COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, March 31, 2026 10:19 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYATTA JOHNSON COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE RICHARDSON COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR. COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS COUNCILMAN MARK SQUILLA COUNCILMAN ISAIAH THOMAS COUNCILMAN JEFFREY YOUNG, JR. BILLS: 260199, 260200, 260201, 260202, 260203, 260204, 260205, 260206, 260208, 260209 RESOLUTION: 260227 - - -
This is the public hearing, a public meeting of the Committee of the Whole regarding Bill Nos. 260199, 260200, 260201, 260202, 260203, 260204, 260205, 260206, 260208, 260209 and Resolution No. 260227. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the roll and take attendance.
Present. Thank you very much, members, for the quorum. I really appreciate it. This committee is now called to order. Ms. Loughead, will you please read the titles of the resolutions.
Bill No. 16 260199, an Ordinance adopting the Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2027. Bill No. 260200, an Ordinance to adopt a Fiscal Year 2027 Capital Budget. Bill No. 260201, an Ordinance to adopt a Capital Program for the six Fiscal Years, 2027-2032 inclusive. Bill No. 260202, an Ordinance amending Chapter 19-2400 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Hotel Room Rental Tax," by providing for an additional excise tax on hotel room rentals, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260203, an Ordinance amending Subcode "A" (The Philadelphia Administrative Code) of Title 4 of The Philadelphia Code (The Building, Construction and Occupancy Code), by adding and revising Zoning Board of Adjustment fees and provisions regarding hearing scheduling, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260204, an Ordinance amending Title 3 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Air Management Code" to modify the amounts of license and permit fees, under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 2602055, an Ordinance amending Section 19-1806 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Authorization of Realty Use and Occupancy Tax," to clarify the imposition of the tax on the use or occupancy of real estate with respect to cell towers, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260206, an Ordinance amending Chapter 6-600 of The Philadelphia Code ("Asbestos"), by adding and providing provisions related to various fees, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260208, an Ordinance amending Chapter 19-1800 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "School Tax Authorization," to a add a new Section 19-1808, entitled "Authorization of Rideshare Use Tax," to authorize the Board of the School District of Philadelphia to levy a tax upon the use by a passenger of a transportation network company for a prearranged ride that originates in Philadelphia; all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260209, an Ordinance amending Title of The 8 Philadelphia Code, entitled 9 "Finances, Taxes and Collections," 10 to add a new Chapter 19-4800, 11 entitled "Retail Delivery Tax," to 12 establish a tax on orders for the 13 delivery in Philadelphia of retail 14 consumer and other tangible goods, 15 all under certain terms and 16 conditions. 17 Resolution No. 260227, 18 Providing for the approval by the 19 Council of the City of Philadelphia a Revised Five Year Financial Plan for the City of Philadelphia, covering Fiscal Years 2027 through 2031, and incorporating revisions with respect to Fiscal Year 2026, 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 capital spending measures for Fiscal Year 2027, a Capital Program and a Forward- looking Capital Plan for Fiscal Year 2027 through Fiscal Year 2032. This morning we have scheduled testimony from the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer, Office of Human Resources and the Office of Innovation and Technology. Given the overlap of these departments' responsibilities, all departments will be available for questioning following the testimony from the City's Chief Administrative Officer, Camille Duchese. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the first witness to testify from the Administration.
Camille Duchaussee, make sure I get that right. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Good morning, Councilman -- Council President Johnson, members of City Council and colleagues. I am Camille Duchaussee, the Chief Administrative Officer for the City of Philadelphia. I appear before you today to present budget priorities and strategic direction of the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer and departments within the CEO cluster for the upcoming fiscal year. The Fiscal Year '27 budget for the Office of the CAO is critical to fulfill the mission of the office, to create and support conditions for city departments and workforce to deliver efficient, effective and equitable city services while enhancing the quality of life for all residents and providing a government that residents can see, touch and feel. Joining me today at the table are Candi Jones, our Chief Human Resource Officer, and Melissa Scott Walker, our Chief Information Officer, along with Ronald Hovey, our Procurement Commissioner, Jim Leonard, our Records Commissioner, as well as Melissa Andre, our OAR Director, Executive Director Carol DeFries, our CCME Executive Director Adrienne Moore, our Executive Director for the Office for People with Disabilities. In the past year, we have realized service delivery and improvement by deploying digital workflow transformation solutions for several departments. We've streamlined the professional services contract and conformance process so vendors navigate fewer hurdles with clearer timelines, templates and touchpoints, expanded upskilling and professional development through CCME and the Office of Talent and Employee Success, worked across departments to center accessibility, ensuring our digital services, facilities and public communication are inclusive for people with disabilities. Additionally, our departmental partners have helmed significant and impactful initiatives and business process improvements, including OIT's launch of citywide AI policy and strategy, digital equity and literacy programs, OHR's time to hire and vacancy reduction and creation of HR University, the Records Department's payment process modernization and establishment of a national first of its kind, deed fraud protection, and procurement responsiveness and partnership during several significant citywide events. I am proud of the work of the CAO and its partner departments and ask that City Council support the proposed budget. Written testimony has been submitted for your review. We welcome any questions. And before we get started, I would also like to ask my colleague Melissa Scott to present testimony today. Thank you.
Good morning, Council President Johnson, members of City Council. I'm Melissa Scott, the Chief Information Officer. Joining me today is Nadine Dodge, Chief Enterprise Officer; Steve Robinson, Chief of Staff; Chris Donato, Chief Financial Officer; Dan Rothman, Chief Technology Officer; Damian Oravez, our Chief Security Officer; Tim Haynes, our Chief Data Officer; Kelly Thornton, Chief Project Management Officer; Idris Abdul Zahir, our Chief Support Services Officer. I'm pleased to provide testimony on the Office of Innovation and Technology's Fiscal Year 2027 operating budget. The Office of Innovation and Technology functions as city central technology agency responsible for establishing and executing the city's IT strategy in direct alignment with the Mayor's vision and departmental goals. OIT provides the digital infrastructure systems and services that enable secure, efficient and effective government operations. For some of our plans for Fiscal Year 2027, 311 new mobile app, a new interface enhancement. The 311 mobile app introduces several new features designed to significantly improve the residents' experience and modernize service delivery. Residents will be able to submit service requests more intuitively through a mobile-first interface, including the ability to upload photos, use location services for precise issue reporting and select clearly- defined service categories. Scheduled to launch August 2026, it marks the city's first inhouse mobile app application. Also, we are expanding PHLgovTV live streaming. This initiative establishes a reliable citywide live remote broadcast capabilities that extend our existing TV station beyond the studio, directly into neighborhoods, events and community spaces. It provides residents with more timely, accessible and transparent information, strengthening engagement and trust with built-in staffing redundancy. The model ensures consistent daily broadcast and creates capacity to expand in additional programming, such as community spotlights, emergency updates and special event coverages. E. E. E. resources on a mobile device instead of navigating multiple offices or paper-based processes. This reduces confusion, saves time, makes it easier for working families to access critical housing support. In addition, we have our AI tools and governance. AI governance strategy of OIT establishes a framework that enhances its control accountability. Each AI tool is required to undergo a comprehensive review process, which includes security evaluations, approval from the Governance Committee, risk assessments, final operational clearance prior to deployment. The utilization of AI is subject to ongoing monitoring, auditing, reporting, guaranteeing complete transparency and comprehensive oversight throughout OIT. IT Security, the Law Department, the AI policy have all participated in publishing the AI policy, which published March 24th of this year, following a comprehensive review by OIT security, legal ethics, integrity and law stakeholders. This strategy is anchored in three core principles: ethical utilization, robust governance frameworks, a data security, emphasizing bias reductions, human oversight and stringent data protection measures. To facilitate this initiative, OIT is rolling out employee training on April 1st, establishing clear AI guidelines to ensure that staff comprehend how to use AI responsibly as a tool to augment, not substitute their work. As far as our achievements, we have achieved the Power Up Tour. It's a citywide initiative that helps bridge the digital divide by distributing 500 free laptops and a host of 50 laptops to preregister residents in all 10 Council Districts. Since we launched the program, we have distributed 367 laptops. Power Up Philly Community Tech Expo, which occurred last Saturday, is a day dedicated to digital empowerment, featuring key speakers, computer training.
Laptop distributions of 1600 Philadelphians received laptops in partnership with Temple and 70-plus community organizations. OIT's digital equity team applied and received over million in funding 2 from PA Broadband Authority to increase capacity at 22 Philadelphia park and recreation centers. The digital equity team project manages those grants in coordination with PPR and the Capital Program Office. OIT has also launched an OIT upskilling training program, a five-layer workforce strategic plan. In 2025, OIT initiated a strategic workforce transformation focused on building consistency, resilience, intercapabilities. Key efforts include launching IT-based training to standardize skills, beginning upskilling programs aligned to modern IT demands and implementing cross-training mentorship to reduce knowledge silos and operational risks. In addition, we also launched a citywide technical training. OIT enhanced the proficiency of all employees and utilizing a critical workplace tools by providing structured-led training on a suite workplace productivity tool. The program improved day-to-day productivity collaborations across departments by establishing a consistent baseline of digital skills through a phase implementation that began in March 2025. From March 2025 to 2026, we held 116 sessions that were conducted in training over 1000 employees. The results indicated a significant impact with a net provider score of 83% positive teaching rating and 95% satisfaction, which surpasses industry standards and confirms that employees are acquiring the necessary skills to execute their jobs efficiently. And lastly, the 2026 mobile app, which has launched this month OIT facilitated the development of 2026 Access Philly mobile app, a centralized platform created to facilitate Philadelphia's 2026 events, enabling residents, visitors and attendees to explore, schedule and participate in activities throughout the city. The application consolidates event listings, schedules, locations and essential facts into a cohesive, friendly interface. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Before I turn it over to my members, just a couple questions: First, I'm going to start off with a statement. The IT department, Melissa, the work you have been doing in terms of the Administration giving out the laptops I think is great when it comes to bridging the digital divide. I know we've all -- let's clap for that, y'all. (Applause.)
And the reason why, I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and I've been an elected official since 2008, right, and we've never had a real strong push from my perspective to bridge the digital divide here in the City of Philadelphia. You have some programs, a little bit here, a little bit there. But in terms of me being inside this body, and even when I was a State Rep, like a concerted effort to put free laptops in the hands of our youth, so I thought that was great. Because y'all not only partnered with Councilmembers, but then y'all popped up at Temple and said, not separate from just Councilmembers, anybody can come, no matter where you're at, you can come and participate. And so, very, very impressed with that this past weekend. And also, obviously, you know I'm a supporter of the H.O.M.E. Plan, and I think the H.O.M.E. app is great as a one-stop shop for individuals to take advantage of all the things that the H.O.M.E. Plan has to offer. So I think that's awesome as well. I want to go into Human Services. I want to first and foremost commend the HR team for reducing the vacancies, right. And so, how do we continue on that path of reducing the vacancies? What was the strategies that was used to actually go after and get more people hired? And then also, with the One Philly initiative that you're going to create a position for a management tool to improve the process in which the city tracks vacancies, tell us more about that as well. And what's our current process of tracking vacancies as well?
Understood. So I'll start with the last question first. Good morning, everyone. Candi Jones, Chief Human Resources Officer. So I would say our recruitment strategy is multi- pronged. To be quite honest, I think I mentioned a few strategies at the Five Year Plan. And so, one of our strongest, strongest tools that we leverage is our community partnerships and its partnerships with Council. And so, we have increased significantly the number of community events that we are attending. So in 2024, we attended 154 events. In 2005, we attended 326 events. 100 of those events had the Mobile Hiring Unit, the bus. We continue to partner with our city departments. We continue to partner with the school district, CCP. Recently we hosted job fairs specific the federal workforce that were being offboarded. We partnered recently with PHA in order to figure out if we could transition some of their layoffs, some of their staff into some of our skilled trades roles. So we continue to leverage all of our community partnerships. We have significant partnerships in the Hispanic community. We have partnerships specific to Re-Entry, Muslim Engagement. And so, we're really leveraging the full totality of all of our partnerships in order to attract future workforce. I think the second question -- I'm sorry, Council President. Can you repeat it?
The One Philly management tool to improve the process by which you're going to track city vacancies? And also, how are we tracking vacancies now?
So right now we're leaning on our relationships with our sister departments to track vacancies manually. We update our critical vacancy list with the Department of HR about every 30 days. And so, we continue to maintain those numbers. One Philly does sit in the Finance Department so they are managing the transition to our position management tool. But the OHR team, my deputy Ardena Starks sits on that team. And so, we are working collaboratively with the One Philly group to ensure that the position management tool kind of meets everyone's expectations, it has an ease of use and that we can sort of abandon what we're doing right now with the manual tracking of vacancies.
In terms of civil service hiring, on average how long is that process in terms of getting people hired through the civil service process, because we do get a lot of calls regarding individuals who are anxious about getting hired by the City of Philadelphia? And also, what's the current percentage of civil service eligible lists that are produced on or by the target date of when you want to get people hired?
Understood. So we're really excited about our time to hire numbers this go-around. So as you remember, City Council generously funded our transition to a new applicant tracking system in last year's budget. That tracking system is called Neogov. So it allows us to track our time to hire processes that we were tracking manually. It allows us to track our time to hire into the entire employee lifecycle. So right now, we're tracking about 100 days. Our goal is to be under 90 days. But what the system allows is we can compare ourselves to our peer jurisdictions that are also using the Neogov system, and our peer jurisdictions are about 180 days. And so, we're looking great. We're not happy with 100 days, but we're certainly on our way, well underway, to make under 90 days in the future.
And what's part of your strategy to kind of --
It's multi- pronged for that, Council President. So if everyone recalls the time to hire process, there's ownership at different parts in the process. So the beginning is the announcement period that OHR fully owns, which is where we announce the examinations. We pull it down, review the applications and establish the eligible list. Then there's a portion that is on the department side, where they're requesting the names off of the eligible list and doing their candidate interview process. And so, on the OHR side we are looking at ways that we can shorten our time to hire. And so, can we post jobs for a shorter period of time, can we decrease the time to establish the eligible list, right, leveraging more training and experience evaluations as opposed to written examinations. On the department side, we are working very, very closely with HR managers across the city. We've established a (inaudible) circles where we're meeting with HR managers one-on-one in groups to talk to them about how they can improve their processes, how they can speed up their time to hire on their end. There is also some really great system gains for reducing time to hire on the departmental side. The new system does allow candidate text messaging, self-scheduling of interviews. And so, we're really both streamlining our human processes, but also leveraging technologies in order to comprehensively reduce time to hire --
Yeah. Oh, sorry, that's good. Thank you, Camille. So we're also looking at the employee -- we're also looking at HR comprehensively, right. So when we're looking at HR Centers of Excellence, COEs, we're trying to identify what components right now that we have decentralized across the city that we are able to centralize and bring in under the Office of Human Resources in order to improve our processes, whether that be training, whether that is the separations process, how can the Office of Human Resources have additional oversight and bring those processes into the office in order to streamline our processes. And so, we're doing kind of a comprehensive look right now of all of the HR Centers of Excellence to then make recommendations both in the short- term and the strategic long-term in order to improve the HR processes across the city.
All right. Thank you. And a question regarding -- there's a million dollars requested for the CCME program that's at Community College. Just give us an idea regarding to date how many graduates from the program. Give me an overview as you move forward in terms of what makes an individual qualified to participate and to be a fellow in the program as well.
So the fellow program specifically is what you're asking?
Okay. Thank you for the question, Council President. So during the course of the first year and a half of our CCME program, we realized that the alignment that we intended for the program completers to move fairly seamlessly into municipal employment, particularly entry- level civil service positions, wasn't working as we wanted it to. There were some aspects of -- there was more support needed. There were some aspects of the announcements weren't lining up exactly timing-wise with the completion of the program. And so, we went kind of back to the lab and thought about how do we better support this transition. And we created the CCME fellow. I'm very, very excited about the CCME fellow because it does a couple of things: Number one, it allows us to create a transitional process, so for our completers, our participants who need a little bit more support. Just because you finish a program doesn't necessarily mean that you are ready to slide right into a full-time position and be successful. We want to make sure that when you finish a program, a CCME program, and you head off into your full-time employment with the city, that you're successful, that you're a coveted human resource asset. So we created the fellow which allows us to pull our completers, our participants, when they complete the program into a transitional pre-entry level position, full-time, permanent with benefits. We can provide on practical experience. We're supporting different departments while also creating a very robust continuation of the professional development work that is needed in some cases. We have a person who is very specifically assigned to track our fellows, to work with them, a navigator who will identify not only positions for which they are qualified and to help them navigate the application process, but to understand where there might be some continued gaps in terms of competency, proficiency and make the adjustments in terms of sliding that person into additional training that's necessary to build their skill. So we're very happy with the program. I believe the budget ask right now is about a million and a half. We have already hired three CCME fellows. We are looking back at the first cohort of CCME completers to pull additional completers into the fellow program. As the program gets up and running, that first cohort is supporting our Philadelphia vendor cooperative or our vendor support unit, and it addresses two issues at this point --
How many graduates have you had thus far through the program and cohorts as well?
So we're still in a process of not every -- the cohorts and the programs don't all end at the same time. So we are still in the process of the first cohort making its way through all the different programs. There's different phases of the program that include some of our, if you call them, power skills or soft skills. Then we go into kind of the technical programs, specific aspects of it. Some of our cohorts stay at CCME at CCP and continue their education, which we consider a win. And some of our participants do absolutely move on from the program and either we're slotting them into our CCME fellow or they're being hired. And in some cases, they're going on to -- they decide not to accept or pursue municipal employment or they pursue external employment opportunities.
So what's the current number of graduates thus far?
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Curtis Jones, Jr.
Thank you, Mr. President. Couple of questions. I'm going to shoot them out because there is a clock. Number one, for OIT what is the impact of artificial intelligence on the future of our workforce? I guess that should also be with the personnel department, to determine what impact is that going to have on jobs and the workforce and to a degree of efficiency. That's question number one. Second question is for Public Property. I need to know what our current complement of publicly-owned buildings is compared to the amount of repair. There's a term you guys used the other day to talk about the needed repairs versus what we have. And Part 2 of that question is, out of all of the departments we have, how many of them are housed in private buildings that we pay rent to? Those are my questions first round.
So I'll start off with the question relative to public property. Public Property does not rest within our purview, so we're happy to either obtain that information for you, but I do believe that Public Property also has an opportunity, a hearing date that might be better-suited for that question. But happy to get that information and provide it to you.
So in regards to AI, our framework is built on a three-pillar framework, so it's ethical, human-centered process and control data and security. So your first question is based -- it comes out of our first pillar, which is to ensure that we protect any biases and equity. So that's the first thing. And the way we do that is we test and we monitor for biases and never assume to be neutral. The other part is a human in the loop. So this goes into where you talk about efficiency. We have to make sure that we augment -- AI is there to augment our workforce, not to replace. So humans have to stay in the loop and stay accountable at all times. Yes, they can become more efficient at their work, but humans need to overlook anything that AI produces, ensure that they're the final ones that has the accountability over what's produced.
So we say that, but there are things -- what are they, chat bots?
Can you for the record announce what they are, and we're using them more and more throughout government. And a lot of the feedback I get from my constituents is that we are moving to an automated, non-human response in a lot of our inquiries. And so, it increases the efficiency. But if my question doesn't fit neatly within that box, sometimes there's a problem.
So you're speaking of the large language models known as LLMs. And we currently have training for the employees that will roll out April 1st. This is introducing them to how to utilize these tools, how to use them correctly, ensuring --
What the bot is, okay. So the large language models takes information and it -- say, for instance, you want to type a paper or something along those lines or you're drafting a memo or something along those lines. It can take the information you type in, what it is that you would like it to do, it's called a prompt. And then it will produce back to you information that would help you with your original prompt that you provided it. What's important to understand is how to use the prompts. And from the perspective -- so there's two sides to it, right. There's the IT side and then there's the operational side. So we have an AI governance team, Camille and I are the co-chairs. I handle the IT side, and then there's the operational side. So from an IT perspective, where my jurisdiction lies is ensuring that our data does not go out to any of these tools that basically bad actors would be able to get a hold of them and use them against us. So the training that we're launching teaches them how to use the prompts, what is the official City of Philadelphia tool, which is Copilot Chat, also explaining all the other different chat bots, ChatGPT and so forth. We should not be uploading city data into those tools. This is what the training explains and ensures that everyone knows how to use it safely and securely. A lot of what you're asking now is what will the departments allow to be used. So the process for that is they would submit what tools they want to use and whatever software or applications. It would go through questionnaire, security clearances. We will look at how it fits in with our infrastructure. So that's the third pillar, our data and security, making sure things are encrypted. That is part of the city-approved tools. We're also monitoring for transparency. So that's my area. But do you want an AI tool now to interact with the public, do you want someone in a particular department to use maybe a chat bot tool to answer questions such as customer service, that's an operational question.
So Member Landau and I, Mr. President, are going to introduce a resolution 10 to look at a longer-term explanation of your vision for the use of artificial intelligence and its impact on our workforce. So please be prepared for that, because I can't -- I know my clerk typist is scared to death when I start doing emails, letters and drafting them out. No, Councilman, I can do this, don't you do it. And so, I want to see long term what that means to the Clerk Typist I, Clerk Typist II and people that are at the counters, that if I can ask a bot or to interface with the public, what does that mean for the workforce?
So it's important that we have an AI governance team, which includes Camille and, as I mentioned, as the co-chairs, but it also includes legal ethics, a labor representative, and we are building out a framework for action plan. So the two things that we accomplished thus far is the AI policy, which is available for viewing internally, and then we also created the training. We are still working through an action plan to get more specifics through our different committees. We have a procurement committee, a legal committee, external advisors committee that would include all of our external community individuals that would like to express their feelings and concerns as well as our technical infrastructure committee. So between those committees and that governance structure, we'll create an action plan that we'll work through the summertime in order to release some additional information as well as building a platform for transparency so we can upload these documents so the public could view them as well, which is not a traditional way that we communicate information, but we are going to have that --
Can you give a copy once the plan is completed to the President so he can distribute it to Innovation and the Majority Leader, who has been on personnel for a while?
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Anthony Phillips.
Thank you, Council President. I want to frame my questions today around one central theme and, that is, responsive government. Because at the end of the day, neighbors should experience government through departments that have outcomes. And we continue to see in our district, whether it's operations, hiring, we are seeing delays in service delivery and lack of clear communication. So I want to begin also by stating that I'm very thrilled that our Chief Information Technology Officer Melissa Scott has done an incredible job with giving laptops out to our communities. I think it was really innovative what was done at Temple recently. And I love the outwardness of the technology department. It is incredible. And then also, I want to thank Candi Jones, our Director of Human Resources, for doing an incredible job with working with some ideas that I shared around getting flyers out, right, images out on social media that we can share across our Council District. My first question is for Camille. If you can just briefly describe to me what specific systems or protocols has CAO implemented to ensure cross- department coordination happens within defined timelines?
Yeah. So often times, many issues in our district require coordination across multiple departments, such as Streets, Water Department, L&I, Revenue and others. When that coordination breaks down, residents experience delays, conflicting information or no resolution. So your department is supposed to ensure efficiency among staffing. How are you ensuring that every department is supposed to communicate with each other, such as maybe sometimes Streets has to coordinate better with Water Department to have efficiency? How are you making sure that those timelines are being worked on by these departments?
Sure. Thank you, Councilmember Phillips, for the question. So we, as a result of Mayor Parker's Executive Order, created a system called Better Services PHL. It is a cross-departmental effort to improve service delivery to our residents. It allows us to create an interdisciplinary team to look at the various services that are delivered across all departments, be able to, where possible, coordinate the improvement of those services. So as an example, when we worked with our Revenue partners and they had multiple application processes that they were using for revenue support, tax support, we were able to work with that department to create a single application process that allows for any resident who might qualify across multiple support systems and support opportunities to apply one time and be considered for all of the different programs for which they would be eligible. This approach to improving services is not exclusive to a department. Because we are looking across all departments, we're able to see the different services that are delivered, the functions of each department and apply the efficiencies gained in one project across all departments.
Would it be possible to get a commitment from you just to follow up on that from every single department to provide a one-pager where there is a clear understanding of service-level agreements between the city and the service that they're providing for a neighbor that we can distribute across our districts to say if there's a pothole, the service- level agreement is a three-day response, if it's a cave-in, it may take up to 40 days? That way we could be very clear with residents how long it's going to take for something to be done, so every Councilmember, every State Rep, every State Senator do not have to call and say, I need to jump the line because the process is confusing for people and they've been waiting for so long?
So, Councilmember Phillips, I think I'm going to do you one better. We are creating and we are at the end of Phase of citywide service standards. And every department is going to commit to those service standards, which to your point would include, what does timely remediation of an issue mean, so that there is one definition of that and where every department is acquiescing to that service standard and going to be held accountable to that service standard.
Thank you. I know I'm out of time. I just want to also briefly say if that could be also published on the city's website as well --
-- I'd still like the one-pager. And then I would also just greatly encourage you all, if you can maybe send some of the people from your team to come by our City Council offices and just sit for a week or a few days just to really observe the type of calls that come in, and we can kind of share out the type of issues that we have trouble with, and maybe that can help with you thinking about how to improve these departments, because the departments are not always sharing the totality of their issues in the way that we experience them.
So I appreciate that and we're happy to do that. Just based on the conversation that we've had with you a few weeks ago, we were able to attend your town hall and we began a project with the Water Department on communication.
Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilmember Jim Harrity.
Thank you, Council President. Good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions. I'm going to, for the sake of time, ask them and then you can go at it. How can we make sure we are being proactive in informing seniors and longtime homeowners that they can sign up for Fraud Guard to protect from deed fraud? And is there a specific enrollment target or outreach strategy in 2027's plan? The program has been free since '22 but enrollment remains low.
So I can also ask my colleague Jim Leonard to speak to that. But one of the projects that we've taken on under better services is working with our Records Department. And the goal is automatic enrollment in deed fraud protection. So we are working on a system, we are working with the vendor to ensure that our residents are automatically being enrolled and they have to opt out of the deed fraud protection. And so, the goal really is 100%, unless a resident very specifically wants to opt out of the deed fraud protection. And I think that very much plays into some of the challenges our seniors may have with navigating the digital systems. So they don't have to do that. They're protected automatically.
Yeah. That is really, really good to hear. Anything that we can automatically enroll our people in to give them a little bit of a savings, especially with some of the things we have planned in the budget, you know, we got to start looking at trying to cut our citizens' cost and protect them, and this is a way we can also do both. So I'm happy with that. Would you like him to elaborate or -- I'm pretty good at the auto. That was what I was looking for. So this is for Human Resources. You provided information about the hiring process from start to finish. Why is it so long? And what parts of the process are causing such a lengthy process? I understand that you are trying to shorten this. What parts of the process are you targeting to make it shorter?
So I'm going to -- thank you for the question. I will go through the full process first and then talk about the parts that we're looking at. So the beginning of the process for civil service positions at the job posting process, Civil Service regulations require us to post those jobs for at least calendar days. And so, it's posted online for 15, sometimes more days. Sometimes we open jobs longer so that we can align with recruitment efforts and things like that. So there's a portion of time there. When that announcement closes, we pull it down and then it is assigned to an analyst who goes through each application by hand to determine if folks are eligible for the role. We have not -- to the AI question, we have not leveraged AI for that because it would be a detriment to our candidates, right. Some folks don't fill out their applications thoroughly. We have a digital divide. And so, we make sure that we go through those applications by hand. That adds time to the process. If we are administering examination, it can add more time. But most of our, I think, about 75% of our announcements are training and experience evaluations right now. And so, candidates are not coming in for a test. We establish that eligible list. Once the eligible list is established, departments are notified that it's established and they have to request the names from that eligible list to fill their vacancies. Once the names go to the departments, then they're responsible for engaging with those candidates in the interview process. So reaching out to see if they're interested, scheduling interviews, you know, making sure whoever the supervisors or managers that are engaging in those processes are interviewing with candidates and then making a selection, and then going through kind of establishing the hire date. So that's the entire timeline of the process where we're looking at about 100 days. What we're doing --
100 days, mm-hmm. But compared to our peer jurisdictions, they around 180 days. So we're proud of 100, but not satisfied though. So what we're doing right now is looking at both the OHR-owned part of the process and the departmental-owned parts of the process to identify where we can close the gap. So can we work in partnership with the Civil Service Commission to change the required posting date to maybe seven, eight, whatever the days look like, are there parts of our process on the front end that we can minimize and then working with our departments, right, to figure out if there are parts of their processes that can be streamlined. The new applicant tracking system has a lot of technology that we're going to be leveraging, right, so candidate text messaging, self-scheduling for interviews, things that will speed up the process and getting that individual in front of a manager, interviewed and selected. And so, we're looking at the entire life cycle to just figure out where there are places that we can narrow that window and still being aligned with Civil Service regulations and our processes. We still want to present a very fair and equitable process for everyone, but we are looking at our process to identify those opportunities.
Okay. I'll come back in the next round. Thank you, Council President. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President. Good morning, everyone. How's everybody doing? I just had a couple of questions and I really wanted to focus on the use of technology. So when you were speaking earlier about Human Resources and the way we do things manually, and I get it, you know, we need to protect the data, we need to make sure everything is safe and secure. But I have a lot of concern. Because in all of my time here in City Council, we have always been sort of lagging behind when it comes to technology and efficiencies, and we're still not there and it doesn't feel like we're close to being there. And I know that there are efficiencies, for example, like the city of Baltimore did --
Point of information. I'm sorry. Since I've been Council President, you all have charges underneath your desk. I just want to say that for the record.
So what I would say, the city of Baltimore has done some extraordinary work using AI and using technology around a really big problem that we have in the City of Philadelphia, which is illegal dumping. I know that the city of Miami has been using AI to address low-income housing. And these are serious, significant issues that we face and challenges we deal with every single day and it feels like we're not working to make ourselves -- we're not working smarter. We're working hard, but we're not working really smart. So can we get a response on that?
I'm going to start, but I will pass it to Melissa. So this is a rapidly changing environment, right.
And we understand here you have exactly the issue that we face with this kind of dichotomy of approach, hey, we really need to take full advantage of artificial intelligence, generative AI, but we need to do so in consideration of what is it going to do to the workforce, are we replacing people with AI, right. And so, the first thing that we need to do, and I was doing a little research on this, there was a lot of fear when computers came to the workplace, right. I'm a fairly older person and I used to do things in triplicate, and we used to type on a typewriter. And when the internet came about, we were very slow to allow folks to access the internet. We were fearful.
Right. This is another iteration of that, right. And Melissa and I had an opportunity to spend some time in San Jose, California who really is doing a lot of progressive work, and to some degree, has created the foundation of how do you implement AI, particularly in government. And one of the things that's very important is that we first have to make sure that we're building a foundation that we're not making people fearful of AI, that they are using it responsibly, that we are using it as the tool that is intended to be. To the point that Councilmember Jones made earlier, there's the idea that we can achieve efficiency, right. And there's a lot of good work that's being done, a lot of good research that's being done out of the Federal Reserve on how do you identify those roles that are going to be most impacted by AI, right. And we're following along with that research and we want to make sure that we are identifying spaces where you have roles that are going to have significant impact by AI, what does that efficiency allow that role to do, right? Not how do we replace the role, but how do we take advantage of that role. So our very first -- and I'll end with this. The very first thing that we needed to do was we really did need to stop, create a policy, at least an initial policy, to allow folks to use, to become familiar with it so that it's not a scary proposition as we move forward.
Right. So my concern -- and I know, Melissa, you're next -- but I just want to address your comments. My concern is that while we're working at the pace that Philadelphia often works at, which is snail pace, you know, the world is moving on. Things are happening. And so, it feels like we're just really behind, and this technology is moving so fast --
-- that if we're not on the cutting edge just in terms of our competitiveness as a city we are likely to be just run over, you know, in my opinion. And more than that, these efficiencies that we're sort of delaying, getting to the point where we're able to take advantage of these efficiencies, they equal out to the savings we talk about. There's a proposal to raise this Uber and Lyft tax, and we did the soda tax and there's this and that, you know, all these things that we don't have to do if we go to finding the efficiencies, and I believe that they're there. And I think even with people, making sure that we don't lose people, because we want to maintain -- you know, we don't want to put people out of work, but at the same time we can still help use those same people to go to the next level is what I'm trying to say.
And I will turn it over to Melissa, but I do want to make sure that I'm being clear. This was the first step and we are very quickly -- it may not feel like it to you, but we are very quickly establishing this first step so that we can move on to taking advantage of those efficiencies and using AI in a different way. So I'll turn it over to Melissa.
But as you say we're moving quickly, what does quickly look like? Quickly to me might not be quickly to you.
So with all due respect, I'm not sure what Baltimore is doing, but I would beg to differ if they're more advanced than us. We have 250 illegal dumping cameras that uses a form of an AI feature. And I can share with you some departments are more advanced than others. Our department that is the most advanced in AI tools is our police department. So we have the body-worn cameras that does translation, AI audio. We have also a speech-to- text translation. We also have a drone detection classification AI tool. So we have a lot of our tools in policing that are more advanced and they're using AI. I don't know if Baltimore has that --
We also have additional tools that we're using in regular-day services. So we have the Copilot Chat. There's some AI features in salesforce. There's the Adobe Creative Cloud. We have Articulate 360, Synthesia, so we have some tools. What we're trying to do and what Camille is talking about is we're trying to get the rest of the departments caught up with maybe some of the departments that are more advanced. But on the record, I do not want us to leave here with the assumption that the City of Philadelphia doesn't have any AI tools and we're starting from ground zero because that is just not true.
Yeah, that's not what I said. But what I'm saying here is that when it comes to efficiencies, other people are using tools that I've researched -- and listen, as somebody who as a District Councilmember who is constantly calling about the same spots over and over again, if I call you one more time about the 5500 block of Sprague Street, you know, that it needs to be cleaned up because there's constant dumping, like it's ongoing. And for someone like myself, if we're using AI, it doesn't feel like we're making the progress that we should be making. That's my point. And it's not to blame anybody. But just to say that there are other ways of doing things and I don't know how far along we are in them, but let's take a look. Let's keep our minds open because, you know, there was -- I don't know if anybody saw the piece on 60 Minutes this Sunday about the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It was shocking, it was horrifying, it was frightening, the report that they did on what's happening in terms of shipbuilding. And it wasn't really as much about Philadelphia. It was really about sort of a national situation, but it's based here in Philadelphia. And it just talked about efficiencies. And again, we just need to figure out how do we get from where we are right now to really being where I believe we can be on a global stage, not just on a national stage, on a global stage. There's only two manufacturing shipbuilding locations in the entire country. We're one of them. So there's a lot of potential there. But there's no potential if we don't see it, if we don't think about it, if we don't use the technology that's out there. So I know the bell has rung, Mr. President. I'll come back around.
I just want to say as far as the example you gave was illegal dumping, we have 1683 cameras in the city. I have a list here of how many cameras are in each Councilmember's District. In your district, there's 183 and illegal dumping cameras are there. So if you're asking for more cameras to be established, we can definitely have a meeting about that. But the idea that Baltimore has some technology for illegal dumping --
That's not the point that I'm trying to make here. We are stuck on Baltimore. That is not what I'm trying to say here. I'm saying that I have 100-and-something cameras in my district, but I'm still calling about the exact same spots over and over and over again. So whatever technology we have it's not enough, because whoever's dumping is coming back, is coming back, you know. And I don't think it's one person. It's become a dumpsite. And so, there's got to be a way to fix the problem. Not just keep coming out, using city resources and picking up the trash. But how do we think beyond that so that at some point we're not just using the same resources to come out, pick up trash. Next week I'm going to come out and pick up the trash. We have to think beyond where we are right now to try to fix this situation overall. And it's not about Baltimore's better. That's not what I'm saying. I'm born and raised here. I love my city. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I'm saying, let's look at what other people have done in other cities and let's try to see if there's something there that we can use.
Absolutely. We agree that we want to take advantage of technology. And while we are taking advantage in some cases -- again, this is an exploding tool, right, and solution to a lot of problems that we can look forward to. We do need to make sure that we are establishing a framework. And while it may not feel like it just yet, the fact that we've established that framework will allow us to now move forward with more kind of rapidity and intentionality and input to leverage AI in ways similar to what you're suggesting, how can we -- we're doing great work. How can we take advantage of AI to do better work.
Exactly, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Council President.
So in the UK, it says UK-based Council deploying an AI CCTV tower within ANPR to spot fly-tipping, aiming to deter illegal dumping and to support prosecutions. So I think we're all saying the same thing. And I think that's just a classic example of a case study of how we could possibly look at another country and/or a city to kind of model how AI is being used to tackle something that we're all very passionate about, which is illegal dumping, so we can have a safer, cleaner, greener Philadelphia. And so, I think we're all on the same page. All right. Thank you very much.
We could take that trip together. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad. Then Councilmember Rue Landau.
Thank you, Council President. Good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. Thank you for all the work you've been doing to improve our city. I want to speak about contracting and the recent report that Pew put out which shows that you guys are working on this. However, I wanted to get some clarity on what's happening, and just to state the case that more than 12,000 outside service contracts that the city signed between Fiscal 2020 and January 2025, 90% were conformed, meaning approved, signed and executed after their start date. When adding up the cost of the agreements during the period examined, the value of those late contracts total $3.4 billion. Think about that money circulating in our economy and what revenues we could have collected from that. So I'm very concerned, but we've been concerned for many years about this. And I know you're working with an outside consultant to see how we're addressing this, because the challenges, particularly our nonprofit providers, face can put them out of business, right. So if you would address that and tell us and give us an update on where we are and what is the timeline for the reform that's needed?
Sure. So first of all I thank you, Councilmember Ahmad, for the question and the opportunity to speak to it, because again it's work that I think has been going on for the two years that Mayor Parker has been in the administration, has led the Administration, and we are grateful for our partners at Pew and Bennett Midland who were able to put the resources to quantify the work that's being done. So I do want to clarify one thing, right. And so, the Pew study does speak to -- the Pew/Bennett Midland study does speak to the fact that from 2020 to January of '25, 90% of our contracts were conformed after the effective date. There does seem to be a leap that is made within that report that suggests that those billions of dollars were therefore paid late, and that is just simply not true. That is not an area of research in which they were able to quantify, what impact did that conformance, that late conformance or conformance after the effective date had on payments and quantify that, right. And so, I don't want to leave the impression that over $3 billion in contract dollars were paid late to our vendor partners, right --
We know that -- what we do know is that late conformance -- we cannot pay an invoice until a contract is conformed. So we know that if a contract is conformed months after the work has already started, at least the initial invoices for those months that the contract was not conformed after the effective date, those invoices were not paid. We know that. We are not able to quantify that at this point.
So let me just interject here because you're refuting the 3.4 billion that Pew is saying was out there unpaid basically, but you don't even have a way to quantify it. So how are you refuting their number?
No. As you read the report, they are equating the amount of the contracts, the total value of the contracts that were conformed late, they are --
Not the actual amount of the five months or whatever?
And that's not an intentional mislead. I think it's just a misread.
But I think the point is still, even if it's a little less than 3.4 billion, it's a lot of money --
-- of this money. Please go ahead. Tell us what you're doing.
I just want to reset some ground rules if it's okay.
No. When you're providing your testimony and y'all doing the Q and A, could you allow the member to please finish what she has to say first and then respond?
I feel very strongly about this one, so my apologies, Councilmember.
Yes. So what we're doing, right, there was a lot of work that was being done realtime, right. We recognize that we have to start the contract conformance process earlier. So we very intentionally in FY26 made an all-out effort using our work group that we put together with all of our contract conformance partners to include Law, Procurement, Finance, the CAO's Office and OEO to ensure that we all had an established expectation of a timeline of how long it's going to take us to do that work. We made outreach. One of the things that I learned during my time auditing is generally if you want someone to pay attention to something or think that it's important, you have to pay attention to it. And so, we paid attention to it. We assigned a specific individual to track when contract conformance routing began and we were finding very similar to what the report suggests, is that 90% were beginning the contract conformance process or were conformed after the effective date because they were beginning the process too late. So we made sure that we were making outreach to our partners, our departmental partners, and we created kind of individualized contact with them to begin FY26. And what we realized this year in FY26 was that 76% of our professional services contracts began the contract conformance process earlier than they did in FY25, which was part of the research, right. Not only that, we realized that there is an expedited process because a lot of our contracts are amendments with very little substantive change being made from amendment-to-amendment. So rather than having every contract in its amendment process go through the same rigors as an initial contract, we recognized that many of our departmental partners were not utilizing the expedited contracting process that's available to them. So we made an effort and we removed that option from our departmental procurement teams, right. They no longer have the option to take the longer road, the fuller contract conformance process. They must use the expedited process. Beyond that, again I don't mean to keep saying this, but it is something that I think has had meaningful impact. We created this collective with our nonprofit partners, so we were talking to them regularly. Something that many of them shared with us was not happening. We had no idea some of the impact and some of the direct service impact that it was having. So our compliance manager has created, Ms. Longcrier has created an advisory council that meets monthly with our nonprofit partners to have conversations about what is working, what's not working, get their feedback to help and use that feedback to inform the improvements that we're making. And then really most importantly, around our vendor contact, we stood up as we kind of mentioned during the CCME fellow conversation, we stood up what we're calling the Philadelphia Vendor Cooperative -- I'm still getting used to that name -- so that there is a one-stop shop. Much like Candi talked about the federated model, where different departments are doing different things relative to contracting and conformance doesn't work if I'm trying to get an answer to the question or if I'm a vendor partner who is working with multiple departments. So I think this is the way I do it. And then I go to my partnership, my contract with another department and they're doing it a different way, so our vendor unit is going to make sure that, number one, we're using standard templates, number two, that there is a single point of entry for them to have a conversation about whatever contract they have, and it is our responsibility as the city to mitigate the variation in response, and that's what the Vendor --
-- Cooperator will do. So those are just a couple of the things that we're doing.
I have one last thing to add. Are you going to do a dashboard because we don't need so much conversation? We could just see I put it in here, this is where it is, this is how much time is evolving and I get my first payment?
We are standing up a dashboard. And the third phase of our partnership with Pew and Bennett Midland is the implementation phase. And so, in their report they recognized accountability and being able to create some transparency around contract and contract conformance work, so they are partnering with us to stand up that dashboard.
Thank you, Council President. I'll use my next question for the next round.
I have a question. And I remember when you came during the first day of hearings, I talked about raising the threshold I guess from 10% to 15%. And at that time, you said yes. So are we going to go on the record and actually move toward the 15%?
Council President, we are having that conversation. We can't commit to it right here and right now, but it has been something that our vendor partners have been very loudly and vocal about, and we are contemplating how we might be able to do to work toward giving more grace to the administrative costs.
And then also in terms of administrative costs, right -- point of information, Mr. Jones.
For clarity, can you explain that process just for the record please?
Sure. Currently, we are capped at around 10% of the contract value that we can be charged by our vendor partners for professional services, for administrative fees as opposed to the actual administration of the service, right. And so, I believe the federal government has upped their standard to 15%. Our vendor partners are asking that we do the same.
And I think because the services they are providing, right, and the services they are providing are really about helping people, right. These aren't major corporations or individuals who are flooding City Council with lobbyists -- well, some -- but overall, they're helping people. And so, that burden shouldn't really be on them because of our administrative execution of getting them their money. And when you have a nonprofit coming to you and says, well, we took out a loan, right. And so, by time we get the money from the city, well, that money is going to pay off the interest to the loans so we're back at square one, pretty much, not -- they may make a profit but, you know, overall in terms of operating the nonprofit. And so, I think that's something -- and I know Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson was working on this aggressively around OHS, right. We need to find a solution for that because it's a burden for helping people. And I do have to ask this question, are we using AI to help out with that process?
So along with this ask, there are other avenues by which we can mitigate the administrative burden, right, the vendor -- I'm not going to get that right, the Vendor Cooperative is one of them. The more that I can use that team to maybe reach out to a vendor or an organization to assist them in the administrative functioning or standardized administrative functioning so you're not spending that much time doing that work. The use of better technology, more modernized technology --
Yes, absolutely. We are working toward -- I know we've all heard the term Opal. We are working toward implementing a solution that is going to be more vendor- friendly, more user-friendly for not only the vendors, but our staff and our --
But on the record, we haven't adopted as yet any AI solutions for this, because Opal does not have AI solutions embedded in it so I wanted --
I'm not specifically speaking to AI, but just in terms of --
-- modernizing our technology, right, and again in modernizing our technology being able to limit the administrative burden.
I have one more suggestion. Is there an incentive where we're penalized, right, on our end? For instance, I know on the state level the Governor has a process where if you apply for certain types of business permits, right, if it's not done in that 90-day time period, it's free, right. And so, that pushes -- something along those lines, right. So it pushes the responsibility on us to administer and get something done in an expedient and efficient manner. And if it's not, then we forego some level of additional revenue or the vendors should get some level of an extra benefit. Because it's not on them, it's on us and they're kind of incurring costs because of us not executing and administering what we need to do in a more efficient manner. Just thinking outside the box. Chair recognizes Councilmember Jones.
So when we used to do factoring at PCDC, we used the strength of the city contract as collateral to finance the in-between and we used to do that. The reason that plan that I asked be submitted to you is important because this is moving so fast, they don't know -- it's like tentacles out there. We need to put our arms around it so we can get a sense of where things begin and end with AI. And I think you said this summer, right, that the plan would be done?
You said this summer your strategic plan would be completed, I believe.