And I'll ask that you keep the response brief. Okay. Thank you. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: I can get back to you with that information.
Do you have anything that you'd like to place on the record though? COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: We're working on the Wyoming Bridge internally and --
What does that mean? COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: -- we can get back to you with the opening dates.
What does that mean we're working on it? I know we're working on it because I know we see people over there. But I need to know what is the plan? We closed it without notice, right, without community notice. I need to know what to say to residents. What's the plan? How long are both of these bridges going to be closed? And how do we prevent this from occurring in the future? I mean, I'm sure that we're doing inspections often so we should know. We're leading up to a point where we can no longer hold this work off. How do we prevent that from happening in the future?
So Wyoming Bridge was not a planned closure just to be clear. There was element of the bridge which deteriorated beyond repair which led to water getting into the bridge. And so, that was an unforeseen situation which forced our hand in terms of closing the bridge. So we are working on a project to get traffic across the bridge. It won't be a full reopening of the bridge. That project has to go through some design and we're starting from a standing stop. We've got to get that process going. I don't want to give you a time frame because it's pretty likely that any time frame I give you would change once we learn more about the bridge's condition, once we learn about our ability to get contractors on board. In terms of the inspection, this is something we're working on because we don't want that to ever happen again. And what I can tell you is that we're in a conversation with PennDOT so that we can work together, we can partner with PennDOT. We have a lot of bridges for a city. PennDOT has a lot of bridges across the Commonwealth. And so, we're going to share capacity in order to make sure that the inspection is upped a little bit, the frequency is upped a little bit so that we can avoid that situation in the future. But what we will get you a little bit more detail on both Hunting Park and Wyoming so that you have some information that you can share.
I would appreciate that. Madam Chair, I'm going to ask that we work towards a proactive plan. We do have a lot of roads and bridges, right, and these bridges are inspected. I don't know if they're quarterly. I don't know if it's annually. I don't know if it's monthly. But there has to be a better process in place for us to be able to respond to some of this aging infrastructure so that we're working with communities and not creating gridlocks the way that we have in that part of the District. I know it's frustrating to my residents. And I can't imagine having two bridges in such close proximity to each other in other neighborhoods creating the same thing.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lozada. And I know that you all verbally responded to the question. I ask that you also follow up in writing. Thank you very much. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Young.
Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple questions for Streets and Water. First, I just want to point out in the Five Year Plan for the Streets Department, Under Class 500 it looks like for FY25, '26, '27 it's an estimate of $15 million. And then in the operating budget, I don't see it anywhere listed in here. So I don't know if that was a misprint. I do see where there are the FY24 actual obligations in Class 500. This is particularly under transportation. But there is no reference to this $15 million that is mentioned in the Five Year Plan in the actual operating budget. So I just want to see if you guys can take a look at that to see what that is, to see if that is an omission or an error. But $15 million is a lot of money. So just please take a look at that for me. Also, on the same line the questioning of Councilmember Lozada, I have a bridge in my District between Glenwood and Sedgley, the Margie Street Bridge that's been closed for forever. It seems like -- so can we get an update? The community will love an update, folks in the 16th Ward on what is the status of that particular bridge. And I have a question about crosswalks and striping. There seems to be a lot of crosswalks being put in place that are nowhere near I guess the intersections or corners where stop signs are in my District, particularly on 19th Street. So can you all talk to us about the placement of crosswalks and street restriping in the city? Thank you. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Thank you for your question. I'm going to turn your FY budget questions over to Deputy Commissioner Newman. And then I'll answer your other questions that follow.
Good afternoon, Councilmember. $15 million does look like a lot. It's actually indemnities which are claims against the City for roadway and traffic work. That will pop up each year as indemnities at the end of the fiscal year. You'll see it blanked out at the beginning of another fiscal year, and it'll come back again at the end of this fiscal year coming up now. So it doesn't show up in our budget initially. It comes in towards the end of the fiscal year once those indemnities are assigned to the department.
Thank you. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: The bridges in question are PennDOT bridges so we can reach out to PennDOT, get you information on those specific bridges and get back to you with that information. And the crosswalks are placed within the ramp locations. The stop bars depending on volume are set back from the radius of the curb. So depending on the volumes in the areas and the locations for your ADA accessible crossings, that's where your crosswalks are marked.
I heard the bell, so thank you. I'm just -- so when you are locating a crosswalk or even a restriping in general, I have a question about the restriping and repainting. How often do you go out to repaint or restripe the crosswalks in certain intersections? COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: This additional line striping crew that is in this budget will actually help us with that. We mark our streets after we pave and then we usually refresh along -- during the seasons where we're paving, we usually refresh the marking. So we try to get on a regular basis with it. But if there's anything in particular that sticks out, just shoot us an email and we can look into it.
I can send you 50 intersections literally. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Okay.
And I'll submit my questions to Water and the rest of my questions for Streets in writing.
And if we have time, we can do a second round but I don't know that we'll be able to achieve that today. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.
Madam Chair, I'm going to put all my questions in for all three departments. First, I'll start with Streets. If I could get an update on the Chinatown Stitch project with respect to which merchants are going to be disturbed during this time, when the project will start, and what should we be expecting in terms of length? So that's Streets. And the second part for Streets is -- thank you to my colleague Councilmember Quetcy Lozada for asking so many questions about the crossing guards. That's a special interest to us. I wanted to know in terms of placement of crossing guards. I know you hire them. Are you working with the school and police for actual placement for the safety plan or is it something just you do? That's Streets. For Aviation, a question about carbon footprint. And I believe you're installing some geothermal technology and I would like a little update on that. That's in the Northeast Philadelphia Airport. I'd like to get an update on that. And the second part for you is hosting the World Cup and the 250th anniversary of a country's founding, in addition to many events and festivals are attracting a lot of visitors. One of my priorities in the lead-up to the festivities is to ensure City departments and law enforcement are ready for the influx of travelers. A component of this is ensuring our workforce is prepared for more undesirable aspects of large events like human trafficking. I would like to have you give us an overview of some work that the Airport might be involved in this aspect. And who do I have left, Water. Just one question for Water, about fluoride in drinking water and having a Health Secretary who doesn't believe in it. Is it impacting us locally? And those are all my questions, Madam Chair. And we can start with Streets. I'll remind you if you forgot what they were. Chinatown's Stitch was the first question. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: I'm going to turn the Chinatown Stitch over to Deputy Managing Director Carroll. I'll correct that. Chris Puchalsky. (Witness approached Witness table.)
Hi. Good afternoon, Councilmember. I think I got the second part of your question about the Stitch, when it is currently scheduled to start. We're in the design process now. The federal funds need to be obligated by September of 2026. We're looking to start construction in early 2027 -- or late 2027. That could slip to 2028. To be clear, this is a joint City, PennDOT project. So although we're leading the current design phase, it will be bid by PennDOT. And I missed the first part of your question about Stitch.
Small businesses and merchants who are going to be disrupted by that. Do we have a plan to make sure they don't suffer economically?
No, but it is on our radar. We're currently working on putting out a contract to maximize participation. But in terms of construction disruption, we will be putting that together as part of our constructability review with PennDOT.
Madam Chair, I would like to make sure there's an actual plan of knowing who are the people who are going to be disrupted and what multi-agencies, perhaps who will make them whole. So while this place is disrupted, their business doesn't -- they don't go out of business because these are small businesses.
Yeah. We are happy to get that to you just to set expectations about the timeline of that. We don't have a construction plan yet so we don't even yet know what are the locations, what streets will we have to shut down. So it will probably be some time later this year, early next calendar year before we can get that to you.
And to Councilmember Ahmad's point, if you could also give her the information regarding the coordination with Commerce regarding the impacted businesses, correct, Councilmember Ahmad?
Yes. Merchants fund would probably be involved in this and maybe other agencies. And maybe this needs to be a multi-agency contribution to something that can be put out to the merchants in the area.
Yeah, we will be happy to when we get to that point in the delivery process. We don't even exactly know what businesses will be there by the time we get into construction, but we will be happy to work on that with Commerce.
Thank you. And my other question was about the street crossing guards. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: We do work with the schools and the police department, and we do try to go into the communities to get people to sign up to become a school crossing guard.
Yeah, that was a great answer you gave so I got that. And the last one is for -- not last one. The second one is for Water, the fluoride. It should be a short answer. COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: On fluoride we are following the national attention that is there. We're working with the Health Department. We do use fluoride in our system. I attended an award program that was at I believe it was U of Penn and they talked about how the use of fluoride was discovered at U of Penn and the importance of it going back hundreds of years. And so --
So no immediate plans to disrupt that? COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: No, not at this time. But at the same time, we will work hand and glove with the Health Department.
Our Health Department? COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: Our Health Department.
Philadelphia's -- COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: Our Health Department.
I'm just worried about the federal health department that potentially could disrupt this plan. I'm just going on the record that we are still doing what we're supposed to do. So thank you for that. Atif, if you could quickly answer --
Yeah, because we're way over time. Okay. I gave you an extra minute as well.
Well, can he put it in -- give me one second and then put it in writing. I only want to hear about the human trafficking.
We'll give you extensive answers for both of them, but let me touch on the human trafficking. It's really important issue for our enterprise as well. As an airport, we are a gateway and as good things come through, a lot of evil happens through those same paths. We do have a program in place. We brought in Cassie Schmidt as our Chief Strategy Officer, who has experience rolling out similar programs for large scale events, specifically Super Bowl in Minneapolis. She's going to be spearheading that effort with us. She's looking forward to working with you and your office as well, but there's a plan of action that is in place. We'll put that in writing and get you a little bit more detail. And we'll do the same thing for PNE and the sustainability efforts.
All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for allowing me those questions.
Yes. Thank you so much, Councilmember Ahmad, Chair of our Public Health Committee. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Landau.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, thank you, Madam Chair. Two Streets questions and two Water questions. First for the Streets Department. The City of Philadelphia recently settled a lawsuit, as you indicated in your testimony, over curb ramps. And the City under that settlement agreement will have to install or remediate 10,000 of these curb ramps. Is the City itself now doing the work on the curb ramps or is it contracted out? COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: Thank you for your question. I'm going to turn that question over to Deputy Managing Director Michael Carroll.
So we have not stood up the ADA construction crew. We're still working on that process, but that is not going to be a major factor this year in terms of us increasing significantly the number of ramps that we're putting out on the street.
Let me be clear. Are you saying that the City will at some point do these curb ramps, curb cuts themselves but we're not yet doing that? We're still contracting out?
Yeah, and I want to be clear. There's probably no point in time where we're doing all of the curb ramps, but we can take on ramps as part of a package of building the capacity there.
Okay. I want to double down on what I've always said. I think we should be doing these ourselves. I actually think it's a great pilot program, a great program for training and workforce development. The City could do it well and not wrong and take responsibility for that and not have the liability in the future. So anything you need from me I'm all about us getting this off the ground. Let's do it ourselves.
The second question following up on some of my colleague Councilmember O'Rourke's questions was about the Zero Fare pilot program which is being cut and this is the SEPTA Zero Fare pilot program. Why was the funding for this pilot cut from the Mayor's proposed budget?
So as the Mayor set priorities for the budget, the decision was made that that pilot should reach its conclusion. We're very confident that our investment in SEPTA represented in both the operating subsidy and the capital subsidies, is us putting our foot forward and doing more for SEPTA than any other jurisdiction and at this point in time including the state. In terms of what SEPTA does with that funding, I have green light to kind of tell you guys we're going to have a conversation with SEPTA to see if there's ways for us to extend the Zero Fare program. Very early in that conversation, but we're hopeful we can accomplish something with that goal in mind.
Appreciate you. I think it's pretty unanimous here in this body that we all want that program back. Thank you so much. Water Department, two quick ones. The City closed two Pennsylvania infrastructure investment Authority PENNVEST's federally subsidized low-cost loans totaling approximately $109.8 million for water and wastewater system improvements in 2024. The loans will be used to fund water main replacements and sewer replacements throughout the city. How will the almost $110 million in PENNVEST loans for water main and sewer replacements be allocated across the City's infrastructure projects? And are there any specific neighborhoods or districts that will see prioritized improvements? And just one more after that. COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: In prioritizing the projects, we look at an analog of the age of the pipes, when the pipes were last treated and make a decision on that. It's not by a specific neighborhood. It's not by looking at a blank piece of paper and then tallying how often we've been in that neighborhood or touched that neighborhood. It looks at the needs of the infrastructure itself. And so, we will analyze across where we need to do it. Now, there were two projects that dealt with lead replacement with PENNVEST and we did receive $9.9 million there where we will be able to in the pilot program remove -- and this is basically in the Kensington area. We'll be able to remove the lead laterals, that's one issue. Lead laterals under the law regarding lead replacement they have to be removed. The laterals is owned by the homeowner. And so, in this situation in those projects the first one we received 9.9. We will be able to go in and remove the lateral. And then we applied for a second one for 9.9. And so, hopefully we'll receive a second grant and be able to do that. But your question as far as environmental justice and making sure that we're going into every neighborhood, we are focused on that, we care about that. We look at the age of the pipes and then we go in with a certain analog and make a determination of which area we have to address. But we're doing everything we can and we make sure that we don't leave any neighborhood out that requires our assistance at that given time.
Thank you for that. One last question just about -- one last question about the City's OPAL System. So you know that the city -- I'm the head of the Technology Committee. We've got Project OPAL, which is tasked with replacing the City's aging financial contracting and purchasing systems with a modern, integrated system which is going to simplify things and hopefully streamline all of our projects. The proposal mentions modernization efforts like the OPAL Project to replace legacy financial procurement systems. How will these technological upgrades improve operational efficiency and transparency in the long run for the Water Department? COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: Philadelphia isn't different from a lot of other cities that have had possibly an older IT system or has through the years used a patchwork to repair. And the bottom line is -- and now, this is a lawyer speaking and not an IT specialist -- the bottom line is that the system will allow us to be more efficient in getting information and allow us to make I believe reports easier than we have in the past and allow us to communicate easier information to the public in general. So it's a large project. I will allow Lawrence Yangalay, my Deputy Commissioner for Finance, to speak on it just a little bit.
Okay. So this is what we're going to do. If he can give a 30-second response, that will be great. After this, I'm going to recognize Councilmember Driscoll and then recognize Councilmember Brooks. And for the remainder of the colleagues who are in the queue, I'm going to apologize in advance. We are not having a second round. You can submit the remainder of your questions in writing. Okay. So we'll take the Deputy for 30 seconds. Then Councilmember Driscoll and then Councilmember Brooks. We'll end with Councilmember Brooks. And then everyone else in the queue will submit your answers in writing. Okay. Thank you for understanding.
Lawrence Yangalay, Deputy Commissioner of Finance of Philadelphia Water Department. What OPAL is doing and we are actively involved with Opal, for instance, if we were here today, the question the Councilwoman asked, I will press the button on my laptop, it will give me financial information. When we go to prepare budget, for instance, we have to manually in Excel type historical information. Of course, you know what that means for accuracy. But Opal is going to streamline that kind of process that will be able to utilize the software to be more efficient in our reporting. And of course, the procurement process we have about 17-step procurement process and that brings several delay in our procurement process. We hope that it will be one step advanced to another question. With all the supporting documentation, you will be able to approve it online and vendors can go in the system to monitor the flow of some of this information. So it's a new software. We are very much eager about it and we hope it will perform as we have been promised by the consultants. I think it's a good thing for the city and we are happy to be part of it.
Thank you very much, Councilmember Landau. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Driscoll.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be quick. So I'll start with Commissioner Hayman. Commissioner, in my role as the Chairman of Public Utilities, you, Glen, Ben, your entire leadership team has been great working with us and I appreciate that. I think when people -- whether it's a pothole or whatever it is in the street, our constituents are either blaming me or it's the Water Department or the Streets Department. And a lot of times it's third-party contractors. So you don't necessarily have to answer this, but it's something that I would like you to look into, and that's the vetting of the third-party contractors. Whether it's a bonding delay sometimes or a work order delay or some shoddy work, I think we're all getting blamed for that. And I think if we can get a little bit better vetting upfront and we get better contractors, that might go a long way to solving the problem. COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: Yes, sir. Thank you for the direction and we will look into that.
Thank you. And, Atif, I wanted to thank you. It was only less than nine weeks ago where a plane came down to my District and your department was there as well as all my colleagues immediately on the phone asking what we needed. And I want to thank you for that. I'm not going to bring up the bathrooms because I think you got to deal with Mayor Parker about the bathrooms down there. I think she's doing a good job on that. But I would like you to comment real briefly about the valet program. I know the valet program. If you can just comment on that real quickly.
Sure, certainly. Thank you. First of all, thank you for your kind words. You know, what we're trying to do at the airport is trying to figure out ways to be able to make it incrementally more comfortable for people to be able to transact at the airport. The Valet Program is a program that deals with clientele that are willing to pay a premium for a certain level of access to the airport that is a little bit more expedited. Integrated with that is an online platform where they actually can do the booking rather than having to come in and transact at the airport. I highly recommend trying out this service. It takes away a lot of friction from travel. And I understand that it's not for everybody, but we want to be able to provide options to everybody and I think it provides a very important premium service for customers, and it's very wellrecognized and appreciated by our customers.
We've been advertising it, yes. And we'll continue to scale that up. And hopefully, people listening to this testimony today will take an opportunity and be out there using the service.
Perfect. Thank you. And lastly, I just want to comment, Streets Commissioner, same thing with the plane crash, your department was great with me Rich Montanez, I had him on speed dial and he's always been there on the big issues with us and I can't thank you enough for that. I do want to double down though on Councilmember Phillips' traffic calming measures and it's really been a big issue. I think post-COVID people drive crazy and we're making changes here in the city. I remember in my old neighborhood, if you went fast or you blew a stop sign, there was always a police officer who was going to pull you over. That doesn't seem to be the way we remedy these things anymore. But if we could somehow in your engineering department, maybe when you have this repaving every four or five years, whatever your schedule is, maybe the immediate ones get done quickly around the schools and the rec centers. But then when you do your regular repaving, maybe you do the repaving and the -- I don't even know if that makes sense. But I'm just trying to put the non-essential ones in the long queue and the real essential ones in a short queue. And that's just a comment. You don't have to respond. Thank you. COMMISSIONER DEL ROSSI: I just want to thank you for acknowledging the staff. We do have a great crew and they were out there hands-on. So kudos to them and thank you for acknowledging that.
Thank you. Last individual we're calling is Councilmember Kendra Brooks. But I also want to take a moment to also acknowledge Rich Montanez. He gets them late night text messages saying I need help the same way I text Steve Lorenz, like on a Sunday -- it was a Sunday night one time. I was like I know he's going to have some words for me, but we're on the ground, we're on the front line and my members are on the front line trying to help people. So we do appreciate y'all stepping up and being responsive, all of you in this context. Councilmember Brooks.
Thank you, Council President. I want to give my kudos and shout-outs to folks too when I call, rapid response similar to what Council President said. We're boots on the ground so a little thing -- I remember when someone stepped in a pothole or something on my block and I was able to find a number and someone came out right away to assist. So thank you, Streets and Water, because everyone had to be involved because I didn't know who the thing belonged to. I appreciate you guys being servants, community servants, and helping us do our jobs better. I'll just run down everything so I have it on record, and this is all for Water. At the end of 2024, the Water Department began auto-enrolling customers in TAP who were participating in the federal low-income household water assistance program. How is that process going and what steps did the City have to take to automate the enrollment? The Water Department is proposing a rate increase for the fourth consecutive year. The average annual water bill payment is up more than $200 since the first increase. Your testimony says that the rate increase is to replenish critically-low liquidity funds and you have two such funds. At what level would you consider the funds to be stable? My next question: I'm glad that Philadelphia has a moratorium on water shut-offs for nonpayment in the winter. However, water shut-offs in the summer can be extremely challenging and dangerous for families and the elderly, particularly when the temperatures continue to rise, and the violence swells in the warmer months. Many cities, including Chicago, have no water shut-offs for nonpayment. Has Philadelphia considered a moratorium on water shut-offs in the summer? And lastly, participation in the TAP program is roughly 30% of eligible customers or less despite specific investments in trying to reach more people. What will the average monthly bill look like for folks who are enrolled in TAP? COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: I'll address the third question first, if I numbered them correctly where you talked about water shut- off and have we considered a moratorium on shut-off.
Yes. COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: First, I want to say -- and this is known across the country because I'm on different boards with Water, utilities and all. And one thing across the country, they always ask what are they doing in Philadelphia and they always speak with respect for the safety net that we have for those. The problem we have with a year-round water shut-off situation is the need for revenue. Okay. If we don't receive the revenue and we are a cost-for- service utility, then we will not be able to always provide the water services that we need to the public. What I always tell people is that when it comes to water and help protecting the health and safety of the community, we have to do 100%. So we can't get to a point where we don't have the funds. And I can say we only protect health and safety 30%. It's 100%, that's the obligation. And so, it takes a certain amount of funds to keep us operating. And so, I'll allow Susan Crosby from Revenue to talk more about the questions you asked on TAP.
Good afternoon. Susan Crosby, Deputy Revenue Commissioner for Water. Thank you, Councilmember, for your question. First, to follow up on the shut-offs, we do have a robust set of protections for customers who are facing shut-off. First, we use administrative data to automatically protect families with children, families with seniors in the home and our customers who are receiving income-based assistance, those flags protect over 260,000 customers, households last year and are on track to protect those households again this year. We also have -- and those customers will never receive a shut-off notice. So they don't even know that they're receiving the benefit. They're just not going to get that shut-off notice. If they do receive a shut-off notice and they belong into one of those protective groups or they're a tenant whose landlord is responsible for paying the water bill but is not or there's a person living in the household with a disability, those customers can contact us and we call it our Raise Your Hand program, and they can receive protection from shut-off as well. So we understand that shut-offs is a very traumatic process for our customers to go through. And so, we try to do everything possible to prevent using that tool, including adding all of those protections. For your questions about auto-enrollment, we started auto- enrolling customers through a pilot program in late 2023 with the federal LIHWAP recipients. We were able to enroll over 3200 of those recipients into TAP. We then partnered with the Office of Integrated Data for Evidence and Action in the Managing Director's Office to use administrative data to auto-enroll customers who were identified as low-income participating in other means-tested programs. And as a result of that, we have enrolled an additional 37,500. So we've almost tripled the participation in our TAP program over Fiscal '24 and we continue to do auto-enrollment in incremental files each month.
Thank you for that information. COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: And you had a question on rate stabilization. I think you asked how much --
Yes. COMMISSIONER HAYMAN: I'll let you repeat the question. I'll have Lawrence Yangalay come up, Director of Finance.
The question was, at what level would you consider the funds to be stable around the low liquidy funds?
It says the Water Department is proposing the rate increase for the fourth consecutive year. The average annual water bill payment is up more than $200 since the first increase. Your testimony says that the rate increase is to replenish critically low liquidity funds and you have two such funds. And at what level do you consider the funds to be stable?
Lawrence Yangalay, Deputy Commissioner of Finance PWD. The Restabilization Fund was established as (inaudible) where when our revenue was short, we could draw down on the fund. From 2017 when it was above 200 million, we are now at 125 million. We have asked for rate increase. If that rate increase is not granted, that fund will go to near 0. And the very good effort that the City is applying to help customer like the TAP program, which grew from 14,000 to around 60,000-something is costing the Water Department revenue losses, and these losses have to be paid by other customers. So these are some of the reasons that we have to be drawing on the Restabilization Fund and some of the reason why the cost to the customer keeps increasing. Also of course, we have other cost impact, for instance payroll. Salaries have been increasing. Each time you increase pay, that has to be paid by the rates.
So there's typically industry guidance for water utility in terms of what they should have in some form of reserve. And the Water Department uses a firm that's been working with us for a very long time to establish that guidance. And so, perhaps we can focus the response on what that guidance is, what that industry guidance is for a rate stabilization fund or a reserve fund for water utility.
The industry rate guidance that was established by the Rate Stabilization Fund is that PWD should maintain at least 135 million in the Rate Stabilization Fund. So that was the target that was set by the Wastewater and Sewer Rate Board. We have maintained that target for a little while, but we are now below that target. The industry target that is set is set at how much cash you should have in your account. That target is set at one year. The target is about 363 days. PWD maintains 154 days of cash on hand. That means if anything were to go wrong and you don't have any money coming in, how long can you survive. PWD is below that target. And it's not even below the target that was set by the Rate Board for the PWD operations.
Just real quickly I just want to comment that one of the things I was hoping to see in the budget was the following: Funding for things that maybe cost -- it cost a lot of money for speed calming measures such as speed cushions. So I don't see anything here that says anything about funding for giving residents signs that can -- like slow down signs as well as maybe other signs that they can use to help with speed calming measures as well as I will also be interested in you all doing a campaign that's public and social media, also visually on a television or whatever it might be just talking about why it's important to slow down in these streets. So literally not every street is going to get speed calming measures and we need to be honest with the city about that. It's also not the right thing to do. So we need to start giving people other alternatives to show that we're serious about this. So would just like to see that in the budget. I'm not sure if it's there. Thank you.
And so, as we wrap up just one comment. And shout-out to Chris Puchalsky over there too, Director of Strategic and Policy Initiatives around Vision Zero, so thank you, Chris. We see you. What Member Phillips talked about, Dr. Phillips, and it's part of the reason why I did Get Out the Bike Lane legislation, right, but when we talk about pedestrian as Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier told me, is it pedestrian violence?
Traffic violence, right. And our leader in this body, Councilmember Thomas, have been leading this issue to get people to slow down, right, and making sure we're preventing deaths from happening. But I think it also comes down to education. You're on your cell phone while you're driving. You're on your cell phone while you're walking. Got the ear plugs in not paying attention. You walk dead in the middle of traffic, right, on the phone. And so, yeah, some level of education and awareness, right. Remember this is your brain on drugs when we were kids, right. We still remember it now. So maybe some level of elevating the conversation around educating the public around just slowing down and being mindful of your surroundings and so forth, I think that would be helpful. And my last comment before we wrap up, I'll follow up with you all offline. But with that being said, this is our last round. It's o'clock. 4 Thank you for all being here. We appreciate your hard work and your dedication. And with that being said, any other questions from the public, members of the City Council? (No response.)
Thank you very much. Appreciate you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Gilmore Richardson for a motion that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolutions before the Committee today stand in recess until Tuesday, April 8th at 10:00 a.m.
It has been moved and properly seconded that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolution before the Committee today stand in recess until April 8, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. All those in favor will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. (Committee of the Whole concluded at 4:10 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