you can reallocate that money to help more young people with housing?
Sure. That's a great question. So actually the way the budget was being reviewed, it isn't actually under spending. DHS has an appropriation of around about 30 to $50 million within its budget. And it's not -- we don't have permission to spend that money, it's just appropriations. So it's in the event that we get additional grant funds. As you know, we don't always get our award letter by the time the budget comes through. So if there's a need for more funding from the state because we're awarded more than we anticipated, that's where we draw that down. So we're not allowed to spend that money, but it's in the budget during the actual budget period. So in FY26, it's in there, and then it goes away because we don't actually spend it, we're not allowed unless we have additional grant dollars. So it's just appropriations. I know it can be a little bit -- a little tricky there, but it's not actually under spending.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Landau. We're now moving to round two. So as a reminder, colleagues, thank you very much for your consideration in advance. You will have 90 seconds to put your questions on the record. Once the bell rings, I'm moving forward to the next colleague. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Jones.
Heck of a test case. One comment, two questions quickly. Thank you, Department of Education. We had several months ago, melees right out on the plaza with young people there about schools, 5 both Catholic, public, private, right 6 in this area, and they choose many of 7 them to use our plaza as their 8 playground. But for your team's 9 intervention and putting together a 10 plan, Mr. Mega, we might have had a 11 bad day outside. We had one shooting, but we've been able to, you know, get around that. So thank you. Thank you, thank you. Two questions. One, kinsmanship care and placement. What is the percentage of that versus people that are unknown to the kids? And what are the rights of siblings when taken out into custody? Does a young person have the right to visit, a complaint about conditions? What are their rights as it relates to siblings? Was that 90 seconds?
Bam. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. And so when you look at our total DHS population, we have 2,554 young people in the city of Philadelphia that's in child welfare population -- a child welfare placement. Fifty percent of those young people are with kinship. So someone that they know or someone that they -- that their family knows. The other young people are in foster care. It's around like 30-something percent in foster care. And then we have residential placement and supervised independent living. In terms of sibling visits, yes, siblings do have a right to visit with their -- with their siblings who are in care. And so we track that. We track whether or not young people are placed together or if young people are placed apart, whether or not they have visits. And so yes, they are entitled to visits.
Quick follow-up. I just want to say, if me and Jamie are brother and sisters, and I feel that Jamie's being mistreated, what are my rights? COMMISSIONER ALI: So, Jamie, should call the Commissioner's Action Response Office. It is aligned directly to my office, in which I have staff who will fill the complaint, talk to Jamie, figure out the issue, and then follow-up with the team for resolution.
Thank you very much, Commissioner and Councilmember Jones. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Gauthier.
Thank you. My questions are about data. Several months ago, I asked DHS to publish data about youth in detention and placement on a quarterly basis. I wanted to check in on the status of that request. Additionally, we are most interested in seeing the lead charges that send young people to placement. So please tell us about your ability to collect and share that information. And then we would like to also see demographic data; age, gender, and race, if -- and if possible, zip codes, so that we can know what areas and demographics are most in needs of services. And then lastly, is there any effort to track young people from their first contact with the juvenile justice system through every program until they come home, and then to tie that to outcomes? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yeah, so thank you, Councilmember Gauthier. As you indicated, my myself as well as my leadership in PJJSC, as well as PMT have been working closely with your office around data. And so, yes, we are in the final stages in terms of the utilization data for young people who are being held at the PJJSC, as well as our community-based detention services. I have a draft that we're finalizing. We also have data around, as you indicated, the demographics, how many were admitted during the quarter, how many were discharged, race. Yes, so we do have that and where they are placed. So you should be receiving that shortly in terms of that data.
Thank you so much. We look forward to seeing that and to engaging with you on it. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Gauthier. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Brooks.
Thank you. So we know that 10 percent of the School District's funds comes from federal funding. And we're talking about, like, Title 1 and IDEA resources. So the School District is protecting deficits and school closings moving forward, even without federal uncertainty. What is the Mayor's Office of Education doing to help the school district brace for these potential cuts or impacts? And second part is, like, Medicaid reimbursements help pay for additional nurses and social workers in school, and have the Administration looked at how many of these positions may be impacted moving forward?
Again, Chief Education Officer Dr. Debora Carrera. Thank you, Councilwoman Brooks. So, yes, we are aware of the financial cliff that the District has projected to be happening. And so the Mayor's Office is -- this administration is working closely with the School District of Philadelphia around those concerns as well. As far as Medicaid, I'm going to invite my Deputy Education Officer, Sharon Ward to come up and have her answer that piece.
Thanks so much. Thank you so much for that question and raising this issue. We're obviously very concerned about what's happening at the federal level. Right now there's a great deal of uncertainty. The cuts that we have been expecting have not happened yet, but they could very well happen over the next two months when the Senate and House take action on the budget moving forward. With respect to Title 1, and with Medicaid, what we have heard from the school district and from other school districts is that the services will continue to be provided by the -- by the school district of Philadelphia or by other school districts. And they will simply have to absorb the costs. So what that means is that federal funding cuts that are on the agenda could increase the deficits that the school district has -- is projecting. On the flip side of that, we have been working very closely with a set of partners, including the school district advocates with city council to work towards increasing the share of state funding that's coming through. We saw a big increase last year. We are very pleased with that as part of the settlement of the lawsuit. This year's funding levels were not as robust as last year, so we are really looking forward to trying to increase some state funding that will help to insulate the school district from these types of cuts. And I do have to say that the governor has also taken a strong position on this. He has been very vocal around protection of education and other types of pass-through funding that comes from the federal government. So we'll be working closely with the -- with the Governor's administration.
Thank you, Councilmember Brooks. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Bass.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Couple questions. So a few years ago, Philadelphia was highest in the nation when it comes to removing youth from homes. Where are we now? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. And so in terms of our removals, I indicated that we have 2,554 young people who are in child welfare placement. That is down from the 6,200 that we had in 2017. So a sharp decline in terms of the number of young people who are no longer in placement. And then at this time last year, when I testified we were actually at 3,001 young people.
So, no, I'm sorry, I'm asking specific, like, just where are we and compared to other major cities, just to get a sense of how we rank. COMMISSIONER ALI: So I have to wait until the other cities publish their data. I can't do the -- I don't know the ranking.
Do we know where we were last year? Like, the last available data? COMMISSIONER ALI: I don't.
Okay. COMMISSIONER ALI: The only -- the last data that we had that was published was from 2017.
Okay. And so that showed us as, like, the highest? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes.
Okay. So we don't have the most recent. Okay. COMMISSIONER ALI: No, we don't.
Okay. Was I going to ask -- the juvenile justice budget was 53 million, and that's just to keep these kids on the right track, right? And what's the size of that population? COMMISSIONER ALI: The size of the juvenile justice population, we actually had, in terms of who -- how many we serviced, I could tell you how many we serviced in juvenile justice.
Yes. COMMISSIONER ALI: We serviced -- oh, we serviced 506 young people in our IPS. We serviced 1,378 in our CERCs. In our evening reporting centers, we serviced 273 young people. In our in-home detention, we service as 982 young people. And don't fall down in the hood, which is our gun mediation program, we service 139 young people. And PJJSC, as of today, we have 132 young people at PJJSC.
Councilwoman, I just want to add that PJJSC number is not indicative of the total number. That's a revolving number because there are so many kids who are coming in and out of there. So we would have to go back, check the data, and could potentially provide it to you at a later time. She's giving you the current census. It's 132 in there right now, but at any given time, there is -- my rate of kids who are coming in and out that would've been serviced.
Understood. So the total population roughly is about -- from the numbers you gave is about 3,278. And we spent $53 million on that population. And I'm not sure that we're getting the outcomes that we were hopeful for. And I'm -- you know, it is -- it is just my thought that maybe we could do something different. It seems like if we just, you know, invested more in their families, you know, double down on, you know, the family structure or the, you know, the household or living or the foster parents or whoever the caregiver is. But we spent $53 million trying to make sure we keep 3,200 young people on the right track. And I'm not sure that we are making -- we're moving the needle as we want to, ought to, need to. COMMISSIONER ALI: So what I -- what I would say, so a couple things. Number one, what I would indicate in terms of the 53 million, the numbers that I said, except for the PJJSC, those were the number of young people that we served in FY24. The PJJSC, we service about young people every quarter coming to the PJJSC, and about the same amount actually discharged. FY24, we saw some additional young people that got discharged, which brought our census down to below the 184 young people. But in addition, in terms of when I said court and community services, the young people who are at the PJJSC, the vocational training that Dr. Williams testified to, that is included and court in community services. That contract is -- of that, it's $1 million dollars of the $53 million. The contract in terms of YouthBuild services for young people, that's another million dollar contract. Because when you're talking about providing skilled trades to young people to also connect them to jobs, there's an expense associated with it.
Of course. COMMISSIONER ALI: But in terms of -- but in terms of our outcomes and what's the result. And so we did at the -- in connection with Councilmember Gauthier's office in terms of -- looked at, we were -- we began to look at recidivism to determine how many young people --
It's way over time. COMMISSIONER ALI: So 13 percent --
I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER ALI: Thirteen percent of the young people who received services through juvenile justice actually recidivated. We have not been able to -- don't have the bandwidth to determine what programs they received and then recidivated. So what we have done is issued an RFP because we need some support in that. We have a phenomenal division in performance management technology, but we had to build some additional capacity. And so you will begin to see, once we select that provider, some additional reports in terms of outcomes, because we want to make sure that what we are paying for works.
So possibly. We have one more colleague in the queue for this round.
So I'll -- please let me acknowledge Councilmember Landau for your last question. And then Councilmember Bass, I'll circle back to you. You'll be our last member for today. Okay.
This is a very quick one for the Office of Education. What data are we using to select the neighborhoods or schools which are included in the expansion of Extended Day/Extended Year?
Again, Dr. Debora Carrera, chief education officer. Thank you, Council Woman -- Councilmember Landau. What we're doing is we are -- we're actually working closely with the school district, the Office of Children and Families. We are -- this is the pilot year. We have a consultant that has been really working with us to look at all kinds of data, to look at socioeconomic status, demographic data, neighborhood, gun violence, just looking at a myriad of data, and we've been coming up with different scenarios of schools that could qualify in -- with those datas -- with that data set. But we are working very closely, again, with the school district, the Office of Children and Families to select -- and charter schools to select the 10 and the 5 for the next round.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Landau. Councilmember Bass, would you like to be recognized?
Yes. I -- just, you know, one last question, and that was -- Commissioner, one of the things you had mentioned earlier that I've lost my train of thought on, and that you said you were going to address was, how do -- how do we pay less and get more? And you said you wanted to answer that. COMMISSIONER ALI: And what I wanted to do in that is, you know, clarify, you know, the narrative. I know when Vanessa was commissioner at the time, in terms of the narrative around the CUA system would be less expensive. That was inaccurate. And we put that on the record previously. We want to make sure that we have qualified staff to work with our most vulnerable population. And so we want to make sure that they are paid appropriately. We also make sure that whatever the needs of the community, that they also have the discretionary funds in order to meet the ever- changing needs, you know, of the community. And so I just wanted to double down on that comment in terms of it being less. As our CFO Perese testified to, the CUA system is $114 million in order to provide quality services to our most vulnerable young people who have been abused and neglected.
And could I just -- a point a clarification, Councilwoman. Vanessa was not the commissioner when that narrative was put forward. COMMISSIONER ALI: Absolutely. You clarified.
I was going to say -- COMMISSIONER ALI: She clarified.
And I probably was the one who clarified -- COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes.
-- that it was never really meant to be a cost-saving measure. It really was about trying to increase quality and to bring the services to the community where we hoped that people would avail themselves of those services. And so it was about the community based delivery of services.
Thank you. I was going to say, was there another Vanessa who was the commissioner? COMMISSIONER ALI: No, I said “clarified.” So she clarified --
A different Vanessa. COMMISSIONER ALI: -- clarified that on the record.
Yeah. No, I remember it was Ms. Ambrose. But thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. COMMISSIONER ALI: Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Bass and thank you to all of the members who offered a very poignant question this afternoon. We want to, again, thank the Department of Human Services, Mayor's Office of Education and all of the offices that are represented here for your testimony, for your partnership, and for the continued collaboration. We certainly appreciate each and every one of you.
This concludes our budget hearing for the day. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Katherine Gilmore- Richardson for a motion that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolutions before the committee today stand in recess until Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.
It has been moved and properly seconded that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolution before the committee today stand in recess until Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Those opposed? The ayes have it. And this hearing stays in recess until April 2nd, Tuesday -- no, Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Thank you very much. (Public hearing and meeting concluded at 4:00 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully and accurately in the notes taken by me of the above case, and this copy is a correct transcript of the same. _______________ Samanda J. Rios