The other thing is on the removal of dead dangerous trees, how is that determined?
Yes. Well, Fairmount Park manages the contract, the contractor, who does the removal work for us, and we develop that list based on the most serious trees. We actually have ratings. We have 5,000 dead trees standing out there that we know of, so we evaluate trees, and we have those that are in critical condition, that are dead, and they are the first to make it on the list. And also those that have been there the longest. So we try to balance that out. We know people have been on a waiting list for up to three 1312 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 years.
Some longer. And, you know, if we have a tree that we know is -- that our arborists, who are all certified and trained determine to be critical, and now that we're looking at this thing coming over in the next few months. Then we'll try to make sure we put that on the next list. So --
Could we see the list of tree-trimming and removal and trimming, tree-pruning, tree-trimming, and I understand you spray trees?
We only spray when there is a need. We haven't sprayed trees in about four years. We had a major infestation of a giant-winged aphid four years ago, which was causing some major problems, and we did spray. We do not make that a practice. We had to identify some additional funding in order to accomplish that work because it's not built into our regular budget. Generally, the infestations of insects or minor. Of course, if you're living under that tree, it may not be minor. But on a 1313 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 whole, we don't do that on a regular basis.
Trees, just tree removal and trimming -- and tree trimming and tree pruning?
Tree pruning, we did about -- we'll be doing about 7800 trees this year. And for tree removal, it's about 1200 trees.
Okay, what I'd like to know by number, not necessarily by street or location, but by district.
How many trees were pruned and sprayed by district in this budget year, in the year 2000, in the current budget year.
And when you prepare your list, I'd like to see the number of trees that are going to be done by district in the Year 2001, this budget coming up. 1314 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00
And are they -- does one company do all of the trees? Are you saying they are hired by sections of the City?
No. The bid is released on a citywide basis, so there's one company, but that company does have the minority participation limits that it has to adhere, so this particular contractor we have now, Davy Tree Experts, is doing some subcontracting work to meet that requirement.
Will they go into one area first and then another area? Or are they carrying employees throughout the City?
We generally deploy throughout the City. Davy Tree had 15 crews working on a daily basis. There is one crew per Council district beginning the work, and they take the other four crews and they'll send them to one area and concentrate them and then begin moving that -- you know, as that crew finishes that work, they'll continue to move them around the City. The current -- we are doing approximately 6800 trees on pruning, and we have 1315 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 about 4200 of those already completed for this fiscal year. And anticipate that work to be done by mid-March now.
Well, I will say to you that last spring, I visited a community in Whittaker Mills, the community association. And I had a lady constituent who told me that she had called the department for a tree to be removed. And they just removed the tree -- I got a letter this that the tree was removed this week. However, she reported that her friend lives in Mayfair, and the friend called the Fairmount Park, they came out the next day, removed the tree, sprayed the tree, and pruned all of the other trees on one phone call. She gave me her report last spring, and they just did the tree this past week.
-- doesn't happen. It may have been -- if we did an entire block and were doing pruning, that was work that had already 1316 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 been listed.
Yes, absolutely. Because we can't do that because we can't stand the fire if we begin doing that. We know everyone talks across the City, not just around the neighborhood. So we do the very best we can to stick to our procedure so that people can't say that someone's getting special treatment. If we went down removed the tree and pruned the tree, then that was probably in a pruning grid, because when we set up our pruning grids, we try to do a ten-block area. So this person may have called and it may have just been a coincidence that we were in. And if we probably investigated that particular location, it's probably parked on a larger grid.
Thank you. 1317 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 Are there any other questions? (No further questions.)
The Art Museum. (Art Museum witness come forward.)
Thank you for your patience. Kindly identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good evening, Madam Chair, Madam President. I am Anne D'Harnoncourt, Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I am pleased to be here, together with my colleagues Gail Harrity, the Museum's Chief Operating, and Robert Marrone, our Director of Facilities and Operations, and until just a moment ago, Cheryl McClenney-Brooker, our Director of Affairs, who had to pick up a child at her school and wishes she were with us but had to leave.
Please proceed. 1318 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00
I am delighted and I know, given the lateness of the hour and your daunting schedule all day long, that I will be as quick as possible. You have our written submission. 2 million in operating support for Fiscal Year 2001. And we appreciate also the opportunity to express our vivid gratitude, both to Mayor Street in both of his crucial roles, past and present, and to City Council as a whole, as well as individuals for all their support of the museum. In fact, if I could emphasize three things in my testimony, one would be the year 2001, because the calendar year 2001 is the 125th anniversary of the museum, which, as you know, was founded as an outgrowth of the first great international exhibition ever held in Philadelphia in 1876, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of this country. And we look forward to celebrating again with all the citizens of 1319 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 Philadelphia, and I will say, we are hard at work devising celebrations, which we hope will reach each and every one of the citizens of this great city, who are we are so delighted to serve. We are also at -- the year 2001 has -- is a -- kind of has been a dream for us, and for a long time, we have a long-range plan that is focused on that year and what it means as we enter the new century, and we are thrilled to have acquired, with City Council's marvelous help, the Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company building across the street from the museum, which will make so much difference in our ability to expand our programs and space for our collections and ways to reach a wider and wider audience. I will -- just very quickly, our exhibition schedule. We had a marvelous run of exhibitions in this past year, including an exhibition devoted to Goya, which infused about $20 million into the City's economy. We are about to open a great exhibition devoted to the splendor of 18th-century Rome, one of the largest -- probably the largest great exhibition the museum has ever done, which is already receiving national 1320 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 press attention. And we're thrilled to have productivity bank loans to advertise these two exhibitions outside the region in order to attract visitors from out of town to Philadelphia. We try to divide our strength and our resources between our devotion to and service to the citizens of this city and our duty and our responsibility to attract visitors from all over the world to Philadelphia, not only to enjoy ourselves, but the rest of the assets that Philadelphia has to offer. Last year, we welcomed approximately 800,000 visitors, and I'm very proud to say that that is substantially up from the 500,000 that I remember so well about eight or nine years ago, and including over 70,000 school children. Aside from the anniversary of 2001, which is enabling us to strive towards a number of our most important dreams, including more space, the second thing that I'd like to emphasize is the museum's increasing role in education. We are not only, of course, as you know, dedicated to the arts education of all of our citizens, but particularly those of young people and children. 1321 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 Because as the evidence increasingly comes in, exposure to art and interaction with art improves children's and enhances children's ability to learn. We have had partnerships with the School District of Philadelphia, which continues to bloom, with the Free Library, with colleges and university across the region. And we are doing this in person, we are doing this online, we are doing this in every way that we can, and we've been developing just now a set of teaching posters representing our collections of impressionism, of African-American art, of medieval art being given free, thanks to a couple of grants we received, to every school in the School District of Philadelphia.
And I'm very happy to say that two of our educators have received national awards in the past year, and in particular, Marla Shoemaker, our Head of School and Family Programs, was named "National Museum Educator of the Year" by the National Art Education Association. I won't go into all the institutions in Philadelphia with which we collaborate, which we 1322 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 are deeply proud to do, so Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods, and there are community arts organizations in almost all of them. We try to be in partnership with as many as we can at the same time -- whether it's the African-American Museum in Philadelphia, which is a big and distinguished institution, or much smaller ones, they go on and on. In Fiscal Year 2001, we are particularly excited because we anticipate that our program will attract approximately 1 million visitors from around the world, an increase of at least 200,000 over this past year. And in part, we anticipate that will be because we will have the honor to present an exhibition called "Van Gogh Face to Face," which is first exhibition of Van Gogh portraits ever to be organized anywhere, not only in this country, but abroad. We are partnering with two other cities to do this. 25 million is a figure that has essentially remained flat for the last five years, and we are doing our best to work with it. It provides the 1323 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 contribution towards the building operating services -- security and maintenance -- which have been the City's share of keeping the museum accessible to the public. 8 million. And I might add that in Fiscal '99, the museum did receive an additional grant of City support to cover the increased cost of security and maintenance for the very successful Delacroix exhibition, as well as a productivity bank loan, which helped improve our attendance and admission for that show. So next year, we do see coming at us not only the Van Gogh exhibition, which we hope will draw several hundred thousands visitors more, I would think, and the Republican National Convention, which, of course, the whole city is anticipating so -- as well as the adding of the Reliance building to our campus, if you will. So we do anticipate, because of our ambition to increase our attendance, to serve the City, to have greater access to all of our visitors, offer them more and more, which is our 1324 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 ambition, we do foresee that there will be substantially increased expenses, so we may need to return to the Administration and to Council to see if there's a possibility of an additional special support of some kind during the year to help defray these special costs next year. I think you know us all very well. We operate a not-for-profit Pennsylvania corporation, which operates the museum's facilities, which are owned by the City under a written contract. It's hard to think that the museum building was constructed 72 years ago and has had, of course, some important infusion of support over all that period of time. It was built by City money, authorized by this Council. And we should say that while we are very grateful for the support and the restoration of some support in the capital program for Fiscal 20001, that we also are happy and have been investing substantial amounts of private funding into the building projects, whenever that is possible. And in the last several years, we invested about 5 million into the reinstallation of our European galleries, and look forward to 1325 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00 doing that in the future, if we can. It's the City's commitment of dollars which helps to us leverage the other support.
So we're very excited about our future, and we're not only entering the 21st century and the new millennium, but we're turning 125 years young, as I hope that will prove the case, we want to make our anniversary year as exciting as possible for everyone in the City and beyond. And we are enormously grateful to the Council and to the Administration for their partnership that makes it possible for us to continue to do what we are striving to do.
Thank you so much. We certainly appreciate all the wonderful work that you do, and we're so proud of the Art Museum. It's a real jewel to the City, believe me. Are there any questions from members of the committee? (No questions.)
Thank you so much. And I'm sorry you were kept waiting to testify. 1326 OPERATING BUDGET CONT'D. - BILL 05 - 2/16/00
This committee will stand in recess until, Tuesday February 22nd, at 9:00 a.m. Thank you all very much. (Adjourned at 6:44 p.m.) - - - 1327 C E R T I F I C A T E I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Wednesday, February 16, 2000, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of same. RE: COUNCIL COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE BILL NO. 000005 __________________________________, JOSEPHINE CARDILLO, Registered Professional Reporter