COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Monday, March 11, 2024 1:00 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYATTA JOHNSON COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE RICHARDSON COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY COUNCILMAN CURTIS J. JONES, JR. COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS COUNCILMAN MARK F. SQUILLA COUNCILMAN ISAIAH THOMAS COUNCILMAN JEFFREY YOUNG, JR. RESOLUTIONS: 240029, 240038, 240075, 240078 240079, 240129 - - -
Members, please take their seats. Good afternoon. (Good afternoon.)
It's good to see everyone today. This is the public hearing and public meeting of the Committee of the Whole regarding Resolutions 240075, 240078, 240079, 240029, 240038 and 240129. I want to thank everyone for being here today. Mr. Christmas, will you please call the roll to take attendance.
A quorum of members are present, Councilman. And Council Lady Gauthier is now present.
Thank you. A quorum of the hearing is present and the hearing is now called to order. Mr. Christmas, will you please read the titles of the resolutions.
Resolution 15 240075, appointing Paul Levy to the Board of Directors of the Center City District. And Resolution 240078, appointing Louis Tice to the Board of Directors to the Old City Special Services District. And Resolution 240079, appointing Elizabeth Woods to the Board of Directors to the Old City Special Services District. And Resolution 240029, confirming the appointment of Adam Geer as the Chief Public Safety Director. And Resolution 240038, confirming the appointment of Renee Garcia, Esquire as the City Solicitor. And Resolution 240129, re-appointing James Aros to the position of Chief Assessment Officer of the Office of Property Assessment. This resolution is being held at the request of the Administration.
Thank you, Mr. Christmas. Will you please call the first witness to testify on Resolution No. 240075.
Good afternoon, Mr. Paul Levy. Can you please state your name for the record and please proceed with your testimony.
I have extra copies of it unless you have it. Good afternoon. My name is Paul Levy and I'm honored to be here this morning. And, Council President, congratulations. It's my first time being in Council since you've been Council President. Good to see so many people.
I would really be honored to serve on the Board of the Center City District. The CCD was first authorized by City Council in 1990 when the late Ron Rubin was the founding Chair and he incorporated or became the first Business Improvement District in the City of Philadelphia formed under the Municipality Authorities Act of 1945. I was appointed in January 1991 to serve as the first Executive Director of the CCD. Since that time I've had the pleasure of working closely with members of this Council and five different mayors as the CCD grew from a clean and safe organization to one that markets restaurants and retail, established the Homeless Outreach Partnership in partnership with Project HOME, has carried out more than $150 million in streetscape improvements and created five new parks, including Dilworth Park just outside the doors of this building. During this same period of time, you have supported the creation of more than a dozen other Improvement Districts serving diverse neighborhoods throughout this City. After 33 years of serving in a role as CEO of the CCD, I was pleased to hand off the leadership of the organization to Prema Gupta, who was appointed by the Board to serve as the new CEO effective January 1, 2024. And if you know Prema, she has extensive experience in economic development and public space management, working for both the University City District and for PIDC, and then for three years at the CCD starting just before the pandemic. She has hit the ground running as an excellent new leader of the organization. The CCD Board asked me if I would be willing to consider serving in an advisor role, and I would be pleased to do so as a new Board member of the Center City District. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
Thank you very much. Before I turn it over to my colleagues for questions, just from your perspective, and I know that this is an organization that is very near and dear to your heart and we watched you work to revitalize Center City, in terms of the future of Center City in your role as serving as a Board member of the Center City District, what's your perspective in terms of the obstacles and things that you believe that could be beneficial and thus revitalizing the health of Center City, which you will contribute as a member of the Center City District?
That's an excellent question. Having just come back from the West Coast and San Francisco, we're in much better shape than a lot of cities. Let me just start there. There are many cities that are having a much harder time recovering. And I think we are recovering as a city, one, because of the much greater diversity of our economy, health care and education, hospitality, the commercial office sector. Those cities with the greatest difficulty in recovery are heavily dependent on information technology, which is really what characterizes San Francisco. So, one, the diversity of our economy obviously is a keystone point. I think we also have -- this Council approved in 1997 a 10-year tax abatement for the conversion of vacant office to residential. Now, cities are trying to figure out how to do that. We converted more than 10 million square feet here in the last 25 years to residential. And I want to tell you a really key point that we've learned from a national study about recovery of downtowns before I talk about the rest of the City, is even in the city of San Francisco, which has the lowest recovery rate of the largest cities, those people who 4 live within to miles of their downtown office are back at 94 percent. Those who live miles 7 away are back at 40 percent. 8 Our numbers here are about 9 95 percent for those people who 10 live close by and about 50 percent for those who live 10 miles away. So the live, work downtowns that we have all been building has not only made good use of vacant real estate and converted that and animated downtowns, it has increased the return to work. And why I think that is so important as you all know is it's not just office building jobs. It's the janitor jobs. It's the security jobs. It's the building engineering jobs. It's the retail jobs. It's the transit jobs that come back. And so, my takeaway first of all is that the recovery will be better and is better here. We're No. 5 in the nation in terms of recovery. The cities that recovered the most are cities like Nashville, which are almost entirely dependent on entertainment and sports. Those are convention center, those are important parts of our economy, but they're mostly low-wage jobs. So the diversity of our economy has been really helpful. I know you are focused and you'll focus today on public safety. That is the number one issue, but it's not necessarily crime. It's the perception that things are not safe. And when you ask people what they're concerned about, obviously dealing with the mental ill or an aggressive, addicted person are at the top of the list, but people are also concerned about the absence of other people on the street, the absence of visibility. So the more we bring people back as tourists, as visitors but as workers, as students, the safer people will feel. And so, clearly at the CCD in the last two years we doubled the number of public safety people we've had on the street, uniformed unarmed individuals. Clearly, this Administration I think has made a really important statement about clean, safe and green as a city- wide priority. If we can't deal with that, we're not going go back to as a city. So I'm not sure if that's fully responsive to what you've asked. But as challenging as it is here, having seen a variety of other cities we are ahead of a lot of ones. We ought to be proud of what we've achieved and we need to build on that in every neighborhood in the City.
And just one other question: Just on some data I've been looking over, in Center City we have between to commercial 6 buildings that are either in 7 receivership or bankruptcy. Just 8 from your perspective, how do we 9 best utilize those spaces in the 10 future where it's obvious all of the buildings can't be converted into residential because the footprint just doesn't allow it?
But just being an expert in that, particularly in the Center City area, how best do you think we should utilize that in the future, those buildings?
Let's start with the fact that -- and I don't want to minimize the challenge if you're the owner of that building or if you're the City and looking to collect taxes. There's a calamity sitting there. All right. But the newspapers and the media tend only to report on the buildings in trouble. And the Class A office space while challenged is doing fairly well, so it's a whole inventory of older buildings and they obviously -- we took as I said 10 million of them out of inventory, so there's a significant more we're probably going to have to convert. I think there are areas that are near our universities and research institutions where life sciences is going to be a major new user of those. So there is going to be real estate that we don't have a clear future use for, and I don't particularly predict where it will go. But if you look at the Class A office space that's in much better shape than the really older buildings, and I think the particular challenge which is compounding this right now which is short term, is interest rates are incredibly high, and still coming out of the pandemic, construction costs, supply chain costs, so we have a public storm. And again, having lived through -- we created the Center City District in 1990 in a severe downturn. Many of us lived through 2008 and 2010 at the bottom of the cycle. It's about as depressing as can be and three years later we forget about it. I don't mean to minimize that. We're at a down-point. There are serious problems, but I think the reuse of these buildings for residential, for hotel, for life sciences and for the things we haven't invented yet. One of the things about being in the Bay area, they're inventing industries I've never heard about there. We need to be focused on what those are. I don't know yet. But I would be less pessimistic than some of the worst news I read, fully recognizing if you own one of those buildings, it's a very painful time.
And one last question: A recent report showed that in Center City, particularly in Rittenhouse Square area, we've seen a significant increase in residential growth and development. What do you think were the key contributors to actually individuals moving downtown in that particular area?
So there's been an increase of individuals moving in the Rittenhouse Square/Center City area most recently. And so, from your perspective what are the key contributing factors even in the midst of public safety that you put out there for individuals still moving downtown in that particular area?
I think, look, in every neighborhood in which we have great quality amenities, great parks or great schools, people will want to live there. The advantage of Center City and University City is that's half of the jobs in the City. And so, people want to live near their work. They don't want to commute that much, but they want to live near amenities. So that's true for all of the Center City and the surrounding neighborhoods at this point. And clearly, I know we'll be talking about this in terms of job growth and tax reform. We need to deal with the short-term issues. But with a more competitive tax structure we will have more robust job growth city-wide as well. But that's the driver of housing for me, people with decent jobs.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilman Curtis Jones.
Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Levy, and I call you Mr. Levy --
I call you Mr. Levy because you've earned it. And thank you for your service --
-- to our city. Thank you for your commitment to want to do a second tour of duty of being on the Board, and I know that doesn't pay at all. So thank you again.
Give us your perspective on relocating the Sixers Stadium to Market Street. Where are you at on that?
Is that going to affect your judgment on whether I get appointed to the Board or not?
Clearly that's not my decision to make. That's your decision to make. Let me start there. We're all familiar with what may be the challenges. I'm trying to focus on both. Okay. I think the opportunities are -and I just came back from the city of Sacramento. That's a city where more than half the employment is in state government and they're not back and the city is empty except the arena is a driver of lots of downtown activity and more people on the street. And Market East is a challenge street, right. So I'm less interested in the Sixers Arena alone. But if it's going to go there, if you decide that it goes there, it's the residential, it's the retail, it's the hotels. It's sites like 8th and Market that have been vacant since 1977 or 13th and Market that's vacant since '82, that could be a driver. I fully appreciate and understand the huge concerns that Chinatown has. And having just come back from visiting San Francisco, Chinatown was threatened in the '70s and '80s by the expansion of their financial district. They imposed height controls and historic preservation, and they have probably the second largest Chinatown in North America because controls were put in place to protect the place from the encroachment of high density commercial. So I see those as potential tools. Clearly, SEPTA's ridership is back at 55 to 60 percent. I see the advantage of putting an arena on the top of the Regional Rail System. It's a way of getting new riders, but I fully appreciate the concerns of surrounding neighborhoods of traffic congestion. We are able to accommodate 25,000 to 30,000 people at the Convention Center, at the Flower Show, but they come throughout the whole day. Games are peak arrival and peak departure. So I wouldn't put an arena downtown unless I had a very strong public transit plan, unless I had a really strong transportation management plan. It's not a one-and-done decision. Either put it there or don't put it there. If you put it there, you need to think about the redevelopment of the entire area. You need to think about transit. I would love to brand any new building there as the gateway to transit, not hide it. People remember what the old Amtrak station looked like in New York City before the new one? This is an opportunity to get a gateway to transit. I think we could have a gateway to Chinatown on Market Street. So I see the concerns. I understand the disadvantages. I see huge advantages. And again, what I would want to contribute to the thinking is don't just think about yes or no on the arena. If yes, what are all the other things needed to do. And if no, what's the plan for Market East which is lagging.
Good point. My only other question is you were a part of a strategy for nonviolent crimes alternatives to incarceration called Community Courts.
And what impact did that have on Center City's quality of life and would you recommend us to --
Yes, yes and yes. Just to be clear for those who were not here because it operated for about 12 years, and it was much more than Center City. It served almost a third of the City of Philadelphia. And what it was, was an alternative to incarceration. People who were picked up for a whole range of crimes could choose to plead not guilty and go the traditional system. But the overwhelming number of people who were dealing with drug addiction, mental health problems or just repeat offenders could plead guilty but be sentenced to alcohol treatment, get access to job training, get access to mental health services. We and many organizations provided work sites for temporary work. It got us out of the either-or choice. It's not criminal or social services. It's how you blend those together. And so, during the time it operated we had a dramatic reduction of quality-of-life crimes. I would strongly urge the reconsideration of putting it back together. And let me just say at the time we did it, Ellen Greenlee was the public defender and Lynne Abraham was the district attorney. It took us three years to get the two of them to agree. We had to go to New York City and look what they did. So anyone who wants to take this on needs to understand it's not snap your finger. That's a lot of coalition building, a lot of overcoming of very different points of view, but that's frankly one of the things I would more than prepare to work on because I absolutely think we need to restore it not only for Center City and as I said, it was a third of the City, it is exactly the tool of today. Not pure criminal justice, not pure social services, but the integration of those with job training and treating people in trouble as full human beings, not just punishment but services, et cetera. So please do consider bringing it back.
Thank you, Mr. President. COUNCIL PRESENT JOHNSON: Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes in attendance Councilmember Isaiah Thomas and Councilwoman Nina Ahmad. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jeffrey Young.
Thank you, Council President. And good afternoon, Mr. Levy. A follow-up question regarding the commercial real estate in Center City, the state of the commercial of the real estate here: So you mentioned our Class A is doing wonderful in comparison to some other cities, but it's more our Class B and C properties that are in distress. So what are some things the City can do to attract more I guess property owners, business owners to come to rehab those facilities into a better commercial space, a better use? And what are some of those -- you mentioned you were on the West Coast and you may not know what those uses are, but can you give us some examples of industries you think that we should be trying to attract here to those Class B and C office spaces?
Yeah. I don't want to do that superficially, and that would take a lot more time. But we know, for example, that older buildings so long as they are near either Thomas Jefferson or Drexel or a Penn which have heavy research and medical capability have life science potential. So clearly understanding -- and those are really a broad range of very diverse jobs. So, one, you need to think geographically about the other uses. Clearly the closer you are to the Convention Center, the more potential it is for hotel. The 10-year abatement for conversion is in place. People always confuse the changes that were legislated downward for new construction. The full 10-year abatement is in place. Does that need to be combined with some maybe other additional state incentives or federal ones given where interest rates are? That would require more study. It may be we need slightly more powerful tools. Again, I don't want to offer that as an opinion without looking at the numbers. But the more we can put those jobs back, those buildings back to use, it's more construction jobs. And again, I always like to emphasize that any office building is not just high wage and midlife wage jobs. It's entry-level jobs, it's janitorial jobs, it's security jobs. So it's how we think about this real estate not just from the owner's point of view, and they have serious challenges. It's what's the economic development potential. So again, I don't want to be superficial. I think we need to look almost building-by-building. I was just talking with Job about the ensemble of buildings he has in Old City. Those need to be looked at uniquely in that setting given the location of the hospitality industry. But we need the focus of our Commerce Department and PIDC and this Council to think strategically about that.
Thank you. A couple more questions. Can you talk to us about the diversity of the Board and executive leadership at Center City District and its staff excluding those that are contracted workers?
I said can you talk to us about I guess the makeup, the Board's compilation of CCD, the demographic of the Board, the staff at CCD?
Okay. Absolutely. Starting with the Board, the Board is approximately a third African American, a third women and a third Caucasian men at this point. That's sort of a break-up of the Board. From a staffing level, our sidewalk cleaning program, all the cleaners are represented by SEIU. That's largely a minority workforce. Our community service representatives are our uniformed unarmed individuals, also unionized workforce are a very balance mix of African American, Hispanic, Asian and Caucasian workers. Professional staff, I don't have those numbers in my head, but it has grown steadily more diverse. And with my replacement as CEO with Prema, we're doing a whole lot better on that front now too.
Thank you. So if it's helpful, if you're able to provide us those numbers, that would be --
And outside the street sweepers, I know they are not Center City District employees, per se. They're contracted out. So can you provide us the numbers that are actually Center City District employees?
Absolutely. Great. And just to be clear, our sidewalk cleaning is an outsourced function. The bike patrol is outsourced. The community service representatives are our direct employees. Our homeless outreach teams are our direct employees and professionals, so I will give you that breakdown.
Thank you. And one more question: Can you tell me, just give the Council an overview just in your opinion on how does Center City's improvement impact our communities and our neighborhoods that are beyond Center City.
Sure. If we start with the fact that 42 percent of all jobs in the City are downtown, another 10 or 11 percent are in University City, they are at the center of our transit system. percent of the working residents 20 of each of your Districts work in 21 Center City. And the interesting 22 mix of jobs in Center City is they 23 are one-third that require a 24 college degree, one-third require 25 an Associate's degree and one-third require only a high school diploma. So we have going back to what I said before between office, health care, education, hospitality and retail an incredibly diversified economy creating very, very diverse jobs. So we're incredibly fortunate to have a hub-and-spokes transit system that feeds this. And when we have this many jobs here connected by transit, it I think gives us the most accessible jobs in the region in many ways. Is that responsive to your question?
You're welcome. First, I want to also acknowledge Councilwoman Kendra Brooks who's in attendance and also Councilman Mark Squilla. The Chair recognizes Councilman Isaiah Thomas.
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, sir.
Couple quick questions for you. You talked a little bit about sale of buildings and real estate values of buildings. If we do not do anything and continue on the same trajectory that we're on, can you give us an estimate, an approximate, how much revenue in City dollars will be lost based on the value of those buildings going down because those other spaces aren't filled?
Yeah. No, that's a great question. I can tell you exactly within the boundaries of the CCD we have lost about 15 percent of the assessed value since 2020 in office buildings, but that was offset by a percent increase in residential apartment buildings, so that diversification is really key. And again, from the CCD's point of view an apartment building is paying like an office building. Because the City is so much more dependent on the wage tax, that to me is the most vulnerable location, I think most vulnerable source. I think you know that the City refunded 90 million in wage tax revenue to suburban residents in 2021. They refunded 85 million in 2022 and 45 million last year when the City mandated you had to be directed to work from home in order to get a rebate. But the City is collecting much less wage tax from suburban residents who used to work downtown. Think about the accounting firms, the law firms, the engineering firms who have offices in the suburbs. All right. I live in the suburbs -- not me, I live in Center City. But if I lived in the suburbs and I could go to my suburban office, the City no longer withholds wage tax for me. So I think we've lost about 40 to 50 million in suburban residents who are choosing not to come downtown right now because they can work in a suburban office. Again, I believe we need to look particularly at this moment at our overall tax structure. I mean, I have long felt that we don't fund ourselves in quite the right way. But I think we're incredibly vulnerable now on the wage tax because those numbers -- which are national by the way. People who live miles away are back at half the rate of people who live 3 miles away, if you add on top of that work from home and get a 2.5 percent raise because you're not paying the City wage tax. So we have a vulnerability on real estate in downtown. If we continue to lose residents from any neighborhoods, the biggest tax base is really the residential tax base, which we need to be careful about. So I don't want to be doom and gloom here. We formed the District in 1990 when people were incredibly pessimistic. We lived through 2008 and '10. We are on a similar crisis now and we need to be strategic. The questions you're asking are exactly the right ones, where are our points of vulnerability but what are the investments we as a City need to make as we did with the Convention Center, as we did with sports teams, as we did with the 10-year abatement, as we did with office buildings. We can lead the recovery here, but the status quo will not be our way out of this.
-- I know that a lot of my colleagues in this legislative branch of government are optimistic as well. One of the things that we've done over the last couple of years is gradually reduce the BIRT and the wage tax. And if you can talk to us a little bit about decisions that this legislative body has made --
-- and the impact that you think it has on the recovery of our economy right now --
-- as well as that optimistic perspective that we're both talking about as it relates to the future.
Sure. Let me start with a non-optimistic perspective. In this morning's Inquirer in the Business section 6 was a major technology firm which signed a lease in the suburbs because all their workers were out there and they were excluded from the wage tax. All right. That's the negative side. We have lots of advantages of living and working in the City, living in its neighborhoods, et cetera. I think the key issue, we need the wage tax, we need BIRT, we need real estate to support the services in this government. Absolutely the case, and you can't slash things and cut people's services. But we are among the slowest growth cities in jobs, right, we grew less than percent the couple of years. There are other cities growing at 2, 3, percent a year. We need more robust job growth. And if I'm a business person making a decision about where to locate my business, I don't want to know this year's numbers. I'm going to look around for the length of my lease, or years. 10 So if Council sends a signal that we have a plan over 5 and 10 years for a gradual reduction in taxes, that is predictable. That's not every year what's going to happen, but you develop a five-year plan and say this is what we're going to support, predictability gives assurance. You need to create a schedule that you can afford, that we can afford. But taxing a declining base of jobs and residences, which is what we did in the '70s and '80s, is a formula for failure, right. So I think we need to be strategic about tax reform. We need to meet current needs, but we need to say that we want to send signals for all types of businesses, small business, minority businesses, large businesses, that we want you here and we have a plan, not necessarily tomorrow, but next year, the year after, it's going to get more competitive. That's a general question, I know. But I'll be more than glad to talk about that in more detail.
Thank you. Last question, I'm going back to the building. So I'm wondering there's been dialogue about the City purchasing some of the bigger buildings as the value has gone down to avoid bankruptcy. Based on your expert opinion, is that a good philosophy for us to try to essentially brainstorm or does it create a slippery slope of unanticipated problems that will possibly put us --
I want to give a lot of thought to that. My quick reaction is if you don't have a use for it -- what will you do as a City with a vacant building if the private market couldn't do something? You figured how to use the former Inquirer building, right. I mean, there are buildings that could have other uses. But I think that requires -- let me not give you -- that requires a very careful analysis. I think again if you're the owner of a building and you've been foreclosed on and you're taking a beating, right, that's an awful situation. But if you're the buyer of that building at one-third of what it was before, you have the opportunity to bring in tenants at a lower rate. It's very painful. I mean, I don't want to wish this on anyone. The private market can be very entrepreneurial with low-cost buildings, so I wouldn't automatically assume that the government needs to step in and buy out buildings unless you have a strategic plan for them.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Rue Landau.
The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier. Excuse me, Audio Visual, she is on the screen. Did you touch your button? COUNCIL TECH SUPPORT: (Inaudible).
Okay. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
-- acquiesce to Councilwoman Gauthier if you don't mind.
Since we're on this topic, the tax structure, I just wanted to ask you a question. I understand the argument for reducing the City's reliance on the wage tax, but in your opinion as we continue to reduce the wage tax and the BIRT tax, what do we replace that revenue with in near term and how do we replace it in a way that's more than speculative, I guess independent on businesses that might come if they catch our signal?
That's a great question. And let me be very clear, having spent the last 33 years running an assessment district, we can't deliver services unless we have tax revenue. So I fully appreciate and identify with that question. You can't wish away taxes and then pretend services will come. I want to be clear about that. We are very unique among American cities in being as dependent on the wage tax as we are.
Most cities frankly rely more on the real estate tax. And it's not that they charge more in real estate tax. They have a more robust job base. So my big picture is that because we relied so much on wage and business taxes, we have driven down demand for businesses to be here and lowered the real estate tax base of the City, which obviously supports the school as well as City government. So I am not saying raise real estate taxes. That's why I think it's got to be strategic. If you have a more competitive tax structure -- and by the way, our real estate taxes are cheaper than in the suburbs, right.
But our cost of doing business between wage and BIRT and several other taxes are much higher, so we give ourselves a competitive disadvantage to support very needed services. So to me it's long-term when you drive down the dependence on wage and BIRT. You increase the tax base of the City without actually raising taxes. I have had that experience. The CCD has never raised its rates in 33 years. But we started with a $6.5 million budget in 1991. We have a $31 million budget this year, because of the diversification, the growth in demand, the more people who want to live and work, hotels and investments that you've made. So again, it's not snap your fingers and solve the problem. It's have a strategic plan. There's only one city that's reliant on the wage tax other than Philadelphia and that's Detroit, and Detroit doesn't have a very strong job base either. So I think again we need those revenues today, but we need to diversify and expand other revenue sources. And I think the real estate tax, not raising my real estate taxes as a resident of yours but having more businesses want to be here, generating more demand for commercial and industrial real estate, I think, is the long-term strategy.
The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you, Council President. And thank you, colleagues. And thank you so much, Mr. Levy, for your service with City Center District --
-- and for all the work you do. I certainly enjoy hearing some of the concerts at lunchtime in --
Okay. I thought you were going to complain about how loud the music was so we're okay. Good.
No, I'm not going to complain today. And all of the Center City SIPs programs that I think have been very popular as well as Restaurant Week and all the things that you all do in Center City District.
I wanted to go back to one thing you talked about relative to the slow rate of job growth in the City of Philadelphia. If you could talk about specifically in your area in Center City the type of jobs that have grown. Even if it's been slow, have they been low-wage positions? Are they middle-market jobs? Are they high-end? What's the trend there?
Look, I think we all went through the awful experience of 2020 and 2021. We are back at a higher level of jobs in 2024 than we had in 2019. And the good news is we went way down and we came back up again, so let's say we're in recovery. But if you drew that line, there are many cities where that line goes much faster upwards, so that's my bigger picture. I think we've been fortunate until this particular period in which we've grown all of the above, which is when you grow high-wage office jobs, you also as I said drive support jobs within those buildings. You drive jobs for the transit workers, for the janitors, the security guards, the building engineers. You drive retail demand. Those tend to be lower-level jobs obviously. The hospitality industry, that's been a great investment this City has made, the Convention Center and tourism marketing. And those are very diverse jobs. So again, I go back to those numbers. In the downtown, it's one-third, one-third, one-third. One-third requires a college degree. One-third requires an Associate's degree. One-third requires only a high school diploma. We've done well in all those, but we've not done fast enough growth in all of those areas.
Okay. So we've done well but the speed is what's lagging, right, the speed of --
Exactly. I mean, the diversity of jobs we've done well at. And we have lots of good programs to engage people and train people for those. It's the rate of growth, it's the speed of growth, which we need to do much better about if we're going to solve poverty in this City.
Okay. Great. And then my last question since some of my colleagues already addressed some of the other questions I had, it's relative to the contracts that you all have with Center City District, recognizing that your budget has grown sizably over the years, even since I've been here. If you could talk about some of the -- or not some, but the percentage of contracts that you have with minority vendors, with women business owners and also disadvantaged business owners?
Let me do what I promised Councilman -- the other Councilmember. I'll get you those numbers specifically because they're not in my head, but I want to give you an accurate count. But we have a very strong commitment on the construction side, on the service side for making sure that our contracts are diverse. But let me give you -- I promise to follow up with detailed numbers.
Okay. And even specifically for particularly the contracts that are in and around City Hall for folks that are working here. I'm interested in all of them, but obviously the folks that are working on the quadplex in some regard.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilman Mark Squilla.
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Levy. Appreciate your work and ideas. On the front of the vacancies, as we see our Market East, even Chestnut Street and Walnut Street, we have a lot of vacancies. Years ago Center City District had a plan with some art installment and things like that, working with South Street and some other folks on how to incentivize storefronts, how it looks, how to encourage more people to rent, but also there are certain landlords and people who are comfortable leaving these places vacant. What are some incentive things that we as a City can do? And I know New York had vacant property fees and fines and increasing over time. What are things that we could do to encourage people to rent these and maybe if it's not at the top rent that they want or other ways to really fill in these vacancies or let the people know we don't want to have these vacancies for long periods of time?
Yeah. I mean, let's start with the simple thing, that -- and it's something we've tried to do and I think we need to do in each neighborhood, which is don't just put up brown paper and block the window, right. You need to animate the window even short- term. I don't know if we need ordinances or just all the outreach by the Improvement Districts maybe. A little bit of graphic design services could be donated so that we could get these things to look better. And I want to be clear, I was just in as I said San Francisco and I was just in Sacramento. This is a problem across the country. It's not just unique here. I think rather -- I mean, I think what we probably can do is a number of -- there's a lot of people in the real estate brokerage community. I think a couple of simple public forums for some of the commercial corridors about who's in the market, what are rents, you know. If you're still holding on to whatever that number was, I want $40 a square foot when the markets $12, nobody likes -- it's like you don't want to lose value in your building, but as a strategy I think we need some good information coming to owners about where the market is, who the tenants are in the market. We're not going to mandate people rent to somebody, but giving them good information. And we're more than glad to help with that in that process as well. Just to put in the minds of those owners, here are some of the options that you have. Now, they're clearly types of businesses that you and I would be glad to prohibit from happening in a lot of these areas, and that's another tool. But I think we need to give people information. We don't have that many incentives for retail, but we may need to look at that in some neighborhoods as well.
How about as far as certain landlords that own a lot of properties that have no interest in that? Is there any option that we have?
I mean, clearly making sure that they're current on their permits, on their regulations and their taxes is the leverage that you do have. And we all get frustrated, and some of them are truly in trouble and I don't want to beat up on them because it's a difficult time. But some owners are less than responsible owners. And I think in City government you have some of that information that becomes leverage.
Yeah. You don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water and --
-- you know, hurt the people who you really want to try to help, but in the other --
You don't want to create an environment where a business says I'm not coming to Philadelphia because they just beat the hell out of me, right.
On the other hand, there are people who are irresponsible with properties. I've seen it for years.
And I think we need to wrap our heads around it and come up with some -- whether it's working with Commerce. I know we have Storefront Improvement programs. I know we have other programs, and maybe it could be for a vacant property program. Maybe we work through Commerce to get a grant out to people who are interested and we can help market that.
Absolutely. This is the time to be creative. One of the people who I worked with out in -- I was on a ULI Technical Assistance Panel with the former Mayor of Pittsburgh Tom Murphy. And Tom, those who remember him basically said, look, when we took over with declining steel mills we said, let's take percent of our operating budget and instead of spending on operations, spend it on strategic investments for the future. We're at that moment. This is a crisis moment for this and all cities. We need to reimagine our commercial corridors. We need to imagine many business areas. We need good intelligence, but we need some strategic investments here in industries that will grow. That's not easy, but we're a new Administration committed to that. I think that's the strategy now. It's not necessarily to be punitive. It's to be strategic about how we grow this economy again.
And last but not least, and I know we can have meetings and discuss it, but 2026 is coming soon and we're not going to wait for new developments and things like that to happen. As we market our City and look to encourage folks or people who live here to enjoy all the activities that are going to be coming throughout the City of Philadelphia, but also visitors, you know, putting a plan together for East Market, our Center City areas, and even our neighborhoods, we need to start thinking about that. It's only a year away. So --
You know that's music to my -- I just invite you all to go to 6th and Market today and walk west of City Hall and imagine you're a visitor from out of town, right. What are we offering, what are we showing or pick any area which we know is a major tourist destination that's near commercial businesses in your Districts. What's that walk? How do we improve that walk? We can't solve the market, but we can clearly improve the cues, whether it's landscaping, the good signage in windows. It's not the huge expensive stuff, but it's seeing not through our own eyes but through the eyes of somebody who's not from here, what signals are we sending them. These are easily done things. And obviously, you know I'm very focused on how we can do that on Market East, but I'm trying to help the folks down in Headhouse how do we do that and on South Street as well. Absolutely.
Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Nina Ahmad.
Nice to see you in this setting. I had a quick question. You mentioned some tools like tax abatements. What about TIFs and can they be used effectively in this --
And also, the value that is given ahead from the future tax utilization, can some of it be earmarked to do public investment, public infrastructure rather than just to the developer?
Exactly. That's music to my ears, that idea. Because I think we've tended to use TIFs as a tool to assist individual development and that is an important use. Most cities create districts where they make public area improvements, whether it's streetscape, landscaping, lighting. I am very interested in the work we're looking at for the next phase of the Rail Park and what I call a pay-as-you-go district, in which we're developing revenue to maintain the park, potentially developing revenue to support affordable housing. We needed a tool for individual development, but there are cities that have done a much better job at spreading the benefits through TIFs. Now, there are cities that have abused it too. They've gone way too far and they've committed way too much money so it's a middle ground. But in the absent -- if you're as old as I am, you remember redevelopment money from the federal government. That's disappeared. Most cities have created tax increment financing districts to stimulate broader developments that the broad community benefits. I think that's exactly the right direction to go. I think there's an opportunity to do that. If you're going to put an arena on Market East, I think a TIF district is the way to address Chinatown issues, it's a way to address other issues. I mean, any other major project, how do you capture that increment and get immediate benefits. Again, it can be abused. They can be overreached, but finding the middle ground. I'd love to talk to you more about it.
So do you see your BID, PIDC, the City sort of creating a transparent system where we can actually see where the part that's set for the public investment is going? Is Chicago one of those cities that have done it --
Well, Chicago is a city that I think made very creative use and then probably went off the deep end --
-- a little bit, right. I mean, but I admire -- if you go to State Street in Chicago which was essentially their Chestnut or Market Street, they completely redid the street with tax increment financing and maintained it for a really long period of time and addressed many of the issues that we have today on East Market or East Chestnut. They used them very successfully in neighborhoods across the city. And then after Mayor Daley was there forever, it just got out of control as --
-- I think is the criticism. In California, they completely shut down TIFs because they felt they went too far, but there are many cities -- so my suggestion is to bring people in from the cities that made great strategic investments as well as people who made mistakes and kind of learned from the best and the worst and figure out how we use this as a tool. We need new redevelopment tools for all of our neighborhoods as well as the downtown. That's one that's within our reach, it's state law, but we need to use it well. And because the City's Budget Director is not sitting here, we're not taking his money, it's public money. It's the same issue, it's how you make strategic investments and meet current needs as well.
And a follow-up in terms of TIFs could be used for foreclosed buildings, all of those things. But could we also envision a fund set aside for this space where we are feeling so much of this foreclosure pressure, which is sort of invested in by all entities, particularly our philanthropic and our nonprofits, which are the corporate nonprofits. We do not have pilots really. So is there a way we can envision creating that to offset some of the paying debt that can occur with these financing structures?
Again, I don't want to overpromise what they can do. But we need to look at this as a tool to generate jobs, to generate public area improvements, to generate maintenance of areas. You don't want to just treat it as the City operating budget; here's an entity that's short on money, let's get them TIF revenue. There needs to be a reason, job generation, animation, et cetera. But I think it's really worth it and again with the new Administration strategically to look at this as a tool and learn from other cities.
Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Rue Landau.
No. 18 Not that I don't want to say thank you for all of your work --
Some spirit somewhere wants you to participate. But thank you, Nina. That's it at the moment. Are there any other witnesses to testify on Resolution No. 240075? (No response.)
Thank you very much, Mr. Levy. (Witness approached Witness table.)
Job, how are you doing today. Just state your name for the record and I have you testifying on Resolution 18 Nos. 240078 and 240079.
Good morning, Council President Johnson and all members of Council. My name is Job Itzkowitz and I'm the Executive Director of the Old City Special Services District. I'm here to testify in support of Resolution No.s 240078 and 240079, appointing Louis Joe Tice and Elizabeth Lizzie Woods respectfully to the Board of the Old City Special Services District. Joe Tice works in Old City as a practice manager at Accelalpha and he is also a long-term resident of the neighborhood. He has served for several years on Old City District's Economic Development Committee and Clean and Safe Committee. At its May 17, 2023 meeting, the Old City District Board of Directors unanimously voted to support the nomination of Mr. Tice. Lizzie Woods is the Senior Vice-president of Strategic Planning and Real Estate Development at the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation. Ms. Woods has served for several years on the Old City Economic Development Committee. As one of our nearest organizational neighbors, DRWC has played an important role in the growth and appeal of Old City, most notably with the currently under- construction I-95 Park CAP. DRWC has been an Old City District strategic partner participating in our Vision2026 framework and related studies and plans. At its July 19, 2023 meeting, the Old City District Board of Directors unanimously voted to support the nomination of Ms. Woods. This concludes my testimony and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you. Any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)
Okay. I'll take one small question on behalf of Rue Landau regarding streeteries. (Laughter.)
Regarding streeteries, you had led the movement during the pandemic to help revitalize our neighborhood corridors, particularly in Old City around the concept of streeteries and there's a renewed interest in this body led by Councilwoman Rue Landau to look at the process on how we streamline streeteries in the City of Philadelphia to make it more vibrant to do business here in our city. Can you just briefly give us an update and your perspective on that particular process and the benefits of streeteries through our economy?
Sure. Thanks, Council President. And thanks to Councilmember Landau. I haven't drafted my testimony yet for that hearing, but I intend to be back right here at this table. We actually founded the Philadelphia BID Alliance in March of 2020, anticipating that we were going to have to have restaurants open at some point and there would have to be a way to serve customers without them being inside the rooms, inside the dining areas. And we looked at four solutions. One was allow tables and chairs outside. We live in a city. Just let someone set out cafรฉ tables and seats right in front of their business because the (inaudible) at the adjoining business, and then also in the street. And Old City in fact was the first neighborhood that had a street closure on Second Street between Market and Chestnut to allow for all of the restaurants to come out every weekend, largely with the generosity of the Parkway Corporation. We had to shut down one of their lots every weekend for an entire year. And those allowed our restaurants to survive. Our restaurants would not have survived throughout that year and into 2021 without those streeteries. But what we learned was that people loved them, right. Residents loved them. The businesses obviously loved them. We also had recommendations -- so the BID Alliance put out a 2023 policy agenda that spoke to this a bit, had some recommendations. It's at philabidalliance.org. I'm happy to share it in advance of that hearing. But one of the ways to make it I think is to pre-approve some designs. There are a lot of national companies that manufacture them. There's no reason they have to be national. Shift Design can build streeteries. DIGSAU in Philadelphia can approve streeteries. And while I had hoped that would come out in the regulations, it is possible to put it in the legislation that says, here's three things, here's the craft crash standard that you need, here's the width you can have, here's the depth you can have depending on the width of the parking lane. And I think it's just something that makes living in the City great, but clearly there's been a problem with the process where no one has returned back to building streeteries. So we had maybe a dozen in Old City. I don't think we have any right now.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you so much, Council President. And thank you, Job, for your testimony. I just had a very quick question, something that I actually saw on social media this morning. And I hope that this particular business is in your service territory. How do you all work to support businesses who have impacted by vandalism? I saw something on social media Cray Taste being vandalized. And so, I just wanted to put that on the record to ensure that they are receiving appropriate services and assistance from --
Great. Thanks. I'll check for that. I haven't seen that yet. We do a few things. Our street cleaning crew, our ambassadors are able to do basic graffiti removal with property owner permission. If we can't get that permission, we'll call it into CLIP and CLIP is really -- everyone here knows how great CLIP is and how quickly they can come out to remove that. We've had a couple of issues with broken windows. Sometimes if someone has limited mental capacity and it's not --
We actually -- I'm not sure if any other neighborhoods have this. We have a daily foot patrol officer, Officer Al Macchione. He works the District Monday through Friday 10:00 to 6:00. And so, he'll come in and review tape. We have cameras in our office, so sometimes I'll find someone. If it's the same individual, he knows who that person is. And then when that happens, if their insurance isn't covering it, we'll refer them to the Storefront Improvement Program because there's no reason that that program can't be used to support some of the expenses related to some of the damage that may have been caused.
Okay. Well, thank you so much for the follow-up, but I just wanted to mention that because they are an important minority business in Old City, and I think they've been doing a wonderful job. So thank you very much.
Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)
Hearing none, are there any other witnesses to testify on Resolution Nos. 240078 and 240079. 2
6 The Chair recognizes Councilmember 7 Rue Landau. 8
Just 9 quickly, could you tell us the 10 parameters of your district 11 geographically? 12
Sure. We 13 get this question all the time 14 because the Old City Commercial 15 District is not the same size as 16 Old City. So the district's 17 boundaries are Front Street to the 18 east, 6th Street to the west, 19 Florist Street to the north. 20 Florist Street is the street that 21 runs right at the foot of the south 22 side of Ben Franklin Bridge. 23 The south side is Walnut 24 Street, both sides, so Penn Mutual 25 Towers and the building that's along there. And Dock Street to 1 Dock Street and the Marriott Old City.
Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)
Hearing none, thank you very much, Job, for your testimony.
Mr. Christmas, will you please call the first witness to testify on Resolution No. 240029.
Sorry. It's Adam Geer first. I'm sorry. (Witness approached Witness table.)
Can you approach with coffee? If you want to. If Members think that's appropriate, it's up to you, sir. How are you doing today, Adam?
Good afternoon. Just state your name for the record and please begin your testimony.
Adam Geer, Acting Chief Public Safety Director. Good afternoon, Council President, members of the Committee of the Whole. I am Adam Geer, the Acting Chief Public Safety Director. I'm absolutely honored and humble to sit before each of you today and testify in the people's house in Philadelphia, the greatest city in the world. I'd like to start by thanking Mayor Cherelle Parker for this nomination. Words cannot express how grateful I am to the Mayor for this tremendous opportunity to lend myself and my life's work to her vision and this mission. I'd also like to thank this legislative body for creating the Chief Public Safety Director position. It is my firm belief the City will greatly benefit from an office whose sole mission is to coordinate resources which are often siloed. This includes bringing together departments ranging from Police, L&I, Streets, Clean and Green to Parks & Rec, Free Library and even Procurement. Breaking down silos also means bringing in community partners and state and federal agencies. Under my leadership, we will do anything and everything to align all of these things and more in the name of public safety. Now, if I may indulge you, I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself and how I ended up in this seat. My mother was born in Kingston, Jamaica and moved to Baltimore when she was 16. Like many Jamaican mothers, my only acceptable career options were med school and law school. I had momma's extra special study hall at home. And I remember her telling me that I would thank her one day as I sat under that table lamp doing her extra homework. Thank you, Mom. It was my mother's example as a nonprofit leader and her tireless and selfless dedication to individuals and families with developmental disabilities that has had its greatest influence on my character. My father was the first person in his family to go to school, attending Duke University. My grandfather was a janitor at Duke, and he would walk the halls of the school and tell people that his son would one day go to the institution. Our last name Geer derived from Geer slave owners. It's memorialized today by a street name in the only cemetery in the area where slaves and my ancestors had bestowed to them to bury their dead with dignity, all existing near my father's campus. After graduating from college myself at New York University and taking my mother up on Career Option No. 2, I left the Big Apple for the City of Brotherly Love to attend Temple Law School in 2004. My girlfriend at the time who is now my wife and a lawyer in the City's prestigious Law Department joined me shortly after to attend Penn Law. And I want to be very clear here. I went to the better law school. (Applause.)
TU. To make a long story short, we fell head over heels for Philadelphia, the diversity, the people, the realness, the food, the sports. supports. We and now our two daughters are proud Philadelphians. I started my legal career as an Assistant District Attorney for this City in 2007 and served with distinction under four different District Attorneys. I held various leadership positions during my tenure and ended my career there as a Homicide Prosecutor as well as the Office's Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. I believe that my reputation as a prosecutor amongst my peers, the Defense bar, the courts, the police, victims, witnesses and defendants is one of fairness, toughness and skill and always in the search for truth and justice. Perhaps though, my proudest achievement at the DAO came outside of trial work. For years and years, victims of intimate partner violence who were subpoenaed to court had to sit in the same seating area within arm's reach of their alleged beaters, abusers waiting for their cases to be heard. It was often intimidation or worse, and many victims would leave court before their cases were called. There was talk for years and years about dealing with this untenable situation. I convened the Courts, the Defender's Association and Domestic Violence Prevention organizations to create a separate and secure waiting area for victims of these crimes, filled with outreach resources and personnel. I left the DA's Office in April of 2021 to accept the position of Deputy Inspector for Public Safety for this City. In that role, I began my work of engaging and coordinating public safety stakeholders to accomplish tangible results. One of my accomplishments was working with the state officials. Shout-out to Majority Leader McClinton and her team, local officials, community leaders, the PPD, the Police Foundation, academics, the State police, the Municipality Police Education Training Commission and the FOP to successfully change a state law that required our Philadelphia police recruits to take a reading comprehensive test that had a disparate impact and failure rates for candidates of color. I was told that it would be impossible to get the law changed at the state level in the partisan House and Senate, but we got it done. I'm now finishing this work in my new role, leading a team of academic leaders and experts from the Community College of Philadelphia, Philadelphia School District, UPenn and Temple along with the PPD to create a fair reading test for our police recruits that will result in a more diverse police force that mirrors the communities they will serve. And that is an example of how I will lead in this office. Working with whoever it takes and not accepting that this can't be done, to get results and fight for the public safety of all Philadelphians. I know everyone is waiting for our 100-day Public Safety Plan that Commissioner Bethel and his team are drafting along with Managing Director Thiel and you will have to wait for the Mayor's Budget Address and the 100-day Report for the full details, but let me assure you that it will be a holistic, smart, targeted and comprehensive plan emphasizing prevention, intervention and enforcement. We will focus on gun violence interruption, community violence interruption, increase in co-responder units and quality-of- life crimes like retail theft, illegal dumping and illegal ATVs. We can and we will do all of these things. We can deal with our children's trauma and give them meaningful things to do after school and real economic opportunities and career paths. We can keep them safe physically, mentally and emotionally. This is the work that we must do and I'm excited to work with each and every one of you. I can feel this energy and the tides are turning.
Indeed I'm looking forward to working with all of Philadelphia in our various institutions, industries and communities from North to South, East to West, Northwest to Northeast, Center City to Southwest, so that we may move as one city with a purpose and make this the safest, cleanest, greenest city in the nation with economic opportunity for all. The weight of this position and its responsibilities are not lost on me, especially in the wake of these recent senseless and tragic shootings. I will tell you what I told the Mayor the first time she interviewed me. I believe that my experience in my life both personally and professionally has prepared me for this moment to be sitting in front of you offering my service. Thank you. I welcome any questions you may have.
Thank you very much for your testimony. The Chair recognizes Councilman Curtis Jones.
I was inspired by your comments and your testimony, and I share your optimism that we, even though it does not seem like it, are on the precipice of turning the corner on some of this. And here's why: Because I remember when people like Katherine Gilmore Richardson, Jamie Gauthier, you, Mr. President, felt in the last Administration gun violence and public safety had not risen to a priority level. I truly believe that it really has today, unfortunate because of what we're going through. But the good news is that we recognize it's a problem. So when we created your position, what we had realized when we went to other cities was that there was no you, which was the straw that stirred the drink to make the silos blend so that people work together. I think it might have been West Chester -- no, it was Chester, was it? (Yes.)
And other municipalities where everybody got along. They didn't agree on every little thing, but they had a commitment from the Rec Department to every -- to work together. And they said, we're going to not point at each other but point at the problem. So when we were crafting that legislation, we had you in mind. So welcome to the party.
My questions are we are working as we speak to take our Blueprint for a Better Philadelphia, Safer Philadelphia and break it down by department and give that to the departments to say when they step before us for their budget, where are you at this level, where at you at that level. One of the things that we charge you, and there was a section 13 and we pointed to you and you'll get the letter, even when the mishap happened at Macy's where the young man was shoplifting and wind up killing the guard, there was something that came out of that, that through the cameras, through SEPTA, through the Philadelphia PPD, they worked together. They actually worked together to apprehend that individual. We need to do more of that. And so, give us a sense of how CJAB or other places your stirring of the drink will occur.
Thank you, Councilmember. Absolutely, and I believe in the strength of this position. I believe in its mandate. I believe that it will have a very real effect on public safety and improve public safety. We are already seeing results of that. Aside from the work that I've been doing, we've been working outside of the convening that we've been doing, and we've been convening. Just the position itself, someone reached out to me from a law enforcement partner that was not necessarily fully in the mix, we brought them into the mix. And as a result of that, there's technology sharing. There's been regular meetings that have occurred, and these are meaningful technologies by the way that have and will have a direct impact, I think, on the safety of some of our communities, right. So not only is it just the fact that there is a focal point and for people to say, hey, if I have to bring up this issue or if I've got this idea or there are these people convening, it's here, it's this very visible office. It's also that we have the Mayor's mandate, the direct Mayor's backing, right, that power that she brings which flows from her directly to me and outward. So I'm incredibly thrilled about the opportunities to bring people in and to organize and to coordinate so that we can get ourselves out of our silos and understand. And, you know, I am a believer now. The Mayor keeps saying this One Philly. We are One Philly. We have to bring everyone in. That's what I feel right now genuinely about the City and where we're at, is that we can all pitch in on this mission. So I look forward to that. And joining CJAB, I think we have a meeting later.
We in this body sometimes plant seeds and it takes so long for the trees to grow and get the fruit from, but we show our patience session after session. One of those things is the crime lab that we worked with the state, put up some City dollars and we want to see that -- we know justice will not occur unless you can process ballistics, unless you can determine if this gun is the same gun that was used in several crimes. So working with our state partners, do you have a strategy for that to make sure that they bring home the bacon that meets with us and works together with us? So it's not just the departments in the City but at the federal and state level, do you have a strategy for that as well?
Absolutely. I think organizations like CJAB that you point out are great. Fortunately because of my career here in Philadelphia and the fact that we have some amazing leaders who come from Philadelphia who go to state office, we have some amazing state relationships. The Senate Majority Leader, again I'll mention that and so many others. So we will be intentional about that. We'll also be intentional by the way about reaching out to our federal partners. In just the two months that I've been here, we have formed a pretty good relationship with the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. I think that that's going to lead to some support, and I'll leave it at that. But I think that's going to lead to some support. So we're going to be intentional about reaching out to all of our partners to assist us in how we need them to be present for us.
Finally, Mr. President, if we could recommend to our state partners that he be placed on the Pennsylvania Crime and Delinquency Board. That's about $83 million annually that comes from the feds to the state that could be useful with his insight as to what departments might be able to utilize those dollars. Thank you, Mr. President.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you so much, Council President. And thank you, Mr. Geer, for the opportunity to have a meeting with you and get to know more about your background and your experience. And I just wanted to get a few questions on the record so that we have this information on the record because this is the very first time Council is being charged with approving this position as the Chief Public Safety Director. And so, you talked about in your testimony as you served as an ADA in the District Attorney's Office and how you became a Deputy Inspector General, I think, for Criminal Justice. If you could just -- or for Public Safety. My apologies. If you could just speak to us about the qualifications of the position, which states that the Chief Public Safety Director must have five years of senior leadership experience in a law enforcement agency, legal entity or other public safety position. Please explain your work experience and how your background meets these qualifications.
Thank you, Councilmember. And I appreciated the opportunity to meet with you as well and talk about many of these important issues that we're facing. I believe that the Charter was changed to three years. I just want to make sure we're on the same page there. But three years of relevant law enforcement -- I'm sorry, leadership experience within a law enforcement agency. Clearly in the DA's Office I held several leadership positions, including Assistant Chief of Municipal Court. I was Assistant of South Division when they were broken into divisions. And I was also a senior prosecutor in homicide and then the Officers' Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. I'm not sure if we sent around my resumรฉ, but that would I think alone add up to over three years if we're doing the math. And then I would consider absolutely my tenure as a Deputy Inspector General to be a senior law enforcement official or an official in a law enforcement agency. That was work that I did for over two years. So that I think speaking directly to the Charter and requirements would account for that time period.
Okay. That would be great. Thank you. Also, you talked about sort of the coordinating resources in City government. And Councilmember Jones spoke to this very well about the silos and stirring that pot to ensure that everyone is working together. As part of this position, you will be tasked with the following functions: Coordinating the deployment of resources within the Department of Police, Fire, Prisons, Parks & Rec, Emergency Management and other relevant agencies, providing operational guidance in consultation on the budgets of the safety-related departments and agencies, preparing reports regarding public safety measures, planning an implementation of security for City facilities and all security services contracts and establishing and maintaining cooperative relationships with civic and business organizations, violence prevention agencies, schools, courts and others. And so, if you could just talk about your background and your experience as it relates to the real work that you would have to do around coordinating the public safety resources, providing that operational guidance but also the budgeting guidance you just spoke to relative to the Mayor's upcoming and forthcoming budget address, research and reporting, managing contracts and facilities and establishing and maintaining partnerships?
So we'll be coordinating with each of those agencies, just like by the way we will be coordinating with some of the ones that aren't stated there. Procurement, I would use again as an example, Parks & Rec, right. The true power of this position comes in its ability and its reach really to coordinate with these City agencies and then beyond, coordinating with the community, stakeholders and beyond. So I think my reputation on delivering on difficult items that require interagency and intercommunity cooperation is there. That's -- for whatever reason I believe that I have a talent, a skill for bringing people together and having them work together to get stuff done, to really get stuff done, right, and not just talk about it. So I think my coordinating function by the force of me and my office, we're going to be on point. We're going to be doing what we have to do. Now, with respect to the specifics of let's say contracts, security contracts, that and the -- we'll continue to coordinate with the Department of Public Property. They currently are charged with that mission. We will be coordinating with them and understanding if they have any challenges. Whether there's budgetary issues, again the good news is that we have some really great budget people in the Mayor's Office. Rob and Bob is what we call them. And I personally will have an employee who will be dedicated specifically to the Office of Public Safety and their budget who I can tell you from working with her is also extremely talented. So we will put --
Pardon me and to your point, I apologize for the interruption, are you speaking about a budget analyst type position that would be under your purview or within your department?
So I believe we're going to put together a team that people are going to be very -- I've got some of my team members here today, they're going to be in awe in the work that we're going to do. I'm excited.
Okay. That'll be great. Also, if you can just explain which of the five areas will be your priority in your new role?
Which of the five areas that we talked about will be more so your priority in your role?
Meaning coordinating public safety resources, providing operational guidance and budgeting, research and reporting, managing contracts, establishing and maintaining partnerships.
We're going do look at all those things. Clearly I think my coordinating function is going to be key here, helping identify for the City agencies what their public safety mission is and tease that out and get people moving in the right direction. That clearly is the majority, the spirit I believe, of the Charter.
Okay. Great. And then you talked about this already relative to your work. Specifically you talked about working with Commissioner Bethel and you talked about Managing Director Thiel as well. If you can just explain how you intend to work with the Managing Director, our Police Chief, our Fire Chief, Emergency Management Director, all of our sort of public safety leads to create a city-wide-all-of- government approach to public safety?
Under the Mayor's leadership, we've been meeting regularly, those partners that you just stated. We fortunately have an extremely good working relationship, particularly with the Commissioner. The Commissioner and I work very closely. Our communication is open and frequent. We understand what's at stake here. We are aligned in the Mayor's vision and we are on the same page, so we will continue to move as one and work together in the interest of the people of Philadelphia.
Okay. Great. And I apologize for the delay with my phone. I was trying to pull up here the Resolution No. 230115-A, wherein it states in Article 3, Chapter 3 under Qualifications. This is 3-307, that the Chief Public Safety Director shall have five years of senior leadership experience in a law enforcement agency, legal entity or other public safety position. That is from the amended bill. I just wanted to say that for the record.
Thank you. Furthermore, if you could just talk about how you intend to engage with City Councilmembers directly, the community and also youth.
Great question. For City Council, and I think in each of our meetings I've expressed this, I'd love to have a direct relationship. If you do not have my cell phone, please ask me after this hearing. I will give you my cell phone. I intend to be completely plugged into City Council and completely available to City Council. And you can hold me to account for that if you find that not to be the case. You are incredible partners. We cannot do the work that we're going to do in the Mayor's Office without your work. And frankly in my tour of meeting with many of you, we learned some things and we got some good ideas to take back. So that is the relationship that I intend to foster with each and every one of you.
And then if you could speak to the community and youth --
Community's going to be huge. I would say if we looked up my calendar right now, probably 75 percent of my meetings are with community groups. And I'm just throwing that out there, but I'm meeting with community groups, anyone and everyone will have a meeting with me. I'm trying -- sometimes we might disagree with some of these -- their positions, but we're having these conversations in the same way that I've illustrated in my prior career with certain organizations that we've met. I'll take a meeting with anyone. I'll meet with them, and we'll see if we can work together. At least we're now communicating, right. And I know you and you know me. I also think we have to be -- and it also by the way will be an important piece of our public safety plan largely, is bringing community groups and you will be hearing more about that. And I'm quite excited for that opportunity. But that will be an important part of our strategy. With respect to the youth, we have to engage them or thinking about ways to engage them in a very meaningful way. And I'm not just talking about like -- I'm talking about what are the youth saying, what are their needs, really hearing from them. Whether that's like regular meetings, whether that's a committee, we haven't gotten there yet. But in order to understand our challenges, and I was just speaking to a community leader this morning about the disconnect between the youth and what's sort of going on in their mind and why they're doing some of the things they're doing. There is very clearly a disconnect and we need to somehow tap into that and understand it if we're going to be serious about our work.
And in particular too, I think it's sort of the youth who -- and I'll give you an example. We have the summer jobs program, right, and we advertise to a ton of young people. We want everyone to have a summer work experience. Now, it's not typically the young people who are signing up to be a part of this experience that we're trying to get to. It's those who do not sign up, those who are living and operating in the shadows. That's the youth we need to get to and that's the group that I'm talking about in particular. Okay. And I just wanted to put that on the record. You talked about having a budget analyst. But what other resources do you anticipate you will need to effectively carry out your responsibilities in your role, and what will the staffing look like in particular just for your role? And I'm asking this in advance of budget so I better understand what we can anticipate relative to your needs.
Thank you, Councilmember. We have recently added a First Deputy Evangelia Manos who's in this room who --
A First Deputy. Her name is Evangelia Manos. She's back there, and I couldn't be prouder to have her on my team. I think her reputation is one of absolute excellence. Her addition has been very meaningful to me quite frankly. We will be adding other pieces. Some of our strategic plan -- and I don't want to get ahead of the Mayor's Budget Address, but some of the pieces that I want to put together to put our stamp, however you want to call it, what I think is really going to pitch in our battles here in terms of public safety, they are in mine. They do -- I'm just going to let the cat out of the bag. They're community-oriented, right. We have our community violence interruption model. I think we really need to lean into that. I think we need to be intentional. I think that deserves its own position, someone who would be tasked frankly with bringing together a community violence intervention organizations and having them in an intentional way go out and helping the public safety mission, right. So I don't want to get ahead of myself, but we will have an office -- by the way, the current criminal justice public safety cluster portfolio, that is going to become the Office of Public Safety and all those resources are -- we avail ourselves to those resources, which are plenty.
Sure. And I guess that's what I'm seeking to understand. And I'm certainly not trying to get ahead of the Mayor's process relative to the budget address that is forthcoming. But I'm just seeking to understand in our ask to approve this position what are we to expect and anticipate since we know that this position is what's been added to the Charter, but what more should we anticipate relative to your specific needs outside of what will be happening sort of around you in the organizational structure? That is my question because that becomes important to the work that we have to undertake in this body as a part of our budget process. And so, what I will ask is if you could submit to Council President for dissemination to all Members your organizational chart and/or structure when it's available and the positions that will report directly to you and some of the positions that may have dotted line reporting to you and how much all of that will be.
Thank you very much. Can we have that information prior to the official budget presentation, which I think we're starting next week, which is Monday. So that will be helpful for members as we evaluate the budget process. I just had a quick question. Part of your testimony you talked about coordinating resources in the City departments, including the Police but also the Procurement Department. So can you elaborate on how you plan to use the Procurement Department to achieve public safety goals?
Thank you, Council President. I believe firmly that every agency, City government can at its core somewhere, right, have public safety. I really, really, really, honestly believe that. And in doing my work, I can give a quick example if I can. We had to align Procurement to get a contract done for our prime time clean up pilot program that's going to be rolling out in the next month or two where we will be the first nation to publicly fund crime scene cleanup. Well, we need to get a contract for a private vendor to accomplish that. Eventually it's going to turn by the way into a workforce development, which we're really excited about. But Procurement has a lot of contracts that they have to get through. I want to be at a place where Procurement will just take instead of me calling them up and saying we need this contract and having the Mayor have that work, that is already common practice for them if it's a public safety-related contract, that it is just the normal course of business that those kinds of contracts are prioritized. So when I bring up Procurement, I love using that example. It's just an example of how we can tease out the public safety goals in each of our agencies and have a more efficient process.
And then also, in regards to the reading exam for the police cadets that you also referenced in your testimony, what's the status?
-- that you worked on regarding those individuals who will be becoming police cadets, what's the status of that policy?
Thank you, Council President. I had to miss the meeting today, but Dr. Guy from CCP I put him in charge of today's meeting and he's just absolutely 100 percent fantastic. So we're having meetings, regular meetings and we're trying to get to a point where we will have a recommendation to the police department as to what that test will be. It is in motion and our partners there, I'm not sure if I mentioned it, Temple, Penn, CCP and the Police Department. So we're actively working to get that test out as quickly as possible so that we can continue to improve our recruitment at the police department.
And my last brief question before I turn it over to my members. I know when this position was created I kind of envisioned a scenario where every Monday the District Attorney, the Police Commissioner, folks from Dr. Watlington's team, someone from Behavioral Health, someone from Parks & Rec and other key various agencies, right, would be meeting in a room and have a dashboard on how they're going about achieving here in the City of Philadelphia with some measurable goals, but most importantly the coordination including DHS, other City agencies all in one room every single week and just evaluating how we move the needle, right, to address public safety, and we also know that poverty is the underlying factor of why we see Black and Brown neighbors suffering from crime and violence. Give me your perspective of how you envision leading in this particular position of public safety as we move the City of Philadelphia forward.
I think that that's spot-on. There are built-in organizations like the CJAB that attempt to do this and they bring in broader stakeholders. But as it relates to City government and those agencies that you just named off, that sounds about right to me. We will get to a place where we're being very intentional about our meetings with stakeholders and City agencies because that is, as you say, what this position is really all about. We have been doing that based upon issues. So there are certain -- for example, Kensington Initiative, we are meeting with organizations -- I'm sorry, with City agency leaders and implementers currently in that model. So we're doing it around issues now, and I think it would make a lot of sense to at some point stand up as you say a regular meeting where we're just touching base on a whole host of issues and not just issue-based. So I take that. I think that's a great point.
Is your team a part of the strategy with the Kensington Caucus when they meet with the District Attorney? I guess it's weekly or biweekly.
I've been invited to those meetings. Unfortunately I could not make the last one because that horrific shooting was last Friday. And so, I have been invited and I intend to go.
Okay. Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Anthony Phillips.
Thank you, Council President. So, Adam, as you know the City of Philadelphia has experienced this surge of violence and it's impacting where our children work, play and also where we work and play and our children live and play, excuse me. One of the things that we're really concerned about with the Public Safety Director is that we understand what the role is supposed to be in terms of employing resources, making sure every department has a resource for public safety. But the question that I had in particular was what particular resources, can you give more examples of how your plan or vision around the library and being a public safety space and the rec centers and just other avenues for every department in the City of Philadelphia focus on public safety, how are you going to bring that out to be able to coordinate the efforts for safety-oriented, you know, for City agencies to be more safety-oriented? Excuse me. Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember. I have not gotten approval to do this yet from the Mayor. But my plan is to ask her to ask all the agencies to identify their public safety mission. I will help them do that, but I would like each agency to on paper identify their public safety mission and that would go to Procurement and they would have to think about what their safety mission is. And again, I will help them do that. So to answer your question in terms of just trying to pull out the public safety -- and by the way, another point here I would make is it was just this terrible shooting that occurred, right, these pair of shootings. I haven't, you know, I've only been in here for two -- I'm working towards this, right, working to get this up. But there might be that Parks & Rec, that libraries have to pivot their programming, have to have some plan in place to saturate an area with resources or to have programming after an incident like this. These are things that I'm thinking about. So maybe they need to stand something up where it's getting kids off the street into meaningful activities right after an event, what does that protocol look like. So we are thinking about all of those things and how to be intentional there.
Yeah. So that actually leads me into another question that I want to pose. You're right, right, these are moments where we can be thinking about how our rec centers can be plugged into public safety. The question I have is do you see yourself based off what you said there are levels of you have to work with all of these departments in the City and sometimes they take time, extraordinary amount of time to get themselves together to do what they need to do. How do you plan to increase efficiency and effectiveness, meaning that they're utilizing their time wisely and being transformative with the work so that we can cut through red tape and bureaucracy that often hold us back from doing public safety work, like the work you're going to be doing for public safety?
So in my last role as Deputy Inspector General, I tried to do a lot of the work that I'm doing now. But no offense to the Inspector General, but I didn't have the authority of the Mayor telling these agencies to do X, Y and Z, right, with the specific mandate of the Mayor. The difference is that I think we've all seen the Mayor is absolutely, truly committed to a vision of public safety. She has given her cabinet, by knowing certain terms, specific mandates to accomplish her goals and her vision and her mission. So the difference is when I'm calling up Parks & Rec, Library asking for meetings and stuff, again it's coming straight down from the Mayor to them, and I'm getting these meetings by the way. We're having these meetings. They're listening to what we have to say and doing what we're asking them to do. So it's going to take time, right. Allow me some time to really dig into how this is going to look from a systemic operational thing. We're getting there, but that is what this is all about. And frankly, I think I'm the person who's going to execute on it.
Thanks. That's a good question -- I mean, one of the things that I think is just as important is just finding ways to -- you have a vision, it's aligned with the Mayor's vision, but then to be able to quickly put your vision -- make sure it's effective and efficient for the City, get the approval necessary that you needed to do it, all of that is going to be really important for us to quickly move things along, because otherwise we're going to be more stagnant if there is a whole process that's actually more bureaucratic than anything, that doesn't allow us to get things done quickly and efficiently for the City of Philadelphia. So I want to encourage you to think more, if you can, reflect on it when you get back to us when you get more time to think more about how you're going to increase that efficiency. But I do want to ask this question, which I think is really important, you did -- I loved that Councilmember Gilmore Richardson mentioned this. Our City Councilmembers as you said are willing to work with you. We want to bring you into the neighborhoods, into the communities. That's really important. But I also want to see if -- we're going to have events. We're going to have tons of events. We're going to want you to be there as District Councilmembers. But I wanted to also ask you, if you so happen to put together events and programs in neighborhoods, right, which I would love for you to actually work with your (inaudible), how do you plan to make sure that our offices are really connected and coordinated with you in those efforts?
We have been I think very intentional, Councilmember, about our contact with the Councilmembers if we're going to be going out to those events. I agree with you very much that we want to have -- one of those things on the org chart you'll see is a Director of Community Engagement Partnerships, so that person -- and that's outside of the Mayor's Community Engagement Team. We're going to be very, very, very intentional about that work. That person clearly will be tasked city-wide and their team with making sure that these connections are there and meaningful and that there's a flow back and forth, right, and that they truly are plugged into those things. That's going to be that person's job, and then it'll filter up to me and my leadership. So I hope that answers your question, but we're going to be intentional about that.
It does. And my last question focuses on one of the biggest obstacles that we face in providing more community policing is the lack of human power. And so, the entire recruitment of onboarding process of police recruitment entails at least 10 steps, right. And it takes about three to four months to complete before the appointment letter to the police academy. Only about 10 percent of those who start the onboarding process become police officers. So how do you plan on assisting the police department with streamlining this entire process so we can get people into work in the police department?
Thank you for that question. The police department is really dedicating a lot of resources to this very issue. It is something that I looked at starting as a Deputy Inspector General. It is something that since becoming Acting Chief Public Safety Director I've had meetings with the Police Department on this, how are we capturing our applicants. Because you're right, there was a period of time where someone would apply, like go into the web portal, apply. It would be something like six months, they would get an email saying show up this weekend for your training and we were losing a lot of people who clearly needed employment, like accepting jobs for them. They've moved on with their careers, whatever the case is. They've gotten that down to about 30 days under the good work of the police department. I've been in those meetings where I'm understanding how they're doing that. And they're going to continue to make improvements I believe thereby implementing technologies that will assist them basically in capturing those applicants who do sign up. That will look like by the way a text message system, for example, where if you do put it in the application portal, you're getting regular texts and regular communication as to the process so that you're not falling out of the process. So I'll continue to have those meetings as I'm doing. I will continue to support them in any way possible, including standing up this police reading test, which we think will increase the number of applicants, and importantly Black and Brown applicants in the City of Philadelphia.
Thank you. And just one more thing. I misspoke earlier when I said it was my final question. Can we count on your office and you to be transparent with providing a report maybe 6 months in, 12 months in that we can provide to our neighbors in our Districts about how this role is working, what's happening, what's changing? What I also hope from the report, it's not just how many community events that you've attended. That doesn't change lives. It's just you're part of a space. Hopefully, you can report more about what the departments are doing to change. If you can do that transparency, that would help us tell other neighbors that this position is working that City Council helped put together, and we would like to show that this is efficient and effective as possible.
Thank you. We certainly want to report on our successes. And things that we can do better, absolutely, we will have transparency there.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier.
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, Director Geer.
I appreciated your testimony. Thank you so much. I have a Caribbean momma too so I definitely could relate to you, and I agree the path is like you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer. So when I became an urban planner, there was much confusion. Like I still think people don't even understand what that means. I was very excited when our former Council President came up with this position and when we voted on this last session. And I think it's the correct approach to public safety in the City. In 2020, I put forward and got unanimous support from my Council colleagues around the Mayor declaring a city-wide emergency on the issue of gun violence. And the reason why I put that forward in the first place is because very early on in 2020 it didn't take me long to recognize that not only were the communities that I represent in West and Southwest Philadelphia really struggling with COVID, but we were seeing levels of gun violence, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades. And I would go to these scenes and I would talk to people. And I never saw anything beyond the police response. And it was also apparent to me that residents had no idea of what the City was doing to help them, right. We had this Roadmap. Nobody knew what that was. Nobody knew how that was supposed to work in concert with policing to make us safer. But at the same time, I saw how we were responding to COVID, right. We were bringing all City agencies together, we were mobilizing, right. When the schools shut down, we had Parks & Recreation switch to delivering food to people who needed it every single day. We set up stations at the rec centers where students could do their work. The Mayor used sort of his platform to fundraise, right. The Roberts family gave us millions of dollars so that every student could have a laptop, and you also saw the Mayor on the T.V. every day or Dr. Farley or the Managing Director talking about the stats and the cases and what we were doing to bring them down. That's how you respond to an emergency. And it was very confusing to me why we weren't doing the same thing as it related to gun violence because I saw what we had the capacity to do when we prioritize something. And so, I was very much in support of this position moving forward, and I appreciated a lot of your answers around how you would get agencies to see their role differently, right, and as change agents as it relates to public safety, because there's no way we should be in the midst of a gun violence crisis that involves teens but I have rec centers closed or I'm fighting for pools to get open or I'm fighting to get L&I to shut down properties that have turned into a hub for gun violence. When every agency realizes that, you don't have those types of problems, so I appreciate this role. But what I wanted to ask you was about accountability, to talk more about accountability. You're going to be charged in your position with bringing together people who have differing levels experience than you, differing levels of seniority than you. People who have the very important job of being in law enforcement and may see themselves as the experts on public safety, how would you go about accountability and how would you go about keeping all of these important people focused on this sort of unified goal, particularly if people don't see themselves necessarily as being answerable to you? I would love to hear more about that.
Absolutely. Thank you, Councilmember, for that. So because of my prior career as an Assistant District Attorney and frankly the work that I was doing in the Inspector General's Office, I was able to forge meaningful relationships, if we're talking about the police department, with many of the police leadership, if not all, so Deputy Commissioner level. And also by the way, because of the trial work I've done, sort of my context from rank-and-file police officers on up through the system were many and meaningful. Also, because of my work, the courts. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the courts and the leadership. We all know each other and I think they know what my reputation is. And I'm hoping that there are some people who would ask questions of the courts, from the police department, from rank- and-file on up from these public safety partner agencies about Adam Geer and my reputation in the courtroom and how I operate and what I do and what I mean and who I am and my character. Because I think it's that which allows me to in those rooms move seamlessly and have the respect of my peers. And I think most people who encounter me for any bit of time understand that I'm serious business, right. I am who I am. And so, I don't imagine that will be a problem at all. In fact, I'm not sure that we'll get there because I do think of myself as a leader. And often in these spaces, that is what happens. I become the leader that I am. So if there needs to be any kind of accountability check, I'm here for it. But leaders tend to only have to reserve that in instances where it's really needed, and I think we're going to have a good-working relationship with those partners and we'll be leading together to accomplish the Mayor's vision.
Okay. I guess I'll end on asking beyond sort of the good relationships that you have created, do you feel that you have the authority necessary to demand accountability at times when people aren't going to like you and that good will might not matter as much?
Absolutely, 100 percent. This is serious business here. Public safety and people's lives are at stake. It demands no less than my full whatever it is that I have to do in order to accomplish these goals for the citizens of Philadelphia. We're going to do what we have to do.
12 Thank you. 13 Chair recognizes 14 Councilmember Nina Ahmad. 15
I have 23 to echo what my colleague just said 24 about the coordination and then the 25 accountability, right. And in spite, you know, it can't be a personality-driven position. It's going to be existing forever. So what are the measures of structuring the office so there's a tracking ability added on like a dashboard or something where the public can see what they voted for? So I wanted to know if you had a thought on that. I have a couple of subquestions, but maybe I'll let you answer that first.
No, not specifically we haven't gotten to the point where we're eliminating a dashboard. We have gotten to the point where the Office of Public Safety -- and again, we're just creating this, right. We're just going to put in these pieces that I think will make a difference. We're still hiring out and building and building this thing out. But absolutely, there has to be some type of metric. By the way, some of these positions which you'll see on the org chart speak directly to this, right. And there is a specific position that you will see when I circulate the org chart dedicated to exactly what you're saying, right. So we want to put that right inhouse so that we are understanding the work that we're doing. It's very important.
Thank you. Then I have a second question: The Delaware Valley Intelligence Center, what is the coordination there and are you going to be able to use hotspot mobilization within the City?
We have a very good relationship. Many senior members of my team also have been working for the DVIC for many years in their leadership. I am currently working with them on a number of brand new initiatives that I think will benefit the City of Philadelphia, in particular a revamping surrounding some tip hotline stuff so that we can really utilize that and update that frankly. So the relationship we have with DVIC in terms of their CCT -- CCTV stuff, all of that, they're a partner and they're an incredibly important partner to our work.
And my last question is about the violence interrupters that you mentioned. Are you going to be using mental health resources to buttress those positions or just on-the-ground resources for engaging with our young people?
That is very important work that needs to be done frankly. We do have our CIRT teams, our Crisis Intervention Response Teams which we spoke about. There are likely certain things that we can think about in terms of those organizations going out and doing work and making sure that they're understanding those challenges and maybe there's some specific training that they would require, but we do understand the need to have that as a part of the model somewhere, right. Yeah, that's important.
And most specifically CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy to be engaged in these spaces is going to be critical for us to really tamp down the cortisol, the violence that erupts as a result of our cortisol. So I'm really looking forward to that piece of your work. So thank you again and very impressive background and I am an immigrant like your parents, and it's so coincidentally I have a daughter in medical school and a daughter in law school, just saying.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Rue Landau.
Thank you, Mr. Geer. Thank you so much for being here.
A couple of things. First of all, I just want to recognize my colleague Councilmember Gauthier's comments that she made about gun violence plaguing our city and being an emergency that we've all watched and being shocked at how quickly the City could respond to a COVID crisis and not respond to violence in the same way. So I am so glad that we are in the right direction. I think there's no doubt that we in Council feel the same way, that we're all paddling in the same direction now and I think the City is definitely going to be in a better place. I had a few questions and mine started with exactly what Councilmember Gilmore Richardson was asking about. I'm very curious about the structure of your department and I think we're learning pieces now. It's a little confusing that there's been some hirings and you've talked about a top team, but we really don't understand what it looks like and it's hard to see how you are set up for success unless we fully understand the structure. I appreciate that an org chart is coming, but can you speak a little bit more to even how many reports you think you'll have, how many employees you'll have and we'll start there and then the next one.
Absolutely. So a lot of this is not -- so there's an engine in a vehicle right now. That engine was the criminal justice public safety cluster. So there was a pre-existing number of agencies within the Managing Director's Office tasked with public safety-related things within this cluster, including Office of Violence Prevention, Office of Criminal Justice, Office of Re-entry Partnerships, Town Watch Integrated Services, Office of the Victim Advocate. There was also an executive leadership within that cluster, some of them again who are here today in terms of policy, people, data. All of that is within the Office of Public Safety or will be when you see it on the org chart. So it is somewhat of like a rebranding. We will think about things differently. We will re prioritize in line with the Mayor's vision, but that pre-existing org chart is largely there. What I'm now adding is like a lot of dotted lines to everything, right, because as we've talked about this job is about reaching out to the other agencies and bringing them in and getting them out of -- so there's dotted lines everywhere. You won't see them in the org chart because that's just a given in our minds and in our work. And then we're going to be adding a few of these other central pieces, specifically tasked with some of the things that align with the Mayor's vision and the work that we need to do. For example, when the Councilmember just said how are we understanding the metrics, are things working, all kinds of things. We're going to have a person for that. Our community violence interruption model, which I think is going to be awesome and successful, especially in a city like Philadelphia by the way where our community violence interruption groups are also so amazing, right. A person dedicated -- you're going to see that. That's an addition. So we've taken what's already under the engine of the thing. We're going to tweak that up. We're going to put some new oil in it and all that kind of stuff, and then we're going to add a few other turbo kind of things, and that's what it will look like. I'm not sure if that answers your question.
That's very helpful. The second question, which you've told me part of the answer to now, is how your work aligns with or coordinates with the Managing Director's work at this point who did oversee much of this?
Many of the important parts of the Managing Director's Office like DBHIDS, right, Office of Homeless Services, Office of Domestic Violence, there's incredible crossover with the Office of Public Safety. The way that we've been operating is as one with respect to the work that those agencies are doing and those joint agencies. So many of the meetings we're having, for example, around the Kensington initiative, and I'm saying those leaders are in the room, they're on our team with respect to these issues. So we have a great relationship. We're on the same floor. We kind of are one, me and the Managing Director's Office, but we have these specific carve-outs and things that can go down to policies and certain offices that work together just under what would be my portfolio.
Okay. I know we don't want to see any redundancy in the work, so having a clear line is certainly helpful, especially for us when we want to know --
It is. There is a very clear line, Councilmember. In fact, me and the Managing Director we are very good at offboarding and making sure that he's got what he's got and I've got what I've got and those are our universes.
The second thing is how are -- are we using the experiences of other cities to help inform our work here in Philadelphia?
We are looking at other cities. I'm looking at other cities. We have a policy person, Joshu Harris. He loves looking at other cities and bringing back -- we are always having conversations about what other cities are doing, including as an example most recently Community Court in Manhattan, right. That would be one example. Obviously we're looking at open drug market-related policies in other cities that are doing things, so we clearly want to look for the best example and do that.
Great. And my third thing I think is more of a comment going back to Council President Johnson's comment, at least I recall I think even back in the Street Administration we had these neighborhood more like collective groups, it wasn't a PDAC, but it would have representatives from the police, SEPTA, the schools, some community leaders -- it was not a PDAC so it wasn't organized by the police -- that would meet and actually talk about what's going on, how are we keeping our students safe and whatever. And I think Council President Johnson said we are looking for somebody who can bring together the entities at the top. And I certainly think you have the personality to do that, but we also want to make sure that we're mimicking that top level down in the hardest-hit communities throughout the City and I think it's a great model that could look at community-specific issues.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.
Thank you, Council President. And thank you, Mr. Geer, for your testimony and your willingness to meet with me and at this point with some community residents as well. I think I want to follow up on the question that one of my colleagues asked about. There's not just a gun violence crisis in the City, right, in Districts like mine. There's also a health crisis, and there's been a health crisis in the District for a really long time. There was a point in time in the District when there were many people who felt like we as a city should be doing things a different way, right. In my opinion, right, I'm going to say in my opinion instead of us as a government addressing the situation and responding to the needs of what was happening in the 7th Council District, we chose to bring those people who were making a lot of noise into our workforce. And it created to me a much more difficult situation to be able to respond to because instead of doing what we needed to do, we wanted to kind of shut them out. And so, my question to you is some of them are still here in the system, in our workforce. Some of them are a part of families that are families to people who have been in our workforce for many, many years. How are you going to respond to the individuals who are currently working in the spaces that we will need action in and really difficult action, right? We're going to have to make some really difficult decisions over the course of the next year or so in order to really improve or restore quality of life in the Kensington community. How are you going to navigate those individuals who will push back on some of the things that the Mayor and yourself are describing you will need to do in order to restore quality of life in Districts like mine?
The short answer, and I guess this gets back to the accountability question, we're not going to have time for that kind of obstructionist behavior. Certainly I can tell you this, the Mayor absolutely 100 percent is not going to have any time for that stuff. We have important work that needs to be done. And if it is identified -- without knowing any specifics, Councilmember, if it's identified that there is a situation like this, then we will deal with the situation so that we can get the work done and accomplish the Mayor's vision and mission, period. So without knowing specifics of particular cases and if we can have an offline conversation with anyone or whoever wants to speak to me, we can have that conversation and see if we can resolve those issues.
You participated in one of our community meetings recently and I appreciate that, right. I'm grateful for you being present. I think there's going to be a need for more of that. As I mentioned, there were folks in the Administration that made themselves or sold themselves to community residents as being their connection or them being the connection to City government. That created a huge distrust, rightfully so. And so, in positions like yours it's going to be extremely important for you, the decision-maker, to be at those community meetings. We have a lot of work to do in cleaning up what we have caused in that community, but we also have a lot of work in building up trust before that community buys into anything that we're going to do. I think it's also really important to note that we need to identify who truly lives there when the noise is happening and the pushback is coming, right. The folks who live there, who lay their heads to rest, who have businesses there are the people that we need to be listening to. We've heard all the comments over the course of the last few weeks as it relates to harm conduction and to some of the providers that are there. DBHIDS has $1.7 billion, and a lot of that money go into programs in the 7th Councilmanic District. What is your plan or how are you going to respond to those individuals who fail to understand that we're not getting rid of harm reduction or that we don't support harm reduction, but that it is necessary for us to change how we do the work of harm reduction in the 7th Council District?
I mean, we are going to be changing the work that we do. I think it's our role as City government to deal with problems that are difficult, that affect public health, that affect crime, that effect some of the things we're seeing in your District. That is our job. That's what we're here to do, is solve problems and sometimes make difficult decisions, and sometimes people aren't going to agree with those decisions. What we're not going to do is do nothing. We're going to do something. I will rely on yourself, Councilmember, other people that represent that District, the community groups in that District, the people who live there frankly to have input into what they want to see and how they want to see these policies sort of meted out. We think we have a pretty good idea, right. We want to be compassionate and we want to get people into treatment, we also want to have a Kensington at K&A where children, community, family members can traverse up and down in a vibrant business corridor with vibrant happenings and music and food without being in an open drug air market and experiencing the trauma related to just seeing it, which is what's happening today.
I think what we also need to recognize is a lot of those programs are being funded by us. And so, I'm going to look for the support of the Administration as we go through the budget process for support when we call for the reallocation of funds for different programs that do some of this work, right. We don't do a good job at oversight. And just because we are the ones funding them or they are friends of our friends who are running those programs, we tend to not want to do anything. And so, I think it's important for you as the conductor of the orchestra, which is what we were calling your position during one of our public hearings, to understand that we are going to hold you accountable, right. You're the person we're going to hold accountable for the work that does or doesn't get done in Districts like mine, right, because the folks who call Kensington home deserve that, right. That means that we're going to have to not fund certain programs and/or reallocate dollars to programs that are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Thank you, Councilmember Lozada. Councilmember Jim Harrity. I just want to double check for the record.
Thank you, Council President. Adam, thank you again. I've been at a few meetings already in the community, me and Quetcy and a couple other people from the Kensington Caucus. It's not like years ago, no. Years ago we didn't have the alternative programs that we have now. People just went to jail. How do you see the courts playing a role with you in the public safety thing and how do you see the DA's Office working with this? Because in reality to do what we are trying to do with getting more people into long-term recovery, that is going to take some of them being charged in order to get them into the alternative programs. How do you plan on navigating between the courts and the District Attorney's Office together, you know, getting them to work together in order to be able to use these programs that we have? I mean, we have the AMP program. We also have the mental health alternative programs, all good tools. But the tool won't work if you don't have the toolbox and the guide with a wrench making the adjustments.
Absolutely. Thank you for your question, Councilmember. You all frankly have been leading. I think the Kensington Caucus was pulled together, that meeting that I'm excited to get to. That's part of this, bringing people around the table together and communicating. So having the DA present, having you all present, having the court present, having us present. We'll be very meaningful for understanding where everyone stands and what people are going to do and what people are not going to do. There is a lot that we will be able to do around trying to get people into treatment and connecting them to services that do not engage the DA's Office. So all of this sort of pretrial stuff that we are going to be implementing and maybe thinking about differently, but certainly that's going to be available to us. I have had communications, regular communications with the DA's Office. I probably at this point almost have regular communications with the courts. I've met with the courts and the court leadership, the administrative judges who are going to be touching some of these issues in a meaningful way. But to answer your question, we need all of them. We need to be communicating. We need to clearly understand as I said what people are going to do and what they can do, right, to support so that we can pivot and fill in any holes that we can fill in to bring real progress and to really make a dent in some of these issues. But we're going to talk to these partners, period. And that includes the DA's Office, we have to. The citizens of Philadelphia deserves City government that communicates, right. They deserve us to be talking. We are all adults. We are not going to agree 100 percent of the time, but it's our responsibility to have those conversations and see where we stand.
Great. All right. One other question: Are you planning -- I know you're going to work with all of the departments within the City, including Parks & Rec because I believe that is a great tool for us to try to reach some of these kids. The problem is programming, lack of and lack of awareness even more importantly, because in Kensington in Councilwoman Lozada's District, we have a lot problems that are being offered that the kids really don't know about. How do we do better with getting it out there that we have these programs and how do you see these programs working as a public safety thing, because bottom line mentorship and having them around people who care about them and don't want to see them do bad things because the problem is their mentors right now are the guys who are doing bad things? And speaking from experiences as a kid growing up in Southwest Philadelphia, we had five Catholic Schools out there with five football teams. Now, we have about two Catholic schools left with one football team. The availability of programs, we complain about the kids running ragged, it's mostly because they don't have anything to do. How do we combat that and how do we make that part of the public safety initiative?
Huge, huge part of it, huge part of it. And we have to really put our money where our mouth is I think there. And maybe I'm going above my pay grade here. But I have a close personal friend who was in Parks & Rec. They've since left the City. And when Commissioner Slawson was appointed, he had very glowing things to say about the Commissioner. The day after her appointment I emailed her and the engagement was more or less paraphrasing, very excited to know you, we're going to be working together closely and it's one of excitement about potential. That is a partner that I'm going to value dearly, right. Procurement is going to be probably lower than Parks & Rec. I'm just being honest. That's going to be really a great stakeholder for us, and I think there's a lot of work and creative things that we can do that.
Yeah. I mean, listen, we've made some strides. I've visited different Councilpeople's Districts and some of their rec centers. And it's amazing how the stuff varies per area. While we need the rec centers for the sports and the activities, part of it, the bottom line is that a lot of kids nowadays aren't into sports. I've got a 300-pound 14-year-old at home that wants nothing to do with sports. But if you give him a computer, he can do whatever you want him to do. How do you see our rec centers being re-envisioned to include more of these kinds of things, maybe computer labs, recording studios, e-games. Kids now can get scholarships to a Division 1 school to play video games, and they can make a lot of money at it. And I think we have to thinking outside the box and trying to figure out what's working in different rec centers that we can mimic in other rec centers?
I think that that's right. And that's where bringing in the youth and being honest, hones about approaching them, and honest about listening to them and honest about what's going to pull them into those rec centers and into those activities, that's where that's really going to matter. And I think we're poised in terms of our leadership to think of ways to get to that so that our programming is successful as it can be in attracting these young people. Because it's critically important, right, like I get it. I've seen some of the programming at my kids' rec center and it's appropriate for them. But I can see some other individuals who we really want to bring in not being at all a dang interested in what's going on at the rec center. So having those moments where we're really trying to figure out things, whether it's music, art, things that are really going to get to them.
Yeah, exactly. We need to figure out what the kids want. I had visited Memphis Street Academy, which is a charter school in Kensington, the other day and actually sat down with six or eight of the 8th grade students and had a really deep conversation. It was very enlightening. And these kids live in the 7th Councilmanic District for the most part most of them, probably about 90 percent. And what they see and what they're thinking is -- I didn't realize an 8th grade student could be that intelligent about how they're thinking about things. And, you know, they brought up the food insecurities to me, they brought up the violence. They brought up how come we can't get these people into rehab. They see them on a daily basis and they walk by and, you know, we've had the conversation about the trauma that they're facing. So thinking maybe we need to talk to these kids a little more and find out what they think of how we can actually change Philadelphia. I think we would all be surprised at some of the ideas they come up with.
Thank you very much. I see Jeffrey Jay Young. Are you --
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, Mr. Geer. How are you doing today?
Just quick questions about your strategies, right. So how do you target those underrepresented groups during the Procurement process when it comes to contracting with your particular office?
Again, we want to be extremely intentional -- I know I keep using this word, but it's the one that makes sense -- about the organizations that are getting City contracts and the work that they're doing and making sure that it's the good work that we need in this time, okay, period. So we are on this org chart going to identify a position where that position will be tasked with this, right, be tasked with understanding the grants that are coming out and having fair measures for these organizations. And also by the way, being fair in terms of the support that we might be able to lend as a City to make sure they will succeed. And again, I had a meeting this morning with a community leader about this, expressing your same sentiments about there's some organizations out there that are doing some great work, how can we make sure that they get on your radar. So it's something that I'm actively thinking about.
And what role will you play in developing the overall public safety policy and strategy implementation? Will you play a big role or any role in deciding what policies that the City's Administration is going to push forward, for example, like GVI or some other types of public safety policies?
Yes. So specifically, GVI falls within our portfolio. We are seeing some really great success with that program that was launched in 2020. We just received some great news, that we received the federal grant, about $615,000. That will allow us to expand GVI to start incorporating juveniles, which in the wake of the last week or two is extremely, extremely good news so those policies, specifically GVI and things that are inhouse directly related to me and my team. As it relates to broader public safety policies, absolutely, I see that as my job to make recommendations to the Mayor to bring to her things that are working in other cities that we can do here and then implement them.
Thank you. You segued into the youth for me. So what role do you see DHS playing in the overall public safety scheme of our city?
Very important. We have just set up our first meeting with DHS and the Commissioner there to coordinate. That is going to be -- that's a meeting that frankly they've been having over the last several years. We're discussing specifically youth as it relates to the approaching summer and warmer months. So we are going to be tied to them in trying to see how we can support the work that they're going to be doing and likewise, but that is an important agency for sure.
Thank you very much. Are there any other questions from members of the Committee? The Chair recognizes Councilman Curtis Jones. For the record, the light was not on. I see it now, sir. Go ahead.
That's all right. One of the things hopefully within your org chart, you will have data crunchers because if it ain't measured, it ain't managed. And one of the things that is illusive to us is to be able to say a pound of prevention equaled a pound of cure. And so, being able to crunch data to see whether it's the 57 Block strategy, whether that investment actually reduces crime in the area, whether it is the use of credible messengers and those types of organizations within a geographic area that we can correlate reduction in shootings, reduction in arrests. Those kinds of things that are very subtle but very important to this body because we have to fund them. I asked the City Controller how much does crime cost, like from the time somebody pulls the trigger to the time they're apprehended, the car that they rode to jail in, the jail that they went in, the food that was fed to them, the evaluations that were given, the DA, the Defender, how much from the point of crime to the disposition of the case does it cost and why is that important when you then say to me or when someone suggests to us, if we invest this amount of money this is how much we can save, then it makes mathematic sense. So measuring what's going on working hopefully with the Controller's office and others to actually measure what we're doing I think is a critical step in managing what's going on. Hopefully, you're included that in your structure.
It is in there. We -- you said everything. You said everything, Councilmember. That's exactly why we think it's that important. Exactly what you just said, we have to have that data or else what are we doing.
And one other thing. When the District Attorney who has a really good data crunching group, the Controller has a really good data crunching group, I think the Defender has a really good data crunching group, the Inquirer and Daily News have a really good data crunching group. They don't always sync. And we need to know whose data we should go by. So that's why it's important as well. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you. I only smiled, Councilmember, because I agree with you completely and we've had conversations about this.
Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments from members of the Committee?
Thank you. Mr. Geer, what role do you see your office playing in scenarios where there are victims or co-victims of crime who do not feel like they received justice, right. There are a lot of people out here that feel that certain crimes are not being punished at a level that they think they should be, and they are continually to be traumatized by being a victim of that crime. So what role do you see your office playing helping to support those victims and co-victims of crime who feel like the system, the justice system, has not been working for them?
Thank you for that. Thank you for that very, very important question. We have in my portfolio the Office of Victim Advocate, which is going to do and does a lot of this work. I think you are absolutely correct, that there needs to be dedication to that. That is part of my plan of really leaning into the community violence interruption programming that we have in the City. Because as you point out, a lot of times those great community groups get in there right before or sometimes unfortunately right after a horrible incident and their work of communicating to the people who are affected steers those people specifically and their communities and their families and a loved one away from the decision of retaliation frankly. That is why it works and it does work. And we're starting to see I think at the national level and certainly we're going to find out here how powerful that is, where when you're dealing with trauma when you are availing or when you have resources for people who are dealing with that and trying to make the decision of do I get justice for myself, am I even going to get justice, I did not get justice. When you're dealing with that in the way that I think you think needs to happen which is the way that I think needs to happen as well, you are allowing those people a chance to make a different decision, which I think will result in lower shootings or homicides, et cetera. I hope that answers your question.
Thank you very much. And just last question, and I think Councilman Curtis Jones played a role in putting this legislation together with former Council President Clarke and I know I'm a co-sponsor on it. But just to refresh my memory, the salary for this position is what? Do you remember off the top of your head?
265. Okay. I just wanted to ask that for the record because when it was a Charter change, the public would come to us and say, how we come up with this number and so forth. But I only say that from the perspective of the reason why we've been in this for an hour and 34 minutes and we actually started on time, it's just to impress upon you how critically important this position is. And I think that's why a lot of Members took time out of their schedule not even just being here from a hearing standpoint, but this is the number one issue that we're addressing here in the City of Philadelphia. But we do want to thank you for stepping up to the plate and stepping in this space to be the number one public safety leader here in the City of Philadelphia. And we know the vision that our Mayor is focusing on and we're going to work collaboratively as you get through this process to make sure we move the City of Philadelphia forward to make sure our young people are safe, to make sure our seniors are safe. Councilmember Jeffrey Jay Young took the words out of my mouth in making sure that we're advocating and fighting for victims and co-victims of gun violence. So we thank you for stepping up the plate when it comes to being a public servant around this particular issue. I know you and I have an event coming up, so you'll be in South Philadelphia with the Young Chances Foundation where we will be addressing the issues regarding public safety and gun violence in my own community. And so, I just want to state that for the record, that you have been on the ground prior to today out and about in the community touching base with people at least listening. And I think that's a testament to your character and how you want to collaborate and bring people to the table. So if there aren't any other questions or comments -- the Chair recognizes Councilmember Quetcy Lozada.
This is the last question. I promise. I didn't hear you mention at all in your testimony how you would or how do you intend to use or work with the Office of Youth Engagement, the Youth Commission. Each one of our Districts has a young person that represents us that lives in our District, right, and can speak to what is happening there. What is the role of the Youth Commission and the Office of Youth Engagement going to play in the work that you all are going to be doing?
I would love to find out more specifically the work that they're doing frankly. Specifically why are they convening, I don't have that information currently. But we do want to access as I've said the youth in a meaningful way. That seems like a built-in way to get out of your Councilmanic Districts what we might need, especially if that's your recommendation. So certainly, we want to look at that.
I think it's important because, right, we talk a lot about what we're supposed to be doing and young people or what young people want to see or what young people are involved in, and often times they are the people that are missing from the conversation. And so, instead of talking at them we should be intentionally inviting them to the table to hear from them directly, right. The Mayor just held a meeting on Friday and we heard from young people. And it was amazing to me how they ran off how much they could pay for guns, right, where they could pick up a gun, how quickly -- it was very comfortable for him to say I can walk out this door and order any kind of weapon that I'm interested in, right, for something as cheap as $200. And so, I think that we really need to be more intentional when we're talking about public safety. Be more intentional about including them in the conversation and have them help us really address and make our city a safer place.
Yes, I was in that meeting, Councilmember, and it had the same effect on me. Just absolutely, absolutely eye-opening every time you talk to a young person, especially a young person who is in the midst and in the wake of that kind of trauma. It will make you -- it will increase your resolve. It will really increase your resolve. And almost as importantly, you are understanding what exactly you might have to do that specifically caters to the issues, right, that they're facing. So I think that we are taking that point very, very, very strongly to engage our youth in the process.
I appreciate that. He ran off those prices and the names of those guns like he was ordering from a menu. And so, that was really disturbing to me. It actually made me even more concerned than I already was.
Thank you very much, Councilmember. Are there any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)
Hearing none, is there anyone else here to testify on Resolution 21 240029? (No response.)
Hearing none, we want to thank you very much, Adam Geer, for taking time out of schedule today and providing your testimony.
It's my pleasure. Thank you, Councilmembers. Thank you, Council.
You're welcome. We're going to take a 10-minute break to let people go to their bathrooms. Go ahead -- before the Chair recognizes Councilmember Thomas.
Thank you, Council President. I have to tend to other Council business, so I just want to be recorded as voting aye on all bills and resolutions presented before the Committee today. Thank you, Council President.
Leave is granted. 10-minute recess, that is. (Brief recess.)
This hearing we're now calling to order. Members, please take your seats. Mr. Christmas, will you please call the first witness to testify on Resolution No. 240038.
The witness is Renee Garcia, Esquire, Acting City Solicitor. (Witness approached Witness table.)
Absolutely, absolutely. Just state your name for the record and then will you please begin your testimony.
Sure. Renee Garcia, G-a-r-c-i-a. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council President Johnson and esteemed Councilmembers of the Committee of the Whole. I am Renee Garcia. I have served as Acting City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia since January. Prior to my appointment, I supervised the Law Department's Litigation Group as the Chair. I'm grateful to Mayor Parker for asking me to serve as Solicitor and I appreciate your consideration of my appointment. The mission of the Law Department is to serve the residents of Philadelphia by providing legal counsel of the highest quality to all City officials, employees, departments, agencies, boards and commissions. With the expertise and leadership we have on our team, we are excellently situated to aid Mayor Parker and this legislative body in making Philadelphia safer, cleaner and greener with economic opportunity for all because this vision is already central to what we do. With my time before City Council today, I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself and provide a snapshot of the work that we do at the Law Department. Formerly a resident of Council President's District -- sorry, Council President. I left for Councilmember Bass' District in Mt. Airy, where I live with my two daughters and my husband who practices dermatology in Roxborough. We are an interfaith multi-ethnic family and are members of Germantown Jewish Center. My older daughter who's 9 years old is my sensitive and creative sole, who's currently into designing clothing and generally follows the rules while my younger daughter who's is hyper-competitive, 6 playing soccer with to years 7 old this winter and does not take 8 no for an answer. It's kind of 9 like my personality split in the 10 most exaggerated way. 11 Their parents are split between Kansas City, Florida and Long Island where I grew up in a small hamlet of 4,000 people. Although from different backgrounds, both sides of my family valued hard work and service to others. My relatives are painters, carpenters, cooks, police officers, volunteer EMTs, volunteer firefighters, County clerks, medical works, Sunday School teacher, Scout troop leader and my grandfather was the town building inspector. They include veterans of the Navy, Air Force and Army. My mother's family had a long history in that little hamlet. My dad's family, however, immigrated from Mexico and Catanlonia Spain. They came by boat and airplane in the 1950s. My grandparents came to this country to escape General Franco's brutal dictatorship. He starved the people of Catalonia, dismantled their government institutions, restricted all freedom of the press, imprisoned political opponents and did not allow them to speak their own language. The rule of law met nothing for persecution for the Catalonia people. I pursued a Liberty Arts education at Barnard College and later became the first lawyer on either side of my family after attending Harvard Law School. Nobody was particularly surprised that I went to law school given how worked up I got when I perceived injustice as a child. I knew I could serve with a law degree in this country where the laws are not always fair, but the arc of justice -- the arc bends toward justice. In the last 8 years I've worked at local 9 nonprofits, global nonprofits, law 10 firms and in the corporate sector. 11 Throughout my career I have always 12 carried a pro bono practice, 13 serving as PNC Bank's Pro Bono 14 Chair and participating in DEI 15 efforts, but constantly felt a tug 16 towards full-time service. 17 At a time when I was trying 18 to figure that out, City Solicitor 19 Diana Cortes offered me the Chair 20 of Litigation position and there was no looking back. And now here I am three years later as the proposed Solicitor and I cannot think of more important work. I've been to battle alongside some of you, University City Townhomes, gaming, gun cases, tobacco cases, asbestos in the schools, driving equality and the police transparency bill.
These are tough cases and you've seen how the Law Department is there to fight alongside you for our residents. With over 365 attorneys and professional staff, our department comes to work every day with a true sense of purpose, to collaborate with Council and our City clients to protect the residents and to build a more equitable and prosperous future for the City of Philadelphia. Whether it's removing a child or an adult from a dangerous situation, filing an emergency petition to demolish a hazardous building, defending a City employee who did their job according to law or keeping our residents' personal data protected, the Law Department keeps our city safe. Our corporate team allows the City to contract with essential service providers and shape our built environment through infrastructure programs, real estate leases and grants, and of course we can't do any of this without money. Our Torts team protect our City's coffers while our Property Assessment and Tax Unit ensures that residents and businesses are contributing their fair share. Our Affirmative and Special Litigation Unit sues bad actors that inflict nuisance and danger on our residents. And we've recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to support our community. And finally, the Law Department ensures good governance for our work, providing everyday counsel to client departments and elected officials, ensuring transparency through the Right to Know law, enforcing environmental regulations, drafting and defending legislation, representing our Boards and Commissions and so much more. Our attorneys and staff ensure that the City is operating legally and transparently. In short, we do it all. As I wrap up, I will briefly address my plans for the Law Department as we continue to support this very ambitious Council and Mayor. First and foremost, the Law Department will focus our strategy prioritizing the issues and outcomes that are the most important for our clients, including you. I'm undergoing an assessment of our work with the goal of breaking down silos and creating synergy among, for example, the units working on public safety. The more we know about your goals the better we can realign our work. Second, we will move past the status quo to propose innovation that moves the City forward. The Consumer Protection bill is a recent example of that innovative legal solution that our team can develop in coordination with Council. And lastly, we will continue to do our work through a lens of equity. The rules of professional responsibility for lawyers in rendering advice, a lawyer may refer not only to the law but other considerations such as moral, economic, social and political factors that may be relevant to the client's situation. Although the entire legal industry talks about DEI, in no 24 other position are those principles more important than for the municipal lawyer who helps to write and enforce the law. I have had the privilege of representing both City Council and the Administration in my role as Chair of litigation and now as the prospective City Solicitor. As City Solicitor, I will remain steadfast in my commitment to upholding the attorney-client privilege while providing high quality representation to all of our clients in the interest of the City. Thank you for welcoming me today and I look forward to collaborating with you as we all work to serve the City of Philadelphia. And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
Thank you. First question: Under your leadership, please explain what will be the Law Department's policy for settling or litigating cases against the City. And just for an example, recently Councilmember Isaiah Thomas introduced the Exonerated Justice Legislative package on behalf of Philadelphians who were convicted of crimes and later exonerated. Currently Pennsylvania does not provide compensation for exonerees. And so, does the Law Department have a process for reviewing these cases to make sure individuals are properly compensated? What is the average amount of time between a claim made by an exoneree and the resolution 17 of their claim, and what are the Law Department's internal goals and metrics for the resolution of claims made by the exonerees? And this is all in the context of the Law Department's policy for settling or litigating cases against the City.
Thank you, Council President. We have several dozen of these. We call them overturned conviction matters. Overtime conviction I think that's what you're getting at. And just to be clear, we find out when they're coming when you all find out when they're coming. So they come to -- we see in the newspaper or we get a presuit letter from the plaintiff's counsel. And these cases are very difficult cases because it's something that happened often 30 or 40 years ago, so you can imagine huge volumes of documents, right. And often times there's a conviction and there's multiple appellate levels, right. So they're very complex. Often times a number of the actors that were around 30 or 40 years ago are deceased. So it takes us quite a bit of time to work through what actually happened, even to get all of the documents together. But we do work these cases up very, very thoroughly. And I'm very proud of the work that we've done on these because there certainly were issues in the past, right. But every case really needs that very personal touch. And so, it is not going to be a matter of us turning around. One of your questions is how quickly can the claim go out. It's not going to be overnight, right. And so, we do work these up. We have settled them and we settle on -- sometimes the numbers are a little uneven and that's because we settle them on a per year basis. So how many years were they incarcerated. We settle them on a per year basis. We have settled a number of them. We do have others that may go to trial, but we have settled them far below the verdicts that have come around the country of those who have gone to trial, because our lawyers are very, very thorough and really no rock remains unturned. So we can ensure that those who are compensated are compensated appropriately.
In terms of the Law Department, what have you done to train police leadership to prevent or have you thought about engaging in working with the police department to train police leadership to prevent wrongful convictions? Have you performed any sort of analysis to determine what gaps in training, supervision or discipline causes wrongful convictions?
Yeah. Thank you for that question. Like I said, a lot of this happened 30 and 40 years ago, so enormous amount of change has already happened, but the Law Department does have an after-action policy. I always say it's never about one case. It's always about systemic issues. And so, when we do see a case, whether it's involving a conviction or really anywhere in our litigation portfolio, we do write up what happened in the case, what systemic issues that we see and that goes to the client and we work with the client to fix the systemic issues. So certainly, over the years when we see anything arising in litigation with police, there is that constant feedback loop.
When you say systemic issues, is there one department or unit that's more prone to claims than others just based upon your experience?
It can really happen anywhere. The police, they're a big client of ours, right, there's a lot of them. But it could happen in the torts context --
Let me back up then. Not so much where it could happen, I'm just talking about in terms of data on the books. I'm sure in your office, right, there should be files of, okay, we got wrongful conviction suits based upon Philadelphia police officers, right, and it's broken down by category.
This may be Strike Force Unit. This may be Drug Task Force Unit. This may be Robbery and Homicide Unit, right, where these types of wrongful convictions come up. Do you have any data to show overall big picture-wise when it comes to the department these particular areas we've seen more wrongful convictions claims than other areas?
We see the most cases needing remedial work in the excessive force, not in the overturned conviction because so many changes have been made over the last three or four decades. The interviews aren't the same as they used to be. They're videoed. There are more people in the room. They have protections already in place. So those issues that came up 30, 40 years ago in these cases we're not seeing those again.
Okay. In 2022, a jury convicted former Philadelphia Homicide Detective Philip Nordo for his actions during homicide investigations, which included the sexual abuse of witnesses and informants. What is the Law Department doing to compensate his victims and the individuals who have had their convictions overturned because of his misconduct? And that was just basically 2022, which is roughly two years ago. So that's more recent.
So give us an update on how we're addressing that.
We have a number of cases in litigation right now. We have settled one matter and we're proceeding through litigation.
Okay. At this time, I'm going to recognize Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier.
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, Solicitor Garcia. I don't have questions. I only have praise. I am so thrilled by you being nominated for this position, my whole team as well. And it's because of what I saw you do with respect to the University City Townhomes case. And just by way of background for those of us who weren't here or for people watching, a couple of years ago I put in place a zoning overlay that covered the University City Townhomes as well as other expiring affordability properties. In response to that, the owner of the property, IBID, sued me as an individual, sued me as a Councilperson and sued the City of Philadelphia. And with you as the Chair of Litigation, we fought that in Federal Court for I think over a year or around a year. We fought that very well, and we did it so well that the owner winded up settling with us in that settlement, including a $3.5 million Tenant Fund for the 70 families involved and it included the City of Philadelphia receiving percent of that very high value site at 40th and Market that we will use to build 70 new units of affordable housing, ensuring that there's still affordability in University City. And there were many things that struck me about what you did in that case. First, that was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me professionally, to have these folks sue me personally for the value that they felt that they were losing and you were able, you know, and your team was able to comfort me. You had the charges against or the suit against me as an individual and a Councilperson dismissed, so we were only dealing with the suit against the City, which was amazing and a huge comfort to me. You fought that case expertly. We were up against -- our team of public servants, our team that was dominated by women of color was up against this high-powered law firm which may or may not have been represented in this room today earlier, and against a team of mostly men who did not look like us. And you guys just did an amazing job and I was so proud to be represented by you. I was so, so proud. And then I know that your primary job is to represent the City of Philadelphia and sometimes that can demand taking a conservative approach, but you also had a heart for the people in my District and the people who were in the midst of this affordability crisis, and I appreciated that and it has always shown through, right, as we were going through this case together. And even after we negotiated the settlement, you kept your eye on implementation. All of those -- I think maybe there are two families or so that haven't received their $50,000 to find new housing, and we just talked the other day about how we will construct new affordable housing on the site. So you carried it all the way through with such grace and such skill and such fearness. So there is no doubt in my mind that as our Solicitor you will continue to both carry the best interest of the City of Philadelphia and the best interest of our people, the people that we're representing. And I'm just really pleased and I'm proud to know you, so thank you.
I thank you, Councilmember. It is a privilege to continue working on that matter and just illustrates how my team, they could be making so much elsewhere and they are here for that, to fight on these issues. And we are not afraid to litigate.
-- it did come out and I'm happy to say over $3 million has gone out to the residents of the Townhomes and now we're looking, like you said, to build affordable housing. And I'll never let that go, right. I will hold that with me forever for my entire career, so thank you.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jamie Gaut -- excuse me, Katherine Gilmore Richardson. You're in my brain.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to also offer my sincere gratitude and thanks to you, Renee Garcia, for your work. I've had the opportunity and pleasure to work with you while you were working in the Law Department helping us with the legislation that I offered to ensure that we have public comment prior to any FOP contract is settled. And so, that was a really long and arduous process. It was a very, very difficult case. It was a difficult set of circumstances and you and your team and the entire Law Department team were just stellar. And so, I also want to say thank you for your work and for everything that you did on behalf of my office to help us face that moment. I also wanted to ask about an issue that you know is exceedingly important to me and a part of your team that we in this Council body have supported relative to our budget process, and that would be the Nuisance Business Task Force. We added additional dollars. I know Councilmember Gauthier worked on this issue as well to ensure that we could have more attorneys in the Nuisance Business Task Force, so I wanted to ask you specifically about that work in the Law Department. And finally, I offer kudos to the entire Lej Team and everyone that we've worked with that has helped us to craft some of our legislation. I see Lou Rosman back there and I have to mention Reynelle. I don't see her, but everyone on the Lej Team I really appreciate all of you and the work that you all have done. And if I did miss someone, charge it to my head and not my heart, but I am appreciative.
Thank you, Councilmember, for the comments. Act 111 litigation is another example of the team coming together and Lewis Rosman, Joe Altman, Cara Leheny, Craig Gottlieb all worked very hard to win on appeal. We've very thankful to Council for giving us funding last year for our Code Unit. We were able to hire four new attorneys and three new staff members. The Code Unit filed 2500 cases last year for code violations. 600 of those were filed in the Court of Common Pleas. And part of those are building safety, and a lot are public nuisance. And we are working exceedingly hard. And I'm proud to say that we have been enforcing the short-dumping ordinance. I know that that has been a tremendous collaboration between our City stakeholders and we are working on gambling, Councilmember, and we continue to work in the tobacco space and the drug paraphernalia space. We are also --
I apologize for the interruption, but you hit the nail on the head. It's drug paraphernalia.
We are inundated with these stores in our communities, and so many people are reaching out to our office saying we've reported these stores, you all have done inspections and nothing has come of this. And I know some of this is on the L&I side. And when we get there, we will get there with L&I during the budget process regarding these drug paraphernalia stores. But we really need enforcement for these drug paraphernalia stores. We need them to be taken to court when appropriate after we filed all the process that we need to do on the City end. But we are being inundated in our communities by these stores.
Yeah. I completely agree and I look forward to seeing when L&I has split how we can really beef up that public nuisance side. As you know, the Law Department is intricately involved in all of that, and we will be there for the clients to help build that out.
Thank you. And I also want to add to that menu of nuisance businesses. We have AutoZones in different Districts where they actually rent tools for people to illegally fix cars in front of their establishments which totally brings down the quality of life of the neighborhoods to the point where I know in the southwest part of my District, a day care center and the whole plaza is pretty much being held hostage. And I know we've been working with the Law Department to look at some ramifications for this particular business and also working in partnership with the 12th Police District as a quality-of-life issue. And so, we'll follow up regarding that particular issue with you and your team because it's definitely a nuisance business that's not a stop-and-go, but it's a business that's bringing down the quality of life just based upon how they go about doing their service.
At this time I'd like to acknowledge Councilwoman Quetcy Lozada.
Thank you, Council President. Just kind of staying along the lines of the nuisance businesses, I know that we worked together and I appreciate the work that you all did to help me craft the Business Curfew bill. Originally we were trying to do that across the District. The goal is not to stop business from being conducted in the District in the City, right. We promoting that the City's open for business. And so, I know that bills like the Curfew bill can raise some questions. I have had multiple commercial corridors now reach out to say, hey, why can't you extend that bill, why can't we have a business curfew in our commercial corridor. And I know that you responded to me and to the office, but I'd like to put it on the record. So if you could just share with us why is that challenging and why did the Law Department recommend that we just did it in the targeted area as opposed to District-wide?
Thank you for that question. I personally was not involved in the initial review of that bill, but what we try to do overall constantly is a risk assessment. So I've said to many of you as we met, I'm trying to get you the best bill possible that can be passed with legal muster that always is meeting your goal, but is surgical enough not to bring immediate litigation. So when we're discussing underprivileged, I'm constantly thinking about implementation risk, legal risk, reputational risk. I don't want to convey privileged information in public here, but I'd be happy to follow up and see if that can be expanded.
And then my follow-up question is I know that you represent the Administration, you represent us in Council. How do you intend to balance or how would you navigate when our ideologies are different?
Do we have a second or a third in the room? The way the Charter is constructed, the Solicitor's office provides the legal opinion of the City, whether a bill is legal or not legal, whether there's a preemption issue, a constitutional issue, whatever the issue may be. So when you ask me whether something is legal and the Mayor asks me whether something is legal or a court asks if something is legal, my advice is the same. It's legal or it's not legal, right. It's not a policy question, right. So that everybody in the City who worked for the City, who does business with the City and the court knows it is the solicitor's opinion that will be represented in court should something go to litigation. And the way I manage the relationships is under privilege, right. You will talk to me or my people obviously, and that will be a confidential conversation. I will not let the Mayor's Office, I will not let your colleagues know who I am meeting with or that we are meeting, and the same on the Mayor's side, right. That confidentiality is very, very important. But I also believe that it is the right structure to have one legal voice in this City, and you all have -- not all of you. Many of you have lawyers in your offices, which is really, really helpful. Some of you are lawyers, right. But when you have a bill 12 that's crafted, when you want the City's opinion, how is the Solicitor going to give advice to anybody who asks for it, then you come to me so that we have one legal voice in this City. There may be times -- it's very, very rare when the law is so unclear that there is a conflict, but it happens very, very rarely. So again, when you're coming to me, I want to give you the advice that you need to make the best bill so I'm going to think about legal risk, I'm going to think about implementation risk, fiscal risk, operational risk so we can have the best product. And I think many of you worked with Lewis Rosman's group at those early stages. I have many lawyers that you can talk with at those early stages so we can get to the best bill. But like I said, at the end of the day I'm giving you an opinion, I'm giving the Mayor an opinion and it's the same opinion on whether it's legal or not legal.
Yeah. I just want to follow up. See, this is why it's great work with a great team of Councilmembers because you don't have to ask all the questions because we're all on the same page and that happens a couple of times a day. But, yes, it's always been our concern to be quite frank, and this is nothing that we didn't have a conversation about during the interview process, just making sure that there's equal representation, right, irregardless of the policy position of the Administration, because sometimes it's going to be adverse. We're not going to be on the same page. And there lies the conflict, right, whenever we get to that point. Based upon policy, I think probably the last similar type of issue was safe injection sites. The Administration had a very specific way how they wanted to address it. Some members of Council had a totally opposite way of how they wanted to address it. And then it was kind of like we just weren't on the same page in terms of how it was being addressed. And just to be frank, on our end it was like, well, where's our legal representation regarding this particular issue. At least that's what was expressed to me based upon how my members felt at that particular time, making sure that we're being represented even though we don't agree with the Administration, and people wanted different types of information, provided it to them. And at that time, folks didn't feel like they were actually being equally represented. And this is not the first that we've dealt with this type of issue. In the past we even explored the possibility of having our own solicitor and legal representation on the Council side. And so, I just want to reiterate and you talked about being sensitive to that type of approach, but it is a real concern that we've had in the past that we're real sensitive to as we move forward, knowing that we would like equal representation on the Council side similar to what's taking place on the executive side with the Administration.
I understand that the safe injection site in particular, which is one of those unique circumstances, was an instance where Council was provided with conflict counsel. But I do understand the sensitivity. If it does come up or if you don't feel like you're getting the attention you need, please talk to me. I am accountable for my department. So if you need resources, if you need other folks, please let's have a conversation about it.
Thank you, Mr. President. I want to join the chorus of people giving you and your team accolades because whether it was ghost guns, whether it was lost and stolen guns. Whether it was flavored tobacco, whether it was now gambling, you have represented our legislative interests to the best of your ability. And something that Jamie Gauthier said that I echo, you're not afraid to legislate and go up against folk that don't necessarily have Philadelphia's best interest at heart. When they go up there, they represent Philly's interest and that isn't always echoed by the rest of the Commonwealth. So thank you for being fierce, formidable and knowledgeable about where you should advise us when we should step up and continue or whether we should be patient, which I rarely am, about a matter. So with that in mind, how are we doing on the whole gambling machine. If you're not allowed to talk about it outside of court, just give me the hi sign and I'll move on.
Oh, okay. So we won't go there. But where are we on lost and stolen?
Yes. Thank you for asking and thank you, Councilmember. You said to me a few times, sometimes we're going to lose but we got to play the long game, right. And lost and stolen is one of those cases that was started many years ago by these brilliant lawyers who planned out the long game. This is a very purposeful suit. That is sitting in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. We do not think it will be heard until our Crawford matter is heard, and that's our preemption case. And I'm going to make it very simple. But that is the case where you we say this preemption is unconstitutional. We cannot protect our people, right, not in the way it's written, not in the way it's interpreted. So we are hoping for a favorable decision on that. That was argued in September. And then lost and stolen is right behind that. So that is sitting there waiting, and again a really good example of playing the long game and how the Law Department is part of public safety, everybody thinks about the DA and the Defenders. But there's so much that the Law Department can do, from this legislation, from code, from child welfare, from privacy angle, right. And thank you for being bold in legislating because that really lets us push all of us forward on the civil side.
So let my colleagues know it's when you start getting personal judgment that you're going to appreciate this department because people pierce the government veil and sue you personally for your interventions, your decisions. And it's right around then that you're happy you got a lawyer like the lawyers in the City Solicitor's Office. So thank you for that.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Rue Landau.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Solicitor Garcia, super happy to have you here. I'm going to add my voice to the chorus of people who love our Law Department, I think I spoke to your group in 2017 or so and came with a list of over attorneys I 4 had already worked with in your 5 department and it has expanded 6 since then. So I am well aware of 7 the great things that you do. 8 Along with all of the cases 9 that my colleagues have already 10 talked about, I want to thank you 11 so much and your whole team for 12 consistently going to bat for the 13 LGBTQ community since we've had to 14 fight life partnership in Devlin 15 until our most recent issues as 16 well. 17 Certainly, everybody has 18 been as tactical and creative in 19 making good law and then are trying 20 to preserve good law as possible. 21 And because of that, we've been at 22 the forefront of protecting civil 23 rights and adding protections here 24 in Philadelphia, so thank you for 25 that. I wanted to ask about -- I love that you're breaking down silos internally. And I wanted to ask about communication within the Law Department and then outside of the Law Department in the departments -- this is a forward-looking question about review of lawsuits in the City of Philadelphia, making sure that we're actually watching. If we keep getting sued from a certain department or because of a certain defect in our sidewalks or streets or something, that we're paying attention to that so we can fix it, come up with some remedial measures and stop it. I fear that there hasn't been the communication that we needed other than case, case, case to try to put an end to some of this.
Yes. Thank you for that question. That leads into the after-action plan that I talked about and being in the corporate sector, coming in and thinking about a compliance function for our Law Department. It is never about a case. It is never about a deal. It is always about the bigger picture. I see myself as a risk mitigator, right. Yes, I'm a lawyer. But overall I mitigate risk for the City, right, and I protect our indemnities when I do that and I protect all of you when I do that. So when we see patterns, our lawyers job is and they know it's their job to elevate that. So perhaps it's a particular community where we're seeing tons of sidewalks and potholes and tree limbs creating issues, yes, that has escalated up to the Streets Department or whichever department it is. There is always that feedback loop. Now, what I'm trying to do with my department right now is look at safer, cleaner, greener economic opportunity, education and try to figure out what are we working on for City Council, for the Mayor's Office, for all of our clients, and that may lead to task groups or working groups within the Law Department. But there are also plenty of working groups with the Administration as well. But just to reiterate, our lawyers know that it is their job to escalate. If you're just sitting there toiling away and not looking at the big picture, then you're not doing your job. You're not being in service of the City of Philadelphia.
Thank you. And the last question is I am very happy about the New Consumer Protection law. Thank you. The City needs it, and it's going to be an incredible tool. What resources does the Law Department need in order to make it successful?
Yeah. And I'll talk about this a little bit if I have the time in my budget address. But when you have bills like this and the bills around the Office of Worker Protection, there really is an investigative element that I want to build up. So to have investigators and an attorney, paralegal staff is really what we're looking for. We will be utilizing the Community Legal Services and other partners to get referrals about the issues, the systemic issues. MV Realty is a perfect example, right, these predatory folks that are in and around the space of housing. But it would be really helpful if we had both the attorney and staff but also investigators so that they can go out and get the data and the details on something that's happening over and over and over again. Thank you for that question.
Thank you very much. And the Chair recognizes Councilmember Nina Ahmad.
Thank you, President. I'm new even though I've been a Deputy Mayor before. I just want to follow up on what Council President was making a point of, the conflict when representing the executive branch and the legislative branch. How do you resolve that? I don't know what exactly happened with that. How you do you address that?
Safe injection sites was a very unique issue in that really Council was on the right side of the law, but the Mayor and the Administration wanted to submit an amicus brief to federal action that was challenging that law, so that was really like there were two sides of the law. It's very unusual. Usually the law is what the law is, right, and that's interpreted by the Solicitor's Office. You might not like the law. I didn't write the law. You all write the law, but I'm not getting into policy disputes. It really is this is what the law says, this is what the case law says, here is how the City would interpret that, and it's really you and the Mayor talking about policy and how we can -- if there's daylight there within the parameters of the law on any specific subject.
So would you be then advising executive branch based on that purview to not do something?
If you pass a bill and you say, Renee, is this legal? And I say, yes. The Administration says, Renee, is this legal? I'm going to say yes. I don't turn around and then say no, right.
My second question is your relationship with the DA's Office around immigration. You know, we have a lot of undocumented folks here and how they get charged if they are involved in something is very critical to their immigration status. I don't know what your rule is there or do you have any at all or what is your oversight over our communities who live in immigrant communities in Philadelphia?
I have not worked with the DA specifically on immigrant issues, but there is a working group around immigrant issues. So we've been very focused on the Welcoming Center and getting together contracts when we have large influxes of migrants from Texas, and we're also involved on the litigation side, so we will sign amicus briefs in support of the Administration's policy and primarily these are taking place in Texas. But I have not been involved on the criminal side.
Thank you very much. I had a couple of shout-outs I wanted to say in the spirit of my colleague Councilman Curtis Jones. It's a Lydia Furst that's a part of your Law Department. I introduced a bill 24 before it was a popular thing to do to ban ghost gun parts in the City of Philadelphia, and she successfully tried that case on behalf of the City of Philadelphia and legislation I introduced, and Josh Shapiro in the spirit of the legislation began to move forward on the state level, so I do want to thank you and your team for that work from a public safety standpoint. And I also just from a point of information just wanted to give you another example of where the Administration may be one place and we may be another place and how it turns out with the Solicitor's Office legally. There was a time when Michael Nutter was the Mayor and he wanted to shut down libraries, and that was his policy, right. And it was a young lady who's a part of the Administration now named Sophie Bryant who actually litigated and took the case and made sure that Council's wishes of not shutting down libraries for the sake of our budget process, our well wishes were actually moved on and the judge ruled in Council's favor. And so, that's like another example of where policy-wise we may not be on the same page with the Administration and then we look into our lawyer which is the City Solicitor to help us navigate and make sure our voices are heard. And so, hopefully as we move forward -- naturally those types of things will happen, but we also work in the spirit of one City, one Philadelphia, so hopefully that won't happen. But we are an independent body at the end of the day and sometimes those things happen. But for the most part we'll be rowing I would think in the same direction in terms of moving the City of Philadelphia forward to a safer, cleaner, greener city with economic opportunity for all. I just want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule, Ms. Garcia. I look very forward to working with you. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the last member of City Council who has comments which is Councilmember Anthony Phillips.
It's been quite the eventful day. And thank you so much, Renee Garcia, for staying with us. Just a quick question, one question only: So Philadelphia has struggled for decades for tax delinquency. Since the suspension of tax sales, property tax delinquency has been on the rise, increasing 2 percent to 8 percent every year since 2019 or around $5 million to $10 million a year. Today 60 percent is owned by investors -- is owed by investors or landlords according to the City's 2023 Tax Delinquency Report. We are in the midst of a housing crisis and numerous properties throughout all Council Districts. It contains blighted and vacant properties. How does your office plan to deal with all of the current vacant properties throughout the City? Furthermore, once these delinquent properties are identified, what is your commitment to getting those properties into court and properly sold to decrease the blight in vacant properties throughout the City?
Thank you, Councilmember. I completely agree with you that something needs to be done about these blighted properties. The Law Department has about 3,000 properties that are ready to go to tax sale. Tax sales are not being scheduled, and I believe you will be hearing from the Mayor either in her budget address or some time in the future about her plan.
Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Ms. Garcia.
Thank you very much. Are there any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)
Are there any other witnesses to testify on Resolution No. 240038? (No response.)
I want to also give a shout-out to Lewis Rosman over there I see. This concludes the -- before I say this concludes, thank you very much, Ms. Garcia, for your testimony. Thank you for stepping up as a public servant to fulfill this role to help move the City of Philadelphia forward, so thank you very much.
This concludes the hearing for Resolutions 240075, 240078, 240079, 240029 and 240038. And we will now go into the public meeting. There being no further questions for members of the Committee and no other witnesses on the list to testify, I will ask if there is anyone else present in the hearing who wishes to offer testimony on Resolutions 240075, 240078, 240079, 240029 and 240038? (No response.)
Hearing none, I want to thank all the witnesses for their participation today. We definitely value your opinion. Mr. Christmas, as we go into our public meeting, can you please call the roll to take attendance.
Present. Thank you, Mr. Christmas. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Kathy Gilmore Richardson on a motion on Resolutions 240075, 240078, 240079, 240029 and 240038.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that Resolutions 240075, 240078, 240079, 240029 and 240038 be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and that the rules of Council be suspended as to permit consideration of these resolutions at our next session of Council. (Duly seconded.)
The Chair notes for the record that Councilman Squilla seconds the motion. It has been moved and properly seconded that Resolutions 240075, 240078, 240079, 240029 and 240038 be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and that the rules of Council be suspended to permit consideration of these resolutions at our next session of Council. All those in favor will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it. And Resolutions 240075, 240078, 240079, 240029 and 240038 will be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation with the suspension of the rules to permit consideration of these resolutions at our next session of Council. This concludes the business before the Committee of the Whole for today, and I want to personally thank all of our Members for being here today as well as being on time. Thank you very much everyone. (Committee of the Whole concluded at 4:44 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL