Committee of the Whole, May 2, 2025

Thank you. So currently we have -- and I'll address the second question. First, we have a consultant that's going out to all of our shelters to do an assessment of the accessibility standards for those shelters. And with that, they are identifying both physical modifications as well as program modifications that may be able to happen in those shelters, and some of them are simply things that just need to be repaired, like cracks in the sidewalk or making sure the ramp is up to standards. Others are changes that need to happen as in changing a paint color for wayfinding for someone who may not be able to distinguish what's happening there or lowering some of the soap dispensers so that someone in a wheelchair can have access to it. But in addition, as I mentioned before our reasonable accommodation process has been updated so that if someone does not get the accommodation that they requested, that they can request an appeal directly to OHS and that we will monitor that and then ultimately give a decision. We are trying to get that word out because so far even though we've had that operational for the past few months, we have not received any appeals. And just because I've been doing accommodation work for a long time, I expected to see some appeals. So we put out flyers. We're trying to make sure that everybody knows that in the event that they need to get an accommodation and they're not getting the accommodation that they need, they can request an appeal with OHS directly. And then the --

Permanent housing pilot initiative.

So we are looking at different models to be able to try to get individuals in quickly. As I mentioned before, one of them is looking at our assessment so that we can make sure that we are placing individuals quickly to the housing that's sitting there. Because as I mentioned, especially some of the smaller units tend to stay vacant a lot longer because people are holding out for the one bedroom or some bigger unit. So one of the pilots that we were looking at is do we change the strategy and just make sure that everyone is getting referred to those smaller units first so that we can get them filled. If people know that they can hold out for a bigger unit, then we have those units stay vacant. But the other part of that model that we are looking at is do we find out the criteria that the individual wants, you know, do they need something with no stairs, do they need something on a particular side of town because maybe that's where their doctors are so that we can then make sure that they're getting referred to those units. But as part of that strategic plan that we talked about earlier in bringing the service provider community in, we really want to have that conversation about what are we missing. Because one thing that I used to see when I was on the provider side, it would take several referrals to find somebody who wanted the unit. And a lot of times we were waving our hand like we know somebody who wants the unit, just let them move in, they meet all the criteria. We just want them to move in. So rather than just refer people to places they're going to turn down, let's turn it on its head and do an assessment so that people are getting referred to the units that we know that they will accept.

Now, when a person comes and they're looking for housing, in a certain instance we will get them a voucher, correct, the kind of system to help them with the rent, right. Do we do an assessment of the people who the renters are renting off? That would be the landlords, correct, right?

Yes.

Do we assess them in terms of are they -- because they're accepting the voucher that we're providing the renter. The person nine times out of -- well, in my case I'm speaking of a case where an individual was disabled, right, they got the assistance for the down payment so they can move in, right. But the landlords weren't up to par, right. They basically were slumlords, I mean to be quite frank with you. Do we evaluate the folks who benefit from the voucher money that we give the renters to hold them accountable to make sure that who we're supporting are still being treated with a level of dignity in terms of the housing that they're going into? Because some of it is private too, right --

Absolutely.

Well, I know a private situation specifically. But I'm talking about on the grand scheme of things to hold those folks accountable. It's kind of like PHA with Section 8, right. But in this case, I'm speaking of an individual who had this disability, right. But there's other cases where they get support from OHS to move in a home or rent a home?

Thank you for that. So part of our Landlord Gateway program is designed to not only recruit landlords who will work with our population but also help monitor. And, in fact, we met with some of the providers yesterday and they talked about some of those landlords. And that's exactly what the team said, we need to know who they are so that we can address that. And that's part of the complication. We want to make sure that individuals are telling us about those individuals who are not meeting the standard. In addition though depending on the program, we have our inspectors go out before we provide the subsidy to make sure that the unit is up to par. But ultimately, we also rely on the providers that we are giving the funding to, to manage the Rapid Rehousing program or whichever voucher it may be to make sure that they're keeping up with those landlords and keeping up the standard. But that is our goal, to make sure that we're tracking what's happening with those landlords. We can pull them off of our website that where those landlords are identified for people with our subsidies so that they can provide housing. But we are trying to make sure that we are getting the information, which is why we were expressing yesterday in a meeting with the providers or on Wednesday with the providers that we need to know who they are if they're not holding up to their end of it. But we are also having a Landlord Week conference in May, May 19th to 23rd if anybody's interested, where we are trying to educate landlords but also educate the community and the providers as well on what it means to be a landlord in our program, what are some of the needs. And so, there's a variety of different topics that we are trying to address, including making sure that our quality is up.

Where is that?

It is in a variety of different places in the city, but we'll be able to get you that in writing as well.

And my last question as I turn it over to my colleagues for Round 2, what's your rubric to make sure that equal distribution of the housing funds in terms of how it's distributed equitably across the board? You have some groups that are smaller, right. Then you have the bigger organizations. How do you make sure that it's equitable across the board?

So one of the things --

I have Outley House in my District, right. I have Outley House in my District, so that's like one of the semi-bigger ones and then you have smaller ones in between. So give me an idea how do you handle that?

So one of the things that we have really been intentional about this year is our RFP process. So during the RFP process, we have a variety of different sizes of providers that apply. And the team looks at that, including the smaller providers, and making sure that we can provide support to those that we award the funding to. But that is something that is ongoing and continuing to make sure that we are equitable. You guys probably heard me say that several times in my opening testimony to make sure that we have an equitable process so it's not just all of the larger ones that are getting the funding but that there are other smaller nonprofits that have the funding source. But part of that is also the technical assistance to make sure that the smaller providers understand the funding source that they're asking for. Some of them, especially the HUD funding, requires a lot of prework in order to get the funding, and that does become cost- prohibitive to some of the providers or they may apply for a certain type of funding not realizing that their housing unit is not eligible for it. So we're trying to look at processes to do training on the front end so that anybody who's interested in getting into this space they will understand the service, the grants or the funding source, what is required, if there's an environmental review that's required or if it can take a tenant-based voucher versus a project-based voucher. All of that requires education for those who may not be in this or don't have a huge administrative team to figure it out for them. And so, we are looking at ways through our RFP process to be able to educate more.

Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Majority Gilmore Richardson. Then Councilmember Curtis Jones, Jr. Then Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, Chair of Housing.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Council President. I wanted to go back to the question quickly that Council President asked regarding sort of the inspections and the corrective action plans that we know were put in place after last year. If you all could just detail for the record how many of the emergency shelter providers have been through that initiative or that program, how many of them remain? And then how did you sort of decide the order of evaluation or order of inspection, so to speak? And how many providers were placed on corrective action plans? How many providers have been recommended for non-renewal based on lack of cooperation with the corrective action plan? And how many providers are at risk for potential non-renewal based on lack of cooperation or other issues relative to the corrective action plans?

Thank you. So we have monitored 28 shelters to date. And of those, initially 7 failed and we have 13 that are 8 still -- or 12 failed on the case 9 management, let me clarify. 11 10 failed onsite visits, meaning the 11 team went out and looked at some 12 things. And then 4 failed on meeting the shelter standards, you know, our policies. Of those, we still have 3 that are pending. Meaning, they're still under their corrective action plan as far as their failure during the site visit. And 13 are still under a corrective action plan as a result of their meeting the standards.

So let me ask you this question because I want to put this on the record because I do think it's important because there's a couple sort of trends that I've been seeing here overall in the detail that I have additional questions regarding even down to the U.S. Facilities contract as well as Scotland Yards contract because there are noticeable decreases, right. And if we need to increase services, I want to -- I'll delve into that on the next round. But I wanted to know if you all have a mandatory line item for the providers around maintenance budget, ensuring that folks could address the concerns really on the front end. If you could talk about if that's included and if you all are addressing that? And I bring that up because of specifically what I've been seeing even with the U.S. Facilities contract.

Yes, thank you. And Dave will address the U.S. Facilities, but if I can just speak to the maintenance. One of the things that we've been doing is looking at what people are budgeting for and why. And there is a variety of budget amounts that have been submitted on maintenance. Part of what you saw in our current budget about one-time maintenance cost was to address or is to address that. So we are --

I apologize for the interruption, but will you all have a line item for that so that it's clear? Meaning, that it's not so many additional one-time allocations because those are very hard to track and you know that there is a need. That came up earlier. Even when I notated where you all have under emergency and temporary housing, you have the provider wage increases notated as a one-time expense as well. But will we need to maintain those higher levels over Fiscal Year '26 and beyond? So are you building those into the increased payments that of the 33 listed vendors 10 are receiving or is that the reason 11 why it's only listed as a one-time 12 and then you're going to build it 13 in moving forward? 14 And I ask that because 15 remember, last year we had 16.1. 16 We went back and forth on that 17 16.1. And remember, we had 18 submitted the additional letter to 19 you all sort of detailing the 20 discrepancies within a variety of 21 the contract documents from last 22 year. And I bring that up because 23 I don't want to be in a circumstance where we're setting ourselves up to do it again because we're just not budgeting and allocating correctly where we can follow the numbers on the budget details. So I just want to give you this example which may help sort of underscore this more. So we compared last year's materials to this year's materials and it's a number discrepancy, right. And so, as an example if you look at the increases and decreases detail portion of the detail, like Bethesda Project, they were listed as $1,354,894 increase. But under the contracts page for 29 on the FY26 detail, it shows a decrease of $530,955 from FY24 to '25. Same thing, even with New Journey CDC, total $1,499,002 across two contracts for FY24, but they were listed as having a $706,967 increase in the FY25 increases and decreases page. But they actually really only saw a decrease of $46,329, and that was after they ended the migrant shelter funds. And there was a decrease in their general shelter contract. So I ask all of that, the one-timers versus if you're putting it inside of the actual contracts because we need to be able to follow those dollars because again, we know homelessness is on the rise. But we need to be able to keep track of what we have so that we know how much more we can do, need to do. Everything is not -- meaning, the numbers aren't matching up.

Understood. So if I could address the first part about the wage increase. That one-time wage increase is in there because it was not in their original FY25 budget. However, our FY26 budget does include that for the providers. And so, that's part --

I told y'all that was going to happen.

I'm sorry?

I told y'all that was going to happen for the FY25, yeah.

And that's part of the reason that we want to make sure that it was addressed and put in the budget. So it's called out in there specifically because we want to make it clear that we are increasing the budgets for FY25. It's embedded in our FY26 budgets. And so, that's why you don't see it called out as a separate line. But that was intentional to make sure that we are covering that this year and then we also have a plan to cover it next year.

No, I understand that. But again, with what we see now we have to be able to track it. That's the challenge, that we're not able to track it effectively to ensure that everything that we have received matches up. I mean, we told you guys that was going to happen. So we need to figure out how we prevent that from happening in the future so that we're not in a circumstance where just because the information is not correct, now we're back at a circumstance where at the end of the day we would have to allocate additional money to no 21 fault of our own, right. You understand what I'm saying?

Mm-hmm. And what we did was looked at all of the providers, what their current funding amount was for their budgets and then be able to come up with the numbers, so we can be able to provide additional detail on that. Now, as far as some of the contracts that are decreasing that you identified, some is a combination of things. Some of them, the contract actually ended this fiscal year so those are now being RFP'd. So we removed it on our FY26 budget from whatever the contract is that is ending and then put it -- you will see a line that says TBD, and that is for the ones that are currently out for RFP. We want to make it clear which ones were ending and then which ones were RFP'g. Now, if they're awarded or whoever is awarded, then our budget then will reflect those awards. But currently they're listed in one lump sum for all of the providers that receive decreases in those lines because of their contracts ending this fiscal year.

Sure. With the embedding that's happening and with the additional discrepancy that like I said we knew would happen because of the detail and then the contracts from last year, how are you all, one, avoiding that from happening again in the future but, two, I don't know how you're able to move -- is it that other contracts are decreasing enough for you in the same class and under the same unit, you're able to move money around? Meaning, where's the extra money coming from?

Are you referring to the wage increases? I just want to make sure I'm clear.

The one-time allotments, the wage increases, the differences in the emergency and temporary housing shelter contracts, where is that money coming from? I'm only asking because we weren't asked -- and I'm Vice-Chair of Approps. We weren't asked to move anything around for OHS this year.

So I will just jump in here. I remember sitting here with you last year and promising you that we would not ask for more money. So OHS, Finance, Budget and MDO literally meet every Wednesday to go through OHS's budget needs every week. And at the close, we're here. We're close to the end of the year. There are funds that we can help providers to do the wage increase. We can help providers that are at risk. We do have providers that are at risk for termination of their contract because of the quality issues, so we have an opportunity to help the providers with that one-time maintenance cost. And then for the budget line item, Cheryl said that we are going to look at what the providers submit in their budgets that they submit to us. They are not consistent across the board in how much they request in their budget for maintenance, so we're trying to do some education with them as well. But the '25 costs are that, just us making sure we're not coming back to you for more money and knowing that homelessness is a real problem. So Councilmember Gauthier has said to us, if you have extra money, why aren't you using it. So we went right to the table and talked to Budget to say we think that that's true, like we need to use this money that currently exists to provide those assistance to the providers that are there.

Okay. So the maintenance line items will be embedded moving forward?

The maintenance line item will be embedded into the providers' budgets they submit to us. So you'll see contract changes to the provider lines, but there won't be a single maintenance line from OHS.

Understood. Okay. Thank you. I'll come back on the next round. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Madam Leader. Councilmember Curtis Jones and Councilmember Jamie Gauthier.

Thank you, Mr. President. On your impromptu inspections, I'd like to volunteer me and Member Harrity to go undercover. And if you can get us through the paperwork, I trust him to go in with -- maybe O'Rourke too, but definitely Harrity. And I'm serious, we will impromptu volunteer to do that. If you would have done that chart that I mentioned early as homework, a third of your questions would have been self- explanatory, not Majority Leader's questions because they were very financial. But the process of this would have been a little more understandable. So I'm going to urge you to when you on the callback please do that. I want to focus on particular populations. I'd like to talk about returning citizens, people coming home from incarceration, how they are infused into the system and older males. We had a situation in my office, young -- well, a man who grew up in Wynnefield. And he went the course of I live with my mom, my mom's no 14 longer with us, I no longer can afford this house, it's a big house, they sold it. He wound up in your care. I mentioned him because that is becoming more and more prevalent, that folk that did not take the precautions at a certain point in their life be self- sufficient are a growing population of folk there. So I want to know how are we treating ex-offenders, that process, and older males that are kind of finding themselves at the last resort coming to you. And at the end of the day, this individual from Wynnefield, the President knows about Wynnefield has traveled up there a lot. You helped him, and you've always been helpful. But when the help came, it was in an area, another part of my District, and when he's used to Wynnefield, that reality, he started barking out crying, like literally, like, how did my life wind up here. So how are we addressing that?

Thank you. So to answer the first question about ex-offenders, our housing or at least the majority of our housing does not have a criminal history restriction with the exception of sex offenders. So with that, anyone who comes in with criminal history should be able to come, especially in the Continuum of Care housing that we have. So they can come in, come to our intake centers, get the assessment and then upon placement, we work very closely with the providers to make sure that there aren't any or very minimal barriers to entry into the housing depending on the needs. And again, with the exception of a few cases of certain criminal charges that is the case. Now, as far as individuals who may be experiencing homelessness for the first time, that's part of the reason that we are looking to make our prevention program a little bit more streamlined because the goal of prevention is to prevent someone from entering homelessness. So we have the program that we partner with the various City providers in order to be able to provide some additional dollars. We work with the Eviction Diversion program. We provide some rental arrears assistance. We also provide some security deposit or maybe a couple months' of rent assistance so that someone can get the jumpstart they need to be able to get housing without experiencing homelessness. So those are just a couple of the ways that we're trying to enhance our programs off the top of your head.

What's the population of senior males coming into that system, percentage?

I don't have it off the top of my head, but --

How we define senior males -- well, seniors in general 55 and older. I know. We're seeing at least between about 18% to 22% of people who are in that age category that's coming in. Again --

And is it growing?

Yes, homelessness overall.

So just to give you clarity, our shelter on Wednesday had 76 people in it that were 65 and older. And that was just on Wednesday.

And that's 65.

We didn't do the 55 but --

O'Rourke is ready to go undercover.

Council President, I do want to go back to Majority Leader to answer a question that we did not and you mentioned about U.S. Facility and Scotland Yards. First of all, let me just say thank you for your advocacy and just holding us accountable for everybody's tax dollars. That's the right thing to do. So as we relate to U.S. Facility, what we did in trying to be fiscally prudent we know U.S. Facility was causing significant -- they do great work. Let me just say that. But it's a very expensive contract. And so, what we did was reduce that contract to hire more City staff, labor staff to do maintenance in our shelters. And so, when you see that number reduced at 2100 Girard, that was a direct result of us being able to hire about 12 custodial workers, at that time $240,000 that saved tremendous amount of money from where the U.S. Facility contract was. Same thing with Scotland Yard. We were paying -- and previous to Cheryl coming on, we had Scotland Yard Security doing security on Kensington Avenue. As a result of Mayor Parker and other initiatives, there were other resources that could have been allocated there which was Philadelphia Police. And so, we decided to reduce that contract and spend that money other places because there were adequate police resources on Kensington Avenue that we did not need to spend out of our Homeless Services budget.

Point of information, Majority Leader Richardson.

Yes. Thank you very much, Council President. If possible, I will still submit the questions that I have -- that makes sense. I will still submit the questions I have specifically for those two contracts because of the changes in the numbers, but that clarifies partially what we were seeing. And even in the changes in the Class 100 allocations, there was a bunch of different changes there where it was noticeable decreases in the lower-level positions. Thank you, Council President.

You're welcome. Councilmember Jamie Gauthier. Then Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke and Councilmember Rue Landau.

Thank you, Council President. Before I get into my questions, I just wanted to respond to something that I heard. When you're on this floor, you'll hear different things come up, especially from different Councilmembers. Majority Leader is always going to be the fiscal hawk. Councilmember Ahmad is always going to ask about data. I'm always pushing for services. And Councilmember Jones always talks about balance, so I'm going to reach for Councilmember Jones in this moment. I'm hopeful that we can find balance with what we're doing here. I greatly appreciate the focus on fiscal responsibility. We absolutely have to be responsible with tax dollars and that's the right thing to do, but it really startled me to hear you say that you promised not to come to us to ask for any more money. I believe that while we're being fiscally responsible one thing that we should not be shy about is spending on unhoused people. We spend so, so much on so many things in this city. Every single year I go to the Homeless Memorial Day and we read off a really long list of people who died in homelessness, and it's one of the most heartbreaking events that I attend on an annual basis. And I go every year and I'll continue to go every year, but I'm hopeful that we don't have that event at some point. And so, I want us to achieve the balance of fiscal control, but also to spend whatever we need to spend to house people in the city of Philadelphia --

Can I just have, Council President, a point of clarification. I want to have a point of clarification. Because what we were directly referring to was the 16.1 million. It was not the overall OHS budget. We were referring to the 16.1 that was in question from last year to say don't come back after we give you this 16.1 because we had settled on an amount that they needed that we agreed upon for last year. So I don't know that that is indicative of what we have been in discussion regarding -- because you know that in Council we've done an extra $41 million since FY18 for homeless services. So when they ask, we do. So that was specific to the issue around the fiscal concerns around the contracts where we allocated the additional money and appropriation for the last year. I just want to be clear about that because --

Thank you. I almost jumped out of my chair when I heard that.

Thank you for that, Majority Leader. But that's true, we always need more money. We know that homelessness is increasing and we hope and pray that it doesn't continue, but we think it will in this time of uncertainty. So more than likely we will ask for more every year, but that was in relation to the $16.1 million.

Thank you for the clarification. On to my questions, the City typically maintains about 3600 year-round shelter beds and adds roughly 250 to 300 extra beds during the winter Code Blue, cold weather emergencies. What operational or budgetary changes would it take to keep those additional Code Blue beds available year-round, for example, additional staffing, extended provider contracts or facility costs? And has OHS considered this expansion? And next, has the Office of Homeless Services estimated the cost of providing these winter overflow beds on a year-round basis? And does the FY26 proposed budget allocate any funding toward expanding year-round emergency shelter capacity or piloting a year-round model for cold weather beds? And I really started to focus on this issue due to what I was seeing in my District. As an example, we have an emergency shelter for women and I was getting quite a lot of complaints from residents that they would see women lining up outside the shelter, which doesn't open until I believe 5:00 p.m., women lining up as early as noon, all of their things standing on the sidewalk because that's how they can assure they're going to get a bed for the night, that they have to leave at I think 6:00 a.m. And when I started to talk to the shelter staff about this, they said, well, we don't see this in the winter as much because we have the beds that we need. But once that supply gets cut, then we're back to the same situation of people trying to ensure a bed by standing outside for hours. And my residents were complaining about this, not because they find it unsightly or inconvenient, they find it inhumane. And so, I wanted to ask have we thought seriously about this as a solution?

Yes, thank you. So to keep the winter beds online, we have calculated the numbers, it's approximately $6.1 million extra a year to keep those beds that we have during the winter year-round. We also are looking at ways to stretch those dollars a little bit more between the enhanced Code Blue and our winter dollars. We're looking to see if there's a model that does add dignity to that so that -- because I agree, lining up to hope for a bed is not dignified. So we are looking to see how we can do something different with that. But the reality is that's about the budget to make sure that the beds that we have during the winter can expand, but we have been looking for different ways to see how we can stretch that. What we did this year with our RFPs, rather than have everyone come up with an operating budget, we came up with a per bed per diem and that enabled us to add additional beds and still cover the cost that the providers had for the shelters and during the winter. So we're looking at different models to be able to add additional beds during the winter in particular, but even outside of the winter.

Does the FY26 budget account for this at all, having these beds online year-round in a way that keeps supply open?

Not currently for the winter beds, no. 16

Thank you. If you could get your -- I'm not sure. I know we asked for this. If you haven't provided that to my office, if you can get that, both the full cost and the sort of per bed cost, we would be appreciative.

Yes, we provided the winter cost, but we can get you the per bed cost.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you. Councilmember O'Rourke. Then Councilmember Young and Councilmember Harrity.

Thank you, Mr. President. While homelessness is a complex problem and the reasons for each specific instance of homelessness may vary, your clarity stood out to me on what was necessary to solve homelessness, and that being more housing. If there are only currently about 75-ish, I think is what you said, senior men -- I would venture to guess they're probably Black -- who are not housed. It just emphasizes to me in my mind why, and I appreciate Council President and other members of this body, emphasizing what the Catholic social tradition calls the preferential option for the poor, that as opposed to us finding all of the reasons to incentivize housing, commodify housing, what have you, that we need to hyperfocus on the least of these. And I just want to put that on the record. It's just heartbreaking to me that we have this problem and we just cannot figure out to solve it. I know that the idea is to limit it or what have you, but I think that's the thing that can be resolved. That's not my question. I just needed to get that off my chest. You mentioned FY27 in your responses to my questions in the first round, which makes me feel a little better that though we aren't finished with hearings for FY26, I'm good to look ahead. Each budget season is hard. But if trends in D.C. continue, then I imagine next year's process will be frankly, incredibly painful. And on this inauspicious morning, the President is sharing his budget and brief with Congress. In that document, the details aren't out yet, but the reporting notes that the document calls for federal block grants to be eliminated or consolidated and envisions significant cuts to HUD and we already know the Feds want to have HUD's workforce. Meanwhile your testimony at the back ends by stating that any reductions in federal funding would have a significant impact across the office, not small reductions, not medium reductions, any reductions would deeply impact your work. So I have some broader questions meant to do some municipal forecasting, meant to kind of forecast in light of FY27. I heard the bell so I'll try to get them out real quick. I know this is broad funding across a range of grant programs, but let's say the office received 10% less federal dollars next year. What would be some of the services that would be first on the chopping block for OHS? Two, I want to ask about the Community Development Block Grants, which this federal administration seems ready to slash. How might any cuts to CDBG impact OHS services and specifically some of the H.O.M.E. Initiative programs that have CDBG dollars baked in? Specifically, is there a clear prioritization of where CDBG dollars will go in the case of cuts?

Thank you. And if I can clarify about the FY27 statement, HUD now has an every other year application process. So when I mentioned FY27 is because that's the next time we can apply for that housing or for that funding. So to answer your question about the federal funding, obviously a lot of our services dollars, not just directly through OHS but also as we apply for that impacts other service providers will have a huge impact on those experiencing homelessness. Our CoC funding is roughly $50 million, $60 million that's just about providing housing. So that would have an impact. And you add on to it all the other federal funding that the City has. So it's something we think about and we thought about it when, you know, they shut down their system and we couldn't get the funding out for a couple of days, you know, what we were going to do during that time. We work closely with the Law Department and the Finance Department to look at the grant agreements that they're sending to us and whether or not we even should sign them just given some of the language that they changed in there. So we defer to Law a lot on some of that. But it is a risk. And that's why every time we get information from the federal government we are reaching out to Finance, we are reaching out to Law just to see what our risk exposure is and also what can happen in the event that some of that funding goes away. But it's compounded more than even some of the grants that you mentioned, again between the service provider community and OHS itself. It would be devastating, just to be honest.

Can you say which services that would actually be first on the chopping block?

It would depend on the funding source because some of them are very specific on how we use that funding. So, for example, our CoC funding is about the permanent supportive housing and Rapid Rehousing. So if they cut that, then we would lose some of the units that we currently have. Other funding that they give us is specifically about the planning for the city and how we are going to implement the services. So if they cut that funding, then that limits that. Some of our staff is actually paid for out of some of those grants. So if they cut that, we will lose some of our staff or we'd have to re-evaluate how we staff those positions. So it's a little bit complex because each of them fund a different thing. But I just wanted to give you a few examples.

Thank you for those examples. Mr. President, I'd like to request a CDBG funding priority list jointly crafted between OHS and the leaders of the H.O.M.E. Initiative naming the programs that our Administration sees as most in need of these dollars. I think Council needs to know how the Admin is thinking about weathering the storm that is clearly on the horizon. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilmember Harrity -- oh, it was you?

(Gestured).

I'm sorry. Rue Landau, then Harrity.

I just -- real quick if I could just get a list of all shelter providers --

Member Harrity, speak in the microphone.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Council President. Real quick and you can get it to me, I don't need it now. Just a list of all the sites contracted or city-run.

Yes, we can do that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Rue Landau. Then Councilmember Lozada and Councilmember Young.

Thank you. At our last Housing Committee hearing we had a witness, a community navigator, testify that he often didn't know where to send people who needed rental assistance. As of yesterday Phillytenant.org indicates that OHS has no funding available for rental assistance and has not had such funding since January 8, 2025; is that correct?

That is not correct. Now, during January it is true that we paused accepting new applications because at the time we had the 4000 applications that we had to sift through. But once they were able to go through those and determine which ones were eligible, which ones may have resolved in another way, we then reopened our application process. So it's now open. We're accepting applications. But again, as we talked about or as I was alluding to earlier we tried to streamline the process. So before people came in, they told us what they needed, we told them what we needed and then they went back and got it. Now, we actually give the information upfront and says if you need assistance, here are all the documents we want you to bring in when you come so that we can do some of that analysis at the moment that the person enters our office.

How can outsiders get the information that they need to know when you have the funds and when you don't have the funds, if this is on a kind of cyclical seasonal basis?

We are hoping that it's not seasonal. However, what we are trying to do is use technology to monitor and be able to process applications in a different way. We've looked at changing our phone system because people call and they leave voicemails right now, so we're looking to use, you know, different technology within our phone system to be able to let people know. When we did have the temporarily paused, we posted it everywhere. We send it to our mailing list and they absolutely can join our mailing list to get information on any services that we provide so that we can keep individuals informed. Any time you email OHS@phila.gov, it actually gives the information, including our prevention information. At the time that we had to pause, it also said on that auto-response that there was a temporary pause. So we're trying to make sure we're getting the information out as quickly as possible when there are changes.

I'm just as concerned if you're going to send information out about a pause, then you're going to have to send information out about it's restarting again.

Absolutely.

Let's just try to make sure there's funding year-round so we won't have to do any of that. I wanted to get back to the technology question though because I know I've talked to you guys about this before. I am the Chair of the Technology Committee and it seems that you are one of the departments that so desperately needs more technology in order to be able to run your very complicated business you're running, between your phones and a database that will help us not just track humans but track open beds, maintenance requests, other concerns that are happening and making sure that we have a holistic view of beds that are available, families who need them and you guys can be the Craigslist, Match.com of making sure that we are giving people the unit available for what they need. How far along are you in this request process or in this production process of technology and is it funded?

So currently we have the RFP out for our HMIS system. And in those specs we are asking for a lot more innovation than what we currently have in our HMIS system, so we are looking to enhance that. There are systems that will track individuals. It'll attract the services, so on and so forth, including bed reservation, which is one of the things that we've looked into. Near term what we've talked about is putting our daily census on our website so that anyone who wants to know at least what the current census is, granted it changes every day, but that is one thing that we've talked about as well as our permanent housing. That one would be a little bit more less frequent because it's not a daily change. But our goal is to put as much information on our website as we can so that individuals can go out. We actually do that now with our service days. Every week we post where we are going, what the locations are so that the community and the providers know, especially if they have participants or clients that they're working with, that we're coming there to do a service day or an encampment resolution depending on the needs.

So you've already put out the RFP. There is funding for this available? Is it being funded?

Yes, but as the Councilmember mentioned it's federal funds. So it's one of the projects that we have -- or part of it is federal and part of it is general funds, but it's part of our Continuum of Care.

How about the enhanced phone system? Is that out -- what kind of change would that have to be? Is that an internal City of Philadelphia change or is that something that you would --

We would have to work with OIT to look at exactly what is changing. The team has started drafting what it would look like even from an IVR system, which is simply you can either say or push the button on what the services you need so that you can get directed to the right location. I would also add one of the changes we did do in technology in our intake is we're using a keyless system. In the past, people came in, they signed their name and they just waited to be called. Now, we're using technology so that there's a unique ID that posts so that they can see when it's their turn rather than coming in and writing on paper what they need and then hoping that someone can read their handwriting.

Excellent. Last comment is that I am very excited for FreshStartPHL, which I know will enhance the support that you're giving people whether it's to triage them to ensure they're not going into the shelters or to help them have a quicker and safer way out. So looking forward to having more of those conversations. Thank you.

Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, then Young and then Majority Richardson will wrap us up.

Thank you, Council President. I actually walked out because I was trying to respond to an issue that was related to Homeless Services in the office, and I'm trying to figure out your process, right. We have an individual who is living in an alleyway who has been throwing urine on people and consistently fighting with the residents, breaking into their homes. And we're being told that, oh, we just can't do anything about it. I'm trying to figure out your process and as we work towards improving the quality of life in Kensington, when situations like this occur how are we going to respond to them, right. What's different from what you've been doing in the past now?

Thank you. So to address any criminal activity, the one thing that we communicate to everyone is the answer is still to call 911. And then the other part with Behavioral Health, we definitely advocate for 988. We have been working again with DBHIDS to make sure that when people call homeless outreach, that that information is also shared. But ultimately, if there's a crime being committed, that has been our answer is to still call 911. I do agree that we are limited in that scope, that if it's a crime, 911. And then if there's a mental health crisis, 988. However, outreach and all of those teams that are out there, they are aware of those same services and hopefully be able to share that information. But again, because outreach is a separate entity I think DBH might be able to explain a little bit more. And I would have to defer to them on what outreach is doing there. But if they call us, that is usually our response, to call one of those numbers for crimes that are being committed.

I'm concerned because community residents are going to become emboldened, right. And I have a bunch of residents now on a block who are extremely frustrated. They've called Homeless Services. They've called 911. They've called 311 and can't get a response to do something with this individual or help them respond to this individual who is also exposing himself to people on the block. And so, they are now committed to taking matters into their own hands. I have seniors who are living with unsheltered people on their porches who have also been threatened and can't get these people off of their private property. And so, we're going to continue to push to improve quality of life in the Kensington community and we understand that community residents have to be partners. But at some point, folks are going to get sick of responding through the process if the process is not supportive of them.

Can I -- Councilmember, if we could connect during the break to get the information about that particular person, I'll have DBHIDS and someone from crisis out now today.

Thank you.

Thank you. How many Homeless teams that we have going on specifically dealing with also mental and behavioral health that's a part of our strategy to get people off the streets?

OHS has four teams that go out. But again, because it's a collaborative effort, DBHIDS has quite a few more teams that they contract with, and we can certainly partner with them to get that information to you but they would have that more accurate number.

Yeah, please do. But I just want to know separate from DBHIDS, right, I'm thinking because OHS deals with those who are homeless, right, and we want to get people off the streets, right, we're not even only looking at incarcerating because individuals are homeless, but the goal is to actually get them off. And obviously a lot of it deals with mental health, right, and mental stability. And so, I want to get an idea from your department, right, you said four teams, but DBHIDS has additional teams. Were you looking to expand your own teams because of the level of homelessness that we're dealing with? Because DBHIDS to me is a different conversation compared to your role as specifically getting homeless people off the street, right. And so, I would think we would have an aggressive strategy with the mental health piece to try to get people off the streets that sometimes may not want to get off the streets because of the mental health issues that they're dealing with.

Yeah, and thanks for that. And you're right, we do need additional resources. But the individuals that we're seeing on the street these days have co-occurring diagnosis, meaning their mental health and substance abuse underlying their --

You said dual diagnosis, right?

Yeah, they're dual diagnosis.

Okay. I'm familiar with it.

So we do need additional staff that can help focus on that. But again, we work with our partners at DBHIDS who has some level of staff that can do that, but we will welcome that.

Okay. Cool. Thank you. Councilmember Jeffrey Jay Young and then Majority Leader will take us home.

Thank you. I'll just get both my questions on the record. First question is over the summer I met some young women who are staying the shelter in my District, and they basically told us that from 9:00 to 3:00 they kick them out the shelter with no services, nothing like that is provided. And also, as a meal all they feed them is tuna and lettuce, right. So can you tell us what I guess is there a standard for meals to be provided in shelters and if there are other social services that are required by the shelter to provide to some of their participants? That's the first question. And the second question is about Philly Home at Girard. I know Councilmember Brooks asked for -- her question is my question. She asked for it to be in writing. I'm asking if you can put it on record, like what is the process to get -- what's intake process for Philly Home at Girard? Who are the participants? Is it only for folks who are experiencing substance abuse or does the mobile outreach workers, are they able to get folks from anywhere in the city to provide them with shelter at Philly Home at Girard?

Thanks for that question. I'll answer the first part as it relates to food quality and shelter. So we provide three meals and a snack in all of our shelters and we follow the City Health Department Healthy Meal Snacks. And if there's a children and food program, we follow what we call CA -- children and food programs, there's a child nutritionist program that we have to do with protein, grain, fruits and so forth. So if anyone is reporting that they have not gotten a meal, this is part of our standards. We have a food service unit that goes out and monitor food quality in all of our shelters. So we definitely want to know that, Councilman Young --

So do they know when you're coming to monitor that? That's the thing, right. Because at that same day I went to the shelter and knocked on the door and they looked like they saw a ghost. They're like, oh, no, right, because they know what's going on. And so, I'm just asking that along similar lines of what Councilman Jones and Harrity said. I mean, we cannot let them know when you are coming out because then things are totally different. And when I spoke to these young women who are parents, they're just sitting in a park all day long because there's nowhere else for them to go. The food is horrible, right. And so, they're sitting in a park eating like crab platters, right, because they're not allowed to go back in. So what are I guess the protocols again for your shelters for the food and again the level of service that the participants are getting or are getting throughout the day to lift them out of that situation?

Yeah, absolutely right. There are some monitor visits that the provider is fully aware, but we can increase and we are going to increase more unannounced visits during those meal times to make sure that we have additional eyes on that and those type of issues there.

And if you don't mind, I would love to get information on which one you're specifically talking about because I want to be able to address that as well, because we do have a standard that we want people to -- everyone should be able to have a decent meal, and crackers and tuna or whatever was that it sounds like you were describing does not sound acceptable. Philly Home Girard I will say is divided into two programs and I can speak specifically to the OHS floors at Philly Home at Girard. That comes through our intake process. The individuals that come there is shelter-based system. The fifth and sixth floors are DBHIDS-run floors so they would be able to describe a little bit more about that process. I do know it's low barrier. And what we are looking at, at that building is not separating necessarily the services offered by who runs the floor, but being able to provide services to anyone who comes in there. So there's behavior health staff that's in the building that comes in and provides services. There's medical opportunities. There's Narcotics Anonymous that they're trying to stand up. So all of these are for the benefit of anyone who comes in. However, the OHS-run floors come through our intake process.

So how do you get to your intake process is my question? Is it -- is it through your outreach workers? If I'm experiencing homelessness, can I go to that facility and say, hey, I'm experiencing homelessness? Can I do intake on site? Like, what is the intake process?

So our intake process for our floors are similar to any of our shelters. They can go to any of our intake sites. They can indicate from an outreach provider that they are willing to come in. They will either bring them the intake or make the phone call directly to us. We are piloting a process with outreach that they don't have to bring someone to intake. If it's somebody that's known, they can call our team. We'll then work with them to get them placement without having to come to an intake site. So our goal is the moment that someone's ready to come in, that we are placing them somewhere. So for our floors, yes, there is a process. But that process is multi-faceted. You can go to outreach. You can go to an intake site. They can meet with like mobile assessors. Just depending on where they are, we want to be able to try to get them in. It may not be specific to that site. It might be based on availability of what we have at any of our sites. But I don't want the impression that they have to go to one specific place to get to our floors at Philly Home at Girard.

And what's the total number of beds for your floors at Philly Home at Girard?

It's 132.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Majority Leader Gilmore. Richardson.

Yes, thank you. Thank you very much, Council President, and thank you colleagues. And thank you again to the team. I want to submit the balance of my specific detailed questions for the record, only so that we get clarity to understand like if there's any underspend and how to plan for next year within our budget process. I want to end on case management and sort of how people traverse the system because I think that's sort of the most important part that we need to continue to understand. You all had stated that case managers have the following caseload. So per 24 families or per 35 participants. You had also mentioned that 80% of the case management costs are covered by state and federal grant funds, a total of $2.9 million from the state and $1.2 million from the federal government. And then the additional 20% of those costs are covered by the General Fund, so a large majority are grants revenue. Do we anticipate any reductions in case management funds either from the state or the federal government at this point? And I think keywords are going to be at this point. And how are we preparing in case we see any unanticipated reductions in those funds from a General Fund perspective in particular? And how much does the City spend on case management out of our General Fund in total? And then, is there a national standard or best practice for case management ratios for us to understand the information that you all shared relative to the families and the participants? If there is a standard or best practice, what is it and what would it cost us to reach that particular level? And then finally, what are the qualifications -- this is on my workforce development hat -- to be a case manager? What level of training do they receive? How often do these trainings take place? And one of the things I think we hear is around the process delays from the case managers are regularly cited as issues for participants who are looking to get into permanent housing. So how often are you all evaluating those policies and processes and evaluating the case managers?

Thank you. So the best practice depends on the vulnerability of the population, but it can range anywhere from 1 to 15 to 1 to 25 as you mentioned, just based on what the population may need. And with that, I will say to qualify it just depends also on the services. So there are certified peer specialists that may work at some sites, certified recovery specialists. Some sites use what are called support specialists that come in and help with some of the case management needs for the individuals.

So meaning, with the numbers that you all provided, the for and the for 35 and the is for families, 35 for 23 participants, do you break that 24 down based on the particular population? Do you understand what I'm saying, based on your response? How do you break that down?

Are you saying the ratio?

Yes. So I asked about any best practices around case management ratios, and you said it depends on the vulnerability of the population. So what I'm saying is are you all breaking down the numbers that you provided even further in groups, meaning mental health, substance abuse? Do you break it down even further and then change the ratios or is this just the overall number?

Right now I believe that's the overall number, but we can look at what we're provided from the different entities to see if we have the actual breakdown ratio based on the actual site and the services that are provided at that site.

Okay.

And then I'm sorry. Can you give me the next question?

And then the qualifications to be a case manager, what level of training do they receive and how often do the trainings take place? And then relative to process delays that we hear about within the case management system, how often are you evaluating those policies and the processes and also the case managers?

Thank you. So it depends on -- I hate to keep saying it depends, but it does depend on the level of service. So for example, if they are just providing linkage -- and saying just feels like it's minimizing what they do because that is still a lot of important work that they're doing, but if they're providing linkages between the person's other services, that is a different level of skill set then someone who is actually providing some of those services on site. So with that -- so if they are providing some of the linkage services, then it may just be some experience of anywhere from no experience with supervision on site, you know, entry level being able to provide some of those services all the way up to social workers being able to provide the services. And again, it just depends on whether or not the site is actually doing all the case management themselves, including some of the behavior health services or if they're doing more linkages of services.

Okay. And I'll put the rest of the questions on the record even around the qualifications for the case managers, because we want to understand their process. And then finally, I am committed to -- and I told David Holloman this I think last year -- visiting with the new family shelter that we worked on together, which is the reason why I started on this journey, when the family called my office with the children and we had to put them up in a hotel and it just went from there. So I'm committed to visiting the new shelter in the Northwest. But I wanted to ask if we wanted to go to any of the shelters at any time unannounced, are we able to do that?

With some of them, yes. Others it just may -- for example, we fund domestic violence shelters and some of the other ones. So it would just depend on the nature of the shelter, but we certainly can provide you the list that you should be able to come to unannounced. And I welcome it and I definitely want to know if you see things that are concerning.

Okay. That would be great if we could get the list. Okay. Have a great day. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you for your hard work in addressing this issue. We know it's not an easy issue to work on. And with that being said, Council will be at ease until 2:30 and we will wrap up the afternoon with the Fire Department and Licenses and Inspections. (Council at ease.)

Good afternoon, everyone. (Good afternoon.)

Good afternoon, everyone. (Good afternoon.)

We will continue the Committee of the Whole. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the next panel.

We'll have Jeffrey Thompson, Fire Commissioner for Philadelphia Fire Department. And then we'll also bring up Bridget Greenwald, Commissioner for Quality of Life, Department of L&I, and Basil Merenda, Commissioner of Inspection, Safety and Compliance. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

And so, the way this is going to work you all will give your testimony, and then members of Council will have a chance for the rest of the afternoon to ask questions of both departments. Commissioner, please state your name for the record and please begin your testimony. COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Good afternoon, Council President Johnson and members of Council. I'm Jeffrey Thompson, Fire Commissioner. Joining me today are several members of my executive team. The Philadelphia Fire Department continues to provide comprehensive all-hazard risk reduction and emergency response while working to ensure the health and safety of PFD members and supporting the Mayor's goal of building mutual trust and safety in city neighborhoods. The Fire Department's goals for Fiscal Year 2026 include graduating up to 32 firefighters and paramedics from our technical rescue school, which certifies participants as hazmat technicians and qualifies them to perform specialized rescue operations. And this is going to help us in our current operations as well as to prepare us for 2026. Additionally, we are planning on hiring and training and onboarding 200 emergency medical service providers. We're also going to work with our partners to make critical building repairs at the fire academy that will help us to get more cadets through the academy. We're going to continue to conduct intensive recruitment campaigns to attract a diverse candidate pool for the upcoming fire civil service exam. We're going to institute an upskilling program for PFD EMTs to become paramedics. And finally, we will strive to fill non-uniform vacancies in the PFD's administrative, fiscal and compliance units. And it is my honor and privilege to be here today to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: For the record, my name is Basil Merenda. I am responsible for the construction side of Mayor Parker's historic reorganized and reinvigorated L&I better known as L&I's Inspection, Safety and Compliance Division. Joining me is my senior staff. I'd like to thank Council President Johnson and all the Councilmembers for affording me the opportunity to submit testimony on behalf of L&I's ISC Division, which formally went into effect on March 5, 2024. I'm pleased to report that the ISC's first year of operation has been very productive and transformative. First, we made great strides in getting a City department that wholly is dedicated to the oversight of citywide construction projects properly organized and up and running. I can report once and for all that the City has a department focused exclusively on construction development that can be more accessible, responsive and accountable to the City Council, contractors, community groups, labor organizations, neighbors and on construction projects throughout the city. As the Mayor says, we have a city department that you could see, touch and feel. At the same time from day one, we ensured that L&I's reorganization on the construction side did not interrupt the essential day-to-day operations of the department, from plans review and inspections to enforcement and customer services, making sure that the trains ran on time as the old saying goes. Moreover, I'm proud to note that during this time period ISC addressed two major citywide challenges in a professional, effective, dignified manner, earning the trust and respect of the Administration, our fellow city agencies and the entire city. I just want to point out two priorities, Council President. And I think this is good for the Council to know about our goals and objectives for this first year. Number one, recruitment and retention. In October, we welcomed a new class of inspectors with 9 16 candidates on track to enter the 10 field this summer. 11 Just this past week, we 12 also filled five newly-designated 13 Audits and Investigation Unit 14 investigators, positions that were 15 funded in last year's budget. And 16 early in March, we were able to 17 bring back a highly experienced 18 inspector who had previously left 19 city service thanks to the recent 20 city service regulation change that allowed the reinstatement of employees in good standing within five years. We also improved significantly our enforcement initiatives. We have achieved measurable improvements in addressing problematic contractors, these fly-by-nights, through the Audits and Investigation Unit, the Clean Sites Initiative, Saturday patrols and the Complaints Units. These efforts have a tangible impact on neighborhoods across the city, and underpinning it all is making the department more accessible, responsive and accountable to City Council, contractors, all of our stakeholders. A shining example of this effort is the system that we have established working with members and your respective Council staff, on issues like construction code violations, on safe structures, substandard workmanship and unpermitted activity. And also, I want to note for the record to highlight two particularly notable accomplishments by our LSA staff that rose to the occasion. First, our Licenses and Inspections plans examiners and district inspectors distinguished themselves with the record time it took to review plans and inspect building construction of the Mayor's Riverview Wellness Center, a key component of the Kensington initiative. That center is now up and running servicing folks. Then on January 31st, on display for the entire city to see, our CSU inspectors did what they do best, inspect unsafe and ID properties.

They stepped up, met the horrifying task posed by the Northeast plane crash, working all weekend side-by-side with the City's other first responders, police, fire and the Office of Emergency Management along with the federal authorities. So in conclusion, I respectfully ask for the continued support of the Council with your partnership, our tireless work of our ISC staff will ensure that we can bring up a department that is wholly focused on construction projects large and small throughout the city. Thank you, President.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I just have a couple brief questions. COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: Do you want me to go?

Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot y'all two -- COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: Remember, two of us.

Y'all split the department. Go ahead, Bridget. COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: All right. I'll be quick. Good afternoon, Council President Johnson and members of City Council. I'm Bridget Collins, Greenwald, the Commissioner of the Department of Licenses and Inspections Quality of Life Department. It is a pleasure to appear before City Council today in support of L&I's Fiscal Year '26 budget request. As you have our written testimony, which highlights the many accomplishments and plans of the department in front of you, I will not belabor them. QOL has taken on a proactive and collaborative approach to education and enforcement with many newly- implemented programs. We coordinate with the PPA and PPD on our very successful PPL program, in which we are out in the neighborhoods every week stopping illegal auto repairs. We coordinate with Commerce, community groups at every District Council office on commercial corridor business, education and enforcement with our B program. We work with CLIP, Clean and Green, Sanitation and Streets on the Clean and Green Initiative. These are just a few of the initiatives introduced since the beginning of the change in administration to improve the quality of life in the city. I would like to add one thing that is not in the written testimony, and that is about the QOL team. QOL has many outstanding employees that are super dedicated and care about improving the quality of life for the citizens of Philadelphia. I would like to acknowledge them publicly for their commitment to public service. They are out in every single neighborhood every single day providing education and enforcement. They want to see this city thrive. I say it all the time. I'm very proud to work in a place where the employees show a genuine sense of care and commitment to their profession by following our core mission of responsibly and respectfully serving the community of Philadelphia by providing quality code, education and enforcement services. The QOL team is transparent. We're approachable and we embrace positivity to make the city the safest, cleanest and greenest large city in the country with economic opportunity for all. We're on the energy bus journey and it is paying off immensely. Thank you for indulging me. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. And first, I want to thank Commissioner Thompson and his team for partnering with City Council as we embark upon fire prevention initiatives where we will be distributing fire alarms throughout the 10 Councilmanic Districts in partnership with At-large members, so we just want to thank you and your team for being proactive and collaborative as we focus on saving lives here in the city of Philadelphia. Also, I want to thank Bridget and Basil for your work as you embark upon a new department that has been restructured and reorganized, put it that way, to address quality-of-life issues as well as making sure we're providing a level of oversight of the construction projects that are taking place across the city of Philadelphia. And thank you for taking my calls at all times of the day and/or evening and the timeless response. And also, Bridget, your team worked with me and my staff and the Philadelphia Police Department and Philadelphia Parking Authority to address illegal auto mechanics in Southwest Philadelphia. They were taking over a particular shopping plaza that held the tenants there hostage to the reckless quality of life -- the reckless work that was being done in terms of bringing down the quality of life of the individuals who were tenants inside that particular shopping center in Southwest Philadelphia, so I just want to thank you very much. And I want to thank you also on behalf of the Southwest Senior Center seniors who were also held hostage in their senior center based upon that work that was being done. So I just want to acknowledge that for the public. And to our Philadelphia firefighters, we thank all of you for your hard work and your dedication. It's not guaranteed when you leave the house in the morning that you will return. So I want to ask that we give them a round of applause -- (Applause.)

Because the work that you and your team do, the work that the EMTs do definitely should be supported. And also, a lot of people, we only think about fires when we think about our firemen and EMT teams, but also around the issue of gun violence, right. When a person is shot down or murdered in the streets or severely injured, most people may or may not know, separate from the EMT showing up you see a fire truck as well. Normally, that's when a person's life is deceased so we do thank you for being on the front line when it comes to the issue of gun violence as well. Just had a couple questions. Commissioner Thompson, give me an overview on your strategy for recruitment of Philadelphia firefighters and EMTs. And then also, we know that the civil service exam is administered every two years. Is there any way that we can have it done more frequently, maybe once a year so we can address the need of recruitment of more firefighters and EMTs? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Well, thank you for that question, Council President. In terms of how we recruit, first and foremost we like to think of our employees, our firefighters and EMTs, as our best advocates for getting the word out about the important work we do. But more formally, what we do is we have a dedicated recruitment unit that canvases the entire city. We try to target in particular underrepresented populations so that we can ensure that our Fire Department represents the City of Philadelphia as a whole. In addition to that, we have a program at the Randolph School, the Randolph Skill Center. We have a program there. We also have our Fire Explorers program, all designed to introduce younger folks to the profession of professional firefighting and EMTs. So in terms of the testing cadence, it's traditionally been two years. We have been fortunate in the Fire Department. We get thousands of applicants every year. And with the length of time that it takes to train a firefighter, which is approximately nine months, we can usually put 75 cadets through the academy per time. So typically we can get approximately 150 people off those lists out of thousands of people. And then we also have to consider our internal HR staff. Processing new cadets is a very timely effort. So we have to ensure that in addition to processing potential new recruits, they can still manage the day-to-day work that we have to do, but we will take it under advisement to see if it makes sense to perhaps have the cadence of the test more frequently.

And last question before I turn it over to my members, just give an update regarding the Fire Academy, the need for repairs regarding the building and also specifically what's necessary for instructors to conduct live burns required for cadet certification and also the timeline and support needed for the repairs? I think one of my colleagues was actually advocating, I think the Chairman of Labor and he'll probably do a deeper dive which is Councilmember Jim Harrity, but we're all in support of a new academy being built, in support of in the Northeast. But give us an idea of the conditions and the things that's needed because we want to be advocates and partners in making sure that you have what you need to make sure we have the best and brightest fire cadets graduating and going out to do the great work on behalf of the City of Philadelphia. COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Absolutely. So these careers all began in 5200 Pennypack in the great Northeast. And that academy was built -- the construction started 1978 with the first class graduating in 1981 I believe. And so, if you can imagine from 1981 until today the amount of times that burn tower has been set on fire. And so, it's been quite a bit. And with that, the heat, the water that's thrown around it has deteriorated that masonry structure over time. And what we've done over the years is basically we've done a lot of patchwork. There's spalling of concrete. Some of the rebar is bent and it becomes unsafe. So every five years, the NFPA requires that these burn towers are inspected. We just had an inspection in 2023. It's pretty comprehensive and it talked about all of the damage to the tower and what needs to be done to repair it. I have a very detailed list that I can share with you if you need it. And so, it has become so bad that our current cadet cohort is being trained in Bucks County because we cannot use our burn tower. So --

You said you cannot use your burn tower? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: We cannot use our burn tower currently because it is unsafe.

Now, explain to the wider public and members of Council how the burn tower is used in your operations, the training that takes place with the burn tower just for the record? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Yep. So for the record, we do structural firefighting. That building is designed to simulate a structure. It's a five-story building. We can simulate opening roofs and windows, all of the tactics that we use to fight fires. And without being able to utilize that, we cannot adequately train our firefighters. So it is a fundamental part of the training of a professional firefighter.

How long have you not been using it? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: I believe this is --

How long has it been out of operation? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: So over the last several years there have been more than one occasion when we could not use it to train our cadets. And what has happened over the years is we would make temporary repairs. And right now it's in a state that even the temporary repairs don't make sense, so we literally had to farm out that training.

And who do you farm out that training to, the cost? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: I can get you the cost but we are --

Can you get that to me? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Pardon me?

Can you get that to me, the cost? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Absolutely.

And who does the training as well? Who does the training? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: So we are basically using the facilities of the Bucks County Fire Training Academy, but it's Philadelphia Fire Department employees that are conducting the training. We are just using their facilities. We are still doing the training.

And they're charging us? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: They do charge us.

Quite sure. And so, when I say the cost, if you could provide to the Chair for members the cost that we are paying Bucks County to utilize their facility as opposed to us investing in our own facility. And I think that's just a capital investment. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jim Harrity for a point of information.

And add in the tower.

Can you speak onto the mic please?

I'm sorry, Council President. I just want them to add in the tower, the cost of fixing that because we're paying Delco apparent -- are we paying Delco to train on the tower? That's all. COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Council President Johnson, we are paying Bucks County $30,000 for the use of their facility.

And how about Delco, are we paying them anything for use of the tower? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Yes, if we train in Delco, we will pay them as well.

So we're paying other counties basically as opposed to investing in our own.

I'd like to be put back into the queue.

Chair recognizes Councilmember Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson. And is that annually that we are paying? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: That is per class.

How many classes per year? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Because it's nine months per cadet class, we're typically doing one class per year.

So it's pretty much once a year you're paying the amount? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: That is correct.

Okay. Majority Leader Gilmore, Richardson.

Thank you, Council President, for the recognition. The question was really the clarification. Are we paying Bucks County and Delaware County, and then how much and then the frequency? I just couldn't get that straight. Thank you. COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Thank you for that question. It depends on what facility we are using. Currently we are using the Bucks County facility and it's a one-time cost of $30,000 per class.

Thank you. Just two other questions I'm going to ask for L&I regarding how are we going about monitoring and growing to address -- we are focusing on a proposal to build 30,000 units of affordable housing. So half will be the preservation of infrastructure. And there's a particular number that's going to focus on building. And so, when you begin wrapping up building, you want to make sure that developers are building in compliance, right. And often times, you know, every now and then I get a call about somebody building in the middle of the night because they didn't properly get their permit. So just give us an idea of L&I's role with the Mayor's proposed H.O.M.E. Initiative? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Yeah, Council President. It's a two-part approach. First, of course we have to do plans review and then we have to inspect the actual building. And we made with the Riverview Wellness Center we implemented some very good protocol changes to plans review and that we may be able to see if we can adapt that to the new 30,000 projects that the Mayor wants to build. And then at the same time we made our inspection staff because we're kind of short staffed, we made our inspection staff available almost on a 24-hour basis. Now, I don't think we have to do that for the H.O.M.E. program, but we are willing to use -- I describe it as overtime strategically to get that all accomplished. So we can accomplish that.

Is there a proposal to increase your staff that also aligns with this proposal to build 30,000 units, because I would think you would need more manpower if you're going to be doing all this significant building in the 9 Councilmanic Districts in the city 10 of Philadelphia. So as part of your request, a specific amount to deal with that because you just said I'm short-staffed and we got folks working hours, and if 15 we're going to do NPI on steroids, 16 if we're going to do Turn the Key 17 on steroids, I would think we would 18 need more manpower from L&I but 19 explain to me so we can all get 20 clarity and an understanding of 21 what that will look like. 22 COMMISSIONER MERENDA: 23 Our gameplan going forward is to 24 first make prudent use of the vacancies that we have. I believe we may have about 20 or so vacancies. So our plan is once this class gets through, we want to start a new class in October for maybe 10, 12, and then another class after that. And then of course we could pull back, reassess and see where we are and see if we need additional inspectors.

Okay. So you are going to be hiring additional inspectors though soon? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Yes.

That's part of your budget request? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: I believe -- we want to work through our vacancies first, Council President.

All right. So you don't have any requests for additional inspectors right now? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: No. 6

All right. So I'm just trying to understand. That's all. I would just think if we're about to embark upon borrowing $1 billion to build 30,000 units of housing/the preservation of units, which means you're going to have developers who are going to be participating aggressively developing these homes because the Mayor stated that she wants to get these 30,000 units done by the end of her first term. And her first term is 2027, which means soon as we -- if we pass this bill and we support this proposal, that means starting this summer and going into the fall to meet that 2027 end of her first term deadline. To realistically build or preserve 30,000 units, then we got to hit the ground running. And that means a lot of work is going to come out of your purview and a lot of heavy lifting is going to be under your team just to make sure people are building in compliance, so we don't have another 2030 Market Street incident happening because everyone's aggressively trying to build so fast to reach this goal. And so, I would just hope that you and your team would think about -- and I don't know how it works on the Administration side, but revisit the request because I would just think that because we're going to undertake such a huge historical undertaking, that an agency such as L&I that deals with compliance of making sure developers are doing what they're supposed to do so no one gets hurt, structures are safe parties, 30,000 units are falling apart as a result of us rushing to reach that deadline, that you will be coming to Council requesting additional staff. But if the reasoning is because you have vacancies now, what's your strategy to ramp up hiring folks so you can have a team and be able to tackle this 30,000 units of affordable housing? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Like we did with our first class that's currently in training, I call it a full court press. We reached out to contractor associations to see if any of their members, maybe older members that want to kind of move on to put the tools down as they say. We also reached out to labor unions, the trade unions. And also, we're reaching out to the vo-tech programs throughout the city to try to introduce young people to construction trades and introduce them to what L&I is all about and what we do. And we have this investigator position that is a real good entry-level position for young folks that are interested in construction trades. And once they get into L&I, they can develop some skills and then eventually take the test for an inspector position. And then of course the overall outreach is also to include an effort to try to attract back to L&I, some L&I inspectors who left who went to the private sector, who left because of a variety of reasons. And there's a new L&I out there. There's a new culture. So we want to try to bring these folks back like we did with that one really experienced inspector Mark, so that's our what I call full-court strategy to try to bring back folks to L&I and fill those vacant positions. And I want to thank you for raising the issue about the need for more inspectors, that hopefully if the program gets goes off and is really effective, then we may have to come back and ask for additional inspectors. But for now we're good where we stand.

Understood. Thank you, Commissioner. Give me an idea, we're talking about demolitions of vacant properties. It takes about an average of 123 days to demolish an imminently dangerous property. How can that timeline be shortened or is that a legal requirement that the time frame from 123 days is the actual time that it takes to demolish the imminently dangerous property? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Yeah, that is a problem, Council President. And in my opinion as an attorney, my opinion is that due process considerations, which we have to recognize and we have to respect, puts additional time delays on all that, in addition to the fact that we don't have limited resources. But what our folks at CSU would like to do, and CSU as you know is focused on inspectors that inspect unsafe and ID properties and they administer the City's demolition program. And we want to try to focus maybe two inspectors on dealing with straightforward demolition type of projects and inspections, and then that would free up the rest of our staff to focus on re-inspections and try to get cases into court to get us the order to demolish these properties much quicker and on a much expedited basis. But we are up against due process, legal proceedings that in my opinion delay the process.

Thank you. Let's talk about, Bridget, the Quality of Life Unit. They originally set a goal of resolving vacant open structure and violations within 10 days and it got extended to 30 days. Tell me why we couldn't stick with the 10 days as opposed to 30. COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: It's actually the same thing that Basil just talked about, the due process point. So we could get to a vacant open property and have it sealed in 10 days. But to get the notice out and all that, we realize that it's going to take us 30. We can actually get to it in 10, but to give all those notices it's 30. So we figured we just shot high with and we put it 6 more realistically at 30. 7

Okay. And last, before I 9 turn it over to my colleagues, give 10 me an idea about the Business Education and Enforcement program, but also we have a law on the books, I introduced legislation some time ago to ban the selling of toy guns, right unless they're like a super bright orange, green, yellow, but nothing that looks similar to an actual real gun. I'm just having an interest in working with L&I, Philadelphia Police Department to begin looking at those stores that aren't really following the law in terms of selling these prototype toy guns. And for me, it's a way to -- some of these stores are basically predators in the neighborhood, to be quite frank with you, preying on impoverished neighborhoods, selling to the young people in the neighborhood guns, toy guns that look like real guns. We had an incident that did took place in Point Breeze where a person had a toy gun and wound up being shot, right. And so, we'll have a sidebar conversation in the future about how we can collaborate and at least just show up and show folks that if you are selling them, it's against the law that you can't be selling them. But tell me about the Business Education and Enforcement program. COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: Sure. We call it The BEE for short, Business Education and Enforcement. But what we did is when we came in, we went to each District Councilmember's office, yourself included, and we said, what are your pain points, where are your pain points in your District. And all District 8 Councilmembers gave us their first 9 biggest corridor issue. 10 So we were on Frankford Avenue. We are on Wyoming Avenue. We're going to Rising Sun Avenue in a couple weeks. Ogontz Avenue, we've been everywhere, 52nd Street, all throughout the city. And what we've done is we've partnered with the District Council office, we've partnered with Commerce's MBAT team and we've partnered with community development corporations and just regular community activists that wanted to come out with us. We do an education piece. First, we walk out, we give everyone a flyer. It's actually a pamphlet. It's in every language imaginable. We work with the business owners. We talk to them. We have Commerce there to actually say, hey, here's some good things that you can do, you could get the facade grant, you can get all these different things, we'll work with you. Hey, you didn't know you were supposed to be licensed here? Well, you were, but you know what, now you know and we're going to let you get in the process. We go back three to four weeks later and that's when we start the enforcement piece. If someone's trying to do what they're supposed to be doing, we work with them. We work with them to come -- our thing is come into compliance, right. We don't want to chase businesses out of the city that are doing good that just don't know, right. So that's what we do. So it's been super successful. We're on our 18th one coming up, which I believe is next week I think. Then what we're doing is after we do the first piece, we do the enforcement, then we go back out, you know what I mean. We'll do a re-inspection. And then some of those businesses that just are not going to come into compliance, then we take the next step, whether that's a cease or that's going to court or whatever it is. But it's been very successful to date.

Great. Thank you very much. Just want to acknowledge the presence of the Chair of Licenses and Inspections Chairman Mike Driscoll. Thank you for joining us. Chair recognizes Councilmember Jim Harrity.

Thank you, Council President. Just want to say thank you all for coming out. The Fire Department, I'm a grandson of a firefighter. As a matter of fact, a disabled firefighter. He was tossed from a truck en route to a job and he had to retire from the fire department, but ended up having a pretty good life at Boeing for their fire department as an injury office guy. So I have a lot of respect for you guys. Also curious, I put $10 million on my first thing for bonuses for first responders and hard-to-fill positions with the example of building inspectors. I know the police have gotten theirs worked out. Do you guys see any of that bonus money first off for recruitment? COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: Was that for building inspectors or Fire did you say?

I put it in and the actual language said first responders with police, paramedics especially and L&I inspectors and the other was hard- to-fill positions. But there was 10 million put into that, right, when I first got here, maybe my first budget cycle I believe or second budget cycle. It was right before when Mayor Parker was going to take charge, yeah, take office. So just curious if you guys ended up with it. I know the police did work out theirs because I didn't think of the retention, so they had to work out a retention thing. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Councilmember, we did not follow up on that.

Maybe that's something that we might have to look into again trying to get some of these people, especially the paramedics and hard- to-fill positions. The bonus may help. I know a lot of different cities are doing that. They were taking our police. That's why I put it in in the first place. And then my stuff's just mostly for Fire. I'm going to skip some of my numbers things. I'll submit them. But are your staff paramedics -- oh, no, I'm sorry. Are there any areas of the city that has no ALS or Advanced Life Support medic units, and why? How many days have you run out of available ALS medic units in the past year? How many units were downgraded from ALS to BLS in the past year? And that'll do it for right now. COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Councilmember Harrity, great questions. I'm going to have my Deputy Commissioner for EMS respond to those questions.

Thank you, Commissioner. MR. McCALL: Good afternoon. My name is Martin McCall, Deputy Commissioner for Emergency Medical Services, and thank you for those questions. We have no area in the city of Philadelphia that's not without an ALS medic unit located within it. All of our ALS medic units, we have a staffing structure from which our medic units, we want to keep them at the highest level possible ALS. And if that level cannot be achieved, we have additional levels in which we can go to such as an intermediate level as well as finally the basic level. We do everything we can within the available members in which we have to keep our units that are ALS, ALS. The number of units that we have that downgraded varies depending on the time of the year and what happens and what staffing we have available. But again, we don't really track how many we keep, how many are ALS and how many are BLS. But we do everything we can to keep all of our units at the highest level we can keep them.

But you're telling me that there are no 17 areas of the city of Philadelphia that don't have an Advanced Life Support medic unit? MR. McCALL: Every zone -- and we divide the city into six zones, right -- have ALS medic units located within those zones.

So that would be six ALS medic units is what we have? MR. McCALL: No, sir. We have 53 ALS medic units in the city and they're divided up into six zones.

Okay. 53 in six zones. MR. McCALL: And there's hours, and we have 10 Basic Life 11 Support units in the city and they 12 are divided up amongst the zones. 13 So there's not a zone that does not 14 have an ALS medic unit located 15 within it. 16

17 Well, that's good to hear. 18 Okay. Council 19 President, I know I heard the clock 20 and I want to be respectful of my 21 colleagues so I'll submit any other 22 questions I have in writing. 23 Thank you, Chief. 24 COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: You're welcome.

Thank you. Councilmember O'Rourke.

Thank you, Mr. President. Commissioner Collins Greenwald, blessings to you. Good to see you. COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: Thank you.

At our March 18th Housing Committee hearing, you said that in order to get a proactive inspection program up and running that could inspect all of our rental units, the department would need to hire 110 people with the budget increase of around $6.2 million plus vehicle and space costs. The President's already named this on the development of the new unit side, but the Administration is committing $800 million, $1 billion to the H.O.M.E. Initiative, and we have a roughly $61 million Housing Trust Fund. As a point of information, I actually believe that L&I is the second highest revenue earning department in the Administration. It's clear that we need these inspectors all around, especially on the proactive side. It's also clear that we actually have the money. So why are we not making this modest $6.2 million investment in protecting our housing stock, which by the way could also create 110 good union jobs for Philadelphians? COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: Thank you. At the hearing that we had in March, if you recall I said that we were actually working with Pew and we were working with some best practices on what we should do. That number I threw out was a quick and dirty number if you just divide really simple math. Do I think we need 110 inspectors? I don't know for sure. I actually don't think we do. I'm going to be honest, but that's just my best guess. So what I would like to do is finish with that research which should be done in the next few months, and then actually come with a really solid plan on how we could do proactive rental licenses. I don't think it's just a matter of adding inspectors. I think there's incentive programs for landlords that are actually following all the rules that we can offer. I think there's something we should be doing for new rental inspections -- new rental licenses. I think the virtual inspection program that we talked about is going to kick off in June. So I think all those factors coming in are going to lead us to a very comprehensive plan. But I'm just not ready to put on paper exactly what it is right this second.

It sounds like those I think would be great things in terms of creating a comprehensive well-rounded plan, but on the matter of inspectors it would help if you could explain this to me a little better for my colleagues. As far as I understand, the H.O.M.E. Plan is a massive investment intent on building -- because if you said you don't even think we need 110, so that would mean we might need less so perhaps it could be cheaper. But the H.O.M.E. Plan is a massive investment intent on building and preserving our housing stock. Meanwhile we only inspect roughly at this current stage 7% of that particular housing stock that we're trying to preserve. Why are we not investing the same level of resources and attention into a proactive inspection system to prevent homes from falling into disrepair in light of the tight timeline that Madam Mayor has bravely set for herself, only making more relevant the necessity of a swift ramp-up? This seems to be a moment where an ounce of prevention actually is worth a pound of cure. COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: Okay. To answer that question again, I think it'd be very premature for me to go on the record and say I needed 110 inspectors. I can't give a different answer than that. I mean, I can work with your group to see what we need. I can work with Pew and do the research and I can work on see what best practices would be, but actually that's where we're at right now.

Okay. Did I hear the bell? I got time?

(Gestured).

Thank you. Bless you. Okay. Thank you for joining us, Commissioner Thompson. We all appreciate the work that you and your firefighters do each and every day. First, how many paramedics do you have currently and how many are you budgeted for? COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Again, I'm going to bring the Deputy Commissioner for EMS to answer that question.

Thank you, sir. MR. McCALL: So again, my name is Martin McCall, Deputy Commissioner for Emergency Medical Services.

Bless you, sir. MR. McCALL: We currently have roughly 212 paramedics enrolled in the Fire Department, on staff at the Fire Department.

As you mentioned, the goal of hiring 200 EMS providers this year is aggressive. How realistic is this goal and what barriers will have to be overcome to meet it? MR. McCALL: Well, we have a very robust program in place now to bring on as many people as we possibly can. We currently have a list of EMTs that we are hiring off of. We are scheduled to have an EMT class start on the 12th with people. We look to start another class shortly after that of EMTs and help get to that goal of 200. In June we look to hire a class of paramedics. We're looking at about paramedics 8 coming on board right now for that 9 class. We've opened the paramedic 10 list again. We've asked our partners at OHR to open that list for us again, which they did, they helped us out and did that, to help us capture any individuals that may need some work due to the Crozer closing and to bring those folks on board. So that is currently open to create another list for paramedics. And we want to bring those folks on board as soon as we can. And then we look to do another class in the fall and then another class hopefully by the beginning of the next year. So we're aggressively looking to bring people on board to reach that number and to get to at least 200. If we can bring on more, we will.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Also, Commissioner, I just want to acknowledge and got a chance to work with some of your members, but I've worked probably more with Daniel McCarty more than others. And so, I just want to acknowledge you for your hard work and dedication along with your team, but thank you specifically in terms of the outreach and support you have been giving us and also the Local and most importantly the 22 Valiants. I learned about the Valiants as a young man fresh out of college working with a gentleman named Harold James and Sheriff John Green and also Commissioner Ayers at that time early on. And so, the Valiants have played a very critical role in producing African American firefighters in the City of Philadelphia but also do a lot of work with Local as well. So 9 just want to thank y'all for your 10 hard work and dedication and 11 acknowledge that. 12 The Chair recognizes 13 Councilmember bass. 14

15 Thank you, Mr. President. I wasn't 16 expecting to be up so soon. 17 Good afternoon. How's 18 everybody doing? I want to start 19 by just saying thank you to the 20 Philadelphia Fire Department for 21 all of your hard work. And I want 22 to especially shout out my two neighbors who live across the street who are firefighters, and that's Bruce Canada and Larry Carroll who are just great neighbors, great citizens here in the city of Philadelphia, great civically-engaged, civically-minded and fantastic firefighters. So I did want to just shout them out as well as for all of those who are working throughout the 8th Council District and the various station locations through Chestnut Hill, Mt. Airy, Germantown, Nicetown Tioga, parts of Olney, parts of Logan, parts of West Oak Lane, parts of Feltonville and parts of North Philly. You all have a very difficult job and I just want to just really say a big thank you to all of you for your public service. L&I, so we have frequent conversations, Basil, of course, Bridget, you know it's always a pleasure to see you guys. But I want to start with a frequent conversation that we have around due process. Because I feel like sometimes we give due process and we give these really bad players an opportunity to get it right when they didn't start out right in the first place. And I want to say, Commissioner Merenda, you recall we went out to a location in the West Oak Lane part of my District on Ogontz Avenue. And this particular business, which was a smoke shop, had no license to operate, no 16 certificate of occupancy. They had done construction without permits. They had illegal signage. They did the sale of tobacco without a license. They had the sale of loosies, loose cigarettes. They had tobacco sales on the same block as a school and church. They had a lack of heat and air circulation. There were exposed radiator pipes, loose and exposed wires, drug paraphernalia, on and on. And you remember that one, I'm sure. But there's so many of these locations and it's so frustrating because people really want something to be done. These are a nuisance in our community. And I know you get it. So I guess I'm just wondering how do we figure out a way so that one person's due process doesn't impede on the rights of the community in which they're operating and disturbing, to be quite honest? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Well, Councilmember, if the activity involves actual construction we can go out there and put a stop work order if they're not complying with the code. If they're going beyond the scope of their permits, we could do that immediately. We don't have to go to court to do something along those lines. However, if it's already built, if it's operating, then that's where Bridget's folks take over.

Right. COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: I can jump in on this one too. Yeah, so to Basil's point, new construction he can put a stop work order up. We can go out inspect if it's violations. We issue usually an intent to cease and then we'll issue a cease, right. Usually, when we issue a cease I'm going to say a majority of the time people will appeal and they'll try to get -- this is where your due process question is coming in, right. So if someone's appealing, there's certain things you can't appeal. But there are a lot of things you can and they appeal these violations. And while they're appealing, there's a stay of the enforcement. And that's where the frustration comes in for all of us.

Yes, yes. So what can -- I'm just thinking that we need to think about it differently. We need to have some sort of out-of-the-box way of approaching some of these matters. Because people look at us, people are angry at us, that a business like this one as an example is still open and operating. They came in with no 20 license with -- they did everything wrong. They flagged their nose at the City of Philadelphia and they're still operating. They probably don't even have a tax account so that we're collecting tax revenue or that they're paying taxes like they're supposed to. COMMISSIONER COLLINS GREENWALD: So to these instances to your point, we're starting to change language. We're working with the Law Department on how -- I said there's a stay of enforcement now. We have this language called, like certified language. It's legal language. But anyway we're going to start putting them on our violations and it's going to stop some of those stays of enforcement under certain appeals. So I think that's going to help a lot. So we're working through the -- we have the language now. We're just working on how do we get it onto our NOVs and how do we get that through the system where we don't put it for every single thing. But these more egregious types of violations, they'll go out in that way. So I think that's going to be helpful.

Okay. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Councilmember, internally what we've done is also establish what we call a Court District Unit that is to address the backlog in cases, because we saw a lot of our inspectors get frustrated along with the constituents. They write a case and then it kind of languishes. So we put together a court district that would focus on re-inspecting these units, getting together the evidence, getting together testimony, getting together prepping witnesses so that they're ready to go to court so that there is no delay as far as getting the cases ready. So it'll help on the margin. It's not going to it's not a panacea. It'll help on the margin and it'll get those cases ready to go into court when they're ready.

Well, listen, I know you all have a really tough job and so I really want to thank you as well for all the work you do. I know that you're trying. I think we're all just really frustrated. I remember there was a previous commissioner a couple of administrations ago who said, oh, L&I did a survey and 70% of the city is happy with us. And I said to her on the record, I said, well, I must have the entire other 30% living in the 8th Council District because nobody's happy with L&I. But I know that you all are working really hard and I know it's a tough job. But it's just we need more tools. We need more tools. And I don't think necessarily for whatever money we put into the budget, I don't think that that's going to get us the tools. It'll get us bodies. But if the bodies are going out and we're getting the same result, then we just need the tools I think. So thank you, Mr. President. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Councilmember, we do have our hands full, Bridget and I. When I was appointed Commissioner, folks would come up to me and congratulate me. And I would say to them, well, if you're religious, say a prayer for us because we'll need it.

Well, listen, like I said I know how hard you all work and I appreciate that we kind of beat y'all up a little bit. But y'all are still here and smiling and we appreciate the work you do. Thank you.