I'll just ask the specific question. What happened to Mr. Brett and Ms. Natalie? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Mr. Brett's right here.
And Ms. Natalie's right here. So what happened to us was we get promoted and we actually, Natalie, myself and other rec leaders we actually for years and years and years we actually were facility supervisors, but we were working out of class. So we did a grievance, we won the grievance, all that kind of stuff, we got a bunch of back pay. It was awesome. But the main goal of that was to stop the practice of having rec leader 1s be facility supervisors. So I absolutely hear what you're saying and hopefully through changing that, leaders will be able to kind of stay where they are. But unfortunately, it is the nature of the beast if you want to get promoted, you got to go to where the vacancy exists.
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think one of the things even with police captains we talk about they leave within a year after they just got to the community. I always say can we just at least have you become a rec leader, you stay for at least three years before you get pro -- or two years, something, some sort of level of consistency before you get promoted. That'll also help us with some level of sustainability.
Absolutely. And Natalie and I were talking about it the other day. Natalie put it great, we need on average -- when we come into a new center, we need at least a year and a half, two years to get into a groove. We need to learn what works, what doesn't work, learn our community, what they need. We need to make that connection with them. And we really don't get moving like a well-oiled machine until about 18 months to two years.
All right. Thank you. We're going to move forward with the next panelists, the next two.
Awesome. It's lovely to be here again. My name is Erica Brown. I, she pronouns. Have you all ever played the human knot game where you're in a circle and you got to grab the hand from some other side and you got to unfold yourself? That's the situation we're in right now with hiring and staffing in Parks & Rec. And now is the time not to blame. Now is just --
For the record, can you please state your name and your position?
Yeah. Erica Brown, Executive Director of Sunrise Movement Philadelphia.
Yeah. So now's not the time to become attached to our egos or shame. Now is the time for coordination so that we can figure this out. And you all are City Councilors. Thank you so much for being here and listening to our testimony. And we got to keep our eye on the prize as well, which is that rec center leaders keep our community safe, right. You heard from so many of them taking on every job. And I want to highlight one particular person, Demetrius Richardson, who for years worked 14 at Wharton Square Playground. And 15 he would out of his own pocket 16 create extravagant Easter egg hunts 17 and he'd call in the ice cream 18 truck and the entire community 19 would get involved. And the kids 20 who loved motor bikes down there, 21 he would turn that skill into 22 engineering. In this past year he's been removed and you've seen kids get on bikes and start riding all around the park and everyone feels unsafe. People are calling the cops on these kids, right. So he needs to be reinstated. Everyone in that community wants him reinstated. But that's the story of every rec leader across the city and that's how we keep our community safe. And one Rec Leader Ms. Deborah Irons from the Parkside Rec Center in Curtis Jones' District, Councilmember Jones, came here earlier this year and she asked for more funding because that's the bottom line, that we need to have staff with good salaries. And thank you so much for in this past budget increasing the Parks & Rec budget by $2.5 million. We're going to need for all rec centers to be fully staffed a total budget of $300 million for rec centers and for libraries. So I'm going to be following up with you about that. But I just want to let you know about some of the meetings I've had over the past year. So I met with Department of Parks & Rec, Department of Libraries HR, the OHR, AFSCME D.C. 47, Friends of the Free Library, Chief of Public Safety Director Adam Geer and the majority of you, City Councilors, and everyone is clear that they want to fix this problem on staffing. And here's some of the list of challenges that I've heard: Wait times for applicants are up to 100 days, people who need a job have to move on. There's around 1,000 City vacancies and only 30 staffers at OHR to create the job postings, review applications, call references, score the tests and pass applicants onto the department. Specifically OHR needs help with mobile community recruitment and additional comp staff. Councilmember Landau, they want help with technology and new computers to keep all this on track. Pay in salaries don't meet the cost of living to support a family for people who want these jobs. There's miscommunications between OHR and the department HR. The department HR sometimes aren't satisfied or aren't prepared to interview people that come in so they just stay at the top of the list. There's amazing candidates that someone who was on this panel already mentioned. Just waiting too long for parks and libraries they got snatched up by a different department, and we're backed up with 200-plus applications. And that's the knot we're in, but we can untangle it. And I was recently made aware that this has happened before with Licenses and Inspections and SEPTA where they were able to restructure themselves and restructure their staffing to meet the needs of the community and we got to assume everyone here has good faith. Everyone wants to solve the problem and everyone I listed wants to solve the problem. And what we need are coordinators, one or two of you to say this is my task. I'm going to make sure -- I'm going to talk to all the parties. I'm going to figure out all the messiness so that way we can have a streamlined process. Thank you very much.
Hi. My name is Christine Rad and I'm Program Coordinator with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation. I want to thank you for having us this afternoon. I'm a program coordinator for Parks & Recreation. I started my career in Parks & Recreation in 2006 as I served as a recreation leader for over nine years and worked at six facilities throughout the great city. I chose a career in public service because I felt a need to give back to the community and make a difference, like so many other of my rec leaders and colleagues. We believe that this is a great city and want to serve the citizens across the city. Since 2015 I have served as a programming coordinator managing citywide programs throughout the city in visual arts, aquatics and currently workforce development. In my many years as a rec leader, I can say I never could have imagined some of the situations I faced every day. Not only are you a rec leader in your title, but you have many other titles such as babysitter, part- time parent, counselor, custodian, recruiter, mentor and the list could go on. We as rec leaders and recreation leaders, those that work directly with the City of Philadelphia citizens providing vital City services. We step into any role needed to work with the communities that we work in and we consider ourselves part of those communities. Providing quality programming requires adequate staff to administer those programs and also administer partnerships in our sites. Staff with unique talents and specialties can offer those unique programmings when they are not taking care of other responsibilities. My current role in workforce development is managing a program for 14- to 18-year-olds to provide work-based learning programs. I'm excited to be a part of this new program as we try to develop a youth workforce program that can mentor youth in our city and ultimately give them a career pathway into Parks & Recreation or other careers involving children. While I'm excited to be part of this program, I also want those youth to have a quality experience and safety plays a part in that. We want to be able to provide those youth with a safe space and also provide them with positive experiences at our facilities so that they want to become future rec leaders. Also, I don't want to put more responsibility on the rec leaders currently working so we really need to look at our staffing levels to make sure we have proper staffing to be able to administer the new programs that we bring in. I thank you all for your time today.
Thank you so much for your testimony. Very valuable. Thank you. Is there anyone else from this panel?
Okay. Thank you. Please proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon members of City Council and my fellow Union siblings. My name is Esther Jones. I am the proud daughter of Michael McCrae who was a very staunch advocate for proper funding for parks and rec and libraries. I am a Recreation Leader 2 currently stationed at Ferko Playground in the Juniata section of North Philadelphia. I've been with the City full-time for years as of tomorrow October 1st. But I have been a seasonal employee of the City of Philadelphia since September of 2004 where I worked as a teen library assistant with the Free Library at the Wyoming Branch. Before that, I frequented my local recreation center Feltonville and participated in the swim team, the afterschool program as well as a few of the one-off programs. As you can see, I pretty much grew up in my local recreation center and library. So to come to you today to appeal for more money for staffing and safety measures is as much about my current position as it is about my childhood and making sure that these rec centers are given the tools to hold up for the next years. In my full-time position in PPR, I have been in five recreation centers. My current position I am back to for a second time, which I don't believe happens often. When I started at Ferko in March of 2016 I was nervous. This was my first facility that I would be supervising and that felt daunting. And then come to find out there's no usable windows in that facility made me a tad more anxious because Ferko Is on the edge of Tacony Creek Park and the back of my facility butts up basically to a bunch of trees. And it can get pretty dark back there at night even with adequate lighting. Coupled with the fact that we have no cameras to see what's going on behind the building, it became a source of anxiety and it still is. I have been advocating for Ferko to get cameras since I got there in March of 2016 and it is now October of 2024 and we still do not have cameras. My facility is very small. It is one room and my office. Four, five cameras maybe. Adequate staffing or not I should not have to physically walk around the building and potentially put myself or my staff in danger to figure out what's going on behind the building. I believe that it is important to adequately staff PPR because staffing helps to build up children like myself to become the lifeguards, the RSIs, the recreation Leaders of tomorrow. If we don't have adequate staff, we can't provide the programming that will foster these children into these roles. We must provide robust and diverse programming to bring in kids and teenagers that will come to our programs -- excuse me, that will come up in the system and want to work for the department in some capacity. These are the kids that come to our programs every school year or every summer because we've made an impact. They then want to give back to their community in the same way. It is difficult to provide all the programming we want for the community when we don't have adequate permanent staff and our seasonal staff can be taking from us seemingly at any point as we have witnessed in the past few weeks where we were told we have to cut some seasonal employees that were extended because of budgetary reasons. I don't know any other departments that rely as heavily on seasonals as PPR. I have been without another full-time person at my facility since September of last year when my recreation outreach worker was deployed to another facility because that rec leader did not even have seasonal workers to be there with him. Ferko relies heavily on seasonal workers because that's all that's given to us at the time. I should have an assistant recreation leader with me at my facility but I have to make do with a seasonal worker. I should not have to make do with a seasonal worker. I should have a full-time person with me to fill in on days that I need off, so I don't have to pull from other facilities to fill in the spot.
I should have a full-time person with me so I can go to my bi-weekly district meetings, turn in paperwork to the district office, anything that comes with being a supervisor and not have to worry about who's watching my facility. In closing, investing in adequate staffing and safety measures will not only help the current staff but also future programming because the more staffing we have and the safer that staff feels, the better quality programming we can provide for all the city of Philadelphia. Thank you.
Thank you so much. We will continue to look into security measures. Yes, we're going to do that. Thank you.
Good afternoon, City Council. I want to thank you for allowing us the opportunity to listen to our testimony today. I want to say good afternoon to my colleagues with Parks & Recreation and administrative staff. Thank you so much. My name is Renee Adderly. I am a Park Ranger. I've been a Park Ranger with Philadelphia for 29 years. It's been at least three administrations that I have been working under. And while I'm here, I want you to know I wanted to inform you that there are two sides to this coin. There's parks and there's recreation and both need the same things. As far as safety's concerned, since my 29 years of working as a park ranger I have witnessed three of my staff members violently attacked while on duty. The most recent one is this summer. A young man was stabbed in eye in Rittenhouse Square. So, yes, my staff is terrified coming to work but they come and do their job every day. We work seven days a week, nights, weekends and holidays. We are considered essential employees. All we ask is for support when we come to work. As far as cameras are concerned, yes, they are needed, they're needed all over the city, I get it, but especially in our facilities when we have 9200 acres to cover. There are only three park ranger districts to cover that land. There's of us together, 5 including supervisors and our 6 chief. So on any given night you 7 will have one person working in 8 each district. That's a lot of 9 ground to cover and then you're 10 coming back in the middle of the 11 night by yourself. We do need a 12 camera in our facilities. I mean, 13 it's not going to protect us from 14 whatever's going to happen, but at 15 least you'll have some kind of 16 eyewitness available. 17 Yes, we are looking to 18 double our staff because right now 19 like I said most of our staff is 20 working solo patrol when we do 21 cover the different areas of 22 Philadelphia. 23 Another thing, our 24 equipment. Basically I'm borrowing 25 a lot of equipment from other departments to be able to complete my duties as a park ranger. For example, we may need barricades, we may need cones, things like that. I'm going to have to borrow a truck in order to transport those type of things to where I need to utilize them. What else am I looking at -- a lot of times we rely on other agencies to assist us at various locations that we're working. Like example, Clark Park we may need to get in contact with the Parking Authority. We may need to get in contact with the police to back us up for different events that are happening. Now, we have people with the booming systems and amplified noise. We need better communication with the police. So, yes, I agree with the monthly meetings with the police department and the rangers need to be invited to those meetings as well so that we can go back and forth on what is needed out in the park system, because a lot of times the way most of the city is set up, in order to get peace on the street we like to funnel a lot of people into the park system to keep everybody occupied. And trust me, I'm quite sure more than half of our constituents are utilizing the park system every day, so we need to have that balance between the Police Department, Parking Authority, Licenses & Inspections. We all need to come collectively together to provide this service for our constituents here in Philadelphia.
Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony. I'm going to ask our Committee members if there's any questions or comments they can give like a 30-second question, a minute.
The Chair recognizes Jeffrey Young, and we'll follow up with other questions. There's another Committee about to happen right now.
Just one quick question for you, Ms. Renee. Is there a streamlined communication method between the park rangers and the police? Are there two-way radios or a certain line that you have, that your rangers have when out in the field if something happens or they have to pick up their cell phone to call 911 to --
Right now we're using our cell phones. And, no, there's no direct line with the police besides calling 911.
Thank you. We'll follow up with any other questions or comments that we have. But I want to say thank you all today to the entire union. This is fascinating and interesting. I'm glad we have these conversations and we'll work together as a Committee and as a Council to really address some of these concerns before our new upcoming year. And I know our Commissioner is committed to helping and working with you all as well. So with that being said, this concludes the public hearing on Bill No. 240392. There being no 20 other business before this Committee today, no further questions from members of the Committee and no other witnesses to testify, this concludes the business for the Committee on Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs today. Vice-Chair Bass just wants to make a quick suggestion. We can come back to follow up on these issues. Did you want to mention that, that'd be great.
I was just going to say that we'll work with the Administration to follow up on these matters so that it's not just a hearing and that's the end of it, but we can figure out how can we make some progress in this matter. So we look forward to working with everybody. Thank you.
And I must admit this is a very attentive group of folks. We listened to every word today, so it didn't go out our ears today. So this concludes the business before the Committee on Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs today. We want to thank you very much for your attendance. Thank you. (Committee on Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs concluded at 1:05 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