COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE, May 5, 2026

Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. And you can understand why there's some confusion around some of this stuff. And I think it's important that we remain diligent as it relates to our work in local procurement. Madam Chair, I did hear the bell. I just want to for the record, Madam Chair, if it's okay, as the Chair of the Education Committee I'm not going to be able to sit through the entire CCP dialogue. I do want to commend our new President at CCP and thank her for her leadership as well as the entire team there. And I just want to ask CCP to make sure that in the midst of their testimony today that they are addressing some of the concerns that's been communicated as it relates to the union that represents CCP. So just wanted to put that on the record. MDO, thank you. I look forward to continued dialogue and hopefully take you up on the offer to meet to be able to have a deeper dive into this issue so I can better understand where we are, what we're doing. And hopefully, we can work collaboratively to figure out how do we continue to invest in businesses, because I think you all would agree that we have done a good job over the last couple of years as it relates to local procurement and procurement opportunities. I just don't want to see us deviate in a different direction, especially in this climate that we're in right now, with the affordability crisis that we're facing. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Thomas. Colleagues, we are now in departmental callbacks and afterwards we will go into Community College of Philadelphia. For this round, we will have three minutes for callbacks. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Young.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Questions regarding the tax bill, then to L&I. So first question to L&I just really quick, we have the FIFA Fan Fest coming up around the Lemon Hill area. We know that this is a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity for Philadelphians to participate in this type of global economy. The Fan Fest is only allowing 10 vendors per session or something like that to participate within the Fan Fest area, 10 local vendors. What's L&I's position on or how can L&I work with some of our local vendors so they can participate in this once- in-a-lifetime economic opportunity without being overly penalized by L&I, because again people in our community, in our city, want to participate in this as well. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Hi. Bridget Collins- Greenwald, L&I Commissioner of Quality Of Life. So we don't determine who can vend in that area. That is actually done by Philly Soccer 2026 --

I know. That's outside the area, right, or around the area, right. Because they're going to be people who may be at the zoo or people who may be, you know, on the Parkway, right, who are vending and want to participate in again this once- in-a-lifetime opportunity where we're going to have thousands of people in our city, you know. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: So you're asking if we can educate those folks; is that what you're asking?

I mean, I'm asking if L&I can -- how can I say this in a different -- in my colloquial language. If L&I cannot be drawn, right? Don't just go out here, like, just heavily enforcing on Philadelphians who are just trying to earn a living during this time? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: I'm going to have to defer that one because we have -- we can only enforce what's in the code, so we really shouldn't turn a blind eye to people that are not legally doing what they're supposed to. However, we do have a very robust education program where we do educate small businesses all throughout the city, and that's what I would recommend, that any of these groups get in touch with. So you could see it on our website, L&I vending, here's how you apply, here's how you do it. I totally suggest that. But they have to go through that process.

Thank you. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: You're welcome.

I appreciate that. Next question is for Mr. Dubow regarding tax bills, specifically on the delivery tax. This is something that I asked the Law Department. The legislation specifically states that the issues that are being caused are being caused by the delivery trucks. Why aren't we taxing DHL, FedEx, UPS, of the like to pay for this tax? Why are we putting this tax on the citizens rather than the billionaire companies?

The tax is trying to capture kind of the new activity, which is what we see from the delivery services. And that's why we proposed the tax the way we did.

One moment. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Young.

Thank you so much. Are we able to tax those companies rather than taxing the people?

The delivery tax you're talking about?

Yes. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: So the delivery tax will be levied per delivery to the people who are making purchases and having deliveries made inside Philadelphia. So 25% per delivery -- I'm sorry, $0.25, not percent.

Yeah, we know that. We know what the proposal is. But the question is, can we tax the delivery companies versus taxing the people?

So I think regardless of the way that tax is written, the delivery companies can make a choice about what they do with their pricing.

This is the same argument with the other tax, regardless of how it's written. If they do it in another way, then they're not following the law, right. Can we write the law in a way where we tax the companies?

So that we will have to talk with Law and get back to you on that structure. I'm not a lawyer and I don't want to give a legal answer to your question.

But you're the Finance Director, as an expert on tax policy, right, I would assume.

You're asking a specific legal question and we will get you an answer. But I don't want to answer something today that is not legally correct.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Young. The Chair now recognizes Dr. Ahmad.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. Actually, the question is along the first part of my colleague's questioning around small pop-ups, and I have probably a question for L&I. Let me just wait until Bridget gets here. Good afternoon. This weekend I was up in the Northwest at something called Mt. Airy Day. There were like 100 vendors in this space. I spent money. My husband bought me a bag. There's a woman who was making purses with the caps off of the cans, the bottle tops, beautiful, beautifully done. She had many other wares. There were all kinds of -- I bought soap. I did walk around. These were mostly pop-ups, most of these businesses, and I was chatting with -- some were a little bit more established. Their biggest issue was how they can participate in the economy with not so much paperwork and not so many hoops to jump through. So I wanted to ask -- I mean, these can be incubators for bigger businesses, for established businesses so there's a real value in them. So I was wanting to know what your department and potentially Commerce together are thinking about how we create a space with less regulation for these smaller ones and can we, given our uniformity law and all of that, carve out spaces to attend to them in a different kind of way to support them? And what that process looks like now and what could it look like streamlined? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Okay. So Bridget Collins-Greenwald, L&I Commissioner of Quality Of Life. So currently, like I mentioned a few minutes ago, we do have a robust program with the Commerce Department. We call it BEE, Business Education Enforcement, very clever. So we do have that. We also have vendor -- we gather vendors together and do some education for just them. We haven't done it in a bit. We did it the last time before we had the lottery. We did the Center City lottery and we had vendors come in. We could certainly do that again. We can certainly work with Commerce and tailor it to smaller businesses. I agree with you. I go to those types of things all the time. It's not really that cumbersome to become a vendor, believe it or not. I think people might feel like it's a little cumbersome so they don't get involved in the process. But it's really you get your commercial activity license, which is free and fairly easy to get. And then we can walk you through, like here's step by step. We have all kinds -- you know our Good Housing Partners thing. We have all kinds of documentation like that, that takes you exactly through the process and we can certainly have those types of one-on -- not one-on-one, but like little seminar sessions, whatever you want to call them.

And so, one of the things that these small pop-ups is people don't necessarily, they come from elsewhere, right, they're not located right where they're selling their wares, so I just wanted to know -- you mentioned doing something in a location. How do we invite them to come and be part of our economy in a way that is welcoming and streamlined, as you just pointed out? COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Yeah. We don't even have to do a location-based. We can put like a call-out, kind of like call to art, you know what I mean, where you get a call to art. We can do the same exact thing and say, hey, we're going to have these five sessions these certain nights of the week or whenever we're going to have it, different areas of the city, whoever wants to be involved. We can do virtual things. I mean, we are all in about the education because that's the better part of our job. The enforcement's the part, you know, I mean, you'd rather educate and have people wanting to do business in the city and feeling welcomed here, like you just said. So we're all in. We can absolutely do that.

We'll follow up with you to actually do a pilot project to do all across the city, inform people, amplify, have all my colleagues support us to make this happen and then really do some results. Like, once you give this information, is this still onerous or not and what are people doing. We would like to get some data as to how to improve that process, and most importantly, get that revenue. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Absolutely. Yeah, we can totally do a pilot and I'll hook up with Commerce, talk to Cameron and Saleem and that crew. And, yeah, we'll circle back and see what we can come up with.

Thank you for being so cooperative and let's work together. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Dr. Ahmad. The Chair now recognizes Dr. Phillips.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want the Water Department and L&I you can stay in place. Thank you so much. Really quickly, as you know we are moving forward on the implementation of the Non-Resident Landlord Accountability bill. The bill was structured to ensure that non-resident property owners provide accurate and verifiable contact information, in addition to designating a local agent. So the questions that I just have for you is I want to thank you for some of the updates you provided and I appreciate that, but we want to know can you please clarify how owner contact information will be captured within eCLIPSE, what steps will be taken to verify the accuracy of the owner's contact information and not just the agents, how that owner information will be utilized during enforcement actions, including notices of violation intent to revoke and other compliance measures? And then I also have to get this out. When a property has multiple unresolved violations -- this is different from the Non-Landlord bill. When a property has multiple unresolved violations, at what point does that trigger consideration for more serious enforcement like a sheriff's sale recommendation? Is there a defined threshold, for example, 40, 30, 60, how many violations do you have to take in order to trigger sheriff's sal or is this handled case-by- case? So that's four questions. Hope you all have them. And then for the Water Department I just want to ask, what structural changes would the Water Department be making in the next year to improve customer service communication and resolution 3 timelines? And also, what percentage of disruptions lasting more than 24 hours included proactive updates? And what type of updates were provided. Thank you. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Do you want me to go first and jump in? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: We spoke some time ago, Councilman. I got involved --

State your name for the record. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Oh, excuse me. Basil Merenda, Commissioner of L&I, Inspections, Safety, and Compliance. Excuse me. Councilmember, some time ago after we chatted I got involved in this legislation and I can report that, effective June 15th landlords will be required to submit agent information, including the name, address, phone number and email address directly into eCLIPSE as part of the rental license process. If the landlord does not enter that information, a rental license won't be issued. For context, previously that information was provided to L&I as an upload, which would not lend itself to verifiable information. Now, because it's a required field in eCLIPSE, we can verify through OPA and Revenue whether the agent's address is a legitimate Philadelphia address. And if it's not a legitimate Philadelphia address, for example, the license application will not be advanced at all and it will not be issued as part of the application process right off the bat. So that's the front end. Now, the back end is for the other enforcement. I can turn that over to Bridget.

Thank you. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Sure. So as part of our proactive rental inspection program, this is a big piece of that, that administrative -- I did mention at the last hearing, the administrative piece. To Basil's point, if you're going to put in an application for a rental license or renewal, you're going to get flagged if you do not put in this agency information. We can run reports off of that, and that will be one of the parts of the criteria for this PRIP program. So we'll be checking owner information, we'd be checking agent information if you live outside the city, along with the other things obviously that we'll be inspecting for. So it will be caught in that, you know what I mean -- it'll be caught up in that process.

The Water Department. I did ask another question, but we'll have to get that on --

Quickly for Water. COMMISSIONER JEWELL: Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for the questions. Ben Jewell, Commissioner for the Philadelphia Water Department. So I believe the first question was structural changes to improve customer service. So we are currently working through some review of our customer call center and staffing as it relates to both our call center, that is a shared responsibility of the Water Department and Water Revenue Bureau as well as our afterhours call center staffing through our emergency support services. I've had a few conversations, Councilmember Gilmore Richardson last year, and her staff brought to my attention some issues with our call center's responsiveness, particularly during the evening hours. Over the winter, we instituted a software tracking program to allow us to collect additional data for the folks that are working in our emergency support services. We're going to be reviewing that data, along with our call center data, and we've already started conversations about expanding hours, adding a second shift and seasonal search staffing, much like we do on the operations side, but on the customer contact, that leading edge, that first touchpoint we get with our customers to be available to take a call which is the most basic form of service, and then able to route those calls efficiently. The second question was --

Disruptions -- COMMISSIONER JEWELL: -- before I get to the second question, I just want to add one other thing, because, Councilmember Phillips, I think you were part of this process that we initiated with Better Services PHL. So we're also in the process of working with the Better Services group to map out some of our customer touchpoints in the field, both for planned and unplanned disruptions related to your second question. And that will include a review of all communications and an effort to identify places that we can step forward, and we've discussed some of those with your office in our meetings and we're looking forward to continuing those dialogues.

Thank you. I want to thank you for our now new relationship of communication. And I also want to thank Commissioner Basil and also Commissioner, Jesus -- not Commissioner Jesus, Bridget, Bridget Greenwald, Commissioner Bridget Greenwald.

We're going to pray for you.

This position has my head all over the place now.

We're going to pray for Dr. Phillips. Thank you so much, Dr. Phillips. Commissioner Greenwald received a little upgrade. Thank you. And thank you to our Commissioner, Commissioner Jewell from the Water Department for that process improvement relative to customer service with the Philadelphia Water Department. I did share with you that we were grateful and thankful for Michelle for being out with us last week in South Philadelphia at one of our senior centers, sharing information from the Water Department, and also Ms. Renee as well. But we're thankful for their continued work in partnership and for you always answering the call, but most particularly for that customer service process improvement that has taken place within your department. Thank you very much. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Landau.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. I want to announce my topics because you're going to do a little shuffle. I have a BIRT question and a Wellness Court question. I apologize that I couldn't be here this morning. I tried to listen to as much as I possibly could via my phone, so I believe these questions have not been asked yet. I'll start with BIRT. First, to Director Dubow. When we first talked about rescinding the exemption on the BIRT tax that assisted small businesses, I believe I asked you here on the record, and we are looking for this exact question and answer, how much you believed it would affect small businesses and you said, on average you thought it was approximately $750 per business. We've now heard from the businesses and they are being hit with 1500, 1800, over $2,000 bills and it's debilitating for them. I know that our colleague Mike Driscoll has introduced legislation that could ultimately help these small businesses and I am fully in support of that and really hope it gets to a hearing soon. But I wanted to know whether the reality of what you're hearing now is worse, harder and different than what you originally thought going in?

Yeah. I do want to start by saying, and I know I said this but I feel that each day every time, this is not something we wanted to do. We felt that we had no choice. I think the reality is there are a variety of impacts depending on companies' receipts and on their income. And so, what they'll pay wind up depending on kind of number of factors. We knew that there were going to be impacts, which is why we set up programs to try to help companies, both grant programs, new ones and expanding old ones and giving tax preparation help, and also treating businesses that hadn't paid for a few years like they're new businesses so that they could stage their payments, but we knew there would be impacts. We didn't want to do it. We tried to do as much as we could to ameliorate that.

Are the impacts that were being reported to the city worse than what was anticipated?

So I think for some companies they're less than we anticipated. Some companies they're worse.

Again, just so you know, hearing from small businesses, some of whom say they don't want to do it, but they might have to leave the city of Philadelphia. And I don't know if we calculated that cost into the cost of just taking a chance and seeing what the courts would ultimately say. I look forward to moving forward on Colleague Driscoll's bill and seeing if we can find a fix.

And in the worst case, that cost could have been hundreds of millions of dollars, so we really did not think that was a risk worth taking. But I understand your question.

Thank you. Then for Managing Director Thiel, I have a couple of quickies for the Wellness Court. If you didn't review them already this morning or even if you did, sorry, looking for somebody with some more specific outcomes from the Wellness Court, whether or not people have found permanent housing, if they've been placed, whether they've gotten full-time employment and also some of the negative outcomes that have happened from stories that we've heard on the inside? Have there been overdoses on the inside and have there been any deaths?

Councilmember, Adam Thiel, Managing Director. Appreciate the questions. The Wellness Court is within the Office of Public Safety, which is not within the MDO. Have texted Director Geer and I think we got all those questions. Our colleagues from Finance got all those questions and we can have them respond to those in writing.

You can't answer the question if there's been any overdoses or even sadly, tragically any --

No, ma'am. OPS is a separate entity and is not managed in the MDO, so I don't have visibility on that or have the data. However, we've alerted the Office of Public Safety and Director Geer, and I know they'll be able to respond to those questions.

Okay. Thank you.

Pardon me, one moment. If possible, will we be able to receive that answer during this hearing? This is our last callback which is why we're requesting it.

Madam Chair, I have done what I can do. My expectation is probably that they're watching and hopefully we can do that. It's not within my purview.

Sure. It's the last callback. And so, if we're able to receive a response from the Office of Public Safety. Is someone here from the Mayor's Office who can contact the Office of Public Safety? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. It is our last callback so I think we need to get it all in today. Thanks a lot. It's greatly appreciated. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Harrity.

Thank you, Leader. My questions are for -- well, in regards to the taxes, regarding the retail tax, retail delivery tax. DoorDash cites Colorado experience with a similar delivery tax, 12.2 million in lost small business sales, 17.1 million in total economic loss and 367 jobs eliminated. Has the Administration modeled similar impacts for Philadelphia before projecting revenue from this tax? And according to DoorDash, in 2025 approximately 70% of deliveries DoorDash facilitated in Philadelphia were to customers residing in low-income communities, as defined by the American Community Survey. What do you say to these customers who will disproportionately be affected by this tax?

So to answer your second question first, because that's the one I remember, when we look at the national survey data, what we see is the number of orders goes up with income, so that it would not -- the tax would not disproportionately affect lower- income payers, but higher-income payers who order many more, many more packages and we can get that information to you. We also have exempted a number of items to try to make sure that things like baby products, medicine, food are not subject to the tax, to make sure that those items don't have an extra cost.

So you're saying that while everyone else is saying that Philadelphia is an outlier. And just like the Uber and Lyft, 58% of that comes to and from low-income neighborhoods. And now, you're saying for DoorDash even though the numbers say that 70% of the orders or the deliveries are coming to low-income areas, they're not going to low-income areas?

That is not -- like I said, we'll share the survey data we have with you. But the survey data that we have shows that as income goes up, orders go up. And we can definitely get you that.

Where did your data come from?

National Household Survey.

National Household Survey. Okay. And so, how about the first part of the question with the loss of sales and the economic losses, especially the 367 jobs that Colorado experienced?

Yeah. We'd like to see that analysis. We haven't seen that analysis. When we had meetings with delivery companies, we asked them for any data. So if they have that, it would be great to see.

So they didn't send it to you?

They have not.

They sent it to all of us so that's, you know. All right. I guess I'm good. I heard the bell. I'll stay with that. All right. Thank you, Leader.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Member Harrity. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Gauthier.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon to all of you. My questions are for L&I.

I'm not hurt.

In the course of our day-to-day work, my office has stepped in many times to walk small prospective developers and landlords through the eCLIPSE process, because they usually report being dismissed when they try to show up in person for help at MSB and because the system itself is not very accessible for someone entering development for the very first time. Your FY27 budget includes funding for enhanced eCLIPSE reporting, and ISC's goals in particular mention a residential permitting modernization project. But neither of these addresses the frontline customer service problem for people kind of just getting into development and their interactions with eCLIPSE. And so, will the department commit to retraining staff specifically on how to assist first-time users through eCLIPSE in person? And will you commit to hosting a usability session or a focus group with small developers, first-time landlords and residents before the modernization project is finalized? We would love to participate in something like this because we see a great need for it. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Sure. We -- I almost forgot again. Basil Merenda, Commissioner of L&I, Inspections, Safety and Compliance. Absolutely, Councilmember. We can certainly work with you to set those educational processes up. It's all part of Mayor Parker's making city government you could see, touch and feel. So that is exactly what we were more willing to do. In the meantime, we have this chat feature that could help new landlords or landlords that are not computer savvy to work through that and get direct information. Also, we have Lisa Adams who's our City Council liaison, who is very accessible --

She's amazing. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: -- and then if all else fails, you can contact me.

Okay. Thank you for your willingness. And so, do you have the resources in your budget to do more inperson assistance and to set up these types of trainings as more than a one-time thing as kind of an offering for folks who are trying to interface with this system on a regular basis? COMMISSIONER MERENDA: I would just ask that you could give us a little time to do a little digging to see exactly what we have and what we can do. I'd appreciate that.

Okay. We would love to follow up with you about this and to participate. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Sure.

My next questions are about inspections and violation tracking. When a violation is issued, the property owner gets 30 days to correct it. After that, my office and constituents really have no way of knowing whether a follow-up inspection has occurred, whether fines have escalated or where the case stands, unless we call. So the question is, is there a way to add an update to the initial violation notice showing the most recent inspection date, the current compliance status and any updated deadlines or fine amounts? And what would it take to build that into Atlas? And is that something that the department would commit to exploring? So this is just about helping us to be more up-to-date about violations as we're trying to help our residents with quality-of-life concerns. COMMISSIONER MERENDA: Is that in the context of a property maintenance issue whereabouts a violations issue because the property is not being maintained as opposed to construction? Then it's --

I mean maybe -- I think we're mostly talking about the former but maybe globally. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: You want to know violations, how people can see updates, right --

Yes. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: -- where it stands? So in our Atlas system, as you said, when you go out on an initial inspection, it'll show up in the system and then you can pull the actual violations up. Now, you're probably familiar with that, right. The actual violations come up now, so the updated violations come up now as well. So you do have to go into Atlas to see it, but it is seeable.

I have to profess that I am not the one generally checking Atlas, so this comes from my staff. I would love to follow up with you just about what they're seeing on their side and getting and making sure that we have the most up-to-date information in a way that will help us to better inform our constituents. COMMISSIONER COLLINS- GREENWALD: Sure. Atlas is a great tool. It really is. It has excellent information, very up-to- date. It's processed right there, so you definitely will see the latest violations, what they are and that actually you can see the violation notices itself with all the dates on them.

Okay. Look forward to talking more. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Gaudier. And I wanted to concur relative to Lisa Adams. She has been stellar, has gone above and beyond the call of duty, including calling constituents while she has been on vacation, on the weekends, which I do not recommend. She has been awesome and amazing. So thank you, Lisa Adams, for working with Beth on my team on the variety of constituent cases that we receive in our office. And I wanted to mention relative to Atlas I was just on Atlas this morning around 6 o'clock. And what I do like the new feature wherein you could see some of the 311 complaints that have come in, in that area, so it's not just particular violations on that home, but also some of the 311 calls that we receive in that local community. I do like that new feature on Atlas. So please follow up with Councilmember Gauthier's office and her team. I wanted to quickly go back to the Managing Director's Office relative to the question around the warehouse. And I did receive this question when I was out in the community relative to the tax bills. Will nonprofits -- and I'll use a church as an example -- that lease out roof space to cell phone or cell providers now have to collect and remit U&O tax? And then if you all could just explain how the cell towers will be assessed?

Madam Chair, Adam Thiel, Managing Director. I'll take the first question. And again, just to reiterate we apologize. We missed that in our tracking. You did ask that well before this hearing, so thank you for that. And this is around the million dollar cost, that essentially is a contingency for 2026 operations, especially the peak period. We could potentially have need for additional space that's not available. For instance, if we did -- and I'll knock wood here, if we did have something happen, if we were to have to stand up a joint operations center or joint information center with a host of partners, those end up being huge operations as well as for the -- so it's characterized as warehousing space. It's essentially space where we can set up whatever we need and it is a contingency or if we do have to bring in commodities on short notice because we overperform our already high expectations for the company that's coming during that period of time, so it's a contingency. What we will absolutely commit to is if we don't need it and we don't use it, then we will let you know that.

Okay. I appreciate that response. I think we'll need to follow up on that because I was trying to look through the detail, the budget detail, to track the 1 million. And I'm not sure whether it's related to DPP, other contracting that's already shown in the detail under DPP that's around almost 800,000 or so. With that said, it was relative to Riverview. So I'm not sure if this is just an extra contract or in addition to that or does that mirror or match in some kind of way?

It's contingency space. It could be for a lot of different things. The main reason is potentially around 2026.

Okay. I'll make sure --

Readiness for 2026.

-- I follow up with the detail that I'm specifically referring to so that we can ensure we're on the same page. And then the question relative to U&O. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Good afternoon. Kathleen McColgan, Revenue Commissioner. I appreciate the question. Councilmember Phillips asked -- I'm sorry. Councilmember Driscoll asked a similar question earlier and there's something that I wanted to clarify in my response. So what I said was that nonprofits would be responsible, but actually the owner of a property is responsible for making sure that the use and occupancy from the tenant is collected and remitted. So, for example, there's a telecommunication agency that's renting or leasing the space with the cell tower. They are actually the one that's charged for --

Okay. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER McCALL: -- use and occupancy, so it's the property owner's responsibility, whether it's a nonprofit or not, to make sure that they're remitting either on the tenant's behalf or that they set up an account on behalf of the tenant so that we can hold the tenant responsible.

So as an example, if I'm said church, we lease space to this communication agency, we would then have to set up a separate account for them to remit the tax in order for it to be collected? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Yes. So the typical model would be that the church would have a Use & Occupancy Tax account in which they remit the tax on behalf of the tenant, but alternatively they can have a tenant account set up for the telecommunications company.

Okay. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: And then we would hold the telecommunication company responsible.

Received. So they can also set up a tenant account wherein they have to do it directly with the city? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: That's right, yes.

And then how will they be assessed? COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: So right now when we receive the assessed value of a cell tower right now in the complete property assessed value from OPA, but we would work with OPA to ensure that we get the value of the cell tower broken out as a separate line item so that we can tax that based on the actual assessed value of that cell tower, rather than square footage of the entire property.

Received, because it could be a larger location as an example. All right. I will submit the balance of my questions in writing. So thank you. Thank you very much. I do want to get this one on the record. We were in South Philadelphia, I mentioned, relative to the Water Department and I had a constituent come up to me, a senior from South Philly, who stated that she is receiving her monthly payment coupons for property tax three days prior to the bill being due. So she's on a monthly payment plan for her property taxes. She received the coupon three days before each month. So at the point that she remits the payment, it's always late and there was a lien placed on her property as a result. She pays every month. She said it was $220. She pays every month. But because of the timing of when she receives the coupon, she's not able to remit until that time. And so, now she has accumulated late fees and she said at one point a lien. So I wanted to put that on the record, not for response because I did send her case directly to your team who was already on site, but it's an issue that my Constituent Services Director has said has come up multiple times throughout this particular year. So I don't know if it's been a change in vendor or if the process has changed with the monthly coupons being mailed out or if it's just a mail issue, but I think that's something that we need to look into because she was a senior. She said, I can't come downtown but I really need help with this issue. COMMISSIONER McCOLGAN: Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that to our attention. We are investigating that. There hasn't been a change in vendor, but that was the first that I had heard that complaint. And of course, we want to make sure that we get those coupons out timely. So we're in the middle of investigating that.

Okay. That'll be great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any additional questions for these witnesses or for the departmental callbacks? (No response.)

Okay. And then is our Public Safety Director, Director Geer, able to join us?

Madam Chair, he's here.

Excellent.

We can get him in. He's out in the hallway.

Okay. He'll be our last witness for the departmental callbacks. And then, colleagues, you all can get into the queue for Community College of Philadelphia. I'll recognize Councilmember Landau first for questions for Director Geer, and then you all can get into the queue for CCP. Thank you. And as a reminder, we do have a town hall this evening. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

Thank you so much, Director Geer. We certainly appreciate your availability for this departmental callback hearing. Councilmember Landau had a question for your team. And so, again we thank you for your availability and for coming over today. We certainly appreciate you very much. Chair now recognizes Councilmember Landau.

Yes. Thank you, Director Geer. I know you didn't expect to be here. Appreciate you so very much. I had asked Managing Director Thiel a little bit more about the Riverview Wellness Village and I wanted to know more about the outcomes of the residents there, whether or not we can quantify how many people have been moved into permanent housing, how many people have received full- time employment and also, some of the negative outcomes like unfortunately, how many overdoses have occurred inside the Village and also whether or not there's been, very sadly, any deaths there?

Thank you, Councilmember Majority Leader. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, esteemed Councilmembers. I was able to bring the numbers that we have. Some of this we have shared before and I'm hoping that this will suffice for today. If not, we will certainly circle back with those numbers.

Madam Chair, Councilmember Adam Thiel, Managing Director. Councilmember, I apologize. When we heard your question the first time, it was around the Wellness Court and that is Office of Public Safety. Now that you've asked the questions, it was about Riverview. Riverview and the Wellness Court are not the same. And so, I want to --

Apologize if I misspoke.

-- apologize to you and colleagues for that. The good news is we have all the right people here to answer any questions you might have about that continuum of care. And I'm going to give up my seat for Deputy Managing Director Crystal YatesGale and let Director Geer --

Managing Director Thiel, I appreciate that. I've been working a lot with other things with the courts and I may have accidentally said court instead of village. Apologies.

May I step back momentarily and I'll be on standby?

Sure.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Councilmember. Crystal Yates-Gale, Deputy Managing Director of Health and Human Services. So the good news is nobody has died of an overdose at Riverview Wellness Village. Unfortunately, we did have a death, not overdose-related. You know from doing work in the population that it's a fragile population. So we did have a death. It was cardiac-related from a previous cardiac history. As far as the number of overdoses, the number of overdoses that have been reported to me are, you know, I'm always trying to be mindful of people's privacy, but they are less than 11 in the time that we've been open there and they've all been successfully reversed. The number of people with employment, we don't track some of the employment that people get on their own, but proud and happy to report -- I hope Director Isabel McDevitt is watching -- the food service provider onsite has hired 10 people full-time. Some of those people have started to be connected to permanent housing and will maintain their employment when they move. We've also connected people to other employment and then some of the residents have gotten employment on their own. I forgot the last question.

Housing.

Permanent housing. I don't have the exact number, but we have used a significant number of our wellness vouchers, not as many as we'd like to. I don't want to guess, but we have been issuing wellness vouchers to residents there, so there has been people that have gone through the whole continuum.

Great. Can you get us some more concrete numbers? I appreciate so much the work that you've done --

Sure. It would be easier to give privately and we'll send it in an email to Council President's office.

Thank you. And thank you, Director Geer.

Thank you. So do we need Director Geer, Councilmember Landau?

I'm good. Thank you.

Are you good?

Yes. Thank you.

Okay. Well, thank you, Director Geer. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. Are there any additional questions for this departmental callback? (No response.)

Okay. Seeing none, we will now proceed with our presentation from the Community College of Philadelphia. We'd like to welcome Dr. Alycia Marshall, our President, and also Jacob Eapin, Vice President for Business and Finance. And as they are approaching the witness table, we'd like to thank again Dr. Alycia Marshall, Danielle Watkins, your Chief of Staff; Erica Harrison, thank you, Erica Harrison from Community Relations for all of your help in coordinating all of our events. And then also to Malika Rahman, CCP Criminal Justice Department, for coordinating interns specifically in my office. And I wanted to mention Rainah Chambliss, who works at CCP. She shared with us this week in a very special moment from the CCP graduation, and also all of the union members who are here from Community College of Philadelphia. I see Marissa and others. We thank you and we appreciate you all for being here as well. So please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Dr. Alycia Marshall. I am the President at the Community College of Philadelphia. I'm joined here today by our Associate Vice- President for Budgets and Business Services, Derrick Sawyer. First of all, I want to say thank you to the entire City Council for your support, your investment in the city's college, and many of you have been to our locations and have supported our events and express support for us and our students and our programming. So I want to start off by saying sincerely, thank you to all of you. What I'm about to share are some of the highlights and success stories of what's been happening in realtime at the city's college. And I want to underscore that all of those successes, most of them are a testament to your support and your investment in our college. The first picture here I want to point out is Donvale Wilson. He is a valedictorian and the graduate of our inaugural naval welding program at our Career and Advanced Technology Center in West Philadelphia. And I want to sincerely thank Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson for being there and speaking at that event. It was a wonderful event, but this is an example of success. Donvale was a career changer, he was a barber, and in four and a half months he graduated from our naval welding program and is actually working at Hanwha now. So we want to talk about how the Community College of Philadelphia is really an economic engine of mobility and creates pathways for success and upward mobility in the city.

And his speech was fantastic, by the way.

Yes. Just to give you a glance at our institution, particularly at this moment in time as we celebrate 60 years this year at the Community College of Philadelphia, 60 years of transforming lives of almost 800,000 students, I want to quantify that for you. We are the highest-enrolled community college in the Commonwealth, out of all 5 community colleges. 6 We service 21,000 7 students, credit and noncredit. 8 About 18,000 of those students are 9 in our credit programs. We have 10 almost 4000 students in our 11 noncredit programs and we really 12 are representing the entire city. 13 We are a minority-serving 14 institutions. 67% of our students 15 identify as being a student of color or minority student. And we also have 1700 students, closer to 2000 depending on the year, partaking in dual enrollment opportunities, so about 10% of our credit population. And our dual enrollment students, those are students who are in high school and at the same time taking college courses with us. I want to underscore since we're coming off of graduation, last Saturday we were pleased to graduate 1968 students at our graduation. (Applause.)

And 122 of those students actually were also in high school, so they are receiving their Associate's Degree before they get their high school diploma. So, yes, that speaks to impact and really exposing students to college early on. I have to share and brag on my institution and my faculty and staff. This year we were pleased to be nationally recognized in many ways and I'll mention a few of those. In February, we became the only community college in Pennsylvania to receive the 2026 Community Engagement Classification from the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This prestigious classification recognizes colleges and universities that demonstrate institutionalized, reciprocal and measurable community engagement, which is the standard that CCP has met through decades of intentional partnership-driven work. We also received the '25-'26 Military Friendly School Silver designation from Victory, celebrating our holistic support of our veteran students through our Veterans Resource Center. And last May, we celebrated not one, but two Jack Kent Cooke scholars from our graduating class. The Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship is a very prestigious scholarship awarded for students that are high-achieving, and it allows them the opportunity to receive $55,000 annually for up to three years towards pursuit of their Bachelor's Degree. This year we have five semifinalists. We're still waiting to hear, but we hope that we will have a scholar for this year as well, maybe two. Lastly, I want to highlight our civic engagement work as well. We did receive a voter- friendly campus designation through a partnership between Fair Election Center's Campus Vote Project and NASA's Lead Initiative. And in 2026, All In Action Plan seal from the All In Campus Democracy Challenge for developing a nonpartisan democratic engagement action plan under our #CCPVotes programming. Before I move on to the next slide, I just want to thank the entire faculty and staff because without them, all of these awards and recognition is really part of their efforts. I want to thank them for that. I want to talk a little bit about CCP as an engine of economic mobility. A few months ago, we worked with eConsult to create an economic impact report. As a result of that report, we found that the Community College of Philadelphia is generating $1 billion worth of annual economic activity in the city, not just in the city, but in the Commonwealth. $882 million of that are actually in the City of Philadelphia and Philadelphia's economy. This includes $30 million of local and state tax revenues. I also want to underscore something that you all probably know. 98% of our students who graduate from the Community College of Philadelphia remain here in the city of Philadelphia. So in addition to our economic activity that we're generating just by being here, just by operating. We also have graduates that are spending and staying here and that contributes to the city's economy as well. I want to underscore our footprint. We hire and we support 1600 employees. We have 327 full- time faculty and 708 part-time, along with 300 administrators and a range of classified and support staff. Next slide. Economic impact goes beyond just a spend, just a footprint. I want to talk about individual impact. 90 If you think about taxpayers' input, they are doubling. For every $1 that a taxpayer pays, they are receiving $2 on their investment when we talk a little bit about return on investment for the city's college. Next slide. I think that some of the efforts that we move towards and that we're trying to build on, expand, are our transfer partnerships and pathways. We have students that are working towards Bachelor's Degree attainment. And if you think about economic mobility, I want to underscore savings for starting with the Community College of Philadelphia.

So in addition to increasing your earning potential, as we know a Bachelor's Degree recipient is going to make $30,000 more annually than a high school diploma. I'm looking here and sharing with you what is the benefit in terms of savings and how much they're going to pay for that Bachelor's Degree. If a student starts with us, for example, at Temple University, which is one of our top transfer institutions, they are saving $50,000 over the course of earning that Bachelor's Degree. Our second top transfer institution is Drexel University, and we are looking at a savings of $142,000 over the journey towards that Bachelor's Degree attainment. Community College of Philadelphia has transfer and articulation agreements with all these institutions that are listed here. We are building and expanding that and we're also launching our Cheyney at CCP program this fall. It is an opportunity to bring access to Bachelor's Degree attainment right on CCP campus. We know that many of our students have transportation issues, so being able to actually bring the classes towards the Bachelor's Degree from Cheyney University to the city of Philadelphia is really going to be a great opportunity for our students, and we are launching that pathway in the fall with business and education as the two areas of degree pathway. Next slide. I mentioned that CCP is the highest enrolled community college in the Commonwealth. So I wanted to underscore that for you and show you those bars are CCP in terms of our credit enrollment. But you can see there that we are surpassing our sister colleges within the Commonwealth. That is the orange line underneath that. And then the top line represents enrollment nationally at community colleges. So we are also inching towards getting to that national average for our enrollment as well. This underscores the fact that CCP is the first choice for many in the city of Philadelphia. So we're excited about our growth and we are anticipating continued growth. Right now we are 5% up year-over- year for our enrollment, and we anticipate that growth to continue. It's not just about bringing students into the college. We are increasing enrollment, but I want to underscore that we are also producing graduates, and our graduation rate has gone up by 8% since 2022 when I joined the college. And part of this is based on the support and the high-quality teaching, innovative teaching and the support services that we wrap around our students that contribute to increased graduation rates. So it's not just about bringing more students and giving them access to education. It's providing opportunities for success, and that's indicated here. We anticipate our graduation rates to continue to climb. I want to talk a little bit about our Career and Advanced Technology Center. Many of you have been there. It's located in West Philadelphia. I know Councilmember Gauthier has been there. We thank you for your support there. This is really a state- of-the-art building. If you haven't seen it, 2022 was when we opened that building. But this is where we do a lot of our short-term training programs, as I mentioned the Naval Welding Program. But we also have a very strong automotive technology program. I want to highlight the Toyota T-Ten program, because that's an opportunity for students to earn and learn, so they're actually working in the dealerships while they're earning their Associate's Degree, and we consider that an opportunity for experiential learning and work- based learning, which we're trying to expand through our programs. We want to prepare students for careers, so that is what we're trying to do. I want to mention, as we go to the next slide, the maritime industry and how CCP is really becoming a player in that space. S. Navy to build out and start up two new programs, naval welding and nondestructive testing. We graduated our first cohort, and you saw the picture of Donvale on my first slide, of students in 5 March.

We were pleased to have 6 Councilmember Gilmore Richardson 7 there as well as Mayor Parker. 8 And we cut the ribbon on 9 our new Naval Welding Lab that 10 really trains students to work on 11 ship building, right, specific to 12 Navy specification. That is at our 13 Career and Advanced Technology 14 Center. We're excited about that 15 opportunity. And I want to 16 underscore that we are continuing 17 to build and expand programs that 18 align with high-priority 19 occupations, such as naval welding. 20 We are also building on our 21 Industrial Maintenance Program, CNC 22 programs, NDT. All of this is going to be part of preparing students for not just jobs but careers. And I want to highlight one piece, the nondestructive testing program. Four and a half months of training at this location students graduate and they can start earning $77,000 a year. This is truly lifechanging, not just individuals, but families and the community and City of Philadelphia. So we're pleased to continue to provide this type of high-quality training. I want to thank Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad for being with us for the ribbon- cutting ceremony for our Healthcare Simulation Lab in February. This is a state-of-the-art facility at our main campus location, where we were able to provide high-quality facilities imitating the hospital setting. We have state-of-the-art real-life mannequins who have bodily fluids, they are real-life mannequins, but they allow the opportunity for our students to practice and learn in a simulated setting, and they can do this on almost humans, not real humans, which I would prefer and I think you do too. Great opportunity for our students. It was a result of a Perkins grant, so we did receive funding to build this out, a federal-funded grant through the state. And we are offering support for our nursing program through this, but we're also moving towards interdisciplinary support throughout our health care programs. I want to take a minute to basically celebrate our 122 nursing graduates that graduated with us this week as well. )

Last week we had our pinning ceremony for them. And I want to highlight that our nursing program is identified as a Center of Excellence by the National League for Nursing. They also have 100% pass rate on the NCLEX exam, so we are very proud of our nursing program. I want to make sure that I share that nursing is not the only health care program we have. We also have respiratory care technology. It's similarly best in class like our nursing program. We have health service management, public health, diagnostic medical imaging, behavioral health and human services in addition to our shorter-term noncredit pathways, such as clinical medical assisting, pharmacy technician and nurse aid. What we are doing is building noncredit to credit pathways through a lot of this programming so students can start in one program. They can get work and then they can transition to another as well. I want to underscore our partnership with the city and providing programming to support careers and to really connect city residents with increased living wages. The City College for Municipal Employment has had over 400 participants in that program to date through our partnership with the city. 80 have completed, those that are in the traditional and upskilling programs. We also have a total of 200 completions with the partnership through the City College for Municipal Employment. That includes our high school as well as our civic entrepreneurship programs. We are pleased to continue to build up programming in response to city needs and regional needs, and we are looking forward to expanding and growing through the City College for Municipal Employment. I mentioned our 122 dual enrollment graduates this past Saturday. 10% of our CCP student population are dually-enrolled. Part of our efforts moving forward is to expand that. What we recognize and acknowledge is that we're not in all areas of the city as we could be, and that there are opportunities that we want to connect young people to in terms of early college and we want to be strategic and do that in a way that touches all areas of the city. So working with the School District of Philadelphia, we are pleased to expand our dual enrollment starting this summer. We are expanding our ACE program. Our ACE program allows students as early as 9th grade to take advantage of college classes on our campus and be in a class all by themselves, so we work with the school district to identify which schools will benefit from this on the first pass and we're excited to launch this, this summer. I also need to mention the Octavius Catto Scholarship Program. Many of you are familiar with that. Thank you for the city's investment for the Catto Scholars Program, last (inaudible) scholarship. To date, the Catto Scholarship Program has serviced over 4000 low-income residents of the city of Philadelphia. We service 2000 students annually through the Catto Scholarship Program. And as you may know, because of the additional wraparound student support services, our Catto students are graduating at almost double the rate of our traditional student population. So that is thankful to your investment from the city for the Catto Scholarship Program, which we want to continue to emphasize and support. All right. So the Community College of Philadelphia is also part of the solution. We want to work to being part of the solution to addressing the teacher shortage. So I want to highlight a few of our programs that are geared towards this. With support and working directly with the Mayor's Office of Education, we are working on the fellow Catto Teacher Scholars program. That allows Catto graduates to transfer seamlessly through those institutions that you see listed there, Holy Family, LaSalle, Temple and Arcadia, as long as they're interested in pursuing a career in education, so we want to create that pathway.

As I mentioned, our Catto graduates are always high- achieving students, so this is a wonderful pathway for them as well as a way to get them interested in education and teaching. I mentioned the Cheyney at CCP. We're looking to launch that with 30 participants in the fall. That will also be an education pathway. We are launching two pathways in the fall, education and business, but the education pathway will obviously help prepare students. They will go seamlessly to Cheyney University and earn their Bachelor's Degree and pursue education and teaching as a career. And then lastly, I'll mention the para pathway. That is a collaboration with the School District of Philadelphia. Paraprofessionals, we're training them. They are completing their Associate's Degree with us so they can go on and possibly become a teacher. We see this as a critical need for the city as well as the region, and we want to continue to support teacher education. So we're almost at the end. So I just want to underscore some of the points that I made. The Community College of Philadelphia is really an economic engine of mobility for the city, and we can't do that without your support so we appreciate that. Also wanted to just underscore the importance and the impact that we are making in realtime as we are increasing our number of graduates, our graduation rate as well as expanding our programming to align with regional and city workforce needs. And I want to just end on how CCP has been impacting over 750,000 lives for over 60 years as we come into our 60th year. We want to do this into the future. We are growing and we are creating opportunities for upward mobility. And I want to have an end point. I have a student here that I think is the best representation. I can tell you how great Community College of Philadelphia is, but the best representation of that is one of our recent graduates. So I have Daniel Emden, who is here with us today. )

He graduated on Saturday. Daniel is also our Student Government Association President. He is also our student board member. He was with me yesterday in Harrisburg representing Community College of Philadelphia and helping us advocate for more money on the state level. And I want to let him have the opportunity to talk about his experience at CCP.

All right. Thank you for the introduction, Dr. Marshall. Good afternoon, Council President Johnson, esteemed Councilmembers, CCP family and honored guests. My name is Daniel Emden. I am a proud CCP graduate, Class of 2026 as of past Saturday and I also had the honor of serving as the Student Body President for the 2025-2026 academic school year. Now, not too long ago I didn't believe higher education was for me. Like many students in the city of Philadelphia, I saw college as something that was out of reach, too expensive, too uncertain and simply not built for people like me. That changed when my older brother learned about the Octavius Catto Scholarship and encouraged us to apply. That opportunity didn't only make college affordable. It made it possible for my family. CCP was more than a school. It was home. My brother attended first. He graduated debt- free and is now finishing up his Bachelor's at Holy Family University on the verge of applying to medical school to become a doctor. I then attended and graduated recently. And today my mother is also continuing that journey as a Catto Scholar. When I arrived at CCP, I originally intended to become a scientist, but through the mentorship opportunities and support that I found there at CCP, my vision expanded. I began to see a path as a physician policymaker, where I hope to continue to be of service to my community, being able to serve individual patients as well as shape systems for marginalized communities. Serving as Student Body President was a defining part of that journey. It gave me the responsibility to advocate for my peers and to understand the real challenges students face every single day, from affordability to access to opportunity. In fact, yesterday I had the opportunity to be in Harrisburg, where I spent the entire day speaking with state representatives, senators and legislative leaders, simply sharing my experience as a CCP student. I was especially grateful for the time and support shown by Representative Jordan Harris, Senator Vincent Hughes and Speaker Joanna McClinton. Their willingness to listen reinforced something powerful, that student voices matter and that leadership at every level is invested in our success here in the city. CCP paved the way with more than access. It gave me a direction and a platform. Because of that foundation, I was one of the five semi-finalists for the Jack Kent Cook Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, which as you all know is one of the most competitive scholarships in the nation, and that allows me to attend any four-year institution debt-free. I was also accepted into several top universities, including Rice University, which also offered me a full Rice scholarship to continue my education at the four- year level. (Applause.)

None of that started at an elite institution. It started right here at the Community College of Philadelphia. That is the impact of CCP. It takes students who may not yet see a future for themselves and equips them with the tools, confidence and support to succeed at the highest levels. I stand here not just for myself, but for the thousands of students I had the privilege to represent, students with the same potential who simply need the same opportunity. Your support makes that possible. It is not simply funding an institution. It is investing in people and families like mine and in the future of Philadelphia. I am a direct result of that investment and I hope you will continue to support CCP so that many more students can follow this path. Thank you for your time and your commitment. (Applause.)

Great job, young man. Continue to keep up the good work, Mr. President. At this time, we're going to get ready to prepare for questions from members of the committee. I just want to take a moment to thank Dr. Marshall for laying out your vision. It's great seeing you go from interim to actually now being the person who is charting the Community College into the next level. And so, great presentation. And I'm going to also thank Derrick Sawyer, who most of us worked with his dad, former Fire Commissioner Derrick Sawyer, and so always good to see you doing the good work as well. He's also part of that D9 fraternities, you know, sororities and all that good stuff, supporting our young people. Just a couple questions, Dr. Marshall. I know last year that the Board raised tuition by 9.4%, which will be implemented in the fall of 2026. And so, give us an idea of -- actually as we deal with the issue of affordability, right, the rent's too high, we're addressing issues around childcare, transportation, right. We want to also encourage and invest in our young people to get a quality education. So give us an idea regarding the strategies and analysis of the impact that you thought the tuition may have on the student body, but also the strategies to kind of mitigate it as much as possible? And then also I would like to get an idea of the amount of funding that comes from the state and also the amount of funding that comes from private donors and philanthropy?

So the most impact that we expect to have is on students that really aren't taking advantage of financial aid and scholarships and those things. So majority of our students, 75% of our students, have some type of financial-need situation in terms of homelessness, housing insecurity or food insecurity. And so, we're hoping that it's not going to really impact them as much. This is the first time the college has raised tuition in nine years. We are the highest- enrolled community college in the Commonwealth. And even though we are the highest-enrolled community college in the Commonwealth, we do not get the highest allocation from the state for our budget. If you add on top of that, what is our student demographic, and as I mentioned 75% of our students have some type of need, right. We also have to service that need. So our demographic is more vulnerable, and that requires us to provide more wraparound support services, particularly if you look at other institutions that we're being supported through the Consortium, the Community College, all of the other are peer institutions in the Commonwealth. So I feel like we're in a unique position. We did not want to raise tuition obviously. But at the same time, as expenses are going up, as enrollment is going up, we had to do something. We're drawing down our reserves. So this was what we decided on. It is a $15 per credit-hour increase. We're also working with our fundraising and our foundation to increase that. The private donors, the scholarships are a significant aspect of that, and a lot of that comes through our private funding. So we're hoping to mitigate some of that as we support them in other ways. But I'll ask Derrick to talk a little bit of specifics about the numbers in the state. We were in Harrisburg yesterday, so we are working on the state piece of it because that is a big part.

Thank you, Council President, Dr. Marshall. So from the state, we are currently receiving around $36 million from the state -

Do you know how much Montgomery County Community College receives?

Yes, I do. Montgomery County Community College receives 22.7 million from the state for operating.

And from the City of Philadelphia, right, you're getting 55.9 million for FY27; is that correct?

Correct.

And you said Montgomery County receives how much?

They're receiving $22.7 million from the state.

22.7. How much are we receiving for Philadelphia?

We received million.

Is there a point of information? Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad.

I was just going to say if those numbers can be given per population, then we'd have a fairer assessment of that investment made by state in Montgomery.

Could you provide that information to the Chair?

Population for each county?

Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad. Just clarify your line of questioning please for a point of information.

So the question was clarification on the numbers the Council President asked about how much the state gives to CCP versus Mont Co. I just wanted it divided by your student body.

I understand, yes.

Just to see the level of investment.

We'll follow up on that particular one. We don't have the data for each community college on that level, but we do have the allocations for state.

Are there any other universities as well that we're comparing ourselves to in terms of level of investment?

We compare ourselves to the 15 community colleges, our peer institutions.

Could you provide that information to me as well just to provide to the members?

Yes.

Just from a supportive standpoint, this also allows us when we advocate with you in terms of our partners that we work with on the state level. It allows us to also kind of crystallize the need. And so, I understand now the investment per population. Because obviously, the population of Montgomery County is much, much smaller than the population in the City of Philadelphia. And so, I clearly understand the line of questioning now.

Correct. And the state also funds the PASSHE schools, which is like the West Chester --

I'm a graduate of Mansfield University. Proud Mansfield alumni, yes.

And the state-relateds, Temple, Lincoln --

All four of them, state- related, Temple, Penn State, Cheyney and it's one more. But, yes.

This is the second year in a row that we were flat-funded by the state as part of the community colleges, so it's --

See, that's good information to know.

We're struggling. And what I tried to communicate in Harrisburg yesterday is that as the largest enrolled community college when we're flat- funded, I mean flat-funded is not great when you have inflation and all that anyway. But in addition to that, we're really struggling when --

Here's what I'd like to do before I turn it over to my members, Mr. President, young man, come on up to table again. He said he had a good time with three individuals I have a very strong working relationship with that can really have an impact on this flat- footed funding that has been taking place. You said you had a good time with a young man named Jordan Harris, the Appropriations Chairman. I am a former State Representative in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. He's the individual who succeeded me. I call him my little brother, but he is the Chairman of Appropriations which appropriates the funds. And so, I want you to tell him that you came to City Council today advocating seeking additional support for CCP, you're a recent graduate. And the fact that they're flat-footing funding for CCP is unacceptable. And it'd be great if they could work toward this budget cycle to increase what is an iconic institution, but most importantly an institution that can invest heavily in our young people here in the city of Philadelphia. And then also I want you to follow up and talk to Speaker Joanna McClinton, who's also the Speaker of the House and a young lady I've worked with as well, and also reiterate that you came to City Council and also had a conversation with us about the need to invest in CCP as a former student and now you're an alumni, but as your last charge as Class President is to push the needle as it relates to investing in high- quality education, secondary education, which starts at CCP. So continue to keep up the good work, but also I'm very serious when I ask for you to follow up and do your due diligence and say, hey, I just understood that from City Council hearing and we've been flat-footed, and it would be great that we can increase the level of funding beyond what's been allotted thus far. Keep up the good work.

For sure. Thank you for that. I'll get it done by end of this --

I want you to report back to me. This is my Chief of Staff, John Christmas. And so, get his business card. He will give you my card and get back to me and let me know how those conversations go.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Dr. Marshall and Mr. Derrick Sawyer, I'm going to turn the microphone over to my members. But in all seriousness, we recognize that in order for us to really continue to drive down the gun violence that we're seeing here in the city of Philadelphia, we had a historical 60-year low when it comes to homicides and shootings. That comes from investing in our young people, right, giving them opportunities to get involved in things that are positive as opposed to things that are negative. I enjoy being City Council President but most importantly, I represent the 2nd Councilmanic District, so I'm very, very aware of the partnership with Hanwha, which is located in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Rhoads Industries, which is also located in the Philadelphia Navy Yard which resides in my district, and we need to continue those types of partnerships to provide individuals, particularly young people an opportunity to get involved in things that are positive, but also a way to build generational wealth and drive down poverty, right. And it starts with investments. And so, I honestly think for CCP to be flat-footed, right, it's totally unacceptable. Now, I work with my colleagues in the State House, but nevertheless we have too much power up there from the City of Philadelphia where we're flat-footing CCP. And so, I will also work with my team to also do some advocacy as well to see if they will be willing to be supported. We're doing our part with 55 million. And so, surely they can do more. Chair recognizes Councilmember Jamie Gauthier.

Thank you, Council President. Dr. Marshall. Thank you so much for being here and thanks for the presentation and all of the great work that you're doing at CCP. So I walked in on the conversation around flat-funding, but I wanted to go -- well, flat- funding by the state, but I wanted to go a little bit deeper. I have heard that CCP has had to raise its tuition by 9.5% this year. Can you talk about what that means for the population of students that you're serving? And do you know in the past when we've had to have that kind of increase, how has that impacted enrollment? Did you already talk about this? If so, then I can move on and grab it later.

So, yeah. I'll just say that it's the first time we've had to raise tuition in nine years. Our enrollment is booming right now. Again, we're hoping that we can mitigate the difference by supporting our students with scholarships and additional basic needs support. We've been fortunate to have donors who invest in that and we're trying to leverage that and make sure that we communicate to those folks that really can help us, so that we can continue to support our students in other ways so they won't feel that a lot of our students also participate and take advantage of financial aid. So we're hoping that they won't necessarily feel this as much as the typical student that's actually writing the check, but we hated to do this. But this was something that we had to do based on inflation and costs rising.

And I know you're newer to the institution, but do you have any information on have we had even similar increases in the past? And what impact has that had on the population?

I believe it was '14, '15 when we did the last increase. But it wasn't $15. It was less than that.

And what was that impact?

On enrollment? OUNCILWOMAN GAUTHIER: Did you see enrollment go down? What were the results of that increase?

So our enrollment was still steadily increasing over the years. Our enrollment didn't really decline until the COVID year.

Okay.

That's when it dropped.

Okay. Thank you. I wanted to ask about the CATC, which I'm so proud to have in my district. I feel like it's a wonderful model of workforce development that is actually connected to jobs at the backend. Can you talk about the current enrollment at the CATC and your plan to increase enrollment?

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that question. We have about 350 students enrolled there right now. That's double our enrollment this time last year. Still --

That's great.

Yeah, it's great. Still a small number. We know that there's a lot of capacity there so we are building and expanding our program. We believe that the Navy project and additional support and expansion of our footprint there with that program and those programs, nondestructive testing, will also contribute to the increased enrollment.

And what are your goals for further expansion?

We're really leaning in on the advanced manufacturing space and collaboration with the Navy. We're hopeful we'll get some additional funding support for that. A lot of these programs are high-cost programs and it's really difficult for us to expand without some type of partnership. We're also working with Hanwha. We were there maybe about two, three weeks ago visiting with the CEO at Hanwha working on how do we develop pathways and what kind of support we can get from the employers to develop out different curriculum and programming. They are supporting us with that in that regard. So as we respond to the needs and the requests, we're hoping that we'll also get partnership investment. Part of that is deepening our partnership to be able to deliver those programs.

Great. Last super quick question: I saw you put up all of your partnerships and I know that you have a lot of students that transfer to Temple, and I was pleased to see Drexel, but I didn't see Penn. Can you talk about how many students transfer from CCP to the University of Pennsylvania each year? And have you talked with Penn about building a partnership and increasing that number?

So we might have to get back to you with the exact number, but I do know when I was serving as Provost, we were always looking to expand that pipeline. We have had multiple conversations with Penn recently. As recently as last week, we had a meeting with them. They definitely see the value in deepening the partnership and creating pathways for our students. We're starting with honor students. There have been conversations around a pathway for our honor students there and expanding and building on that. But there's definitely opportunity, and we've had conversations with their Provost and their leadership over there most recently.

I would love to further that conversation. We all know that there are so many things they're allowed to say or not say. This is an easy way for them to live out their values and their mission. So would love to talk about expanding that partnership further.

Of course.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke.

Thank you, Mr. President. And good afternoon, President Marshall and all the cabinet that is here. Thank you for all that you do to make higher education accessible for the residents of Philadelphia. Last year CCP reached a contract agreement with the faculty and staff union AFT Local 2026. The agreement was widely reported on by the media and it came in the final hours before a potential faculty and staff strike. I remember someone was there until about 4:00 in the morning in discussions, and I remember hearing the good news the strike was averted. I am concerned, however, that CCP has not honored its agreement with the faculty and staff union to provide SEPTA passes for all CCP students. In your testimony, you shared that you signed a non-contractual MOU with AFT that you would negotiate with SEPTA for a free transit benefit. AFT members understood this to be a vital part of their contract negotiation. Can you help us understand, explain the difference in the understanding here?

Yeah. So we signed a non-contractual memorandum of understanding. And the language with that said the parties agree that during the term of this agreement the college will negotiate with SEPTA for a free public transportation benefit. In keeping with this, we've continued negotiations with SEPTA, which actually began in January of 2024 The college also launched a free pilot program at our Career Advanced Technology Center located in West Philadelphia. And let me just start by saying this: As we've been negotiating with SEPTA, the dollar amount that they have quoted for us in order to provide free SEPTA passes for all of our students is a little over $2 million --

How much, 2 million?

2.1 --

2.1 million.

We simply don't have that, right. However, we understand that we want to provide services to our students so we have been working on how do we do that at least in incremental ways. So we started a pilot at our Career Advanced Technology Center, particularly around supporting the students that were there, having an opportunity to perhaps increase enrollment there at the same time, but then give a sense to us about how it's going to be in terms of cost to administer the program. As we've done that, we've also worked with our Student Government Association, Daniel, we've worked with him to survey the student population to really identify what percentage of our students would actually want and take advantage of this because we want to go into this in a thoughtful and a strategic way, as we decide to offer SEPTA passes for our student population. We are signing up for this into perpetuity, which means every budgetary cycle we will be looking for a certain dollar amount. I know it seems like a quick decision. But as I look at it if we start offering SEPTA passes, which I think would be great, we are signing up to 2.1 or more as our enrollment increases, and every year we will need to figure out how to fund that. And so, I will say we started the pilot. We're assessing that. We're gathering the data from the students through Student Government Association. About 50% of our students actually use public transit. And so, there is a large portion of our students that drive and so forth. And then we're also looking at how can we potentially identify a certain population of students that are really our neediest students and maybe support them as we start to figure out how do we finance this over the long haul. The last thing I'll say is that we have shared this request with the state in Harrisburg yesterday. We talked about these numbers. There is some general support. And so, we're making it very clear that this is something we'd like to provide, but we're just not in a financial position to do it right now and into the future with that dollar amount for all of our students.

If I may, President Marshall -- and I heard the bell, Mr. President, so I want to be mindful of the clock -- with all respect, please hear me if I seem a bit direct, the strike last year was averted on the premise that this had been agreed to and was going to be worked out. And so, it seems this is challenging for me to hear and I'm sure others as well, that it sounds like we're figuring out whether or not we can or will do it. And so, I really want to press on this, the only reason why we're in a good position right now to even be having this discussion is because we were able to avert it upon an agreement. And there's understanding that AFT has that I think that you all do not have with them. The questions I want to ask that following this is when can we actually expect CCP to provide SEPTA passes for all CCP students based off of that agreement? And what the plan was for negotiating with SEPTA moving forward on that front? I was going to ask, has CCP requested additional funding this year from the city or pursued philanthropy grants or other sources to support the transit benefit? I'm assuming -- maybe I should ask that question. Has there been an ask within your budget proposal to fund the passes? Is that included in your calculations, in your tally?

We have asked state for that. And so, that was part of our conversations yesterday at state.

So the budget proposal to the state has been to include those particular passes?

As we've been discussing, the city has been a great partner with us, but the state is lagging behind. So from my standpoint, I know how challenged the city budget is. It makes sense for me to talk about how can we get state support. We're not the only institution particularly that might benefit from something like this at their institution as well. So we are continuing to have those conversations with state as recently as yesterday. And I will say the agreement was not to provide free SEPTA passes for students. It was to negotiate with SEPTA, to try to get there, and that's what we agreed to. And so, I understand the interpretation of that and I understand how people took that away as we will provide. But I will say, had we said that, that probably would have been premature. I'm new in this role trying to assess what our financial situation and picture would be and need to really understand what we will be signing up for and how the college will be able to support this in the long term.

And again, no shade on you or anything like that, but I am going to advocate for AFT. And that I think it undermines confidence in conversations that as you come back to the table, eventually you have to, it's going to be hard for anyone to believe that when you have that sort of agreement, and I understand there are different interpretations on it, but when you have a sort of agreement that they can trust that they're going to come through, if we come back a year later, ask about the update on these things, that they are clear in their minds, they're clear they're supposed to be expecting or getting or figuring out what the plan is, something more concrete, and the response is, well, we don't have the money, you know, we're not really sure. So this is a major concern, I think, for them, certainly for myself. I'll leave the balance of the questions I had on that because I'm clear what your response is. One question and I'll get off the mic, I've heard from AFT members that there are challenges with HVAC systems at all three campuses. Some staff are working from home indefinitely because conditions of offices are unbearable and there are no other spaces for them to work. How did this happen? What is the college's plan to address this particular situation?

Yeah. So I appreciate that question. We have old buildings. We've had HVAC issues historically. We were pleased to receive funding from the state to address some of these issues, and we are prioritizing the buildings where the highest need is and the impact is on students. So as I've been sending out communications as recently I think as last week, we sent a facilities update where we indicated one of our buildings, which really has high traffic of students coming in classes, CBI, that's our CBI building, that I have prioritized that and we are allocating some of that money towards addressing that in the near future. The building is actually offline so that we can get in there and address it this summer, and we'll be ready to go for the fall. It has been a long time, five plus years where this hasn't been addressed, but I'm prioritizing it under my administration and we're moving forward with addressing that.

Okay. Thank you. I'm done. I just want to reiterate again I do think it's essential that we figure out -- I even said this amongst my colleagues. Certainly when budgets are not -- when other states, the country, they're not helping to provide necessary funding that you may be relying on, it requires municipalities or other separate entities to think differently about how you're going to meet your particular budgets, how you're going to stand on your own two feet. I don't know what decisions you have to make. You're in a tough position as president, but I do think that there has to be some figuring out in when you're talking to unions. If they're walking away with the understanding that averts a strike that was certainly going to happen and then a year later they're not getting a real solid response or answer on actually delivering on the thing that they were standing ten toes down on, we got to figure out how to move differently. And so, I just want to encourage us to think about that. I don't mean no harm, but I do think this matters to them. I'm a big proponent of transit. I'm not the only one who's advocating for this. It is essential that they get this. So please, please find out a way to address that matter. Thank you for the time, Mr. President. (Applause.)

I do have a question though. Was there anything in writing?

I'm sorry?