And when I look at this list and look at these large institutions on here who have enormous capacity and staff personnel to just chase money, I think that that is unfair.
So I need to know beyond consideration and beyond the map what you are going to do as an agency to fix that.
I think that, first off, the one thing that we can commit to is that we will partner directly with the Council districts so that we can actually 195 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. do some neighborhood trainings. I think one of the best ways that we've received referrals is through the Council offices, and I think we'll go ahead and continue to do that. So we will commit to doing that.
My last ask would be then, having done recruitment and outreach in trench warfare, what do you do internally from a proactive sense to inform and make aware this Fund to child care centers universally across the City?
We attend many meetings -- there are collaboratives of child care providers around the City, and I go to a lot of them, talk about the Fund. I participate in citywide boards with child care providers. We're out there in the community. We make sure that the Child Care Facilities Fund has a face, that they know that they can call us, that they know that we're there. We partner with organizations 196 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. like Child Care Information Services, and we do outreach and we try to inform not just our providers in the area, but also their specialists who handle cases of child care providers, and we also partner with people like Keystone Stars and we make sure that their specialists take our information out when they do their site inspections. We reach out to the Department of Public Welfare. We try to reach out to as many partners as possible, as well as are in the community.
Okay. So in terms of your own timeframe, have you put up a window, an end window, on when you plan to complete the mapping?
We think that -- the mapping is actually done. We just haven't had a chance to put it in the narrative form and publish it. So we're working with Gervasi as a partner on that.
At some 197 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. designated hour determined by you and the board, if you would please submit that to the Chair.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I wasn't going to say anything, but Councilwoman Brown started off, I hit my switch, and then she covered just about every point I was going to cover, so I feel like I'm piling on. But to be clear, what have you mapped?
We've mapped the number and the locations of high-quality -- what are considered 198 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. high-quality centers in Philadelphia.
So why did you limit it to high-quality centers and how did you determine what a high-quality center was?
That's a good question. We actually didn't limit it. That was just one of the maps. The other maps show licensed centers --
Right, which may not be high quality. The high quality is determined by the state's Keystone Star Quality Rating System, which is a one to four star rating scale.
So you have a list of every licensed child care center in the City of Philadelphia?
Yes. All of our 199 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. mailings go to about 650 providers.
So you do do some outreach to let everybody know that these funds are available?
I mean, the smallest grant I think I saw was 14,000, but they seem to average 40, 50, 60, a hundred thousand dollars. What do you do -- do you not get applications from the smaller providers?
No. We do. We actually get a pretty good mix, I would say. Our typical size would be anywhere from about 350 to about a million.
And it's not that we don't get the applications. Renovations have either been deferred for years and they cost a lot, or if they need to replace a playground, for example, that could be up to $75,000 or a hundred thousand dollars. So these requests are large when we get them, so it's not just that agencies have tons of 200 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. money and they've been hoarding money and this is why they make the request. It's a timing issue. It's they've leveraged it with other private money. They've done some fundraising.
So you've got the ability then to look at the number of children, say, in a census tract, the number of providers, say, in a census tract and to do the kinds of needs analysis that Councilwoman Brown spoke about?
And then directly target providers in that area so that there are more high-quality centers in that area because you helped create the high-quality centers in that area rather than lending only to high-quality centers that already exist in areas where there might or might not be a need. You have the ability to do that?
Yes. As of this spring, we do now. 201 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc.
Okay. So if you could provide the information that Councilwoman requested that you already have prior to June 9th, which is when this will be recessed to.
Next year the questions that you'll be asked, assuming there's any funding for you, will be about the needs analysis that we'd all like to see.
You have something to say, young lady? (Witness approached witness table.)
Yeah. My name is Christie Balka. I'm the Director of Child Care and Budget Policy for Public Citizens for Children and Youth and I'm also a member of the Stakeholders Council for the Child Care Facilities Fund. And two points that I think would be helpful 202 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. to this very constructive discussion are, one, the City of Philadelphia, unlike Pittsburgh and other major cities around the country, has no comprehensive child care policy. This fund addresses capital needs and needs for deferred maintenance for child care programs that meet a certain quality threshold, but there are many other things that we can be doing and there are many other ongoing pieces, but they're not coordinated into any comprehensive strategy, and they probably should be. We've been having talks with the Administration about this, but really I think it's placing a burden on the Child Care Facilities Fund to say they need to do it all. One of the reasons that the Fund works well is that they have a limited focus. Second, when the Fund was established, they received a lot of calls from home-based child care providers for assistance, and they said that's beyond the scope of what we're doing, but we're 203 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. going to create a one-stop shop for child care licensing to get them into the pipeline, to bring them out from underground, get them into the pipeline to the point where some day they'll be able to apply for funds from the Child Care Facilities Fund. So right now -- and that was initially funded using some City funds, some OHCD funds. It's not funded through OHCD anymore, but it is ongoing. So right now we have something that works at the very, very grassroots level with home-based providers, simply trying to get them licensed, and we have something that helps quality providers maintain that quality and some get up into that top tier. But we're really lacking a strategy for moving the ones that you all are speaking about toward greater quality.
Well, this fund was set up some years ago and what my thinking was that the purpose was to 204 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. work with those home-based child care facilities or daycares to bring them up to code so that they could come out of the closet and be full time. So when I looked at this list and I saw all the large amount of grants, I was looking for the smaller grants to neighborhood-based programs. Because while Councilwoman Brown said I have a lot of daycare, well, I only have three large quality care centers on the list. But if you look at the Ninth District, I mean, every week or so we're going to zoning about a home daycare, and there are some that are fairly large that I don't see, maybe they didn't apply, and that's why I'm going to set up a meeting with you to talk about that. So that was my understanding as to what the program initially was designed to do.
So some years ago, about 10, 11 years ago, there was a fund that was set up at the initiative of the 205 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. City through the Women's Business Development Fund to help some of those home-based providers that are operating underground become licensed. That was discontinued two and a half, three years ago. And the other resource that we had in place was the one-stop shop for child care licensing, which, as I said, grew out of the Non-Profit Finance Fund's experience, just being flooded with phone calls, probably from the same providers that call your office, for help with zoning. So the one-stop shop for child care licensing is up and running. It's being successful. It's more of a technical assistance, coaching, capacity-building operation. It doesn't make the loans, but it did initially grow out of this project.
Thank you. I recently issued a paper on 206 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. education in the City of Philadelphia, and one of the things we focused on there was early childhood education, child care and the need for experiments like happened in Harlem's Children Zone where there's an entire community focused on the child from the time its born until the time it ends up in school. So that we can change -- fundamentally that's the number one thing we have to do. I don't know whether what you're talking about with the Administration is tangential to that or is something that could be interwoven into a larger strategy about early childhood care and education in a sort of not just a care comprehensive strategy, but in an early childhood comprehensive strategy for the City of Philadelphia. So my office has done some significant work on this. I'll get you a copy of the paper, and I'd like to be involved in any discussions in this regard. 207 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes Cynthia Roberts and next Joan Reilly and Bob Grossmann. (Witness approached witness table.)
I'm a very fast reader. My name is Cynthia Roberts and I am the Director of the Parent-Infant Center in West Philadelphia. We provide child care for 135 children ranging in age from six weeks to five years and after-school care for another 80 children from kindergarten to grade 6. We are nationally accredited and we are a four star Keystone Star site. 208 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. We've been providing child care for more than 30 years at 42nd and Locust Streets, and in the past few years, the Child Care Facilities Fund has provided real, tangible support to help us improve quality and safety of our buildings, which were built in the 1950s and early '60s, and I want to just tell you two examples. One was a grant that paid for two really important safety improvements. One was a $17,000 upgrade of our electrical system and a $10,000 upgrade of our telephone and intercom system. Before the electrical upgrade, on a day like today when it was really hot and we had the room air conditioners on, if you flick a switch in another part of the building, the circuit breaker would go off and we would all be in the dark. Our communication system before that was improved, we had some classrooms that were newer to the center and they weren't tied into our communication 209 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. system. So this meant that in an emergency and, worst-case scenario, if there was an intruder in the building, we literally would have had to call outside lines to let that classroom know that there was someone in the building. With the communications upgrade now, we can instantly intercom every classroom and let them know what's going on, and that's really reassuring to our families and to our staff. Last winter we received another grant that helped us completely renovate a second building to expand our child care capacity. We've added 50 new child care slots, and this includes new infant and toddler rooms, and this is the kind of care that's the hardest to find, especially in terms of quality. The cost of the sprinkler system for that renovation, that cost alone was $68,000. So I hope that you see that this type of support from the Facilities Fund is really critical when a center embarks on 210 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. major renovation that requires compliance with the current building codes. Non-profit organizations across our region have been hit, as you know, by the economic downturn, and that's especially true for child care centers. Funders have, I think, understandably shifted their dwindling resources to programs, but that makes the dollars for the bricks and mortar a lot harder to find. One source that two years ago helped us out and provided $29,000 for capital improvements last year cut our support to $2,900. And as I searched other foundation and corporate sources to support our renovation, I found that many had simply stopped funding capital projects or they were limiting their funding to the projects that had already been approved. Without the Child Care Facilities Fund, centers are really hard-pressed to fund improvements that support quality care, and this becomes even more important because the state is 211 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. increasing their standards for facilities and especially, it's been mentioned before, playgrounds. You know as Councilmembers that it costs about at least $100,000 to do a really quality playground, and without financial support to meet these kinds of mandates, I think that some centers might just keep children indoors because they can't afford the upgrades, and then that would put the centers in violation and possibly maybe have them shut down. And that would really be a tragedy for youngsters who need to, as you know, jump and run and climb as much as they need to learn their numbers and their A-B-C's.
And so I would encourage you to increase the CDBG support for the Child Care Facilities Fund in the next fiscal year, and I thank you for your investment.
Thank you. And I 212 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. have copies of it here.
Good afternoon, Councilwoman Tasco and Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown. We're very happy to be here. I understand it's been a very instructive, informative day for me over here and I know you want us to wrap up, so I am going to give you a turbo version of our testimony, but we've submitted it for the record so you can have that. But we're very happy -- I am Senior Director -- my name is Joan Reilly. I'm Senior Director of Philadelphia Green, which is the urban greening division of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and I'm here with my colleague, Bob Grossmann, who is a Director with the Philadelphia Green program. In urban areas, green spaces 213 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. offer aesthetic, economic, environmental and social benefits. Public spaces filled with thriving greenery create a more appealing urban environment, and green spaces enhance a city's economic prospect by increasing property values, stimulating business activity and attracting reinvestment. Trees and other living plants improve air quality, absorb storm water and, in addition, evidence points to the power of greening to reduce crime, promote social interaction and improve health. And I know Councilwoman Blondell Brown is a huge champion of the greening work and understands it all, so I'll just skip down to say that over the next fiscal year, our work will continue to help achieve the goals of Philadelphia Greenworks, which is the Administration's initiative to create a greener, more sustainable city. And we're going to do that in our work with vacant land management, planting trees, creating quality landscape, streetscapes and 214 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. neighborhood parks as a critical component of the City's efforts to become a more prosperous, competitive and sustainable city. I'm going to go into a little detail on the vacant land, because I think there have been some questions about that today. So, number one, we're going to do that through manage vacant land as a community asset. That's turning blighted, vacant liabilities in communities into amazing neighborhood assets. Since Fiscal Year 2004, over 5,000 vacant and blighted parcels of land have been cleaned and greened with grass, trees and fencing and are being maintained on a regular basis. In addition, Philadelphia Green's Community LandCare project has contracted with over 15 community-based organizations to perform regular housekeeping on an additional 2,500 lots. This project engages community organizations in the process of land management and has added 215 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. the benefit of employing over 100 neighborhood residents through the program. In Fiscal Year 2011, we plan to maintain the existing 10,000 square feet of managed land and clean and green an additional 250 parcels -- million. 8 Excuse me. Ten thousand wouldn't be very 9 impressive, would it? So we're going to 10 maintain the existing 10 million square feet of managed land and clean and green an additional 250 parcels and create employment for over 100 community residents. The second thing we do is with our work with community gardens, and we have -- there's over 400 community garden in the City of Philadelphia, and in their next chapter, they've not only been a way to repurpose vacant land, but they're supporting our local food economy and providing, through our City Harvest program, food to people most in need of access to locally grown fresh produce. So since its inception, the City Harvest 216 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. program, which is a partnership with inmates up at the Philadelphia Prison System and our network of community gardeners, SHARE and the Health Promotion Council, we have grown over 55,000 pounds of organically grown produce, and that's being distributed through the food cupboard and soup kitchen system through 900 families per week.
The third way we want to work with you is promote and invest in localized approaches to storm water management. You heard earlier today testimony about that storm water problem, and we are very excited to partner with the Water Department and the community in finding green solutions to that problem. So we're using our vacant lots, we're using our landscapes and parks and our tree planting and gardens as a way to mitigate that problem. The fourth way is to revitalize neighborhood parks. We began 16 years ago with three neighborhood parks and now 217 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. work with over 104 friends of park groups around the City and partner with the Department of Parks and Recreation and any number of other public and private entities to reclaim and revitalize neighborhood parks in districts throughout Philadelphia. There was a question earlier about the Growing Greener funds, so I do want to say that the City of Philadelphia applies every year. That's money that is managed largely through the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. The Department of Parks and Recreation is the main applicant for those funds every year, and at the moment actually that money is at an all-time low. So that money has dwindled down over these eight years and there's a new campaign, and we hope the next Governor and that Administration will invest in building up that Growing Greener funds. Supporting and developing the City's urban forest. We support 218 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. Greenworks' initiative to want to plant 300,000 trees by 2015, and we're doing all we can with citizens and again in other public-private partnerships to take care of the existing canopy. We have a geriatric tree canopy here that needs care and it also needs replacement. And, finally, we invest in the civic landscapes. I think you're all familiar with what we did at Logan Circle a few years ago in partnership with Fairmount Park. And most recently we're working with the Rodin Museum, with the Art Museum, Fairmount Park, Olin Partners and, again, a host of other investors to rejuvenate the landscape outside the Museum and the interior garden. So, again, the Horticultural Society is grateful for the long-term support provided to its Philadelphia Green Program through OHCD. I think Philadelphia distinguishes itself by using CDBG money, among other things, to support greening, and we look forward to 219 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. continuing our public-private partnerships to create safe, attractive, healthy neighborhoods as a way to contribute to the City's prosperous future. The one point I did forget to mention is, the money that we do get through OHCD, we work very hard and very successfully every year to leverage. So that money really helps us get additional money, federal money, state money, money from foundations, the corporate community and individuals. It's the combination of all of that investment in those partnerships that we believe help to make the City a green, wonderful place to live, work and play. Thank you very much.
Thank you, and thank you for your help with Shevchenko Park.
Thank you 220 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. very much. Any questions or comments? Councilwoman Brown.
Thank you also for the testimony and the continued enormous impact that your organization has across the City. It's just priceless in many ways. You mentioned that you do use CDBG dollars to leverage federal dollars, correct?
Well, I probably spoke too broadly. I guess what I'm saying is, PHS leverages dollars from the federal government. We understand CDBG money is federal money that comes through the City. But what I'm trying to say is that the money -- whatever money we get from investors, we are successful at leveraging and growing that money to get additional monies to do the work. So the work of Philadelphia Green gets a portion of its money from CDBG and then we bring in other money. 221 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc.
Okay. Is it correct that PHS was the recipient of Recovery Act dollars?
We received some money through Pennvest, a $1.6 million grant for tree planting in this past year, and we used that to plant 8,000 trees in the City and the region. We've just completed that. So I believe that was Recovery Act dollars that -- usually Pennvest gives loans to municipalities, and for the first time with this Recovery Act money, they were able to give grants and to allow non-profits to apply. Our grant was part of the very first round of funding that allowed money to be used for green solutions to the storm water problem as opposed to gray solutions, which are typically pipes and tanks.
I see. You may have observed that one prevailing, continuous concern and interest of members of Council is finding ways to make sure in this case Recovery 222 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. Act dollars find their way to communities, folks living in communities, in neighborhoods who are unemployed. With that said -- and I believe it was Councilman Clarke who actually called for hearings on how those dollars would be spent, principally in government, but we think that rule should apply across the board for City agencies or agencies providing Recovery Act-related work across the board. What type of procedures, considerations, plans does PHS consider along those lines?
That's a wonderful question. I'm going to let my colleague talk about something we're working on right now. I would say that that money that we got through Pennvest had so many requirements and qualifications --
-- that smaller companies, start-up companies or smaller 223 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. businesses were not able to qualify. So we experienced that firsthand. And I'll have Bob comment on something that we're working on right now to address that for the future, because we are applying again for Pennvest money.
Right. In this first grant that we were just discussing, a good amount of that money went for trees, just paying for trees, which were planted by volunteers, some in riparian areas and some in the City. We just planted over a thousand trees with volunteers throughout the City utilizing that fund. We intended to go back, because we had -- in this first go-around, we were told that non-profits could apply for this money. When we went back, we found out that was a mistake and that while they're rejiggering things to make sure non-profits can apply in the future, that at the present time, they're only considering -- 224 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc.
-- for municipalities and utilities. Now, this is from Pennvest now. It's not Recovery Act money in the future, but Pennvest has its own state funding to do the kind of green infrastructure work that we do, and they have been mandated to see that to 12 percent of their funding goes to green 13 infrastructure work. So we are 14 collaborating with the Parks and 15 Recreation Department to submit a 16 proposal this year that is basically 17 surrounding recreation centers with trees 18 in North Philadelphia, and that will 19 be -- it's a submission that's headed by 20 Parks and Rec, which we collaborated on that submission, and we're providing the management for that.
But I'm talking about with the OEO and that workshop that we're going to offer. 225 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc.
Yes. And in preparation for all of this, we're working with MBEC to provide a workshop for minority contractors to build their capacity so they can meet the requirements of any of these either state or federal kind of programs that have more restrictive requirements, and we're going to have a workshop in June on that working with MBEC.
We'll be delighted to hear when that happens so that we can share that with contractors, in this instance, landscapers and others, who look for -- who are in neighborhoods, some of whom do have capacity but for whatever reason cannot connect the dots to the work that PHS does.
So that's the other thing we do, particularly through the vacant land work. That is work where we have a number of minority contractors and community-based organizations applying. We do a lot of capacity 226 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. building prior to the RFP being issued so that people are in good shape to apply for it and can be competitive, but we found that their ability to apply for more complex work and to access any of these federal dollars required that they have some level of insurance, any number of other certifications that they don't have, and that's the workshop that -- so understanding that, we're collaborating with the Sustainable Business Network, as well as MBEC to create this symposium. So we'll make sure that you all know about it in advance. We have a pretty good list of people we're sending it out to in our side of the green industry, but if you have additional people to recommend, we'd be glad to let them know that. And we believe you have to be very proactive, one, maybe struggle to change some of those requirements that the federal government has, and that's a whole other advocacy and policy path, but, two, given that that's what it is 227 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. now, what can we do proactively before the RFP is issued to do all we can to ensure people have the proper information, they meet with people who already have those qualifications who can help them see like a ladder of how they can move from where they are to where they want to be. So we're deeply committed to that.
Absolutely. And just let me offer a friendly amendment. MBEC are the days of the past. The new world is OEO, Office of Equal Opportunity. So I share that with you just to let you know that going forward, number one. And, number two, it is very distressing when I see workers working on the City Hall Courtyard and their company name is from one of the suburbs, from one of the counties. I believe in some ways that is -- it's not right. So those are the kinds of changes we want to begin to see, 228 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. particularly when it comes to dollars, federal dollars or the like.
Let me just say that we've always believed the same thing, and that in our -- in the contracts that we manage through the Office of Housing funding, say, for the maintenance contracts of the stabilized land, the fences and the trees, we have presently contracts in the 2010, last 12 year's work, and of the 14 contractors, 13 ten are either minority-owned businesses 14 or community-based minority-owned businesses that are non-profit, and the only -- we only have one contractor who is not based in the City doing all the work that we do. And so we've always given priority to City-based contractors and especially minority-owned contractors, and have worked hard to develop the capacity of those contractors who may have started out mowing lawns in the neighborhood and now are building their 229 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. capacity to do more and more work.
And that's part of what we see our function, and it makes us a little bit different than maybe a contractor just doing a lot of lawns all over the City.
Well, we appreciate the commitment, because it's not in what you say, it's always in what you do that illustrates how committed you are. So we thank you for that. And please remember to forward to us the announcement of that upcoming June effort.
I just have one comment to make relative to the storm water. I've gotten a number of 230 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. calls from churches. Are you trying to develop a relationship with the churches? They have all this land and sometimes a large parking lot, and often some of our parking facilities downtown, how do we work with them? Certainly they're going to have to have a certain amount of concrete to park a car, but maybe the surrounding site or some way you all could work with them during this whole issue of --
Absolutely, because their water bills -- their water rates are going to be affected now not only by their usage, but the amount of green space or hardscape they have around. So people who have lots of hardscape that they own around their facility, their rates are going to go way up, and people that have more green space or permeable surfaces, regardless of the usage, their rates are going to go down. So the Water Department is doing a big education campaign right now, and, of 231 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. course, we're on the green solutions side of this, and we'd be very happy if your office wanted to refer anyone over to me who is having questions or issues about this. Of course, it always requires resources to make these changes, but we have a pretty good handle on that storm water system right now. So we would be glad to help them navigate it and put them in touch with the right folks, and potentially there's a partnership with you with some of these folks in your district and Philadelphia Green. We look forward to that. I would also say that this Community LandCare that employs 100 folks seasonally, we were very excited to work with the Commerce Department and the Mayor's Philly Works initiative, so that some of them had work beyond the landscape season with corridor cleaning. That was the first time that happened this past year. We look forward to more of that going on. And when I mentioned 232 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. our City Harvest program that grows food for the hungry essentially, up at the prison the inmates grow these seedlings, we've created a job readiness program for them, and understanding that it's not enough just to do job readiness but where's job placement, it's small but significant that we've expanded that program to not only be at the campus of the prison, but then when those who are eligible for work release, we will be graduating our first small but mighty class of five inmates who went for another eight weeks of training at Bartram's Garden and they will all be receiving jobs. So our commitment is do job readiness, job training and job placement to support reentry efforts using the green side of the business, which is both, you know, ancient wisdom. You work on the land, it's healing in and of itself, it's restorative. These participants get to give back to 233 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. communities where their families live. They're the little engine that creates the seedlings that turned into the 55,000 pounds of food that feed people they care about. And then in addition, for those who have an interest, an affinity for landscape work, we've now partnered with a private landscape firm, as well as Bartram's Garden, the prison and PHS to expand that program on the Bartram's Garden campus, so they're making a difference there, and that's an under-resourced treasure that needs a lot of help, and we're working on that Part C, that ever-important job placement. So we feel like not only in what we say but what we do, we have a very deep commitment to this, and understand that that's key to our shared vision for the City. It's essential. So we applaud Council's interest in this, and you should count on us as a partner. And we'll furnish all the data and information you need for 234 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc. that case making.
I need to congratulate you. I clearly remember a prison officer who sent my office a summary about this very program, and we advised that they need to talk to you or the Fairmount Park, and here we are X number of years later and it's real.
Thank you. Yeah. It was hard, but I'll invite you all -- we're still trying to confirm with the Mayor the exact date and time of graduation, but it will be June 17th or 18th. And we want a graduation where people are not only recognized for what they've accomplished, but that their employer will be there to offer them a job. 235 5/26/10 - FINANCE - BILL 100129, etc.
So we hope, if your calendars permit, you will be there that day for that celebration.
It was really inspiring and informative. I'm sitting here with a lot of ideas. I will contact you, because I do have a lot of churches in my district.
We need to talk about what advice we could give them, how they may want to partner with you, but we'll get back to you on that.
Much like Shevchenko Park. We're eager to make 236 those connections.
Is there anyone else here to testify on this bill? (No response.)
There being none, we will recess this hearing until June the 9th at 11:30 a.m. Thank you very much. (Committee on Finance adjourned at 3:25 p.m.) - - - 237 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 on May 26, 2010, and that this is a true and correct transcript of same. -------------------- MICHELE L. MURPHY RPR-Notary Public (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)