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Minutes

Stated Meeting, April 18, 2024

Philadelphia City CouncilApr 18, 2024

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Councilman O'Rourke

Thank you, Council President. And thank you to all my colleagues who joined Councilmember Landau and myself in recognizing Sapphira Cristál today. I don't claim to be glued to each new episode of Drag Race, but I know plenty about the deep importance of cultural leaders like Ms. Cristál and what her work means in Philadelphia. This City has been at the forefront of so many critical moments in LGBTQIA history, and the community that exists here has so many sources of sustenance from parties to protests and so much more, but I imagine few sparked as much joy as we saw today as the work of Philly's Crown Jewel. Still I want us to remain cognizant of the moment we're in. Beyond the stigma and subtle discrimination that is basically pervasive no matter where you are, LGBTQIA people are under explicit attack around the country and certain parts of this Commonwealth too. Philly for so many is a relatively safe haven as we heard from Ms. Sapphira today and it's on all of us to maintain that reputation, to earn it every single day, to make law that shapes a city where we have safety, not just that we can see but that we can feel, that when we come to this building week after week, that we're coming to work with intention to create a city, to shape a city in a world really where everybody belongs. They don't have to question that. And I thank again to my colleagues for their participation in this morning's presentation in that spirit. I also recognize the Philadelphia School District's All resolution today. That's because 100 of Philly star student performers graced about two weekends back WrestleMania 40 and they did it at the drop of a hat. These students only had a week's notice I found out before they performed, a week's notice. So to put it all together and represent the City so well on such short notice is something that's simply incredible and they should be commended for that. And then one last thing and I'll be quiet. I just want to remind my colleagues and the public of our office's Civic Salon that our office is hosting along with the Mural Arts people's budget office. It's one week from today right after the people's budget team finishes a presentation with all of us members of Council. reminder on behalf of Minority Leader Brooks in light of her absence. But the salon is a way for community organizers, interested residents and the City Council staff writ large to casually convene, converse, a way to kind of invite the people to their house which is City Hall, and give folks a chance to interface with Councilmembers and their teams. So that's next week from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Just swing by our office on the mighty third floor, and also check out our social media for all the hard details. Can't wait to see folks there. Thank you so much.

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Councilman Phillips

Thank you, Council President Johnson. I just want to quickly say please join our office immediately after Council today as we host Graduate Philadelphia in the Caucus room for a legislative briefing where lunch will be served. Malik Brown, President and CEO, a graduate of Philadelphia and his team have been at the seams of post-secondary education, workforce development and community empowerment to address the immediate and long-term economic needs of families and households. Just so you know, there's Philadelphia has an innovative model that creates a seamless transition from high school to employment and from training to livable wages, livable-wage jobs. North10, Philadelphia, Uplifts Solutions and Graduate Philadelphia formed the collective impact partnership to launch the Impact Center to transform East Tioga and Hunting Park. The mission is to provide economic mobility for a diverse low-income adults and North10's transformative services for community well-being. So I'd like for everyone, staff and Councilmembers to join us after session today for Graduate Philadelphia, and also want to thank all of those who came out last week on April 15th for a very robust and fruitful Council in the meeting led by no other, our Council President Johnson and hosted by myself and Councilwoman Cindy Bass. Thank you all.

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Councilman Jones

Thank you, Mr. President. Colleagues, colleagues, I want to alert you to a tip of an iceberg, particularly my At-large colleagues but all my District colleagues as well. There is a -I want you to imagine a place when you were coming up when you were putting your money together early in your life that you said if I money, I'm moving to this neighborhood. Don't shout it out but think about where that was, and then maybe somewhere along the way that neighborhood changed for the worse. And you said, you know what, I'm not going there. I'm not raising my family there. I raise this tip of the iceberg to cite Center City's developers, literally some building owners are throwing back the keys saying, I don't care about the debt, interest rates went up or whatever happened. I'm walking away from this deal. And many of us thought it was just a Center City problem. Tip of the iceberg, it is not. In a bucolic part of the community called Wynnefield Heights, there are several buildings that were established in the '60s, some HUD buildings, some deals that were trying to put affordable housing up, these individuals that live there are veterans. They're seniors. They're the handicapped that are in these buildings. And right out of the scene of Casino where they move into a restaurant, they burn out all the lines of credit, they get all of the loans that they can get on the building and then the fire happens. We're at that point. I talked to you about the Pavilion. I talked to you about Brith Sholom, and there's another building which I will remain nameless because we are working out a deal to try to get transfer and receivership for. But this ain't a 4th District problem. If you look around your neighborhoods, you're going to see a chain reaction of these types of So what is left. Some of these people are stranded and stuck, can't move. These are their familiar surroundings. They know who's on the 5th floor, 7th floor. They know where to get that Friday night meal, hair did, friendly poker game. These are their familiar surroundings. They know the bus routes to their doctors' offices. To disrupt them, to lose them means disrupting their lives at this point in time. Worse, because these investors walk away, took the money out but did not maintain the buildings, major systems are failing. I want to thank Amen Brown, state-repping the 10th District. Before he went to the 10th District, the electric went out in one of the buildings. He had to go up like 10 floors. Kathy was out there, right, and helped people down that had walkers with only the use of their cell phone flashlight. So what I'm saying is that we want to help, but it's creating dangerous situations and risking a catastrophe. So now Gas Works wants to cut off these people's gas, half a million dollar bill, because the owners refuse to pay the bills. So what I'm calling is a state of emergency. I'm looking at the tip of the iceberg, and I'm saying to my At-large people, if you've never been to Wynnefield Heights, I'm going to take you up there because they need you. They need your re-assurance that they're going not to wind up the homeless. These people are too elderly in many cases to face this. So we have this much coming out of nowhere with this, that we've sent to the last Administration saying, this is coming down the pike, buildings like this around the City are coming offline. We have to establish a mechanism, a blueprint, to deal with these buildings.

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Councilman Jones

So if you walk away, who receives them, who takes care of them, who maintains them. We passed the bill in 2021 saying that L&I can remediate these buildings because if there's electrical failure, if there's no HVAC, then we can go in and then put liens on these buildings so that when they are sold, we can recoup the City's dollars. But guess what, no money in it. So I'm asking my colleagues, take a look at this so that we can put money to restore in one of those buildings there's no security. They walked away. So the drug dealers walked in. Many of these individuals are being captive in their familiar surroundings. So I've called upon a stakeholder's group made up of HUD, made up of the state. My colleagues at the state level are part of it, and the Mayor's Chief housing person John Matlack, I hope I pronounced his name, because we can't kick this can down the road. These are your neighbors, my neighbors. These are your constituents that need to know that you represent them. So as a District Councilperson, I'm all in. I'm on the front line, but I need some help lifting this because it's coming to a neighborhood near you and we need to build a blueprint, a methodology of when people abandon properties, what the City can do to stabilize them. Thank you, Mr. President. )

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Councilman Harrity

Thank you, Council President, colleagues. I want to first start off by saying thank you to the sponsors of the Displaced Workers bill and all my colleagues who voted for this bill. I know there was a lot of questions and it wasn't an easy thing to do. But I'm so proud of this body for voting for the working families of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was one of the first cities to protect dedicated experienced workers from being arbitrarily let go through no fault of their own. The law has been incredibly successful in maintaining a stable work environment for these hard-working women and men so that they can provide for their families, pay taxes, buy homes and contribute to local economy. These amendments adjust to the changing times of our city, reducing training and hiring costs for businesses. Again, I just want to thank everybody. And just so everyone knows, that this isn't something I took lightly. I took every comment and every idea under consideration, and I just thank this body for doing the right thing for workers. Thank you.

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Councilwoman Landau

Thank you. Councilmember Harrity, glad to be a part of it. Thanks for doing it. And, Councilmember Jones, we are -- I'm all in on trying to help fix this housing crisis that we see in Philadelphia. And none I wanted to speak for a moment on our resolution that I introduced with Council President Johnson and with Councilmember Gauthier just recognizing Fair Housing Month. That's April, Fair Housing Month. And we are now commemorating the 56th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. So we introduced a resolution that emphasizes the Act's protections against housing discrimination and highlights the urgent importance of protecting our most vulnerable communities and providing equal housing opportunity. Sadly, Philadelphia still suffers from the long painful history of discriminatory laws and policies going back to redlining in the 1930s that made it difficult or impossible for people of color, applicants, to get mortgage loans as their White counterparts were doing. Today Black homeowners still get denied mortgage loans far more frequently than White homeowners, and this has caused Philly's Black homeownership rate to be declining over the past three decades. What does this all mean? Even with the Fair Housing Act that was passed in 1968 and our local Fair Practice Ordinance law that was passed even before that in 1963, we still have a strong racial wealth gap that must be rectified. We must ensure equal access to safe and affordable housing for all individuals regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status or any other protected aspects. So while today we celebrate past achievements in rights, we have to advocate for stronger enforcement and continued expansion of housing protections. This is an emergency. We should not be in this position right now. It has to be urgent. It is a state of emergency in housing. So thanks for this opportunity. And then on a lighter note, I just want to say thank you again. We're so happy to introduce the resolution commemorating Sapphira Cristál on the eve of what we believe will be a victory tomorrow. See you on Broad Street. Sapphira is just absolutely Black queer excellence at its best. I could not be happier to have her in my life, and she has shown with her journey that she exemplifies the power of embracing one's true self without apology, a principle as the first openly LGBTQ Councilperson elected. Today I am honored to recognize her accomplishments. Thank you.

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Councilwoman Lozada

We had a town hall meeting and everyone was extremely busy and I completely forgot to recognize him on the floor during the session, but I wanted to make sure that he got his shout-out today. Thank you so much. Wishing you many, many like to invite everyone to an event that we're having this week in the District, Philadelphia Youth Future Fair April 27th. It's co-hosted by both State Representatives Giral and Burgos and the City Commissioners. We are hoping to share with youth between the ages of 14 and 24 employment opportunities as well as connecting them with colleges and universities. There's going to be resumé writing workshops and interview workshops. And so, there is no excuse for young people to stay home this year. I think that across the City of Philadelphia in collaboration with this legislative body and the Administration we are working very hard to make sure that young people are connected to something positive. And so, I invite all of you come, to participate as well as to share the information with your respective constituents. Immediately after the Youth Your Future Fair at Feltonville Recreation Center between 10:00 and 2:00, we will be hosting a GoTV event at Compare and Save Supermarket and that is located at I and Tioga. Again, everyone is welcome to attend. We will be doing onsite voter registration, updating voter registration and talking to community residents about the importance of their vote. So thank you very much.

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Councilman Driscoll

Thank you, Mr. President, for your vote and for the unanimous vote of this thank Councilmember Squilla and always the leadership of Councilmember Jones on these quality-of-life law enforcement issues that we're trying to get on the books so that as Mayor Parker and Police Commissioner Bethel say, this is another worthy tool in the box to fight crime. These tinted windows are used to conceal identity, allow for a parking ticket to be issued for tinted windows, used to hide identity when speeding, reckless driving, preventing law enforcement from inspecting vehicles and too often far worse. As we know, recently the getaway car used in the Northeast High School shooting where eight children were shot in Councilmember Phillips' District, those children get home, but that car had tinted windows. This body must give law enforcement every tool to make it harder to commit crime. Making it easier to enforce tinted windows is another step in the right direction, and I thank each of you Councilmembers for supporting this. And thank you, Mr. President.

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Councilwoman Gilmore Richardson

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. President. And first, I wanted to thank Councilmember Jones for introducing the resolution commemorating the life of Mr. Sonny Campbell, someone who was so important to the political fabric I know particularly it was very important to me in 2019 and just throughout my career and beyond and to so many other African American judges. And so, thank you for that resolution. They had a wonderful memorial service for Mr. Sonny at St. Thomas yesterday. And I was privileged to have the opportunity to attend along with our other colleagues. I also want to let you know, Councilmember Jones, I'm all in. I'm all in for Wynnefield Heights. You know I'm born and raised in Wynnefield, have never lived anywhere else. You know we love Wynnefield, and we really have a tremendous opportunity while we're dealing with this challenge around these older buildings that have years and years of deferred maintenance, many that have our seniors and our veterans living so, I'm all in to work with you, Councilmember Jones, on that very important issue. We have so many seniors that will be displaced. I remember the nights that we were out there in the cold and trying to get seniors on the SEPTA buses, get them down the staircases and stairwells. And it was very, very disheartening to see so many seniors be displaced, many of whom do not have family to help them with some of the challenges that living in those buildings bring. And so, I look forward to working with you, with our Council team and also with the Administration to bring resolution to that important issue. And finally, colleagues, I want to remind each of you about our SEPTA briefing at 2:00 p.m. today in the room, the updated briefing relative to the Bus Revolution Plan. We've had the additional sessions with SEPTA in a variety of our Council districts, including Councilmembers Lozada, Young, Bass and Phillips. And so, we want everyone to come to hear about the updated Bus Revolution Plan to bring any additional questions or concerns that you may have so that we can bring a resolution to the Bus Revolution. Thank you, Council President.

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