Thank you, Council President. I move for the adoption of the resolution. (Duly seconded.)
It's been moved and properly seconded. All in favor indicate by saying aye. (Aye.)
And a resolution authorizing City Council's Committee on Public Safety and the Special Committee on Gun Violence Prevention to Hold Hearings Regarding Relocating Victims Who Are Targets of Deadly Violence and STATED Meeting 117 9/15/2022 9/15/22 - STATED - 2ND READING Determining How the $500,000 Appropriated for their Relocation was Utilized, introduced today by Councilman Oh.
Thank you very much. I move for the adoption of the resolution. (Duly seconded.)
It's been moved and properly seconded. All in favor indicate by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it, and that resolution is adopted.
STATED Meeting 118 9/15/2022 Decker, we will now move to special business on Bill No. 220517-A. The Chair now recognizes Councilwoman Gauthier for a motion regarding special business.
Thank you, Mr. President. I move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit consideration of special business at this time. (Duly seconded.)
Thank you. It has been moved and seconded that the rules of Council be suspended to permit the consideration of special business at this time. All in favor indicate by saying aye. (Aye.)
The STATED Meeting 119 9/15/2022 The motion passes. Mr. Decker, please read the letter from the Mayor.
To the President and members of the Council of the City of Philadelphia, I am returning herewith, as requested by your resolution adopted today, Bill No. 220517-A, entitled "An ordinance authorizing the installation, ownership, and maintenance of various encroachments in the vicinity of 1 Convention Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104, under certain terms and conditions," for the purpose of reconsideration by the Council of the vote by which said bill passed Council.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Gauthier for a motion that Council reconsider the vote by which Bill No. 220517-A was passed.
So moved, Mr. President. STATED Meeting 120 9/15/2022 (Duly seconded.)
Thank you. All in favor please signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it. A majority of all members having voted in the affirmative, the motion carries and the vote by which Bill No. 220517-A was passed has been reconsidered. Bill No. 220517-A will be placed on the Final Passage Calendar. That completes our Calendar for today. Prior to recognizing members for the last time regarding speeches, I will note for the record at this time we will use the Chat future available in Microsoft Teams to allow members to signify that they wish to be recognized. In order to comply with the Sunshine Act, STATED Meeting 121 9/15/2022 only be used for this particular purpose. Are there any speeches on the part of the minority? The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Brooks.
Thank you so much, Council President. Good morning, colleagues, and welcome back to Council to my colleagues and everyone watching. I just wanted to briefly share information about an event my office is hosting this weekend. So this Saturday from 2:00 to 6:00 in front of the Constitution Center, my office is hosting a new voter registration party honoring the rites of passage of voting for 18-year-olds in the City. We have a long list of partners who are helping us with this event, and we are inviting young people and their families to come out to this party and register to vote. STATED Meeting 122 9/15/2022 issues on the ballot this fall, and we're hoping to make sure that as many young people as possible are registered so their voices can be heard. Thank you so much, Council President.
Thank you, Councilwoman. That is so very important. I wish all to attend. The Chair recognizes Councilman Oh.
Thank you very much, Council President. October 21st I went to visit a home. The home had a bullet hole in the front of it, the first time I actually heard about the level of violence where young people basically were shooting at mothers who they believed were somehow connected to witnesses or people who cooperated. The first time I heard about that. And I also heard that these women were promised and were awaiting STATED Meeting 123 9/15/2022 And that seemed to be a failure. There was a transfer ordinance in early November with the cooperation of the Administration and Councilmembers Jones and Johnson where $500,000 was appropriated specifically to move these women. They have not been moved, and the mystery is what happened to the money. I have no idea. We're trying to figure that out. But we're going to approach October 21st, 2022 soon. So there has been a failing, and since that time, we've learned about the level of random and wanton violence where people are being shot at simply for being in a photograph with somebody else on social media, the level of trying to hurt someone by hurting someone who is in a photograph with them. This type of violence has to be stopped, and the fact that we all, the entire city, knows that we need witnesses STATED Meeting 124 9/15/2022 be protected, but these are not even witnesses. They're just relatives of somebody. I heard rumors about what happened to this money, and that's why I've introduced a resolution to find out where did this money go, because it was definitely not supposed to go to the District Attorney's Office. Specifically the District Attorney has money for relocating witnesses. These are not witnesses. They are not going to a trial. They're just being shot at. And we've gone through this with the Administration, with the School District, because you can't move the family. You have to have a house to move the children to where they can go to school. This whole thing must be dealt with in a final manner where $500,000, no money spent to relocate these targets. Anyway, I just would put out to the public and to my colleagues and to STATED Meeting 125 9/15/2022 Administration, we should find out why the victims have not been moved and where this money is and why it's sitting there. And if the City cannot handle this, perhaps there should be another entity like the state or somebody else that will take care of this. All right. Thank you very much, Council President.
Thank you, Councilman. Speeches on behalf of the majority? The Chair recognizes Councilman Thomas.
Thank you, Council President. Thank you, colleagues. I'm happy to be back in Council. I know a lot of us did a lot of interesting things this summer. Throughout the course of the next couple of weeks, I want to talk about some of the things that I've done. STATED Meeting 126 9/15/2022 that I'm most proud of, though, is the free camp I did this past summer. So for three weeks in the summertime, we had over 100 young people that we essentially occupied their time in different parts of the City, from Kensington to South Philadelphia to the Northwest section, and my colleagues joined me in each of the locations, Councilmember Squilla, Councilmember Jones, Councilmember Johnson, former Councilmember Cherelle Parker, Councilmember Brooks, and we had -- as well as former Councilmember Domb, and we had a great time interacting with the young people, learning from them, listening to them, and recognizing their concerns as it relates to the City of Philadelphia. It feels somewhat numbing to come back to Council dealing with adults now that I spent my entire time working with young people this summer, only to continue to be in the face of a lot of STATED Meeting 127 9/15/2022 to say that some of these issues that we've seen, especially recently, are really heart-wrenching, are really heartbreaking. I know Councilmember Gauthier was out there with Tiffany Fletcher and her family, but I felt compelled to at least say her name and acknowledge the fact that she was our colleague. Might not have been a Councilmember in the City of Philadelphia, but a City employee, one with an important job as it relates to working with youth and young people on a consistent basis, and what she did on a daily basis is where my heart is, is working with the demographic of folks that I feel like I'm actually called upon to work with. So I did want to take a moment to offer my condolences to her and her family, to really put into context some of these issues that we're facing in the City of Philadelphia and continue to push STATED Meeting 128 9/15/2022 do the best that we can to adjust the senseless crime that we're seeing as it relates to the current state of Philadelphia. So I wanted to first acknowledge her family as well as some of the work that was done this summer. I also want to say thank you to the Hubbard family with the passing of Cliff Hubbard, looking at his impact on sports, athletics, the School District of Philadelphia, the legacy he left behind. I also thank Dr. Lynch for his testimony, the person who is currently responsible for filling those shoes. Last, but not least, similar to my colleague Councilmember Brooks, we're having a big event this Saturday at Triumph Baptist Church Saturday morning. Working with Councilmember Bass, we'll be giving away a couple thousand pounds of food to anybody who is in need or to people who are not in need, if you just want to get a little bit of support and STATED Meeting 129 9/15/2022 maybe not paying for some bills this week. We know that the economy is having a huge impact on the entire country, but we also know poor and middle-class families in the City of Philadelphia are being hit pretty hard. So just to try to offer a little Band-Aid for that situation that we know we're dealing with, we're going to be giving away a couple thousand pounds of food on Saturday. We're going to be able to provide some free resources. The event is going to take place Saturday morning. We encourage people to arrive early. We'll be there as early as 10 o'clock, and we'll have other resources that will be available to families as well. So thank you all so much for your support. Colleagues, welcome back to City Council.
I'm looking forward to a very productive, informative, and STATED Meeting 130 9/15/2022 constituents of Philadelphia fall session. Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Councilman. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Gauthier.
Thank you, Council President. I want to thank my colleagues who recognized Tiffany Fletcher, our very own Parks and Rec employee who was tragically and senselessly slayed at Mill Creek Playground, and I thought that this being our first session of Council following that murder, that we should take a moment of silence to recognize her life and her contributions to her community and to our city. So please join me in taking a moment of silence. (Moment of silence.) STATED Meeting 131 9/15/2022
I also wanted to say a few words. You know, we've had a lot of violence in West Philly, in Southwest Philly, in many areas of our city, particularly over the past three years, but -- and all of it hurts, but this hurt in a different way for me. The people who work at the Mill Creek Rec Center, they work so hard, so incredibly hard, to make sure that it's a space that is warm and welcoming and inviting for the young people in that community, and even the volunteers who are dedicated to the Mill Creek Rec Center work really hard to fill in the gaps where the City, you know, can't, to make sure that it's an inviting and safe space. Tiffany in particular was a resident of the Mill Creek community. She came on as a pool attendant this past STATED Meeting 132 9/15/2022 when, you know, we had a call out to people to really help us to open pools. And, you know, the staff at the center liked her so much and she liked the job so much, that she decided to stay on to continue in that work, and that's why she was there this past Friday when the event happened. And, you know, to have her be cut down in the midst of that really noble work is just incredibly heartbreaking and hard to believe. And our Parks and Rec employees more broadly work so hard to make sure that these are safe and fun spaces for our young people. In particular, the staff that work at rec centers, when many of us were virtual, they were in these centers, you know, every day coming in to make sure that young people had access to those centers. And so to be in a place where that work is not safe for these dedicated employees, it just cuts to the heart. STATED Meeting 133 9/15/2022 really striking to me about what happened at Mill Creek is that these were very young people who were engaged in a gun battle, and that gun battle took Tiffany's life. And I know that as a city we have efforts like GVI, or Group Violence Intervention, where we are really trying to identify people connected to street groups and trying to put them on a different path, but I would encourage us to look even more deeply at this issue of street group violence. It seems to me that a lot of the violence that's happening in my district in particular are these groups of, in particular, young people connected to different geographies that are fighting back and forth and shooting back and forth at one another, and I think we need to dedicate more capacity and more -- and we need to work harder to understand these conflicts, why they're arising and how we can calm these STATED Meeting 134 9/15/2022 back in the day in the '70s, for example, there were many efforts around gang mediation, and I think I would encourage us to move back into a space where we're making that a bigger part of our work. I spent many hours at the hospital on Friday with Tiffany's family and with City employees, including our Parks and Rec Commissioner, Kathryn Ott Lovell, and Kathryn said something, you know, while we were waiting in hopes that Tiffany would come out okay that I thought was really profound. You know, the 14-year-old that was arrested in connection with that shooting would have been 11 when we started this pandemic. And so thinking about the space we're in, where our young people have been cut off from resources for a very long time, they haven't been able to socialize like they have in the past, I don't think we've yet scratched the surface in just STATED Meeting 135 9/15/2022 on with young people and what is driving them towards the type of tragic violence that we're seeing. And what makes it even more dangerous is the ample supply of guns.
So young people who have had a very difficult several years have easy access to guns as well, and that's another issue that I think even with the resistance at the state level, we just have to work harder at and be more creative at in terms of not only identifying these very young people but getting them to let go of these weapons. And so I just wanted to speak about that. That's something that I'm certainly going to be focused on here in Council but, most importantly, I wanted to make a space to just honor Tiffany Fletcher's service to our great City of Philadelphia. And I also wanted to make people aware that Parks and Recreation, in concert with the Parks Alliance, has STATED Meeting 136 9/15/2022 to raise money for Tiffany's three sons and their support. Currently that fund is at a little over 25,000, but I -- and I thank all of my colleagues and everyone who has given to it. I encourage everyone to give and give again. I think, you know, it's very important that we wrap our arms around those young men, because their lives are going to be forever changed, and they'll need the support of all of us in the community. So thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.
Thank you, Councilwoman. Our hearts go out. The Chair recognizes Councilman Johnson.
Thank you, Council President. I'm going to be real brief. It does feel good to be back in City STATED Meeting 137 9/15/2022 see everybody's faces who I haven't had an opportunity to see up close and personal. But just a couple announcements. This Saturday at Wharton Square Park in South Philadelphia at 23rd and Wharton Streets, I will be hosting the Peace Not Guns - Stop the Violence Community Day. It's just basically a day where we're bringing the community together to provide resources for victims and co-victims of gun violence, trauma support services, violence prevention services, career opportunities for young people as well as the community as a whole. We also will be having our first Peace Not Guns award ceremony honoring and recognizing individuals who are on the front line addressing this issue and also we will have the Peace Not Guns kid zone. It's an opportunity and a safe place for our children to come out and have a good time, free food, free STATED Meeting 138 9/15/2022 but, most importantly, motivational speakers with the message of peace, not guns, and stop the violence. m. m. To all my listeners, I want to make sure that they have the information about it. Any of my colleagues that want to come out and participate, you are more than welcome. But it's a day to send a message across the City of Philadelphia that if we ever want to have a city -non-violence in the City of peace, not guns, it's all about coming together and working with one another but, most importantly, providing the information and resources to our communities. Second announcement is, yesterday at Yesha Grand Ball Hall in South Philadelphia we hosted our first property tax relief workshop. It was a great turnout, right, and we worked in partnership with OPA, the Revenue STATED Meeting 139 9/15/2022 Department, Community Legal Services, SeniorLAW Center to make sure that people are taking advantage of addressing the 31 percent property tax -- property assessment increase that individuals are going to see on their tax bills. And so great turnout, very, very informative. We have three other events. Our next place is going to be next Wednesday at Myers Recreation Center, 58th and Kingsessing. And then following that, we're going to be on the 24th at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith at 22nd and Bainbridge Street. And then also we're going to be in Saint Monica's Church on the 22nd, which is -- I'm sorry; next Thursday at 16th and Ritner. Mark, tell me if I'm wrong about 16th and Ritner in terms of location, but I think I'm correct. But basically it's a series of workshops to try to make sure people can sign up for the tax relief measures that STATED Meeting 140 9/15/2022 as the first level of review if they want to challenge their property tax assessment. I want to thank Council President for you and your team for putting together a letter with a lot of the details regarding those tax relief measures that we put together last budget season. They came across very well in the community in terms of people receiving them in the mail. And so this is a matter of life and I would like to say individual's life -- I guess I will say a person deciding to pay for their -- senior paying for their prescription drug or paying for their actual property tax, but based upon our work, now your property taxes are frozen if you meet a certain criteria and you're a senior. And that's something to be proud of. And most recently I want to thank all my colleagues for signing on to a letter as well. I've been talking to STATED Meeting 141 9/15/2022 -- as well as Councilman Squilla. We've been on the phone the last couple days about extending the first-level review deadline extension.
No way in the world people are going to make their deadline if they're just getting their tax bills on the 28th and the deadline is on the 3rd. So it's totally unacceptable. We're going to also work with BRT to see if they can work with us to also either push back their deadline or give consideration to people who may file late because they may have been denied for the first level of review. So thank you very much, Council President, colleagues. Good to see everybody, and let's get the work done, as we always do. Good to see everybody, though. Peace.
17th and Ritner, Councilmember. STATED Meeting 142 9/15/2022
Don't say that too loud. That's my district, man. I had a moment.
And they are going to extend -- I'm sorry for interrupting. Point of information. They are going to extend the first-level review to the 14th of October. So thank you for your hard work.
Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jones.
Thank you, Mr. President. I have two things that are heavy on my heart and mind. The first one is, Derek Green, Maria Sanchez, Cherelle Parker, and Allan Domb, if you're looking at this or watch it on reruns later today, tonight, know that -I don't remember saying thank you for STATED Meeting 143 9/15/2022 service, but also already first day, I miss you, and I miss you because we didn't always all the time agree, but I understood your rationale and how you came to positions that you took and respected it always. And so we want to -- I want to thank you for your service to this city, to City Council in particular, and say that you might -- we may have to fill your spot, but you will never ever be replaced. Secondly, I last night was out supporting District Attorney Larry Krasner, who had been censored by the House of Representatives this week. Two points on that. Number one, it is incredible to me that when we pass gun laws here in the City of Philadelphia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania says, oh, no, City of Philadelphia, you should not have lost and stolen gun reporting. We passed sensible gun laws about red flags, and they'll say, oh, no, STATED Meeting 144 9/15/2022 your level of responsibility compared to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We run Second Amendment issues. It is incredible to me that you could have other district attorneys in other parts of the Commonwealth that are up on charges and you feel it's okay to ignore that and not pay attention to that, but you want to find our District Attorney in contempt. I want to say that that is unfair, and it's not whether or not you agree with District Attorney Krasner or not, the audacity of the Commonwealth to tie our hands behind our back and don't allow us to defend ourselves, but yet they want to meddle in our internal business. Second point, my colleague Cindy Bass came up with a profound statement that says, what do you do when you realize the shooter lives with you. I told her I love it so much, I'm going STATED Meeting 145 9/15/2022 I'll never plagiarize it. I will say where I got it from. But that is the hard conversation a lot of parents have to look in the mirror and have with their children. And we as a community, as a city, as a neighborhood have to ask that question of our children, demand the accountability from them. Some of the folk in my district have that problem. I'll never forget a mother in Wynnefield when it was brought to her attention that her son had a gun and had showed the gun to another fellow student at their school, and when the police kept him, confronted her along with DHS at her home, she kind of threw her hands up and said, I don't know what to do with him. Thousands of parents, single parents often, have to face that responsibility, and we as a society have to give them more options. We have to give them intervention, whether it's DHS, STATED Meeting 146 9/15/2022 of intervention to help out with that, because when we fail them in that kind of intervention way, look at the 100 Shooter Review, often, Mr. President, they raise their hand, say some day I'm going to be dangerous. We just didn't believe them. So I look forward to having those tough conversations. I look forward to going with my colleague down to the Juvenile Justice Center today to see what we can do to recognize those young people and give them the help they need early so that they aren't the "defendant please rise" later on. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Councilman. Thank you. We've got to figure it out. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Bass.
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much, and I just wanted to follow up on a couple of STATED Meeting 147 9/15/2022 is, I did want to -I see Councilman Jones is busy, but I did want to thank him for acknowledgment of a program that we've been working on for quite some time now. As he mentioned, what do you do when a shooter lives with you. And we have been working on that, because as we all know, the shooters here in the City of Philadelphia have become younger and younger. There was a time when it was unheard of really to hear of a 14, 13, 12 or 11-year-old shooter anywhere, but it seems to be the thing now. It seems to be happening on a much more frequent basis. And so, you know, the idea behind this plan, behind this initiative is what do you do? What do you do when you walk into the room of your 13-year-old son -- and I'm a strong proponent of, listen, running through that room, flip over that mattress, look in the closet, look under the bed and see STATED Meeting 148 9/15/2022 so what do you do when you come across a firearm? And so, you know, we were having some discussion about it, and the question is very valid, because most people don't want to call the police on their, you know, new teenage child, 13, 14, so forth. They don't want to call the police. They don't want to report them, but what do you do to make sure that your child neither becomes a suspect in a crime, a perpetrator of a crime, or the victim of a crime? And so how do we manage that is really the question behind this initiative, and we've been working on that and we anticipate, Mr. President, doing some more work which you'll be hearing about in the next coming weeks as we unveil and unroll this program. So, you know, I do want to offer my condolences to the family of the young woman who worked for the Parks and Recreation system that we lost this week, STATED Meeting 149 9/15/2022 of the other horrific homicides throughout the entire City of Philadelphia. We had a father of seven in Germantown who was shot on his front lawn, ambushed in front of his home. And, you know, we had a 17-year-old girl who was gunned down in Frankford, I understand, and so many of these stories. It's hard to keep up with them, but this is something that we need to keep up with, because we need to keep talking about it and working towards a solution. We're all frustrated. We're all afraid. We're all concerned. And this is something that won't go away if we just go in the house at the end of our days and close the door and close our blinds. This is not going to make it go away. So we have to be engaged. We have to be a part of the solution. That's each and every one of us. We all have some role to play. And so the question is, what is that role and how do we make that happen? STATED Meeting 150 9/15/2022 to mention that. I also wanted to thank Councilmember Thomas for the food giveaway over at Triumph Baptist Church. You know, it's a pleasure to always be at Triumph. Victory for everyone from Triumph, as we recently celebrated Pastor Hall's 90th birthday, and what a wonderful occasion that was. And so I want to thank my colleague for always keeping Triumph at the forefront of all of our minds and doing this fantastic event and making sure that we can close that bridge and close that gap with folks who may have a hunger issue, a food insecurity issue, and that we will be out there on Saturday and hope to see you there. Also, I just wanted to mention something else our office is doing and follow up on something Councilman Johnson mentioned. He said that he had done a property tax relief workshop, I think it was, last night. So he's doing fantastic STATED Meeting 151 9/15/2022 thank him for that.
We are also in the Northwest doing some work around appealing property tax assessments. And so we've been working with the BRT and OPA, and we're going to have them come into our offices to help folks do the actual appeal. So if you received your notice and you want to get help doing the appeal, you want to make sure it's done right, we encourage you to call our office, make an appointment to come in. Right now we're operating, myself along with my colleagues in all things good, myself, State Senator Sharif Street, State Senator Art Haywood, and State Representative Darisha Parker. m. and we also have Tuesday, September 20th from 11:00 to 1:00 at my office and also Wednesday, September 21st from 11:00 to 1:00 in STATED Meeting 152 9/15/2022 So we want to really encourage you -- excuse me. And also Friday, September 23rd from 10:00 to 4:30 at Senator Art Haywood. So those are during the day. The rest are pretty much during the evening. But we really want folks to come out and to -- we want to be helpful to you. So please come. Please bring your paperwork, bring your assessment. We would love to help you with making sure that your property tax appeal is filed, it's filed on time, and that we can help you, because we know that a large part of the Northwest has been adversely affected by these assessments. So please feel free to contact us at 215-686-3424 for more information. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Councilwoman. Thank you. That concludes our speeches on behalf of the minority and the majority. So with that, I would like to recognize STATED Meeting 153 9/15/2022 motion to adjourn.
Thank you, Mr. President. I move that Council stand adjourned until Thursday, September 22nd, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. -(Duly seconded.)
-- in Council Chambers, Room 400, City Hall. (Duly seconded.)
Thank you. It has been moved and enthusiastically seconded. All in favor indicate by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it. The motion carries. Thank you all very much. Be safe, and love you guys. ) STATED Meeting 155 9/15/2022 CERTIFICATE I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings, evidence and objections are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me upon the foregoing matter, and that this is a true and correct transcript of same. MICHELE L.