I know 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. this Administration is championing the return-to-work policy, and post-pandemic many City workers will be returning to work downtown. How is that rollout happening? COMMISSIONER BRASKY: Are we talking about space?
Say it one more time. COMMISSIONER BRASKY: Are we talking about space requirements?
Like how is the rollout of the return-to-work policy taking -- how is it going, how is it happening? Like how much of our workforce currently has an assigned office space? Like how is it going? COMMISSIONER BRASKY: We're actually working with the MDO's office now to assess all the space that we have and figure out -- the MDO did hold a team Tuesday to bring some people back to figure out space, but we have a team that's working on assessing all the 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. buildings and areas that space is needed and how much is needed.
Thank you very much. So they will be explaining to you how much -- how we're making the buildings more accommodating to our growing and changing workforce too? They'll be kind of giving you the information back? COMMISSIONER BRASKY: Yeah. We will work with -- somehow like try to do a building refresh for when people come back to have a little bit more energy.
Okay. It sounds like there's just a lot more that you need to figure out. COMMISSIONER BRASKY: And we also are working with the CAO's office on -- they're taking the lead on bringing people back and then what space is needed.
Okay. So a lot to be learned there; fair to 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. say? COMMISSIONER BRASKY: Yeah.
Okay. Then how about this: I'll shift to Fleet questions overall. I think that's probably appropriate.
Can I have a number two for Fleet? And the reason why, members, Mr. Rosati is currently at this same moment being reappointed by the Mayor and had to step out. So we wanted to accommodate her schedule. However, can the number two answer the questions of Councilmember O'Rourke? And we will also reinstate your time, Councilmember O'Rourke.
Thank you, sir. (Witness approached witness table.)
How are you? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER WILSON: 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Good.
Sir, could you state your name and your title for the record, please. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER WILSON: Good afternoon, Council President and members of the City Council. My name is K Wilson. I'm Deputy Commissioner for Administration, Department of Fleet Services.
Thank you very much. It is so great to hear about a promising pathway and apprenticeship program that has worked so well for many years. As we continue to chart the path for Career Connected Learning across many different fields, I had a few questions. What lessons can we learn from the over 30 years of experience that DFS has in running apprenticeship programs? Can you speak to it? 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER WILSON: We started the apprenticeship program in 1993, over 31 years. We have trained more than 188 students. We hired more than 88 students -- 188 students. Mostly we're focusing on minority students. Eighty-eight percent of the students who are coming to the internship program are minority, and the (unintelligible) completion rate is around 70 percent, and then out of that (unintelligible) completion, about 40 percent of the students choose to stay with the Fleet, and they are still the students. After the completion of the program, they choose to go to the college or for higher education or some other field. What we learned through the program is that this give some motivation to our high school students who are in the technical field, and during this Administration, we are promoting this program more by talking to the School 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. District, and they included this programming through their school curriculum. And what we're doing right now is that it's a two-day program on a weekly basis. For the past year students, they are coming on a full day to the program and they are working with our supervisors and the team leaders and they're learning more and more about. In their second year program, second year of the program, they come two full day to our facility and they learn on the job more about the automotive training. So we do that. Once they qualify, they are coming to the City's civil service position and there is a career growth for these students, and we have students who graduated and get into the program. Right now they are like supervisors, team leaders, and we have a district manager right now who come through that program.
Okay. These are great learnings. My time kind 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. of ran out, but I have one more question. No, yea? Okay. Thank you very much, Council President.
You're welcome. Because we're recessing at 12:30, so I want to get as many people in as possible, unless after y'all want to do a slight third round and follow up.
The ladies have an event at 12:30. They want to go downstairs in a second. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Isaiah Thomas.
Council President, I'm going to be quick. I just want to revisit our conversation around traffic-calming stuff that we were having earlier. While I wait for Mr. Carroll to come up, because I'm going to ask about the speed light cameras, I forgot to thank other staff 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. members in my first round. So I do want to thank all of the people who work in Public Property, all of the staff members that work in Fleet, especially Fleet. They gave us an earful when we were at an event, because apparently we always thank everybody but Fleet. So I hope Fleet is listening. Special shout-out to the folks that work in Fleet and all of the City workers who make our job a lot easier, make it possible. I shouldn't even say a lot easier. Harrisburg gave us the ability to put us in a position to be able to add five cameras to different roads that we feel like will address some of the traffic issues that we're seeing, whether it's hit-and-runs, issues with pedestrians, issues with cyclists. We've seen firsthand how cameras can change cultural norms on Roosevelt Boulevard. It did take some time, but Roosevelt Boulevard at one point was the most dangerous road in America. That is no 1 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. longer the case, and I do give you credit for that. Where do you think would be best -- actually, let me say this: What is your strategy for implementing the five cameras that will now -- I'm sorry; for picking the five roads where we will now have some level of technology to be able to enforce motor vehicle codes or motor vehicle code violations? COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Thank you for your question. Deputy Managing Director Mike Carroll had to leave. I'm going to turn it over to DC Montanez to answer your question. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: Good afternoon, Councilmember. The way the Philadelphia Streets Department Transportation Infrastructure group and PennDOT, along with the Philadelphia Police Department and the Philadelphia Parking Authority, we're all working together to come up with the five corridors. We're basing 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. that on crash data and police data that we currently have to come up with the five corridors that will be then presented to City Council.
So my only concern about going off of crash data is when -- I spent some time as the Chair of the Streets Committee and we were doing a deep dive when this issue was at its peak, and we've began to turn a corner from then, thank God. The speeding issue doesn't always correlate with the car accident issue, according to some of the information that was presented to us. So my question is, are we using these cameras to try to address speeding and other motor vehicle code violations or are we going to use the cameras to try to address issues in the High Injury Network that deals more or less with hit-and-runs and things of that capacity? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: So the cameras specifically by the state 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. law can only ticket for speeding. And I do understand your concerns. That is why the Philadelphia Police Department is also part of the task force, because they do know sometimes a lot -- other things happening in the corridors that we cannot see in the data.
I'm going to put a shameless plug in for the District Councilmembers to be included in that conversation as well, because they know their areas. Thank you, Council President. And thank you all for the work that you're doing.
Thank you. I just want to also add for the Streets Department, if you could provide -- and I used to receive this in the past. If you can provide per councilmanic district which streets are going to be paved. And I don't know if the schedule is a part of it, but I used 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. to get a list to say, okay, give me an idea of where the streets are going to be paved in my district. That would be helpful. And also in terms of the lights, I know you said there's a map that you can go on. I think it's great, but if y'all can go a little over and beyond and also give per councilmanic district what the schedule is and the targeted area of the lighting per councilmanic district, that would be very, very helpful for us as well. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: We can do that for you.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Cindy Bass.
Thank you, Mr. President. So a couple more questions. Bike lanes. So particularly in Center City, one of the things that's been 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. brought to our attention is that some bike lanes essentially merge you into traffic. So there's one in particular I'm thinking of on Market Street eastbound at 16th Street, and it's a very busy intersection and it's a very complicated system. Like you kind of have to sit there for a moment and like figure out, okay, what should I do. But some of our bike lanes direct bikers directly into traffic, which I'm sure that's not the intent. Has the Streets Department looked at that? Are you looking at it? Is it something that you're working on to try to bring more clarity and safety really? COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: We work with the Office of Multi-Modal Planning, which is Director Yemen, and we incorporate the bike lanes and they look at -- so, yes, we do.
Okay. And so is there any plan or like an idea as to when we'll be able to expect some 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. changes that will make it more safe or... COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: For the bike routes?
Yes. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: I can work with Director Yemen and we can get you something.
Okay. Because I guess what I'm asking is like with this and also with the lighting that I discussed in the last round, if we could have some sort of a sense of this is something we're working on, this is when we can expect to have some sort of a resolution, this is a target date. Because if we don't set targets, if we don't set goals, then it just doesn't happen. It just kind of like floats out there for a very long time. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Thank you. That's something we can work on.
Okay. All right. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think that might be it. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Oh, you know what, wait. One other quick question. ADA ramp construction. I know that we spent -- like the amount that we were spending on that was considerable. How far along are we with completion of the ADA ramps? I think they were federally mandated, correct? Okay. Yeah. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Thank you for your question. I'm going to turn that over to Deputy Commissioner Montanez. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: Good afternoon. So we do ADA ramps whenever they get triggered, such as paving, utility ditches or other things that disturb the pedestrian path. The cost right now is $36,000 a corner.
Per corner? Okay. So the four 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. intersections -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: I'm sorry. I apologize, Councilwoman. She just shocked me.
I was trying not to act as surprised as well, like oh, my goodness. But it's considerable. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: This is why --
It's important, but it's expensive. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: This is why we're actively working with Deputy Commissioner Newman to get Future Trackers, to get people working. We're also working with the Prisons, who have, I'm going to call it -- they call it brick pointing, but we're trying to find ways we can get people who have the skills to become City workers who can then do this job and not contract out at $36,000 per corner. Whenever we do a traffic 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. signal, the average cost of a traffic signal is $750,000 right now.
Interesting. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: One signal.
Thank you, Member Bass. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.
The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier.
Okay. I'm going to be quick. First, we are so excited about the LED street lighting project. When we first embarked on this, I was under the impression that we were starting in the areas that had the most gun violence. So if there could just be some clarity on that in follow-up, that would be good. But I also wanted to talk about the issue of how bright the lights are. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. We've received some complaints, even though people are happy that we're going through with the project. And so I understand that there are shields that can be installed, but that we don't have many shields at the moment. So can you explain more about the shields and what is needed to ensure that we can put these shields up as soon as they are requested? COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Thank you for your question. The house-side shields will deflect the light from transferring into the second floor bedrooms. We can order them, so if we have locations, we can definitely look at where the light is spilling into the residential homes. You asked about the areas in which we were installing them?
So wait. First, on the shields, are we going to order them and what will be the process and timeline in terms of getting them up? 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Deputy Commissioner Montanez just told me we placed an order for 6,000 shields, so they are ordered.
Cool. Thank you. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Thank you.
And then, lastly, I just wanted to emphasize the Council President's point for Fleet around the charging stations. I believe during the FY23 budget year, we fought for several million dollars to get electric vehicles to L&I inspectors. We had heard that one of the main things making -- or one of the things making the job unattractive was that the inspectors had to use their own personal vehicles. So we went forward with this expense, only to find that we don't have charging stations or enough by far. And so we have the inspectors kind of riding around trying to find stations, waiting in line, 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. which is a bad and inconvenient situation for all of us. So it's imperative that we do move forward to increase our charging station capacity. Thank you, Council President.
You're welcome. See, I ask progressive questions, see. Y'all will catch that later on. I have a quick question I want to slide in here before I go to Councilwoman Rue Landau. We have the Neighborhood Preservation Initiative where we're repaving driveways. Will the Streets Department be able to participate and partner in that process, and what do you think that will look like in the future? COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Thank you, Council President, for your question. The Streets Department is actively meeting with the group Janae (ph) and we are looking at the list of 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. driveways that they requested. So once we determine the list, we will get back to them.
All right. Thank you very much. And any budgetary concerns or conversations, let me know. I know the Mayor's neighborhood, like that Ninth Councilmanic District, right, is one of the key areas that have a significant driveway issue, and then also in deep parts of South Philadelphia, we also have residents who have concerns regarding their driveways as well. See, Carlton, we do have driveways in South Philly, so not just in the Northwest. But on a more serious note, we would like to continue that dialogue as we go through this budgetary process to see how we can continue those efforts. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Rue Landau.
We have 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. to be outside in five minutes, so I will be very quick and some will be statement-y question-y things, but while we're looking at driveways, I really think we need to look at assisting low-income homeowners with sidewalks outside. I've been saying this. It's going to be the last to-do thing on their list, and it is an issue that affects people with disabilities and all sorts of other folks, so let's talk about that. I love bike lanes. I want more. I want them protected. And then I wanted to ask about the LEED gold buildings, that we're trying to take our municipal buildings that have so many issues and turn them into actually healthy, energy efficient places for us. Can you talk about that a little bit in two minutes? COMMISSIONER BRASKY: In two minutes. Thank you, Councilmember. Capital Projects Office, they are striving to any new building that we 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. build is a LEED certified. Take an example PPSB at 400 North Broad. That was one of our last bigger projects, and our goal is, and I believe still is with Capital Projects, to make sure we are energy savings and do everything we can to make our buildings LEED. And one goal I was trying to have is to try to at least get a gold star rating for City Hall, one of the oldest buildings. So we're getting there. It's little by little. We're making advancements in the older buildings, but anything newer going forward is, we're setting out to be a LEED building.
That's it? All right. Thank you. On a serious note, though, could that data come up to my initial conversation about maybe in the next round NPI providing support for constituents that need their 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. pavements repaved. And I think right now we don't do it because it's private property, correct? Which I do understand, but maybe if we could find a legal way to address it under NPI 2, if we get the NPI 2, which is the game plan, to provide those families who can't come out of pocket to get their pavements repaved the same level of support that we're doing individuals who have driveways, because from my understanding now, under certain circumstances if a driveway needed to be repaved, everybody on the block would have to agree and kind of chip in on the cost and then they would get an extra bill. So if we can support the type of support for the driveways, then surely we can find a way to support maybe with some income criteria for low-income families, moderate-income families to get their pavements repaved when they're totally not livable. I guess I want to say that word. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. To wrap us up for this session, I want to go back to the Chair of Streets, Councilmember J. Young.
Thank you, Mr. President. A quick question on City surveys. In the Five Year Plan, it says that you have a goal to do 30 or 32-day turnaround is the target, but in FY23, the actual turnaround time was 30 days. Can you explain why we are increasing the time for -- the response time for the survey district? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: Thank you, Council President. So City surveys, it's one of the difficulties we are having hiring. We are training people internally and bringing them up, Future Trackers. The City of Philadelphia Streets Department -- within the City of Philadelphia, there are 13 licensed surveyors. Eight of them work for the Streets Department. And so it is a very 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. hard thing to do. The other thing is that we lose them to private industry. Their salaries -- they increase their salaries by $40,000, $50,000 once they get their license and leave the City.
Are there any incentives we can think of to try to keep those folks inhouse with the City? Because it seems like that's the theme of a lot of our City agencies, is that we train them up and then they go out to the county or to the private sector. What can we do to try to retain some of those employees here in the City? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: We're willing to discuss with your office any ideas you guys have to help us retain staff, and pretty sure all the Commissioners up here will echo that, that we do want to keep our staff for as long as we can.
And my last question just for this session, 22nd 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. and Market there is a bike lane there that was installed, two-way bike lane, took away a traffic lane, parking lane. The people in that community hate it. This is what I'm told, right? I don't live there, but I do know that the folks that -- my committee people who live around there, they do not like that. It's supposed to be a pilot. Can you tell us how long this pilot will be in place or can you provide a little more detail on that? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER MONTANEZ: So Market Street was installed by PennDOT and it is one of the ten approved bike lane facilities that PennDOT allowed the City to install. And so we can discuss with your office to see if you'd like to make some changes on that, but it was to improve ridership of bikes and to try to reduce the carbon emission in the City.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC.
One more question. Crossing guards. Can you just tell us a little bit about the efforts to recruit and retain crossing guards in our city? I do know our office has been getting a lot of calls for the need for more crossing guards in certain areas. We've asked community members to start volunteering as crossing guards in certain areas. But can you just talk to the Council about what more is needed on our end. Is it budgetary? Is it a budget issue? Is it a manpower issue? Can you just describe to us what the issue is with crossing guards? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER NEWMAN: Thanks for the question, Councilmember. So what we are doing to help facilitate hiring for crossing guards is, we started a new process called hiring fairs. So not the same as career fairs. What we'll 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. do is, we'll recruit for the crossing guards and have them come in every two months and we go through the process of everything they need to do with their background clearances, of which there's three of them. We help facilitate them getting into the website to start the clearance process. We give them an orientation of what the work is actually going to be so that they have a realistic sort of time example of what they're going to be doing, and we let them know what the salary rate is, schedule, everything like that. We find that we're actually able to net more individuals by doing that, and we have that process, that hiring fair process, lined up with when OHR establishes the civil service list that we can hire from. So it's sort of at a canvas of every two months that we're doing that, and we've hired 144 individuals so far just this fiscal year. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC.
Yeah. On the same subject, several years ago some frustrated neighbors who were trying to become crossing guards and were having difficulty doing this when the Police Department -- it was either Police Department or School District, when they were working, one back and forth with the other, but it was a fairly simple concept and could never get anybody to pay attention to and, that is, if you're 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. running a school, you have substitutes. Some use agencies, some use different agencies and more than one, and some of them, some schools, just do it directly, but it gets done. The teacher who wants to be a sub goes online, sees when the opening is going to occur, when somebody is not going to be there. Sometimes it's early in the morning. Sometimes it's late at night for the next day. So there's a list of subs, and what was suggested by several people that wanted to be crossing guards and were having trouble was why not start with a pool of subs, because first of all, you'll know if they're any good. They come out, if they're punctual, if they are good at what they do, and when an opening occurs, you just pop them in to your rotation, but everything is done ahead of time and you get to see where -- I'm not saying it's going to be perfect, but it's better than having a police car where there are 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. enough cars to put police on the corner, and which didn't used to be the case, but they have to leave if they get a call and kind of defeats the purpose often. So also a police officer usually has to stay in the car, so they're just kind of being a presence there as opposed to the crossing guard that's actually out on -- with boots on the ground. If you think about that, I'd appreciate it. I think it makes sense. Usually the common sense comes from the little people, you know, that experience it, and it might be worth it. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER NEWMAN: Thank you, Councilmember. We're happy to consider any ideas that would get us more school crossing guards.
Thank you. We want to thank everybody for your testimony. We look forward as a 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. body to continue working with you as we move the City of Philadelphia forward and also to make sure we are the safest, cleanest, greenest, city, with economic opportunity for everyone. This hearing will now be at ease until 1:30. Thank you very much. - - - (Recess from 12:31 p.m. to 1:35 p.m.) - - -
We will now continue our hearing and I would like to ask for the following departments to please come on up: The Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, the Philadelphia Energy Authority, and the Office of Sustainability. (Witnesses approached witness table.) 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC.
Good afternoon, everyone. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Good afternoon, sir.
And so I'm going to ask Emily to kick us off. My Nana taught me as a young man ladies first, and so, Emily, if you can begin your testimony. First state your name and title for the record and please begin.
Yes, sir. Good afternoon, Council President Johnson, members of Council. I am Emily Schapira, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Energy Authority. I am really pleased to provide testimony on PEA's Fiscal Year 2025 Operating Budget today. We are, as many of you know, a nimble team of 16 now building a robust, equitable, clean energy economy in Philadelphia. In 2016, with the leadership of then-Council President Clarke, we launched the Philadelphia 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Energy Campaign, a pledge to invest a billion dollars in energy efficiency and clean energy projects to create 10,000 jobs over ten years. Through 2023, we've supported $904 million in projects and programs and helped create over 7,600 jobs. Again, that is $904 million invested and over 7,600 jobs created. This initiative works as designed and is almost to its goal more than two years ahead of schedule. For every dollar the City has invested in us, we've generated $132 in economic development. Again, that economic impact is 132X. PEA leverages clean, efficient, affordable energy as a key entry point for Philadelphia's biggest challenges, spurring equitable economic development, creating jobs, alleviating poverty, and improving public health. We help make Philadelphia safer, cleaner, and greener, with economic opportunity for all, and we are in full support of Mayor Parker's and 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Council's efforts towards those ends. We've been called one of Philadelphia's best kept secrets, but you can see and feel the impacts of our work everywhere. We exist to serve our city behind the scenes, facilitating and enabling key projects and programs on behalf of others. We do work that we are uniquely designed to do as a municipal authority to help bring more dollars to Philadelphia, advance the City's climate goals across administrations, and enable the City's ecosystem to serve all Philadelphians. We hold long-term contracts on behalf of the City, which are common and necessary in energy work, to facilitate and support project development and execution for municipal and institutional clean energy projects. This includes projects like the Streetlight Improvement Project, which I know we talked about this morning. We're about a quarter of the way through replacing over 130,000 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. street and alleyway lights citywide in partnership with the Streets Department and others. It includes $250 million in energy-saving capital projects across 7 schools in partnership with the School 8 District of Philadelphia and Adams Solar, 9 which will provide 25 percent of 10 municipal electricity needs starting this 11 month after six years of work. We hope 12 you all will join us to flip the switch 13 on that project on April 30th. 14 - - - 15 (Applause.) 16 - - - 17
We also run 18 programs that address similar issues in 19 housing, commercial and industrial 20 buildings, and small businesses. I'll 21 mention four of those programs very 22 briefly. 23 First, Solarize Philly, which has supported over 2,700 homeowners to add solar on their roofs, over 45 percent 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. of whom are low or moderate income. Not only is it the largest solarized initiative in the country, but it is also a program we are planning to roll out to the rest of the state through Inflation Reduction Act funding. Secondly, the Water and Sewer Service Line Protection Program, which serves 90,000 homes and has saved consumers over $60 million in repairs and supported 105 homes with last-resort funding for water and sewer emergencies that could not be covered by Basic Systems Repair or the Water Department's HELP loan due to tangled title or foreclosure prevention programs, and 75 percent of all claims were serviced by minority and women-owned plumbing companies. Third is C-PACE, or Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy financing, which has facilitated almost $200 million in energy projects in commercial and industrial buildings in seven of ten 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Council districts, with recent projects done in Kensington, Port Richmond, Germantown, and Center City. Six of those projects were multi-family and typically built about 30 percent more efficiently than code requires. This is a program authorized and modified by City Council, so thank you for your leadership on that, and that leadership has allowed the program to grow and serve even more properties. And, finally, Built to Last, Philly's whole home repair program. - - - (Applause.) - - -
Built to Last is a low-income home preservation initiative that coordinates, layers, and supplements Philly's existing home repair programs, including Basic Systems Repair, Weatherization, utility programs through PECO and PGW, senior services across multiple organizations, Habitat's 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Critical Home Repair program, Health Department programs, and much more. We've served over 300 homes so far, and we have handouts that my staff can share, if you don't already have them, that show that district by district you can see where that impact is. We work to restore homes to safe, healthy, and long-term affordable conditions. Many of these homes replace old and outdated heating systems with electric heat pumps, which provide both heating and cooling. And as everybody in this room knows, that is needed now more than ever, especially for our most vulnerable residents. We pair heat pumps with solar for long-term affordability and resilience. With existing funding from the state Whole Home Repair program, which was modeled after Built to Last by Senator Saval, we have enough to take an additional 200 homes off of our wait list, for a total of about 500 homes 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. served. That wait list currently totals over 1,100 households, and we expect it to grow, so it will leave at least 900 homeowners without funding to move forward. Significantly more funding is needed to even begin to meet the current need. In this year's budget request of Council, we are asking for $5 million in City funding for Built to Last. - - - (Applause.) - - -
Built to Last receives no funding currently from City coffers. We fund that work through state, federal, and philanthropic grants, as well as our own program revenue. After receiving lots of national and community-based recognition, we come to the City to ask for your help to match federal funding and help us direct available rebates and resources to Philly's low-income communities. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. In my written testimony, I've provided a link to view a short documentary made by the Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Hunting Park NAC, and the Here4CJ Coalition featuring six Built to Last clients explaining the program and what we did in their homes, and two weeks ago we hosted a press conference with Governor Shapiro, Senators Williams, Saval and Street, Chairs Harris and Cephas, and Representatives Hohenstein and Krajewski at the home of one of our Built to Last recipients, Dominique Young. Ms. Young has two children and bought her home in Kingsessing five years ago. She had no idea there were some serious issues with the property until she started having electrical issues and experiencing $400 and $500 a month electric bills. At one point last winter, she said she had to take her kids and go to an Airbnb because the heat wasn't functioning in her home. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Ms. Young applied for the Basic Systems Repair program and though she was income qualified, the cost of repairs exceeded BSRP's maximum and she was denied any service. We did a holistic home assessment through Built to Last and saw that she had rotting joists in the kitchen that presented a safety issue and water penetration happening on the rear of the home that was causing structural issues, in addition to her major electrical and heating issues. PHDC and PEA worked together to split up needed repairs and are collaborative partners in this program. BSRP invested over $15,000 in Ms. Young's home to deal with the water penetration and structural issues, and then Built to Last came in and spent roughly $18,000 on electrical issues and removing inefficient electric baseboard heating and replacing it with a high efficiency heat pump that provides both heating and 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. cooling. We're in the process of adding solar and completing final insulation and punch list items, which will leverage other federal funding in the amount of about $8,500. Built to Last fundamentally restores homes that build generational wealth, that preserve neighborhoods, that help Philadelphia families like Ms. Young stay in their homes and avoid displacement from gentrification or from disrepair. Built to Last was designed with feedback from communities and the organizations that serve them to support Philadelphia's existing home repair programs to make them more effective together. This program has been nationally recognized by the Alliance to Save Energy, the Department of Energy, and many others as the model for lower income home repair. When Congress passed the 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Inflation Reduction Act, we were thrilled to learn that there would be loans and rebates available for things like rooftop solar and efficient heating and cooling systems, but we quickly learned that federal funds cannot be matched by other federal funds in most cases. Without non-federal matching sources of funding, low-income homeowners will not be able to take advantage of millions of dollars in incentives. I urge Council to help us fund this important program and ensure that these federal dollars make it to those who need it most. While funding Built to Last is incredibly important, we will not be able to continue to scale up our work without an increase to our City-funded operating budget. 05 million from the City, which covered 20 percent of our overall budget. The other 80 percent was from federal, state, and philanthropic grants as well 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. as our own program revenue.
05 million line item under the Managing Director's Office. So I don't think it comes out as its own line. 6 million. ) - - -
We ask for this increase at a critical moment. With support from the William Penn Foundation, we've spent the last year supporting the City, Commonwealth, DVRPC, and various other stakeholders and CBOs to apply for competitive federal funding. We've submitted over $2.6 billion in requests, including $250 million in partnership with the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority for low-income solar subsidies 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. statewide, $200 million in Climate Pollution Reduction Grant requests with DVRPC, and over 40 sub-awardees from PHA, PHDC, and the School District to Philly Youth Basketball and Share Food Program, and multiple Environmental Justice Community Change Grants focused on home repair and more in Kensington and Grays Ferry with ECA, Philly Thrive, Impact Services, and NKCDC. There are a number of major funding opportunities still to come in the next year, including Clean Ports, which is critically important to PhilaPort and others, Clean Heavy-Duty Vehicles, and sub-awards for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and more. PEA will need to build operational and compliance capacity to manage significant federal grants, scale up programs like Built to Last, Solarize Philly, and municipal projects just like the one currently active for the quadplex, health centers, and homeless 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. services buildings. This will allow us to provide additional services to the Administration related to City utilities, expand and speed up City projects, and continue to provide support to ensure the School District and others get all of the federal IRA funds possible. We believe we can draw down $5 billion to Philadelphia from the IRA. That was 5 billion. This is the year we need your support to make that happen. If we wait until FY26, it will be too late. Our final budget request for this year is $2 million for the Philadelphia Green Capital Corp, our green bank affiliate. This funding would -- - - - (Applause.) - - -
This funding would provide loan loss reserves, credit 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. enhancements, and other tools to ensure that federal loan dollars are deployed not only to moderate and higher income Philadelphians but also to lower wealth communities in ways that are supportive and appropriate, in particular for those between 60 and 80 percent of area median income. This funding could support energy upgrades for 700 households to make their homes safer, healthier, and more affordable for the long term. It would enable at least $10 million of federal funding deployed to targeted communities. As I mentioned earlier, federal funding cannot often be matched with other federal funding, so City funding would be incredibly valuable in this context. We're expecting more than $100 million of federal loan funds to become available to Philadelphia in the region starting in FY25 through PGCC. So our total funding request 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. for FY25 is 10.6 million across all three priorities, Built to Last, PEA's operating budget, and PGCC's credit enhancements. - - - (Applause.) - - -
This is an increase of 9.55 million over the allocation contemplated in the Administration's budget. We've worked so hard over the last eight years to build a reputation of being an effective strategic organization that does what we say we're going to do. I hope our strong track record of success and the overwhelming support of partners, stakeholders, and community members lends credibility to this request. Thanks so much for your consideration.
Thank you. - - - 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. (Applause.) - - -
I think other than Jane Golden and the Mural Arts Program, I think you're the only other person that brought your entourage, a little shout-out to Philly Thrive. So I think that's great. - - - (Applause.) - - -
Always on the front line advocating for those most in need. And so that's what it's about. We welcome everyone here today. Next, the Office of Sustainability. Just please state your name and title for the record and begin your testimony. DIRECTOR LANKENAU: Yes. Hi. I'm Elizabeth Lankenau and I am the Interim Director of the Office of Sustainability. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Good afternoon, President Johnson and members of City Council. I am Liz Lankenau, Interim Director of the Office of Sustainability. Joining me today are Katherine Leonetti, Deputy Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives; Dominic McGraw, Deputy Director of Energy Services and Operations; Nidhi Krishen, Deputy Director of Climate Solutions; Genevieve LaMarr LeMee, Deputy Director of Environmental Justice; and Abby Sullivan, Acting Chief Resilience Officer. I am pleased to provide testimony on our Fiscal Year 2025 Operating Budget. Through the support of Council, others in the Administration, and our partners, the Office of Sustainability has made significant strides over the past year and will continue to advance the Parker Administration's mission of a safer, cleaner, greener city, with economic opportunity for all. Working with the Streets 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Department and the Philadelphia Energy Authority, the Philly Streetlight Improvement Project is the City's single largest energy conservation investment to date. Upon completion, it will represent a nearly percent reduction in 8 municipal carbon emissions and lower our 9 street lighting energy costs by 10 25 percent. The Adams Solar project, another project with the Energy Authority that is now complete, will provide renewable energy to nearly a quarter of municipal buildings. ) - - - DIRECTOR LANKENAU: This brings the City closer to its goal of 100 percent renewable electricity used in municipal buildings by 2030, while also providing budget stability against electricity market volatility. Looking forward, the Office of 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Sustainability is in the planning stages of a new Guaranteed Energy Savings Act project in partnership with the Energy Authority. This project would finance major upgrades to improve indoor comfort for City offices, health centers, and 8 homeless services buildings through 9 energy savings. 10 We are competing for federal 11 dollars available through the Bipartisan 12 Infrastructure Law and the Inflation 13 Reduction Act. We received awards from 14 EPA's Environmental Justice Government to Government program and the Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant, technical assistance from the Government Finance Officers Association, and other applications are pending. We will continue applying for opportunities directly and support community-based organizations and other partners through convening an Inflation Reduction Act forum. We received funding through 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program to develop an Eastwick flood resilience strategy, which launched in March, and we will continue our place-based work in partnership with state, federal, and city partners. We will be releasing an energy poverty alleviation strategy later this spring, which strives to address residents' high energy burden, while reducing residential emissions, building resilience, and improving housing quality and security. This work will focus on underresourced and overburdened communities and incorporate green workforce development to prioritize an equitable and just clean energy transition. Through our Community Resilience and Environmental Justice Grant Fund, we distributed 10,000 grants to 15 community organizations through the City, with the Environmental Justice Commission operating as the selection 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. committee. In the coming year, the fund expects to increase the number of awards to organizations.
5 In the coming year, the Office 6 of Sustainability will continue to strive 7 to do more to address the impacts of 8 climate change already being felt by 9 Philadelphians. We recognize that 10 collectively we must move faster to 11 reduce our emissions to meet or exceed 12 the City's 2050 carbon neutrality goal. 13 The climate crisis will be 14 predictable in its unpredictability of 15 increasingly hotter and wetter weather 16 events. We will continue to do the 17 maximum with the resources available to 18 prepare our city for escalating extreme 19 heat and flooding and to prepare our 20 departments to meet their public mandates. We will update our partners on climate science data, associated vulnerabilities, and seek ways to reduce the residents' health and private and public assets. Through all this work, we 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. will ensure that environmental justice and climate preparedness are threaded throughout policy, planning, and implementation decisions. Thank you, and I'm happy to address any questions you may have.
Mr. Williams, just state your name and title for the record and please begin your testimony. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Good afternoon, President Johnson and the honorable members of City Council. I'm Carlton Williams, Director of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives. Joining me today are Crystal Jacobs, Sanitation Commissioner; Casey Kuklick, Deputy Director of Clean and Green; Mary Stitt, Deputy Director for Clean and Green 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Strategic Initiatives; Keith Warren, Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation; and Christopher Newman, Deputy Commissioner for Administration. I am pleased to provide testimony on the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, including Sanitation's, Fiscal Year 2025 Operating Budget. The FY25 total General Fund budget request establishes $165 million in funding for the newly created Sanitation Department operating under the auspices of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives. This proposed budget includes significant new investments reflecting the City and Mayor Parker's deep commitment towards making Philadelphia the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation, with economic opportunity for all. 3 million in new FY25 Sanitation investments for major new and expanded initiatives, including the establishment 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. of the first ever district-based residential cleaning operation providing focused cleaning services in every neighborhood across all geographic areas of the City of Philadelphia; the expansion of enhancement of an anti-litter enforcement campaign; more than 150 new illegal dumping surveillance cameras each year; a substantial increase and support for more of the City's highly successful Taking Care of Business program and the creation of a new bulk collections crew and illegal dumping crew. In addition, by repurposing of existing operating resources, we will be creating a new and unprecedented twice-a-week collections operation, providing extensive collection services in areas of the City where litter conditions are the worst. Complementing those exciting and highly ambitious plans, the new FY25 budget commits over $1 million to the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. staff and functional structure, with responsibility to strategically organize and coordinate a multi-faceted array of governmental agencies, including community groups and business partners, to reduce waste, increase recycling, and continue to work towards a more sustainable future. In addition, commensurate investments have occurred specifically for CLIP and Taking Care of Business programs, which, although they are being proposed through the Managing Director's Office and the Commerce Department operating budgets respectfully, will be critical and integral components of a larger clean and green operational strategy going forward. Councilmembers, if you would give me a moment to explain the holistic strategy and introduce the partnership agencies that consist of intergovernmental, proactive, coordinated approach to addressing the City's most challenging quality-of-life issues and 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. prioritizing the most underserved communities first. Our government partnership agencies include Sanitation, Streets, CLIP, Parks and Recreation, Commerce, L&I, the Police Department, the Water Department, the Office of Information Technology, the Philadelphia Parking Authority, the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, our Mural Arts Program, SEPTA, the Philadelphia School District, of course the Office of Environmental Sustainability and the Philadelphia Energy Office, and the Managing Director's Office, all working together to make Philadelphia the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation. In other words, no more silos. We are working to address the needs of the concerns of each and every resident together. These are indeed very exciting times for the City of Philadelphia.
This proposed budget ushers in a new and visionary clean and green strategy that 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. lays the groundwork for comprehensive and long-term solutions to remove litter and blight across the City and drastically improve overall quality of life for all residents and communities. We are looking forward to working vigorously pursuing this new innovative and strategic approach as we achieve our clean and green mission, and excited to present this proposed budget today. We are, therefore, requesting your favorable consideration of this budget request, and we thank you for the opportunity to testify to you today. The deputies, staff, and I are happy to answer any questions that you may have.
First, I want to start off by publicly 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. thanking you, Mr. Carlton Williams and Keith Warren, for just always being on the case when it comes to cleaning and greening the City of Philadelphia, making sure that we're addressing the issues of illegal dumping, making sure we're addressing the issue of cleanliness throughout the neighborhoods in the City. So I just want to thank you for your public service. I want to also thank Mr. Keith Warren and your overall team as we go into this new Administration. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Thank you, sir.
A couple questions just to get started. So first for Emily. Emily, thank you for your hard work and your dedication. We had a chance to meet to talk about your needs overall but, most importantly, how you are using your leadership to actually bring dollars to this program and grow this program, right? As you mentioned, 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. particularly for Built to Last, it doesn't receive any City of Philadelphia funds, and so I'm of the mind of other members of Council that we will be advocating to support Built to Last. That program -- - - - (Applause.) - - -
The program complements what people may or may not know, the Basic Systems Repair Program. And so through that meeting and working with Janae, I found out that a lot of times separate from the work that Basic System Repair does, you come behind and also make sure that home is energy efficient, right, and you're able to address a lot of areas that Basic Systems Repair aren't able to address. And so I'm glad that that type of collaboration is great in terms of moving forward and is happening. And also we recognize particularly in areas 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. where we see not just in areas that are gentrifying, but also just areas where we just have long-term residents who have just been living -- particularly in South Philadelphia, we don't ever move. South Philadelphia residents probably like most other neighborhoods, we pass our homes down from generation to generation to the next generation. And so I just wanted to acknowledge you and your hard work from that aspect. I want to go into questions specifically to Mr. Williams to get an idea of the District Council -- no; the cleaning crews per District Council. How many members will be a part of those crews, the type of equipment will be a part of those crews, will these individuals -- because I also recognize going through our notes that there's a certain level of vacancies that we do have. So how are we going to hire up to make sure we're accomplishing the things that we need to do, because obviously 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. this is the highest budget item pretty much in the whole proposal that's being put forth to us today. And so you got some work to do ahead of you, which I'm sure you're up for the job to addressing. So how many people are going to be in the crews, right? How you're going to go about hiring staff? And then I have a couple other set of questions I want to ask around Same-Day Pay, making sure that Roots to Reentry program, to the LandCare programs, where do they fit in the grand scheme of this proposal and are they a part of this proposal, because the last Council President worked very hard for Same-Day Pay, and that LandCare program is like great for our districts as they are right now. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Thank you, Council President. First of all, to answer your question in reference to the district residential cleaning crews, these will be ten-person crews per district. They will operate on Tuesday 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. through Saturdays the day behind trash collection day. They are actually being recruited right now through our Future Track program, which I'm very pleased to say they're doing an excellent job with cleaning alleys. And so we know what type of employees we're going to get to clean our neighborhoods, because we already have them. Once they complete the program, they will be designated per district in each area of the City, operate on a Tuesday through Saturday schedule. Again, the goal is to address issues after trash day when our city is most impacted by litter. Ultimately be available to our Councilmembers and the community when it comes down to requests. So if there's a certain area or neighborhood that we need to clean or address, we will target those areas, but primarily they'll be on a schedule where they're cleaning each and every part of the district in your neighborhood on a 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. daily basis until requested to do other services that may have come up throughout their week.
So every day that there's a trash day, they will be out doing that follow-up. On that same day or the following day? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: The day behind, the following day.
My trash day is Tuesday. Wednesday they'll be out there cleaning up? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: They'll be out there cleaning up.
Just a small recommendation, just something to think about. Maybe after the trash truck get finished that day, can y'all take into consideration to actually come on that same day? Because sometimes, I'm going to say, the wind will blow the trash after the trash trucks go. I'm going to put it that way, and we'll see -- I'll come home and I'm 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. like, it look worse than it did before they pick up the trash. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: I understand.
But the wind blew the trash after the trash trucks picked up the trash. And so we're kind of looking to see, well, maybe -- or sometime the trash truck juice like totally decimates the whole block on that actual day, leaving like a foul smell. Just something to take in consideration as you strategize moving forward. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: We certainly will. And to make a quick comment, the difficulty in that is that sometimes it's hard to keep up right behind a trash truck because they're on different routes in different parts of the City. So to do it with all of the routes, that may be a challenge for us, which is why we want to go a day behind to ensure that we try to address those streets. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. The part about the trash truck juice spilling, if you do get those issues, you can always feel free to contact us directly, because those are outside the norm of cleaning operations that we -- those are one-offs and they happen sporadically where we want to make sure that we have a consistent presence in neighborhoods. Regarding the type of equipment, they'll have mechanical brooms. So every neighborhood will get the part of the street sweeping that everyone has been advocating for and also sidewalk sweepers. So we want to make sure that not only the curb lines get touched but sidewalks as well. In addition to the work that we're doing, we're going to collaborate with other departments. As I mentioned earlier, CLIP, PPA, the Commerce Department TCB program. So the goal is to create a holistic approach where the entire neighborhood is being touched and 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. the whole neighborhood can feel it.
So TCB will still deal with the corridors? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Yes.
Your cleaning team will be in the neighborhoods? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: That is correct.
All right. Now, when you say you're going to follow up behind the trash trucks, would this also include middle blocks? Like, for instance, in South Philadelphia, we have Ready, Willing and Able. They do the middle blocks, right, irregardless from Washington to Snyder, Broad to 25th. Separate from coming down like one particular street, they go through the middle blocks as well. Will these crews do the same thing or only the routes where they pick up trash? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Well, our 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. trash trucks hit those smaller blocks as well, so we do plan on hitting those areas. We estimated that there will be a return to those areas in which we service that we didn't complete on, say, Monday's route, because we're estimating that these crews can clean at least 30 blocks per day and per district. That's almost 300 blocks a week, and overall, you know, that is substantial. So we'll be covering a considerable amount of areas. We'll also work with those cleaning agencies. We're working with TCB. We're working with those existing cleaning programs, especially with our mechanical street sweeping program already in existence, to make sure those efforts are coordinated. And in addition, we'll be working with, again, CLIP, PPA, L&I to make sure properties are cleaned and sealed with private property issues. So this is the holistic approach that Mayor Parker's vision helps 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. to make us safer, cleaner, and greener.
Just a couple small ones before I relax my time to the members. On this particular part regarding the cleaning and greening crews, just talk about that pathway to permanent employment with the City of Philadelphia under the Streets Department. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: We were fortunate enough to work with and I want to thank Deputy Commissioner Chris Newman and Office of Human Resources for having an open mind in terms of changing the civil service process to allow Future Track members to get into certain tracks. You heard about the Streets Department earlier talking about survey jobs for Future Track members. We have a beautification track in Sanitation in which once they complete the training and program, they're offered the opportunity to civil service opportunities in the 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Sanitation Division. We can continue to create these pathways for people who have non-traditional status of taking tests to get on a civil service list and then waiting two years. By coming into Future Track, you're able to not only prove yourself that you're worthy of doing the job, but you'll be able to actually have an advantage to be able to get in because you've already worked in the City of Philadelphia.
Now, this is a very, very big deal. Do we have a marketing campaign to recruit individuals to participate? Because I think some people may or may not know with Future Track irregardless of your background, you can have an opportunity to have a pathway to work for the City. And, again, as we deal with gun violence, we also know that if we give these young people an opportunity or returning citizens an opportunity, then they won't 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. go back to that street life. So will there be any type of marketing campaign to like really recruit people aggressively to fill those vacancies to hire up? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Absolutely. First, let me first thank you and this entire Council especially for advocating last year for the largest contingent of Future Track members the City has ever seen. Over 200 people participated in that program, and that's thanks to the members of City Council for approving that budget. It is a widely successful program that so many people want to get in, 200. There's a lot of positions, but we had a list of up to 800 to 1,000 people trying to get into the program. We will continue to advertise that through our traditional resources. We have an anti-litter campaign that is about to launch called Join the Fight and learn how you can become a productive member in the clean and green strategy, 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. and part of that website will direct them to become Future Track members if they're interested to apply for the position.
Good. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: We also work with a program called N1. That is the recruitment agency that kind of screens the participants that come in, and screening in terms of making sure that they have all of their information correctly. It doesn't disqualify them for having a record or anything like that. It just makes sure they have all of the credentials necessary to be in the program and they're accepted. They did an excellent job this year with a recruitment base, and we're going to continue to work with them in those aspects.
Thank you. I'm going to wrap up with this one question for the next round. I talked about Roots to Reentry. I talked 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. about Same-Day Pay. Where does that fit in terms of your overall strategy? Will it be included? And then also we're doing a lot of the cleaning, but I also know that the Mayor talked about 30,000 new trees planted. And so will Philadelphia Horticultural Society be a part of that strategy as well or any other organization? But I know they're the premier organization to actually do the tree tending work, so to speak. So talk about that as well. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: So in the past, these programs -- the partnership agencies were funded as one-time funding opportunities in the budget. As you know, that there's a significant funding request for cleaning and greening this year, and we're working with the Budget Office to determine at what levels these other programs will be funded. So we will definitely talk with City Council in reference to when and how that process 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. will be awarded and then determine amounts that we can get to keep those partners within the City government to address those issues that you just stated.
Strong advocate of Philadelphia Horticultural Society, because separate from the Flower Show, they're actually like in the neighborhoods, right, doing tree tending work day in and day out. And then also I have a special place for the Roots to Reentry initiative, as well as Same-Day Pay. Same-Day Pay started under the former leadership with Council President Darrell Clarke, which I know is very, very successful. I know they do a lot of work in Jamie Gauthier's district, which in Southwest is close to my district, and they're also cleaning and greening lots to address the eyesores that we see in terms of blight. And then also Same-Day Pay and Roots to Reentry also from a 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. crime-fighting strategy providing hope and investing in people are initiatives where like -- I'm sure you've been to the graduations. These like guys who have a glimmer of hope in their eyes, right, because they learned a tool from landscaping, right? And then also -- I learned this when I was an AmeriCorps member working for Habitat for Humanity. It does something to the psyche where you can go and see an abandoned lot, right, filled with weeds, right, an eyesore, and the neighbor is watching you go and cleaning it, and they're happy, because it's all kind of debris in there. It's drug dealing going on in there, people using it as an escape route when they're hustling and selling drugs, so it's an eyesore in the neighborhood, but when you actually come out and transform that lot into something that's cleaner and greener for the neighborhood, it not only does something to the neighborhood in terms of boosting their morale, but also to the 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. individual that actually participated, and I saw that when I went to their graduation, like, wow, these are some young men that are really on a path of changing their lives just off the basic Same-Day Pay/Roots to Reentry type of initiatives. And the recidivism rate -- I mean, sorry, the actual graduation rate and placement rate is significantly high. And so just really seriously consider, if we're talking about cleaning and greening the City but also making a safer city, that type of strategy that really engages as many young people as possible, and with this type of budget request, I think it's like 500 million over five years, I think it would be prudent for us to really take a look at those things that's been very, very successful as we move forward. So I just wanted to put that on the record. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Thank you, Council President. Yes, PHS is a major partner, and those participants are 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. definitely candidates to also be enlisted into Future Track and TCB so that you can get long-term employment as well. And so that could be their starter base until they get into these programs and we can move them forward. So we're looking forward to having that discussion with you.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jim Harrity.
Thank you, Council President. Thank you all for coming out. So glad to hear about the solar panels going on the school roofs. That was something we talked about, and I was big on that while I was out on the campaign trail. My questions are for Carlton. Commissioner, is it still the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives' intention to do the pilot program of twice-a-week 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. pickup trash collection? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Absolutely. Wholeheartedly. That is a big initiative in our efforts to reduce litter and illegal dumping, especially in close-knit neighborhoods where they have limited access to storing trash. So absolutely.
Okay. How is the data going to be collected to determine what areas of the City will get the second trash pickup? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Well, first of all, the density of the neighborhoods is the first indicator. People who do not have places to store litter in driveways or they don't have setback properties where they can put a trash can out of the way and store it for the week, those will be prioritized first, but the ultimate goal is to hit all of those neighborhoods who don't have access to these type of services. The goal is to give them an opportunity to be able to get rid of their trash much quicker so 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. they don't have to contain it. It ultimately hopes to stop reducing the amount of waste that you see on corners and vacant lots and litter through our streets. So eventually depending on the amount of trucks and how fast that we can get them in, we plan on touching all neighborhoods who have these issues.
That's great to hear. How about the BigBelly trash receptacles? Are they part of the strategy and plan to combat the litter? If so, how will they be used? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Yes. So we're looking in this -- the mid-year transfer actually provided for investment for over 1,500 new BigBellies. That's double the amount that we have currently in the City of Philadelphia. Most BigBellies have a life expectancy of ten years, so some have to be replaced, but others will be going on 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. those additional corridors that TCB will be expanded to and also other neighborhood corridors. So majority of those BigBelly waste baskets will not be in Center City. They will be in our residential neighborhoods.
Love it. Love it. And just to close out, I'd just like to say thank you to you guys for all you do. I call you on the weekends, just like everybody else. You know, listen, you guys get right out there. And shout-out to my buddy over there, Mr. Conway with CLIP. You guys do great work, and looking forward to working with you to clean up Philadelphia. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Thank you very much, Councilmember. We appreciate it.
I want to echo the sentiments of Tom Conway. He'll get text messages from me like on a Sunday evening. I know I'm 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. like totally out of line, but it's like when the constituents call me screaming and yelling at me, I'm like, who can I call to get some additional help. So to the CLIP program and Tom, thank you for you and your team being on the front line to help the constituents in the City of Philadelphia. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Nina Ahmad.
Thank you, Council President. What an impressive plan, multi-faceted, which has got my head spinning like what questions should I ask first. So the one issue that I want to make sure is happening is that we are greening while we're cleaning, not in a linear fashion but at the same time. That's one issue that I was somewhat concerned about, but after hearing you, that PEA and Sustainability Office will be working in concert under one kind of 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. umbrella. So you're sort of the greening. PEA, Sustainability would be sort of the greening aspect of this impressive plan. Question one is data collection to justify this huge amount of budget investment, right, so that we can show to our constituents on a not too long a timeline to show how quickly we're making impact, particularly if you can connect it to crime stats in the City as well. Because I heard you say you're going to be working with the police as well. So I don't know if that's in your plan, but if you could address that we're cleaning as we're green -- greening as we're cleaning as well as how we're collecting data to show the people of Philadelphia that this is worth the investment and it's working. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Sure. Councilmember, I'm going to allow both the Sustainability and PEA to talk about their cleaning and greening -- their greening initiatives. I'm going to ask 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. my Deputy Director, Casey Kuklick, to come up, because we stole him from PHS, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society --
I heard. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: -- to help us with greening initiatives in the City of Philadelphia, and then I'll come back to address the data collection metrics that you spoke about. (Witness approached witness table.) DEPUTY DIRECTOR KUKLICK: Hi, everybody. I'm Casey Kuklick. I'm the Deputy Director of Clean and Green Initiatives working with Director Williams. Thanks for the question. I do want to point out a couple things. First, there is funding in the TCB expansion to do greening along commercial corridors in a stepped-up way. So that includes vacant lots, tree planting, and things of that nature. So that is absolutely part of the proposal. Second thing that I want to 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. highlight is the great amount of work that we've done, my office, our office, along with Parks and Rec in particular, around tree planting, and there's significant federal funding that has already been awarded, $12 million last fall, for tree planting across the City, but particularly in our hardest hit and the highest heat neighborhoods. And we're getting ready to submit an additional application, a group of partners including the City, for $20 million from the EPA for that work as well.
I would just add one other quick thing on that, and I'm really grateful for this question because I think it has been really exciting to see the Administration sort of starting with vacant lots and trees and sort of physical greening, which is fantastic and desperately needed. And so the Office of 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Sustainability and PEA are able to really focus on other components of that. So thinking about energy, thinking about sort of from the Office of Sustainability's perspective, resilience, how do we make sure that everybody is able to sort of meet the moment with climate change in ways that are affordable and long term able to function. I will say from our perspective, we're excited that the Clean and Green Office is able to get new trash trucks. So that's something that's been on our radar. Of course, there's all sorts of new technology out there for that. So we're really pleased to be able to work with them and talk more about what that will look like coming up. And I'll just say to you, we think about commercial corridors and we think about residential properties as just part of our core infrastructure of the City, and so we're looking at energy 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. efficiency as the way to sort of follow on to the work of the Clean and Green Initiatives office and make sure that communities are able to move forward as climate change happens.
Thank you. Were you going to address it? I was going to ask about recycling and where have we gone with that. DIRECTOR LANKENAU: Sure. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: I can address it. Did you want to follow up on green? DIRECTOR LANKENAU: Sure. I'll follow up, sure, on the green component of this. The Office of Sustainability, we're largely a policy and planning office, and there are many great plans that impact the work of our office and what we're trying to achieve policy-wise. So, for instance, Parks and Rec, the Tree Plan, amazing, a really robust public 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. effort, and that really speaks to reducing the heat island effect throughout the City to the degree that that's implemented. We have a Food Policy team, a little not green maybe in the sense of trees but certainly urban agriculture, and we are mentioned, the Office of Sustainability and our Food Policy team, about 80 times in that plan. And so we'll be working with Parks and Rec to implement on that plan. And then we work closely with the Water Department, and their green stormwater infrastructure program is also very important, not just for stormwater management but to the degree that trees are planted. Whether they're stormwater trees or rain gardens, all of that really impacts the greening initiative for the City.
Thank you. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: And really 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. quickly, Councilmember, the Litter Index that we use in the City of Philadelphia throughout the years has been a data source for us to identify and target problematic areas and then measure success. We're now transforming the Litter Index into a Community Appearance Index that not only looks at litter or illegal dumping, it looks at things like abandoned autos, vacant properties, vacant lots, graffiti. All of these are the top quality-of-life issues that people complain about in 3-1-1, and we're taking that and we're mapping that. In fact, Mayor Parker's 100-day action plan calls for a tracker to determine where these locations are and how fast we're addressing them, and we're going to use that data to drive service. So that's basically the response to that, and we'll continue to work with multiple departments on their datasets to continue to deliver that information to show our progress. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Regarding recycling, as you know, over the years since the pandemic, we've taken a hit. The recycling rate plummeted to eight percent. We're happy to say that it's increasing now. It's back to percent, and that is the 8 diversion rate. That's not a 9 participation rate. That is the amount 10 of trash that is taken out of the waste 11 stream that is recyclable, and that is 12 the percentage. 13 So, for instance, if you have 14 20 pieces of trash, you take out five pieces, you have a 20 percent diversion rate. We're working to increase that rate to get it up to somewhere around 25 to 30 percent, but there's also things that we should be also looking at for a long-term waste plan, like organics and the amount of waste that we can now turn into renewable energy. We have a proposal and a plan to be able to do that through a pilot program through our waste contract system. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. So those are the things that we're doing to try to not only increase recycling but reduce waste overall.
Thank you. I'll hold my questions for the second round. I have lots more questions.
Thank you. Do we still take our trash to Chester? Just want to ask. I think I had one of my members I saw -- DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Yes. We still take a percentage of our waste to a waste-to-energy plant in Chester called Covanta.
Any other place we can take it besides Chester? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: The other contractor is Waste Management, but we put out the waste contracts every seven years. It's four years and then three 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. one-year renewals. Actually, there is a shift to want to do a longer term stable agreement with other waste companies. That is the opportunity for new waste and technology systems to come in. And so we're now looking not only at that for recycling, as Councilmember Ahmad stated earlier, but we're also looking to do that with waste so that we can become a more environmentally friendly waste system.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier.
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, Director Williams. I first wanted to thank you for everything that you do to serve our communities and wanted to give a shout-out to DC Warren as well, because he's always amazing. I wanted to ask for more 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. clarity on the twice-a-week trash pickup pilot. Were you saying that you would use the Litter Index to figure out the areas? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: It will be both the Litter Index and we're looking at population density. So places where we have tight streets, so North Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, those are all areas -- parts of Frankford in the Northeast and parts of Germantown are the areas that were targeted. We're not prioritizing one neighborhood over the other. We're looking at it in terms of where the dense neighborhoods are, but also it's contingent upon how fast I can get the trucks in with Fleet Management, because it takes a considerable amount of time to order compactors. And so we're working to try to expedite that process so that we can hit all neighborhoods when we start. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. But we're going to look at litter conditions first. That is our primary concern. Then we're going to look at housing density as well, and then between those, we'll come up with a phased-in approach to roll it out across all of those areas that we discussed.
How many blocks will be included in the pilot? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: That is a very good question. I need to get back to you on the number of blocks. I could tell you that it's a considerable amount of districts in the City, because South Philadelphia and parts of West Philadelphia is included. I'll get back to you in terms of the number of houses that will be impacted. That's a good question.
Great. It would be great to have an understanding of how many blocks and where and how that relates to the Litter 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Index and the other sort of metric you were using. Will people have to move their cars for the residential cleaning program? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: No. For mechanical street sweeping, yes, that is a scheduled once-a-week collection. For the residential, because it's diverse and so spread out, they won't be required to move their cars, because their schedule is a little different. It won't be once a week for the residential program. It's once a week for the mechanical street sweeping program that we have that's posted and on schedule with signs.
How often will the residential street cleaning program take place? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: So once every four to six weeks they will return back to that particular neighborhood, because they have to do an entire district before they return to those 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. areas. Mechanical street sweeping program does weekly.
Okay. And, lastly, can you talk about whether the installation of surveillance cameras has aided in finding and prosecuting dumpers? You sort of ticked off a lot of partnerships that you will have in this new role. How is that partnership thinking about and addressing illegal dumping? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Thank you for bringing that up, Councilmember. That is absolutely an integral part of our strategy in terms of enforcement. So we're working with the Police Department, and we want to expand the number of officers who are capable of doing inspections and investigations to track down and prosecute illegal dumpers. As you know, City Council passed several regulations years ago to strengthen our laws to address illegal dumpers. In fact, we were happy to 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. report that we caught a dumper and actually prosecuted him and they received a fine of about $10,000. That is huge compared to the $300 CVN that we used to give. It is deterring illegal dumping in locations where we have cameras. We want to expand that network. This budget calls for additional funding to expand the number of surveillance cameras in those neighborhoods most impacted by illegal dumping.
Are the cameras helping us? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Absolutely. They're making areas cleaner. We're getting more cases for people who are offending. And I can get you -- we keep a tracker of the number of people that our Law Department -- because this is not only a Police Department issue, but our Law Department actually takes them to Municipal Court for a lawsuit to not only give them a fine but pay the cost of restitution. And so we're finding that 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. many of them are now trying to negotiate settlements to pay the fine and then pay a lower cost so that they won't infringe and reoffend, but it is making a huge difference in areas where we're seeing cameras, so we're going to continue.
My next question is for both PEA and the Office of Sustainability. You all are doing just amazing work and so want to commend you on that, first of all, but I wanted each of you to talk about what your next biggest important priority is in order to help the City to meet its carbon neutrality goal. DIRECTOR LANKENAU: Sure. Thank you. And I can share our testimony from March 4th when we did testify for the resolution for carbon neutrality, so I won't go into great, great detail here 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. and I will share that. However, for neutrality, one of the biggest things that we're finishing up right now is an energy poverty alleviation strategy, which will really seek to alleviate the burden that many of our underresourced renters and owners have in paying their bills and looking at all of the gaps and challenges to getting people into various programs and how do we better convene partners around that, and then also really looking at the workforce development opportunities that would come out of both the Inflation Reduction Act dollars but through better coordination of the various programs that we have. So that I think is one of the big ones coming up. We are also looking into for larger buildings building a performance standard, which is not just about efficiency of buildings but setting metrics so that buildings are performing better. It could involve things like 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. switching out HVAC equipment. So what we are doing now is finishing up a grant application through the Department of Energy to apply for funding through that. It could be up to $20 million over the next nine years. A lot of the details about what that policy would look like would come if we are awarded that funding to figure out the size of the buildings, but regardless of what happens, if awarded, it would be a really big public involvement process and inclusive process to really understand what we can implement for more efficient buildings since buildings are about 70 percent of our carbon emissions problem.
Great. And does this budget proposal set you up to achieve those goals? DIRECTOR LANKENAU: Yeah. I mean, a lot of the work that we're doing, we would be looking to grant dollars to help supplement the work that our team is 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. already doing.
Thank you so much for that question, Councilmember. So in addition to the work that the Office of Sustainability is doing, we are collaborating with them on a number of major RFPs for the City. We have one that's currently in the selection process now finally for our next big energy efficiency project for the City that includes the quadplex, plus health centers, and homeless services buildings. So that one is in process now in Procurement. We hope to have that done soon. Our next big procurement will be for our next round of renewable energy procurement. So as we're flipping the switch on Adams Solar, that's percent 23 of the City's electricity. Our goal is 24 100 percent by 2030. And so we are 25 getting ready to release that RFP as fast 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. as we can. We've also got projects at the Airport and at Northeast Airport that are related to solar and microgrid, and both of those will be ready for procurement this year. So on City stuff, those are the big ones. We're also working closely with the Water Department and PGW to really take advantage of the biogas that we produce through water treatment as well as other sorts of opportunities with them. So those are kind of the in-City things that we're doing in City government. We also are working closely with the School District. There's a Solar for Schools bill in the State Legislature now that we've been working closely with Representative Fiedler on, and we've got funding hopefully coming our way through the federal Solar for All program that will focus on low-income solar and should also help us figure out 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. how to get funding to schools to help them put solar on the roofs.
The Chair recognizes Councilmember Nick O'Rourke.
Thank you, Council President. And I want to say good afternoon. Director Emily, the last time we saw each other, the earth was ending, but here we are in a better, brighter, beautiful day. I want to start with a big thank you to you and to PEA. As you stated in your testimony, PEA is one of the City's best kept secrets. It's been great to work with you all since -- - - - (Applause.) - - -
Always want to make space for parades. That's 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. good. It's been great to work with you all since I've come into office and I'm really looking forward to continuing our partnership, especially to continue providing energy savings and home repairs to the Philadelphians who need it most. First I want to talk about -- amen. - - - (Applause.) - - -
I want to talk about the Built to Last program, which has done over 300 home repairs for low-income homeowners since the program's inception, and from my understanding, the Built to Last program has not been funded by City dollars. You all have relied on federal, state, and philanthropic funding for that program until now. Can you explain why you all have a need for City funding to the tune of 5 million this year? 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC.
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Councilmember, for that question, and just a quick recognition to our friends and partners and collaborators in the crowd today from Philly Thrive and Community Legal Services and Here4CJ Coalition and Sierra Club. Thank you all so much and others who I'm forgetting. POWER, thank you so much for joining us and for your kind applause. So Built to Last really has been leveraging existing dollars to get off our feet and -- or get onto our feet and sort of get the program up and running, and now we've sort of reached this tipping point where we've got some federal funding, we've got some Whole Home Repair funding, and so we scaled up kind of just where we needed to be to meet the three-year schedule of the Whole Home Repair funding from the state. And so we have 900 more people on the wait list that we're not going to 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. be able to serve, and yet we'll have federal funding coming in the door to the tune of millions of dollars that we may not be able to spend because we won't have matching funding that is non-federal. So that's really what we're coming to the City for this year. We have to find sources of non-federal funding that we can use to combine and braid and layer with that federal funding in order to deploy everything that's available in the Inflation Reduction Act. So that's why the ask is here today. And just by the math, you can tell that $5 million doesn't get you 900 homes, so we know that we'll have to look for other sources, and we will continue to do that as well.
Indeed. Sounds critically important. I'm also really interested in how we can scale up the impact of Built to Last. So I have a few rapid-fire 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. questions on that topic. Do you all have any numbers on how many Philadelphia households could be eligible for Built to Last?
At least 10,000. Do you all have any data on the conditions of the City's housing stock and how much of it is actually in need of repair?
Absolutely. There was a study a few years ago from the Federal Reserve locally that showed that the home repair need in Philadelphia is now $4.7 billion.
Billion with a B, yes. So we know that takes all kinds of forms, and the 10,000 homes are the ones that we think we can reach pretty easily. There are at least 60,000 homes that are low-income owned that could be 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. generating generational wealth if we could give them that support. We don't know if we'll be able to ever reach those homes, but we know across all of Philadelphia's housing stock, which is one of the oldest in the country with some of the oldest infrastructure in the country, that we have an absolutely enormous need. And so this will not be solved by small philanthropic dollars or even large philanthropic dollars. It won't be solved just with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. We need to rally all resources and use our funding that we do have as thoughtfully and strategically as possible, which is why Built to Last exists. We need to leverage not only funding that comes to us but funding that goes to PHDC for Basic Systems Repair, funding that goes to Weatherization, that goes to all of these programs across the City and use every dollar as best we can. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC.
Would that 4.7 billion, you said, would that clear your entire housing repairs list, wait list, of 1,100 homes or is there a larger figure there?
No. That's the number. So that's -- the 4.7 billion is kind of the housing repair need citywide across all income levels. We have this 900-person wait list today, and that will probably grow year on year. This was from zero marketing, zero advertising of the program. This is just word of mouth.
Now I want to pivot to talk a bit about the other aspects of our funding request, which includes about $2.5 million for PEA staff and administration and 2 million for the green bank. I understand from speaking with your team that PEA needs more staff to be able to continue all of the good work, but something that has come up in a lot of other budget hearings are questions around staffing recruitment 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. challenges for other departments. Could you speak to whether PEA has similar challenges in your recruiting for filling positions when posted?
Sure. We've not had a lot of challenges in recruiting. We're a pretty small, close team. We try to do as much with as little as possible. And so we do have a few positions that are open now, but we've gotten lots and lots of interest and resumes. I think really our focus in recruitment has been not only to use our own network but to make sure we're reaching outside of that. And if I am being frank, I think generally an energy industry, not a terribly diverse industry, and so our own networks tend to be not as diverse as we need them to be in order to find great candidates. And so that's really been our focus, how do we reach out and connect with other organizations and use that sort of personal connection to all sorts of 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. people to bring in the best candidates, and we have an absolutely incredible team who is doing incredible work, all punching above their weight.
And some of those folks are here. I'm grateful that you mentioned many of the groups that are here with us, Philly Thrive as well as others. You know, home team for me has been POWER, Pennsylvanians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild. So grateful to have them there. In fact, it was the rabbi who was in the house today that taught me about the difference between just focusing on reducing carbon footprint as opposed to building a green economy where we can be able to get green jobs. So I'm very passionate about making sure that we can create good union jobs in the new green economy as we fight climate change. Could you speak briefly -- this is my last, because I have more questions 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. maybe in the next round. Could you speak to PEA's role in that work. What recommendations do you all have for the City to expand our ability to develop green workforce pipelines?
I love that question so much. So every time we work on a project or a program, we pair it with workforce development programming, whether it's new programs that we run like Bright Solar Futures or the residential construction program or if we partner with unions, with Laborers has a fantastic program, the Sam Staten Sr. Pre-apprenticeship program. We work with Power Corps frequently. They have fantastic programming and wraparound services. We work with ECA, which runs an incredible training center up in Kensington, will host tours so everybody can see what they're doing. They do both energy efficiency and solar up there. Solar States recently opened up their own solar training center up in Bridesburg. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. So there are a lot of resources for workforce development. We're also part of a Good Jobs Challenge with PhilaWorks. That was a $22 million grant. We're in Year 2 of that now. There are three sectors we're focused on as a city - energy, which we're leading; infrastructure, which Palm's Built-Rite program is leading; and life sciences, which is run by West Philly Skills Initiative. And so we're all sharing best practices about how to build workforce development, and our workforce team within PEA really focuses on building those onramps to career, so working directly with employers to bring them to our incredible pool of skilled trainees who are ready to start this industry.
Thank you very much. Directors Williams and Lankenau, I have questions for y'all later if we have another round, but thank 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. you so much, Council President.
Absolutely. Thank you. Councilmember Mike Driscoll.
Thank you, Mr. President. And kudos to you, Emily and all at PEA. We're big fans. Liz, you too at the Office of Sustainability. You guys do incredible work for the City, and I'm truly grateful. Commissioner, I enjoyed working with you in your old role as Streets Commissioner. You and Rich Montanez every time we called, whether it was a small issue or a big issue, it was a can-do attitude. It wasn't no. It's let's try and find a way. And you know what's happening today. We're not going to go into that, but thank you for that Northeast project. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Yes.
As you 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. know, 2026 we're going to be on the world stage. We have so many wonderful events coming here to the City of Philadelphia, and the gateway to the City is, by driving anyhow, is 676, I-95 north, I-95 south. Now, I know it's a hybrid of responsibilities of who is responsible, but the prevalence lately of post-pandemic this graffiti has been skyrocketing, and I know PennDOT has some responsibilities. And a little thing that irked me this week, talk about government not always getting it right. So we have the accident on I-95 where the truck hits the Conrail bridge, and in five days, they repair it. That's wonderful. But guess what? They're up there on scaffolds, they're up on this stuff and they can't get a spray paint of can and spray over the graffiti that was on that bridge? They're actually doing the welding here and the graffiti is right 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. there. So that just irks me, that government can't get it right sometimes. I'm a huge fan of CLIP. You may recall that it was founded in the Sixth Councilmanic District with Joan Krajewski. Tommy Conway is on speed dial. I don't pretend to understand everything about the Managing Director's budget, but it appears to me that CLIP may be getting cut, and that concerns me. So I just want to weigh in that -- and I probably speak for all of us when I 14 say that CLIP is important to all our 15 districts and to the City and that 16 whatever we need to do to make sure that 17 that funding is appropriate, that's my ask for today. And with regard to that graffiti, to the extent that we need to reach out to the other Mike Carroll, Secretary Carroll, whether it be CLIP in the safe mode or whether it be other members of your team, I just think when we're on that world stage, seeing a dirty 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. highway or graffiti just sends the wrong message on what is the greatest city in America. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Yes. Thank you, Councilmember, and you're absolutely right. CLIP is an integral part of our City operations to help address clean and green issues, especially when it comes down to graffiti. The graffiti that you talked about on 676, 76, 95 and all the other areas is definitely a problem. It's something that we need to address. Commissioner Shipman and Director Conway and myself are arranging a meeting with PennDOT to see what we can do together to address this, some kind of shared services agreement so that we can maintain not only the graffiti but the litter strewn on and off ramps that currently plague our city, because you're absolutely right. The first impression that people see of our city when they travel up our highways is not a good one 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. at this moment, and we need to address it, and I'm looking forward to working with your office as well as PennDOT to make sure that we get that addressed.
Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you. And I just want to echo the sentiments of my colleague. I ain't even on the first impressions. I'm just talking about as a citizen that go to and from east and west on 76. I think now it's more profound than it's ever been, and I know our Mayor has a special interest in intergovernmental collaboration and also I think -- I don't know if Amtrak owns part of the overpass where the train goes as well, but maybe if we can have like a collaborative effort and include Mural Arts, I think it would just be a beautiful collaboration to just put a whole bunch of murals along 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. the Expressway, and I think the graffiti artists will probably think twice before they write on, because a blank slate is like come write and bomb the Expressway because it's -- you saw B Street. When the train came and it was all white, it was like it's so white, it's so clean. They bombed it that night. For those who don't watch hip-hop or B Street, you'll catch that later on. Just Google it, but nevertheless, you get my point, right? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: I get your point.
Had it been a mural, they'd have thought twice about it. When you just see a clean wall -- and so I just think that's something that we should focus on irregardless of who is coming to our city. Just a sense of pride, and I feel that coming from this Administration to take that in consideration, and then when our visitors do come, it's just a 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. by-product of just how we operate in terms of it being a new day. So any way -- personally, Mural Arts would be a great collaborator in helping up spruce up the City as well as on the Schuylkill River Trail. We gave the kids what we call a skate park. That skate park looks terrible, right? You got the Art Museum in the back of it. You got people having a good time on the trail, and then as soon as you get to the actual skate park, there's nothing but graffiti, right, all graffiti. And that might go with the culture. I get it, but at the end of the day, like I would mural that up as well, because it's just not a good look when we talk about cleaning and greening a great city. So with that being said, the Chair recognizes Councilwoman Quetcy Lozada.
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, and thank you 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. for being with us today. You know, you're never going to get a no from me, because I am extremely grateful for Streets and Sanitation and the support that I have always received, even before becoming a Councilperson. As a staffer for my predecessor, you guys have always been responsive, and the accolades that Keith Warren and Tom Conway are receiving here today and the gratefulness that they receive from the community is extremely well deserved. And so thank you to both of you publicly. I want to also support what Councilmember Driscoll just mentioned about cutting anything out of CLIP's budget or Streets and Sanitation. I think that you all need to get more so that you're able to do more, right? I've always been a fan of cleaning and greening and beautifying, so anything that will get us to making Philadelphia a cleaner, more beautiful city, I want to be very supportive of. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. That being said, we have a culture in our community that tossing trash on the ground is acceptable and that it's normal. What are you all doing as we shift how we are responding to trash, to short dumping, what are you all doing to work with young people with the School District, right? How do we change young people's mindset about litter, about the environment and how to protect it, not just because when it's clean, it looks nicer, but because it does create safer spaces and because it is good for the environment? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Thank you, Councilmember. On April 22nd at the Horticultural Center, Earth Day, we are announcing a round of green schools grants that we are going to award 21 schools around the City of Philadelphia 22 for doing environmental service projects, 23 and on that day, we're going to declare 24 them litter-free school zones, that 25 they'll have to commit to cleaning their 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. schools at least two times throughout the school year. The grants are up to $2,500, and they do things from composting to learning about beautifying their neighborhood to rain barrels, because you're absolutely correct, we have to start teaching our young people the importance of environmental stewardship and environmental sustainability. By offering these seed money grants, it gets them involved and it encourages their other students to get involved. As well as being a part of a litter-free school zone, they learn those habits to maintain their areas. So that is just one of several programs. We're also launching this month an anti-litter campaign across the entire City of Philadelphia featuring Madam Mayor Cherelle Parker, who is going to encourage people to join the fight against litter and illegal dumping, and there will be a menu of options for all 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. residents to participate in, from becoming a block captain, from cleaning up your neighborhood to setting a community meeting, because we can't clean up the City alone. As graciously as we are to receive the funding from this Council and the work that we're putting in, if the residents don't participate, our efforts will be meaningless. So we need to engage young people, old people, and everyone in this fight. Join the Fight will start this month. There will be a menu of options not only from Streets but CLIP, but Parks and Recreation, learning how to understand the process for removing abandoned autos, connecting with your neighborhood. These are the things that we want to engage residents with.
That's really exciting to hear. We had started to post photos of different crews cleaning in different places, and it has been really successful 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. in how community residents have responded to it, right, the amount of support that we have received. And it's not us. It's not my office, right? It's Streets and Sanitation crews, it's CLIP crews out there, there's SEPTA crews. Every photo that we have put up has received really positive feedback. So I think it's really important for us to start showing each other how we are doing our own part to be able to clean up the City. So thank you so much for that. Whatever I can do to be supportive, I'd like to do that. My last question is around how you all are selecting the spaces where you're going to install traffic-calming measures. How are they being prioritized? I know that when I first arrived here, I requested for my district to prioritize spaces around schools and churches and rec centers, parks, that kind of stuff, but my list of residential requests has blown up. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. And so how are we prioritizing how calming measures are installed aside from that schools, recs, churches, and senior spaces? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Sure. Earlier today I think Streets Commissioner Del Rossi and OTIS, Mike Carroll, testified on the process of prioritizing using data. So High Injury Network is what the Vision Zero initiative and our component uses to determine in residential neighborhoods where those traffic-calming measures go, not only speed cushions but the countdown cameras, narrower street-calming mechanisms to ensure that cars slow down, is how they'll prioritize. The requests are exceeding the demand right now. So we're looking at creative ways in using capital investment dollars to leverage what we're doing. We thought that schools, as you stated, and rec centers should receive high priority just because of the sheer nature of 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. children and volume of people who use those pedestrian walkways daily. It doesn't require a traffic study to make commonsense decisions about making sure we protect our most vulnerable. But we also need to make sure we're trying to keep up with the ones that need the highest priority based on accident data and based on injury data from the High Injury Network.
Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll be brief, because I'm a huge fan of you guys. So I want to just 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. start with the Energy Authority and Sustainability. Thank you for everything that you've been doing. You're not new to a new initiative. So thank you for everything you've been doing. The way in which you're able to kind of effectuate the work that's in front of you and be forward-looking and leverage federal dollars to just keep adding to what we're doing and it's working is fantastic. So you're a model for so many other projects in the City, and I love everything that you're doing. I guess the only real question I have is really about Built to Last. And I'm sorry I did have to step out for a meeting, but how quickly can somebody -- I know you have people on the waiting list now. Even when they are approved, how quickly does it work that they get the money to them to -- go ahead, look at that. Home repair is community care. We love it. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. How quickly can you make that happen to repair the homes?
Thank you so much for that question, Councilmember. Unfortunately, people that join the wait list today are unfunded. So we are getting through the wait list fairly slowly, because the funding we're using is the Whole Home Repair funding. So we have total funding for 500 people, and that's sort of the level that we've scaled up to in our infrastructure. We just brought on some additional contracts to help us scale to the next level, because we're hoping we'll be able to find additional funding to work through that wait list. At the moment the people at the bottom of the wait list, we're kind of expecting somewhere in the neighborhood of two years before we get there. So it is certainly not an emergency program. Our hope is that if they have an emergency need, we can direct them to 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. another program that either doesn't have a wait list or something like Basic Systems Repair that is intended to be an emergency program to get that immediate thing. But that's, of course, why we're in front of you today and hope to find some additional funding that we can leverage to get through that faster.
How fast is the process when they're at the top of the list, though?
The whole process start to finish takes about five months. The average home is getting anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 total in repairs. They leverage four to six programs in addition to ours. And so we sort of do one application. We put them all together. We order the construction in a way that optimizes the dollars that each program can put into it. And so that's kind of the basics once they've got all their paperwork in, and many of them have 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. already been through BSRP by the time they get to us and so we're able to move that pretty quickly. We do a single holistic home audit to figure out what are all of the issues that are present in that home. We put together a scope of work and then sort of match that with all of the programs that can fund it, and then Built to Last fills in the gaps. So we contribute on average about $18,000 per home.
I love this. Thank you. Keep doing everything you're doing. Absolutely love it. Just two quick clean and green questions. The first one is, while you're doing -- first of all, I see the next video that we're going to make is going to be you and the trash truck knocking down the silos, Mr. Williams. I love also that you're pulling together so many different pieces to make sure that we are just focused first on the 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. neighborhoods that need it most and, second of all, beautifying our entire city is so important. During the education campaigns, including and especially with the young people, do you have a plan of also educating kids on not using things like -- sorry we handed them to you -- single-use plastics? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: We don't have a specific campaign right now, but I think that's something that we should certainly work to include when we do our educational curriculums. The litter-free school zone campaign requires us to teach about environmental education, and I think this should be a part of waste reduction, and not using single-use plastics is basically what we're discussing when you talk about forks and Styrofoam and plastic water bottles. So, yes, that is something that we should develop a curriculum. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Our Recycling Director, Kyle Lewis, is here, so she's hearing you loud and clear in reference to the things that we need to do to start getting to zero waste.
We could get some Philly Clean and Green -- DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: I see that.
-- water bottles, right? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Yes. Yes.
And then the last thing for you is, I got to meet with our neighbors in Chester County, who unfortunately live next to Covanta where we're sending our trash, and it was super sad to hear their stories, and most of them grew up there and didn't even know that they were living next to this incinerator that was making them sick. They do not have -- that site does not have a filtration system for the emissions produced by the incinerator, although other plants do have the 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. filtration system. Can we leverage our business to improve the health of our neighbors in Chester and help them get the filtration system? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: So I'm going to ask our Environmental Services Director, Scott McGrath, to come forward. He's here today to talk about the requirements, what we have in our contract and our ability to leverage it. I will say that they are also under strict EPA guidelines to report emission issues. We've met with, during the previous hearing with Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson, with Covanta to talk about the environmental concerns of the residents. They have provided -- and we'll make sure that we can set up a separate time for them to come meet with you as well -- details on what they are doing to ensure a safe environment in terms of emissions. But I'll let Mr. McGrath -- here he is. Hello, Scott. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. I'll let him come up and talk about the emissions process and what the status of Covanta is right now.
Thank you. DIRECTOR McGRATH: Yes. Scott McGrath. I'm the Sanitation's Environmental Services Director. Yes. We've been working with Covanta to expand their outreach to their community so that they can develop a much more cohesive and integrated outreach to everybody in their communities as they develop their programs and improve the environmental performance of their facility, which they've also been working on for some time. They also have been working very closely with both the state and U.S. EPA. They just started a new program where they're reducing their NOx emissions, the nitric oxide emissions, substantially for the facility. So this will improve the environmental 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. performance of the facility.
And I'll just add one other thing to that question, not to in any way answer for Clean and Green, but this is one of those places where waste and energy really converge and there is lots of new technology out there as well that is much cleaner, much better neighbor than what we have at Covanta, and of course we're in the tail end of the seven years of available contracting at the moment that Clean and Green would have to sort of decide what to do next. So I'm really grateful that Director Williams approved a shared intern for this summer who is going to be doing a report on what other cities are doing with waste to energy and where there are some opportunity and technology in the marketplace. So we'll have more for you after this summer.
Excellent. Thank you so much. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC.
Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Nina Ahmad.
Thank you, Council President. And I'm piggybacking on what my colleague just asked about. This is my question too about Covanta, and I know their contract is coming up for renewal. Really a more global question about whether trash incineration is the way to go at all, and you kind of alluded to that. And we in Pennsylvania have -- not that landfills are the best option, but we have a lot of available landfill opportunities, so I have no idea why we even have a contract with Covanta. This is just not new. We should -- yeah. That's right. So Chester is one of the worst environmental racism examples in the nation. So I think for us as Philadelphia, we should be on the 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. forefront of stopping this, right? We need to really look at that. - - - (Applause.) - - -
Thank you. So that's one thing. The other question I had is about where you take your toxic materials and electronics and all. You have these locations where you go, they're once a week or they're very hard to access. So I don't know if in your clean and greening plan you're going to make it easier for our constituents and myself actually to be able to avail these opportunities to deposit these items. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Sure. So the answer to your first question in regards to the waste-to-energy facility in Chester, the contract is up and we're in our renewable years. I believe 2026 is the -- or 2027 is the new contract 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. period. So we'll be renegotiating new RFPs that have to be approved by City Council. So we will have those discussions up to that point. I still open the opportunity for Covanta to meet with City Council, as we have originally discussed with Katherine Gilmore Richardson, our Councilmember, who heads up the Environmental -- who headed up the Environmental Committee, because, again, they need to be able to give real answers to the community, to you to ensure the safety and well-being until we come up with a different option that is more sustainable. We certainly would love to look at different waste processes. We have to look at what's available that's out there that can be built and implemented here and around the City of Philadelphia that could allow us to be able to safely dispose of our waste. Obviously we need to look at 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. other avenues as well, Councilmember. I'm going to continue to advocate for an organics facility here in the City of Philadelphia, because that makes up a considerable amount of the waste stream. We want to continue to also try to promote as much recycling habits and legislation that reduces the amount of waste, as Councilmember Landau stated with single-use plastics. So those are the things that we'll continue and look forward to working with this City Council on.
Another question I have is about the event you had in the Please Touch Museum. That was wonderful. You had all the block captains there, massive number of people. I just wondered how accessible is it for residents to find out who their block captain is and if there's an online resource of some sort so that we can really amplify the beautification of our blocks? I know some blocks have nobody, 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. some blocks have people who have been there a long time. So I don't know what that process looks like. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: So the new website we're designing for Join the Fight and to be able to apply to become a block captain will be as a part of that initiative, and then there will be a map on that to identify if there's a block captain on that block. We don't give out personal information of the block captain because many of our block captains are also our Town Watch representatives who work with the Police Department for issues of crime in their community, and we certainly don't want them targeted, but we also want to be able to make sure that there's accessible information for someone who wants to learn if there's a block captain, how can they connect with them, so we're going to work on that.
So they can go through you to find the spot? 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Yes. Absolutely.
One quick question, Council President. Can I ask my last short question?
The bell went off? You're not going to give me a minute?
He's cutting me off. Quick question about solar energy production in Philadelphia. Got to get it in there.
That's what we're doing? Y'all want to answer that?
You can answer just in writing, if you want. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC.
I'll follow up with you and give you some additional information.
Thank you, Council President. In the Ninth District, we have about four continued dumping sites along Northeast, Olney, and one of the things that constantly happens, residents are constantly doing the cleaning. There's a camera at one of the sites. However, it's not quick enough to get to the perpetrator, plus it's not 24/7 monitored. How do you plan to bring -- when is the plans for 24/7 monitoring to take place and how is that going to work when we finally do install that? I'm 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. looking forward to that process. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Sure. I'm going to ask Commissioner Shipman to join me at the mic, and I can talk briefly about increasing the number of staff members who will be trained. This budget calls for an additional 27 sweep officers. Those cameras are highly sophisticated in that you can monitor them from your cell phone. Ultimately our goal is to expand the number of people who have that capability and to monitor. Now, I don't know if we'll be able to do 24/7, because that requires multiple shifts, but we will expand the number of people who are capable of looking at it and then we'll look also at technology to be able to address people in realtime on the spot when it happens. But I'll let Commissioner Shipman also comment on the surveillance process. (Witness approached witness table.) 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. COMMISSIONER SHIPMAN: Thank you, Director Williams. Councilman Phillips, Council President, we do have a number of employees at present who staff our surveillance camera network, but we are expanding that to add additional employees, and the hope would be that we have a wider range of hours where we're actually physically looking live as opposed to looking at those cameras after the fact to capture folks.
Because some residents are arguing that cameras may not work, right, and they're thinking about the idea of like revamping spaces to be something else completely in terms of green, making it more green spaces as opposed to just trying to monitor the space in general, because maybe that will prevent the dumping all together. Is that part of the plans too? COMMISSIONER SHIPMAN: Yes. That is definitely part of the whole 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. concept of cleaning and greening, is to be able to get us to that point where after we've cleaned it, we could make those spaces available for other uses.
And we will be back at some point in the City of Philadelphia with the entire City receiving mechanical street sweeping; is that correct? Hopefully. I'm ready for it. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: So part of the residential cleaning program gives us that opportunity to do the entire City. Some areas don't require weekly collection cleaning; others do. So the citywide district cleaning will include street sweeping as well as hand cleaning as well. So it won't be on the same interval as our current routes in the City of Philadelphia. We're going to continue to expand that with signing and posting and people moving their cars. The residential district cleaning will also have mechanical street sweeping as 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. well. Some areas of the City may require once a week, others may require once a month, others may require once every other month. We'll put these areas on intervals based on the Litter Index and data driven.
Got you. And then in other counties such as Bucks County, Montgomery County, things like dumping, when they happen, it's like a big deal, right? And the county immediately comes rushing like, you know, racing police officers to clean it up. Are we going to be able to have like these level of service-level agreements where when dumping happens, there's just like this race to clean it up where it's like systematic that the City knows and residents know -- excuse me; residents know that the City is going to take care of it right away? DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: I'll speak to it first and then let Commissioner 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. Shipman talk about the expanded number of illegal dumping crews we have. The goal, again, is to be proactive so that residents don't have to report it. The Community Appearance Index requires us to look at areas and locations and target our resources to address those issues proactively, so we shouldn't have to wait until someone calls it in. We should already know in advance where it is and collect it before they even see it. Just like graffiti, the more you leave -- the longer you leave it, the more it will become prevalent and others will be invited to come there, the same thing with illegal dumping. The faster and longer it stays, whether it's one bag, three bags or a whole construction debris, that invites other people to do it, and we want to eliminate that. First we want to catch them, fine them, but most importantly, we want to get it cleaned up so it doesn't stay at that 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. location. And you're absolutely correct, cleaning and greening vacant lots is a priority to deter illegal dumping.
Thank you. COMMISSIONER SHIPMAN: And just to answer your question, we are expanding the illegal dumping, our illegal dumping efforts, to add an additional crew to be able to help us to capture those materials in a quicker time than our already -- our planned agreements for responding.
Thank you, Commissioner Shipman and Director Williams. This is very exciting. So thank you, Council President.
Thank you. Commissioner Crystal Jacobs, congratulations. Welcome back to City Council. Seeing you on the other side, most people may or may not know, former 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. staffer. And so we watched you work the trenches. And so congratulations. All right? Keep up the good work. COMMISSIONER SHIPMAN: Thank you, Council President, and congratulations on your new role.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jeffery Young.
Thank you, Mr. President. I also want to echo congratulations to Commissioner Shipman as well and I want to publicly thank Director Carlton Williams because of his efforts. In the Fifth Council District in the first -- I guess we're saying the first hundred days of my term on City Council, we have been out. The Commissioner's office has been out in our district, I want to say, about five or six times already now cleaning our 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. district, making sure that --
Listen, Mr. President, you know, your district probably doesn't have as many challenges as some parts of North Philadelphia has. So, you know, working with that office has been a delight, and my team really appreciates the services that you have been able to provide us, and the community, first and foremost, really appreciates it. We get calls every day just thanking us for being there, thanking us for just showing that we care about the aesthetics of the community. So I just want to thank you for always listening and being there when we need you to be there. DIRECTOR WILLIAMS: Thank you, Councilmember. Really appreciate it. And we're coming to a district Council near you very soon, Council President. 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC.
But I do have questions for the Office of Sustainability. My question is around the Food Policy Advisory Council and just matters regarding that. So in the budget briefing, it looks like that there were some goals to engage people around the Food Policy Advisory Council. The engagement goals slipped by 5,000. So can you tell Council why your goals to engage people are lower than previous years? DIRECTOR LANKENAU: Sure, and I may call up our Deputy Director for Environmental Justice to come up to add a little information to this, but the COVID pandemic definitely set us back, and so this past year we've really been gearing up and getting more involved. We don't right now have a full slate of Advisory Council members. So that is something that our Food Policy team is working 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. toward. We have one full-time City staff person. We have a second person who is supported through philanthropic funding. And then we have a third who is a VISTA coordinator. So if there's anything you want to add, Genevieve. (Witness approached witness table.) DEPUTY DIRECTOR LeMEE: Sure. So our engagement numbers for this fiscal year actually increased substantially from prior years. And so we're not expecting to maintain those same levels. We expect there to be a little bit of a drop. So the Council reopened to the public this fiscal year for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic and there was a lot of engagement around that, and so we saw a lot of participation and there was also a lot of recruitment to fill vacant seats. And so 4/10/24 - WHOLE - BILL 240179, ETC. we are expecting a little bit less engagement in the next year just because there won't be those same factors of reopening to the public and also filling those seats that had a lot of engagement around it. But we do have those -- one grant-funded staff and a VISTA member that have really been leading a lot of that work, and so we'll be looking for grant dollars to maintain that one staff member and also hopefully keep up the engagement of the VISTA so we're able to continue with newsletters and all of that support.