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.