COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, April 14, 2010 11:10 a.m. - - - PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT ANNA C. VERNA COUNCILWOMAN JANNIE BLACKWELL COUNCILMAN DARRELL L. CLARKE COUNCILMAN W. WILSON GOODE, JR. COUNCILMAN BILL GREEN COUNCILMAN WILLIAM GREENLEE COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR. COUNCILMAN JAMES F. KENNEY COUNCILWOMAN MARIA QUINONES-SANCHEZ COUNCILWOMAN DONNA REED MILLER COUNCILWOMAN MARIAN B. TASCO BILL 100115, 100116, 100117, 100118, 100131 and RESOLUTION 100141 - - - 2
Good morning. I do apologize for the delay. This is a continued public hearing of the Committee of the Whole. Our first department to testify this morning will be Licenses and Inspections. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Good morning. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Good morning, Council President Verna and members of Council. I am Fran Burns, Commissioner of the Department of Licenses and Inspections. I appreciate the opportunity to present the Fiscal Year 2011 Operating Budget request to City Council. The Department of Licenses and Inspections is requesting a total Fiscal Year '11 budget of $34,594,886, of which 3 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. $23,068,925 is in the City's General Fund, $10,920,000 is in the Grants Revenue Fund and $605,961 is in the Community Development Fund. 2 million in demolition funding. The Fiscal Year '11 budget continues our efforts to preserve and improve core service delivery. The Department of Licenses and Inspections exists to enforce The Philadelphia Code and, through education and enforcement of the Code, protect the citizens of the City of Philadelphia. The core services of the Department are to review plans, conduct inspections and issue permits according to building, zoning, plumbing and electrical codes; inspect properties for compliance to fire and property maintenance codes; issue licenses; and to inspect, demolish and clean and seal vacant properties. The Department is organized in 4 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. three divisions. The Operations Division handles code enforcement inspections, including property maintenance, fire and business inspections, as well as demolition and clean and seal activity. The Development Division handles permit review and issuance, license issuance and permit inspections. The Administrative Unit handles budget, communications, human resources, payroll and information technology. As you know, the last two fiscal years have presented a significant challenge to the City of Philadelphia and the Department. To provide context, our General Fund allocation has decreased approximately percent since Fiscal 19 Year '08, and as a consequence, the 20 Department laid off 38 employees. million for Fiscal Year '11. While it has been a difficult period for our workforce, we can also communicate 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that we are delivering an improved service to the public at a reduced cost. We have established a goal of becoming the nation's leading code enforcement agency, and thanks to the hard work and dedication of our employees, we have made tremendous strides during the course of Fiscal Year '10 towards that goal. Two of our Fiscal Year '10 achievements - the license consolidation project, which reduced the number of licenses to be administered by the Department from 138 to 35, and the demolition activity funded through the commercial corridor bond - would not have been possible without the unwavering support we received from City Council. Both efforts were great examples of the positive outcomes that can be had when working together collaboratively. Thank you. We are holding ourselves accountable for better results. We continue to measure our performance on 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. license, permit and plan review turnaround times and how long our customers wait for our service. We reported improvements last fiscal year when it took 87 minutes in January 2008 to get a license in the Municipal Service Concourse. 82 minutes in January 2010. In addition, changes in our building and zoning process have helped to make Philadelphia a better place to do business by creating a more professional environment where customers sit with examiners one on one to discuss their building and zoning applications in a quiet environment. Our work has reflected positively in a customer service satisfaction survey that the Department has administered for the past year and a half. Consistent results show that 85 to 90 percent of our 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
" We have consistently reviewed construction and zoning plans applications within business days at 7 the rate of about 95 percent throughout 8 the past fiscal year and continue efforts 9 to improve the submittal of correct and 10 complete applications from our customers. 11 We have also performed requested 12 construction permit inspections within 48 13 hours of request in excess of 90 percent 14 of the time. All of this work is 15 performed by a nationally certified 16 staff, which adds definite value to 17 obtaining permits and inspections of 18 construction projects for our customers 19 and ensures the building safety of our 20 city. As of January, our Business Compliance and Housing Units were making 95 and 86 percent of their respective initial inspections within 30 days, and our Commercial and Industrial Unit was 8 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. turning around 93 percent within 15 days. Clean and seal requests that used to take months to respond to from an inspector request now take an average of ten days. We have also started the first proactive housing inspection program in years, through which we are targeting property owners who have delinquent housing inspection licenses or are not licensed at all for code enforcement. We have also embarked on a proactive business district inspection program where we first provide an educational letter, then follow up with an inspection. Our educational letter is in multiple languages. We are also expanding our commitment to serve limited English-proficient customers and for the first time have conducted cultural competency training for our inspectors. In Fiscal Year '10, we are on track to reduce regular overtime by an additional percent as compared to 25 Fiscal Year '09 and a combined 65 percent 9 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. from Fiscal Year '08. We have also continued to reduce our costs for demolitions. Our average demolition cost is now $17,000 when comparing the full-year average and $13,000 over the past three-month average. That's compared to roughly $26,000 two years ago. We accomplished this by employing better management, combining three former stand-alone contracts into one contract under one responsible party. We also rarely allow for change orders or add-ons to the initial bid, which in the past has driven up the cost. In the Administrative Unit, we have implemented an electronic time and attendance record-keeping system which will allow employees and managers to better understand their resource allocation on a day-to-day basis. We have also created a consolidated inspector series which will allow our inspectors to address multiple types of complaints at the same location at the 10 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. same time and provide a new career track for our employees. We are investing in new training in green building code and design using money awarded through the City's Recovery Energy Efficiency Community Block Grant, and we have launched an Employee of the Quarter program, which recognizes significant contributions throughout the Department. The Department of Licenses and Inspections is also committed to supporting the Administration's goal of percent minority, women and 15 disabled-owned business participation in 16 City contracting. Based on the available 17 contracting opportunity, the Department 18 of Licenses and Inspections' fiscal year 19 participation goal is actually 25 20 percent. 21 That's a change that I know 22 we're going to talk about shortly 23 compared to the written testimony. 24 To demonstrate our commitment, 25 earlier this year we pulled together a 11 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. meeting with several minority, women and disabled-owned demolition firms to understand what barriers there are to doing business with the City and what we can do to alleviate them. Our demolition funding represents the primary contracting opportunity that the Department engages in.
Accordingly, it is where we will work to improve our participation rate. As a result of this meeting, we are working to make it easier for minority, women and disabled firms to meet the City's requirement to become an eligible vendor and are improving our notification process for new demolition sites. Provided the Department's proposed budget is adopted, we will continue to make significant progress in Fiscal Year '11 towards improving services and making the Department the nation's leading code enforcement agency. In the coming year, we will transform the public's perception and initial 12 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. interaction with the Department by revamping the look, feel and usability of the Department's publications. We will bring more services online. We will continue improving our response rate to service requests and investing in customer service improvements. We will plan on two full-service remote locations at district offices to provide services that are currently only offered downtown. The hard-working employees of the Department will continue to make Philadelphia a better place to live, work and play. Thank you for the opportunity to present our Fiscal Year '11 budget. I am available to answer questions at this time.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Goode.
Thank you, Madam President. 13 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Good morning, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Good morning.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply to my e-mail blast yesterday, but I still have some questions I'd like to put on the record, and if the Office of Economic Opportunity is here, I'd like them to come to the witness table as well. L&I is in the demolition business? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Part of the services that we provide, we do have abatement activity, which is demolition of imminently dangerous buildings.
And $7.2 million in Fiscal Year '11? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's correct.
And you are the Commissioner of L&I? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That is correct. 14 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
How much demolition work will women-owned businesses receive in Fiscal Year '11? COMMISSIONER BURNS: From the demolition activity?
Yes. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Right now we do not have any certified women companies on our qualified demolition vendors.
How much will women-owned businesses receive in non-demolition work? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We actually have -- our biggest contract right now in our Class 200 is with a woman, a woman-owned firm, and we're working with her to get her certified, and that would be probably a majority of our Class 200 funding outside of the demolition funding. 15 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
And what percentage overall is that? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I'd say that's probably about 55 percent.
And what percentage in demolition work will businesses owned by people of color receive in Fiscal Year '11? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We currently have two companies that are, again, they're minority companies that are not certified that we need to work on getting their certification. If we get them on with some of our current companies that are certified, I think that we can be, just with those two actions, in the 12 to 18 percent range for the demolition activity. Also, for our asbestos contracts, we have four firms that are qualified as the asbestos contractors. 16 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Fifty percent of those firms are minority. So in that way we can also do a good job and take this very seriously, as we do, to our minority participation rates.
So the overall DBE goal for Fiscal Year '11 is now percent? 10 COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's 11 correct. 12
It's not 13 4.63 percent? 14 COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's 15 correct. 16
What was the 17 goal for Fiscal Year '10? 18 COMMISSIONER BURNS: I don't 19 have our Fiscal Year '10 goal. What I 20 would like to do is talk a little bit 21 about how as the Commissioner I've 22 approached this. 23
I would 24 prefer to finish my questions first. 25 COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. 17 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Absolutely.
And OEO can come to the table now. (Witness approached witness table.)
What was the goal for Fiscal Year '09? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I'm going to ask, because I have the actuals for both years, but I don't have the goals.
The goal for Fiscal Year '09 was 55 percent - 35 percent MBE, percent WBE. 15 What was the goal for Fiscal 16 Year '08? I'm sorry. First, what was 17 achieved in Fiscal Year '09? 18 COMMISSIONER BURNS: Fiscal 19 Year '09 was close to seven percent. 20
What was the goal for Fiscal Year '08? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Fiscal Year '08 I think was again that 55 percent.
So there was 18 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. a 55 percent goal in Fiscal Year '08 and Fiscal Year '09. What was achieved in Fiscal Year '08? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Fiscal Year '08 was 24.5 percent.
So 24.5 percent was achieved in Fiscal Year '08. It then dropped to seven percent in Fiscal Year '09? COMMISSIONER BURNS: As a percentage of the total, yes.
It dropped from 24.5 percent to seven percent in one year? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's correct.
That's also the transition in Administrations; is that correct? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It coincided, but I don't think that that's a cause and effect. But, yes.
I actually believe it did. 19 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Ms. Dowd-Burton, could you state your name for the record.
My name is Angela Dowd-Burton. I am Executive Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity.
The Administration released the OEO strategic plan on February 8th. Under that plan, what is the responsibility of OEO to avoid such a drop in capacity and participation that existed from 24.5 percent in Fiscal Year '08 to seven percent in Fiscal Year '09 to a goal of only 4.63 percent originally stated in the budget testimony?
My question was, under the strategic plan, what is the responsibility of OEO to avoid such a drop in capacity and participation?
OEO is dedicated to expanding the number of 20 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. companies that the City of Philadelphia will be able to generate participation goals with, and as a part of that expansion, it is looking more towards registering companies that are certified by agencies throughout the region as opposed to conducting the certification process itself.
The Street Administration obviously built capacity in this area. How will the Nutter Administration re-establish that capacity? In other words, clearly, the Street Administration set goals of 55 percent. Originally in this budget testimony it was less than five percent. The Street Administration actually achieved participation at percent and 20 above. 21 How will this Administration 22 re-establish that capacity? And I will 23 stop there until the second round. 24
One of our 25 goals is to implement an extraordinary 21 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. outreach into the business community. We are building relationships with the African American Chamber, the Hispanic Chamber, the Asian Chamber of Commerce to make sure that companies are aware of the extraordinary interest in engaging them on City contracts and in the private sector as well. So our goal is to begin to build those relationships that apparently have been in place in the past and to expand them. COMMISSIONER BURNS: I just want to elaborate on that in terms of the Department of Licenses and Inspections. One of the things that we actively did and we already have taken those steps is, on January 14th and prior to January 14th we looked at the list of qualified vendors that had worked with the Department before and compared that to today who are getting business. We also -- the Administration in working through the economic recovery 22 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. and some of the dollars there, and having meetings at the Enterprise Development Center, we got a list of minority firms, demolition firms, in the State of Pennsylvania, and we invited from that minority participation list and from those vendors who we know have done work in the City before, we held a meeting on January 14th. We invited vendors to 11 that meeting. Six of the ones we invited 12 showed up. And we talked to them about 13 what are your current barriers prior to 14 when we look at Fiscal Year '08 to what we're doing now. The biggest and the biggest change here is actually with some funding through the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, and when the -- biggest barriers related to bonding and the insurance requirements, that some of the smaller companies were able to take advantage from through the NTI dollars. Some of the other things that we heard is if we can get our invoices 23 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. paid as quickly as possible for the smaller businesses, that if we can look at our experience and what we require in terms of experience, and also in terms of -- some of them actually wanted us to do some faxed bids rather than things directly by e-mail, because they felt fax was more accessible to them. On those three areas, I know that I can and will make strides in terms of the Department's flexibility and be able to really meet what we heard in terms of their barriers. We also have -- as a follow-up to that meeting, we had a second meeting on April the 1st where we walked through filling out all of the forms --
Commissioner, I was actually getting to that, but my time for asking questions has expired, so I'd prefer to go through that when I can still ask questions. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. Thank you. 24 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jones.
Thank you, Madam President. How are you, Commissioner Burns? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Good morning.
Last year Councilwoman Tasco talked a lot about the process by which vacant properties were, A, cited; B, demolished and then the possibility of conveyance. A lot of this centered around the broken window law that we talked about again last year. I wondered if you could provide me some of the statistical data related to us doing citations, there being core actions, fines that were accumulated, and then at the end of that process, what 25 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. dispositions were made. So if there was a vacant property on a block, we went out and cited them based on the broken window law, what was the result of those actions taken and were they either corrected or did we take action to come against the property owner? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Councilman, since you're specifically asking about the broken window or what we refer to as the doors and windows policy in the Department, this past fiscal year we wrote 230 violations of windows and doors. Basically on blocks where there's 80 percent occupancy and you have a vacant property that doesn't have windows and doors, we can write a violation according to the law that windows and doors should be supplied and actually put on the property by the owner. Out of that, 55 of the 230 have complied. That means that they actually put the doors and windows in. And 175 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. have not complied. And I'm going to talk a little bit about how we handle our compliance or non-compliance right now. Throughout this past year, we established a very strict court policy in terms of our inspections and how our inspectors should handle inspections. Our inspectors will go to an initial inspection, will go to a second reinspection and then a third reinspection. If after the third reinspection the property has not complied, we will send it immediately to Municipal Court. What we've also done over the past year is, we've hired, through cooperation with the Law Department -- and they're actually employees that report to the Law Department, but two lawyers that will represent us in Municipal Court. So what we're hoping is that, one, we have a very clear standard and policy in terms of the Department on how many times we're going to actually be 27 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. out to a property when there's non-compliance. Second, we're going to get it to court after that third reinspection. There is exceptions built into our policy for supervisors. But then when you come to court, we're going to have a lawyer there representing the City of Philadelphia when you meet us in Municipal Court. So I'm hopeful -- your question was directly on windows and doors, but I'm hopeful with a stricter adherence to our policy, with the lawyers and seeing that people actually do come into compliance through just issuing the violation, that we'll continue to see better compliance rates.
Actually, Fran, I -- Commissioner -- I forgot you come from our district and I get too familiar, but officially, Commissioner, that's a good start. That 200 cases represents how many vacant properties in the City of Philadelphia, compared to how 28 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. many vacant properties in the City of Philadelphia? Approximately 25,000 roughly, give or take a couple thousand? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I would say it probably represents only about two percent, and that's a rough, off-the-back-of-the-envelope estimate.
And I'm not going to hold you to that, but what I'm saying to you is that the success -- I'm going to consider that a beta testing, that if in fact we write the citations and we show those property owners that we care, they will either do one or two things. They will either comply or we will build enough fines to get conveyance to the City and/or community groups. What I'd like you to do is kind of highlight, not today but provide to the Chair and members of Council, a sketch of how that process works. Also juxtapose some of the kind of successes you've had in that two percent, with an eye towards how this body can help you to 29 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. replicate that in a larger fashion. The State Legislature did a piece of legislation, I believe, that is talking about quicker conveyance of properties to community groups that might be interested, and that is on the back of a conversation we've had about the frustration that CDCs and block captains have about vacant properties, absentee owners that refuse to do anything, and that this particular tool might be used to help them along, us along and actually improve the quality of life. So I guess what I'm hoping that you will do is give us an outline of how this body can improve the laws. I understand that the fines currently are not less than $150 to $300 a day after the 30-day court piece; is that correct? I think it is. I'm looking at the law. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. Yes.
So if there are things that we can do to enhance 30 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that, complement the State, let us know. COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's a State law. Okay.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilman Greenlee.
Thank you, Madam President. Good morning, everyone. Commissioner, first of all, I usually start out every other year by asking about the delay or the lines over at the MSB for getting permits and whatever, but not just by your testimony but by applicants telling me that you've made tremendous improvements over there, and I appreciate that. I know they appreciate that. Thank you. As far as getting on demolition, coming at it from another angle, and I know you and Mr. McDade have 31 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. been very helpful whenever we've had particular concerns, but I know one of the things that you hear from the community, they think sometimes properties they think should be torn down and they don't meet the definition of imminently dangerous. Could you either explain or if there's written things, you could get it to the Council President, like the difference -- what some of the differences that delineate between imminently dangerous and just dangerous? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Absolutely. And I'll also be glad to provide this through Council President Verna. The imminently dangerous, we really look at imminently dangerous properties as those that from our qualified inspectors they determine is in imminent structural danger of collapse. And I'm going to talk through what we have. We do have another -- this is another policy that we worked on over the 32 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. past year to really give some structure and consistency to our inspections of when we do determine it as imminently dangerous. When there's a partial collapse of the front wall; when there's a partial collapse of load-bearing wall or structural member; when there's partial collapse of the side wall if it's a corner property; when there's a partial collapse and the condition is affecting an adjoining property; when there's a partial collapse and the collapse leaves a freestanding wall. Those are instances -- and from the public view, you could see a property where the roof may have fallen in, but really the structural elements of that property are still sound, so we don't determine that as imminently dangerous and we write violations that are unsafe violations. And to the point that we were just speaking about earlier, what we really need in those situations is, we 33 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. need property owners to be held accountable for the conditions of these properties.
Okay. Thank you. And if you could get that information to the Council President, I'd appreciate it. When you talk about making owners responsible, and you and Councilman Jones talked about some of the violation procedures, if you will, would some entities, like Philadelphia Housing Authority, Redevelopment Authority, maybe the School District, maybe there's others, that have properties that for whatever reason have fallen in disrepair, are they basically treated the same way? I mean, is PHA given a violation? Is RDA given a violation? How is that handled? COMMISSIONER BURNS: They are given violation notices, yes.
If it gets to the point where L&I has to take some remedial action, like on imminently 34 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. dangerous property, I assume with a private entity there's a lien put on the property, whatever. There's some action to try to get money back that the City put out; am I correct? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. We bill first, and if the bill is not paid, then there's a lien placed on the property.
Is that same thing done to the entities like the examples I just gave, PHA, RDA, School District, whatever? COMMISSIONER BURNS: If we were to take an abatement action, we do bill 17 the public agencies as well.
Do they pay? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I don't have that -- I didn't anticipate that, so I have to look at what we have, what the instances are and get back on that.
Because we'd be interested to see who is putting 35 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. out money. And I'm not blaming you guys for this. You guys are doing the right thing. So just take it where I come from. But if those other entities, if they don't pay, they should be -- really they should be treated the same way as a private entity, in my opinion. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. I'll get you that data.
I appreciate that. One last question since it looks like I have time. Lot cleaning, does L&I still clean lots? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We don't. We can write violations for vacant lots, but we do work closely with Deputy Managing Director Tom Conway and we'll refer vacant lot cleanings to him through his program.
So basically through the MDO? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. 36 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Kenney.
Thank you, Madam President. Considering the City's desperate need for revenue and considering the widespread unlicensed, unpermitted, unknown contractors that are doing work all over the City, streaming in from New Jersey and the suburbs a lot of times, creating a situation where someone hires them thinking they may be licensed and they do shoddy work and they're not licensed and you can't find them, they're not insured, what plans does the Department have to begin to seek out, search, track down these folks who are basically making a living off of the City and not paying any fees or any 37 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. license requirements and kind of insulting the real people who do that, who get their licenses, get their permits, are insured, pay taxes? Because we've had this discussion in the past. You go to any Home Depot or Lowe's at 7 o'clock in the morning and they're all there picking up their equipment for the day and going out to do their work, without a permit or without a license. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, the first thing that I want to encourage is that you let us know about it by address, because some of our data from the past year, we only have 35 reported complaints of unlicensed contractors. So something in terms of that data at least isn't coming through --
Well, should it be complaint driven? For example, if you have an unlicensed, unpermitted contractor who comes to work at your house and the work is fine, you're not going to complain. You're 38 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. going to pay the guy and he's going to go on his way. So I don't know how that could be complaint driven. It needs to be, I think, more proactive than complaint driven. COMMISSIONER BURNS: I'll get to that, but to the extent that we can also have in terms of the eyes and ears and understand that if it's known where people think it is occurring, even if it's a thought, to get it to us and we'll be there to inspect. But the other is, we just had -- I just hired eight new Construction Inspector Trainees. If they make it through the six-month probation, I have eight new hires. And we're going to do a Tuesday to Saturday shift. I'm hopeful that that Tuesday to Saturday shift, particularly now we'll be able to say L&I has construction inspectors out on Saturdays, that we'll be able to respond to some of this that there's construction activity that maybe we're 39 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. not hearing about through complaint but that's ongoing and that's happening.
Will they need to be told where to go or will they drive around like they do in the suburbs? See, I think the irony is if I were an unlicensed contractor in the suburbs, they would have an inspector at my work site within the hour of me arriving. And then also if I'm not licensed or permitted, they have the practice of taking my equipment, my tools and my roofing kettle, if I happen to be a roofer, and they tow it away and impound it. I mean -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: We have -- and this is something that, again, is something I could get back in this terms of data, but we do -- our inspectors are on the street. We do want to make sure that we get to our permit inspections for those permit holders that are paying for a service for a trained inspector to come inspect their site. But while we're on 40 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the street, we're also looking at what's happening, and we have inspectors that are assigned per census district and they know their area and they know the work that's out there. The biggest tool that they have right now -- and this is where I can get you back some data on what we've actually -- how we've used that in terms of what we call pick-up inspections, but we can issue a stop-work order. That's the biggest -- we walk onto a site. If the prime contractor is not licensed, if the subcontractors aren't licensed, if they don't have the correct permits, we can stop the work immediately, and we did put out --
Can we impound the truck? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Not right now, no. 41 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Would you like authority to impound the truck? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Why don't I consider it. It's not been anything that we've really talked about, but it is something we can consider.
I think part of all this is reputation, too. I think the reputation is is that you can come here, basically ignore the rules, make a day's living and go back home to the suburbs. The suburban experience is that our folks don't do that because they know they're going to lose their truck. One of the things I always thought might be appropriate -- and I don't know whether it could be worked out, but I've called them the most relentless enforcement agency in history of mankind, the Parking Authority. They are on the street every day. Those folks are walking up and down business strips. And I don't want them inspecting construction work. I think they can 42 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. easily ask the owner of the truck to show their business privilege license, and if that's not available or they don't have it or they say they don't have it with them, you can take a license number and we can send it on -- they can send it on to you guys. At least you know who the unlicensed guy is, to go back to that location and check his license again. Because again, the reputation that the suburbs is, if you go out there and you do that, you're going to have a bad day, and I think that the people who come here think that it's just wide open. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
Is there any possibility that we could put those folks into action and maybe share some revenue with them? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, I'm definitely open to -- I would be --
They are. I talked to them already. They don't mind doing it. 43 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, I'm open to talking about ways in terms particularly with the vehicle itself and licensing, where we might be able to have some joint cooperation there. I would be very hesitant to talk about anything in terms of a building, a property and that --
No. I mean, I don't want them doing that at all, but I mean asking a person to show them their BPL is not exactly that, you know -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: It's not onerous.
You don't need to be specially trained to look at a person's BPL. And also you don't need anything much more complicated additionally to put on the bottom of their little hand-held fine generator another way of generating a fine or at least a ticket that goes back to you guys so you know who is out there doing what. 44 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies. Let me stay on that questioning, the line of questioning of Councilman Kenney. You mention that your inspectors now, who are going to be interdisciplinary, are going to be assigned by area and you said census tract? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, our inspectors are assigned by census tract throughout the entire Department. 45 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
So in designating the census tracts, I'm a little concerned about areas where there's more density or more construction. Going back to his point around how do you capture folks, is that something that you're able to monitor in terms of how many inspections inspectors conduct a day? Does that kind of flowchart exist so that we can see who has more activity or less activity? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. We can look at it by permits issued by census tract, by Council district. We can look at it historically by complaints as well. And in terms of the housing, our Operations Division, one of the things that Deputy Commissioner Greenwald did is, she looked at our density and reassigned inspectors based on the demand more or less.
So in some census tracts, there might be two? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, we 46 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. actually have -- they could have more or less than -- the numbers vary based on the demand.
When we're looking at the data -- I'm glad we're collecting that data -- how are we collecting that data? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, we have it in our software system and we can pull it out into a spreadsheet and then look at it. We can map it through GIS.
How far are we as we talk about enhanced training for inspectors and interdisciplinary training, how far are we from technology and using PDAs? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It's something that in conversations and cooperation with the Department of Technology that we've acknowledged as a requirement for the Department, and over the next year, we're actually going to be building what those requirements are given our current technology and any gap 47 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. we might have between our technology and the hardware itself.
Because all of the reviews I get is that Hanson is in fact pretty good. Are we going to be able to interface with Hanson in our PDA system? COMMISSIONER BURNS: In the short time, that's likely our goal.
So that's our goal for next year? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, our goal for next year on the hand-held side is, one, we recognize that it's where we need to be, but to really -- what we really need to do is understand the requirements of interfacing with, as you mention, Hanson, which is our software system, and building those requirements so that we can really understand what it takes to implement that.
That data sharing, do you look at then CLIP's information and that information? Are we 48 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. able to put that information together by geographic areas? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes, we are.
Is that information readily available to folks? I'd like to be able to look at -- as you know, I represent a district that has a lot of non-compliance issues. Many of it has to do with folks not knowing how to comply. So I'm interested in looking at, now that we have the ability to collect that data, where we see high levels of non-compliance and how do we do some preventive stuff in some of those areas. So I wasn't sure that you were collecting that data that way. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, we are, and it depends on basically how we ask the question based on what we're looking at. So what we would do is make sure we were aligned with you in terms of what the question is, and then we can call the data to really provide your 49 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. needs that way.
I'd like to work on that. Very excited about fast-track permitting and zoning. Can you talk about any challenges in the implementation? And then I do have a comment that I've heard a couple of times that I want to kind of relay back to you. What's our diversion rate from your normal zoning and permitting process to some of this fast-tracking? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. The fast-track process is something that was implemented within the Zoning Board of Adjustment. So it only really comes into effect when a zoning permit is refused and the applicant wants to appeal that refusal. In those cases, we have eight items or scenarios where we consider them simple scenarios that they would qualify for this fast-track process. It's really been out of, say, a handful of like 2,500 50 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. cases, we've seen only like about 75 that have qualified in the fast-track. Part of that we think is -- well, actually, we just expanded the fast-track to add three items. We were at five; now we're at eight. But part of that we think is just the number of cases coming through. And what we found is that it's a step, and I think it's a step in the right way to be looking at how we handle cases, how cases are handled at the Zoning Board of Adjustment and also the timeliness of getting in front of the Board.
So we can look forward to some expansion on some of that fast-tracking? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We recently went to eight about a couple months ago. So I think we're probably going to stay at that for now to understand if that's a comfort level, if there's anything else that really can be put into that simple category.
In those 51 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. fast-tracking, one of the issues I heard -- I guess you pay for the expediting $500? COMMISSIONER BURNS: No, not fast-track. Fast-track is handled exactly like any regular hearing. The only difference is when it gets to the Board, if there's no opposition and if there's City Council support and if the City Planning Commission supports, then it's basically an item held at the first of the hearing to try to get a quicker vote and read it into record.
So where's the permitting that people -- one of the -- I had a meeting with small developers last week, and one of the issues is that for some of their permitting, you have some sort of fast-tracking. An inspection is conducted and they're in non-compliance, if the inspector doesn't reinspect within the timeframe, they're no longer eligible for that. Am I understanding that 52 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. correctly? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That doesn't sound familiar in just the way that you just communicated it. We do have an accelerated review program --
That's what it is. COMMISSIONER BURNS: -- for permits in the Municipal Services Concourse to get an accelerated review or a review within five days.
Right. So then when the person comes out, if there's some issues and the inspector is not available for reinspect, people have lost their ability to be part of that fast-tracking, that they have to reapply for it. COMMISSIONER BURNS: No, that's not the case.
Well, that has been the case with some folks, so -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. 53 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. I'll be glad to --
Because I wasn't even aware of it. I was kind of happy to hear that they had something nice to say. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Goode.
Thank you, Madam President. Commissioner, although you claim that the difference in participation rates are not based upon Administrations, I feel comfortable saying without contradiction that the Street Administration gave a ton of 54 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. demolition work to disadvantaged businesses and the Nutter Administration has given very little demolition work to disadvantaged businesses. To prove my point, do you have the participation rates achieved in Fiscal Year '07, which was the last full fiscal year of the Street Administration? COMMISSIONER BURNS: No, I don't have Fiscal Year '07.
It was 44 percent. So in the last full fiscal year of the Street Administration, the rate was 44 percent. In the fiscal year that included both the Street Administration and the Nutter Administration, it dropped to percent, and according to your 19 response to a question earlier, in the 20 first full fiscal year of the Nutter 21 Administration, it was seven percent. We 22 don't have the numbers yet formally, 23 because we won't get them through our 24 report until June, but it went from 44 25 percent in Fiscal Year '07 to 25 percent 55 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. in Fiscal Year '08 to seven percent in Fiscal Year '09. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, the other thing --
Is that attributable to a change in Administration or not? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I don't believe so, no. 11
In the last full fiscal year of the Street Administration, it was 44 percent. Is OEO still here? In the last full fiscal year of the Street Administration, it was 44 percent. In the first full fiscal year of the Nutter Administration, it was seven percent. COMMISSIONER BURNS: I know. I -- (Witness approached witness table.)
I'm going to ask OEO a few questions. 56 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. We went from 44 percent in the last full year of the Street Administration to seven percent in the first full year of the Nutter Administration. That's indisputable. Ms. Dowd-Burton, who on your staff is responsible for noticing a drop like that?
Well, the Executive Director and the leadership of OEO would be responsible for noticing that drop.
My question was, who on your staff is responsible for that? Not so much the Director, but who on your staff is responsible? We don't have the Fiscal Year '09 numbers yet. I received that information from the Commissioner. We'll receive the information formally in June. So I only noticed the drop from 44 percent to percent to a goal that was 24 set in the original testimony of less 25 than five percent, and that's what set 57 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the alarm, which is why I sent the e-mail blast yesterday. Who on your staff is responsible for L&I in terms of setting the goals for the Department?
Well, Councilman, I think what I'd like to do is take responsibility going forward.
And I'd like you to name the staff person who is responsible for L&I, because under the Mayor's strategic plan where you set a goal for percent, as it was explained, 15 the strategic plan said that people would 16 move away from certification, will move 17 into a goal-setting and goal-achievement 18 process and that the staff would not be 19 focused on certification, but the staff 20 would be focused -- would be assigned to 21 departments specifically. So are staff 22 assigned to departments? 23
Who is 58 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. responsible for L&I?
I want to know who the staff person is responsible for L&I. Well, let me ask this question: Would it be the same staff person that rather than trying to build capacity of disadvantaged businesses has actually spent time trying to de-certify minority contractors? Is it the same staff person?
Okay. Well, we're going to have a lot of fun next week.
Commissioner, can you explain how you think this should work out? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. We have, as I started to say a little bit 59 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. earlier, we identified firms through some of the Enterprise meetings that we were going through that are demolition firms in actually the State and minority firms, and we invited those firms, in addition to firms that we know have done business with the City in terms of demolition business before, and we invited them to a meeting in January 14th to talk about what are your current barriers, why aren't you participating in the City of Philadelphia. We need them to bid in order to issue them work. From that meeting, we had a follow-up meeting on April the 1st where we brought the actual forms and walked through with the companies the forms that they need to fill out in order to get qualified as vendors for demolition activity, and I think we were very successful there. We had follow-up with those firms in terms of making sure they're submitting for their qualifications to be on the bidder's 60 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. list. The other thing that in terms of understanding the barriers, I mentioned a couple of them that I think are definitely within my control, in that I can give assurances to in order to get this participation. The biggest one --
Commissioner, real quick, I'll ask one more question and then you can finish your statement as long as you want. Those barriers seem to be overcome during the Street Administration. Some of those barriers you believe you can overcome, you can fully explain that. Are some of the new barriers associated with the fact that OEO has actually de-certified some minority contractors? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I didn't hear that at all. We didn't hear that at all in our meetings. The biggest is really the bonding, which through NTI there was a program to help contractors with bonding. And what we hope to do now 61 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. in terms of identifying that as an Administration is find out if it's not NTI dollars, is there a resource that we can provide the same assistance, because we take this seriously. It's important for the City. It's good for the City to have this minority participation. We're actively trying to get it.
So the Street Administration bonded the contractors? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Through the NTI.
But the Nutter Administration has not? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Through the NTI dollars, there was a program available for bonding.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilman 62 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Jones.
Thanks again, Madam President. We had talked about in our initial question about how we more rapidly get vacant properties cited and then eventually either fixed or conveyed. I don't know if you've been working with the State or reviewed that law to kind of see how it can be a companion tool for what you do. Have you looked at that at all? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Actually, Deputy Commissioner Greenwald and one of our Directors was out with a representative from the State driving around the City looking at some of our vacant properties and talking about really the situation the City faces right now in terms of those vacancies. As you know, I've also been working closely with the Redevelopment Authority in terms of what they're thinking, because we have different roles, but they're very much 63 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. intertwined. So we do have the contact with the State House and Urban Committee for the vacant property.
So that means, yes, we are looking at it -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
-- to see how we can incorporate it as a useful tool? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's correct.
Thank you. I'd like to shift focus, however, now to occupied properties. One of the unintended consequences -- and we've been using that word a lot lately about public policies that we make that have unintended consequences -- was a constituent that called about a landlord/tenant issue where there was a busted soil pipe, I believe the incident was, if memory serves me correctly. Our intentions were to send them out to help the tenant to get the owner to actually 64 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. fix the property, but to our surprise and dismay and definitely to the dismay of the occupant, when they went out there, they said, Yes, you're absolutely right, this is a health violation, pack your stuff, you have to go now, and what we did was make a person homeless. There was a happy ending to that story. We found them suitable housing, but it was a thing that gave us pause that when we bring in the calvary, we better watch out that we're not sending them to their own demise. So what I want to know is, describe for me the cease and desist order that you can implement as it relates to renters and occupied tenant facilities. COMMISSIONER BURNS: From July 2009 to March 2010, we only ceased 22 housing or residential properties in the 23 entire City, and they were largely 24 illegal rooming houses where not just -- 25 where we saw a multiple number of 65 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. occupants and really were concerned about the safety of those occupants given the numbers in the homes. I think what in the situation that you just described rightly scares people is when we issue intent to cease notices. And if I received an intent to cease and I was the tenant, you know, I would be wondering do I have ten days to get out, do I have days to get out. 12 But the advice that I would give is that 13 we use the intent to cease to really take 14 our enforcement to the next step in terms 15 of, Take us seriously, property owner, 16 this is something you have to address. 17 We need to do that, because we need 18 people to comply, because in order to be 19 helpful for that tenant, the property 20 owner needs to make those fixes. I think maybe if we could do a better job in terms of our education if as a tenant -- and we could actually use your help in that. As a tenant if you know that there's an intent to cease, the 66 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Department isn't -- wait to see if there's an actual cease order issued. If there's a cease order, we work with our social support agencies and --
Well, we would be glad to enlighten our constituents and also enlighten my staff so that we can calm them from thinking it's time to pack and run, but what I'd also like to ask, which is a logical question, is there a threshold that we as a municipality -- I know we did this in prior Administrations -- to actually do the work in some cases, put a lien on the property, collect it at the point of transfer of title or sale? We used to do that, and I understand that it is a costly proposition, but maybe in a scaled-back version, there might be some classes of violation that are so -- that are not -- the property isn't imminently dangerous, but it is not fit maybe for habitation based on some criteria that you establish, that we would do the work, 67 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. put the lien on, with the possibility of getting that money back and almost accelerate the fine because of the fact that we had to do the work. That could make sense. Because it's, again, a case of taking money out of one pocket and putting it -- if that person winds up homeless, they wind up in a homeless shelter, we wind up paying for it anyway. So is there a limited category of repair that in order to keep a person from becoming homeless, that we might consider providing that kind of funding for? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It would make --
And I'm kind of addressing this also to the Administration. Has there been a discussion that kind of says at this point we're robbing Peter to pay Paul and we're not really saving money. We're just transferring the payment over to another department. 68 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: We have talked about it internally, particularly given some of the history of where we've been. Our current and primary focus was on imminently dangerous buildings and what can possibly occur there and focus all that as a main priority, but we have talked about it, particularly because when we go out, we're seeing things and there is a lot of passion behind the employees in our department and they want to be helpful, and really what we are doing is, we're continuing to try to get this compliance effectively through the property owner. So we have talked about it, and it's something that if we ever get a handle on imminently dangerous properties, and that should be our first priority, that we could consider given our funding parameters, definitely.
Even if we put an assessment due at the time of real estate tax. I don't know the legality of 69 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that, but even if we send a separate bill 3 that was on the real estate tax, so if there's a mortgage that's being paid, where they automatically deduct that portion, that we would get our payment even quicker. So to look at whether or not that is in fact legal. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
Councilman, you're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Sanchez.
Thank you, Madam President. I'm going to follow that line of questioning. Let's talk about where we are with our lien situation. Last year President Verna had asked around the NTI liens. Where are we with the placement of all those liens on the properties? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We did 70 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. another look at all of our billing through NTI to see if everything was billed, and we're actually almost like days, minutes away from the results of that analysis. We did under -- when John Elfrey was Acting Commissioner, he noticed that some bills hadn't gone out and he did a billing -- basically a pick-up of some billing from NTI and got that out the door. So this is like a third look just to make sure, and we're going to provide that when we have that results.
That would be very important for us. One of the things that we found or I found was that there were a lot of properties where the City through NTI had done demolition in my district where we hadn't done acquisition, and now people were selling them, so there was a time sensitivity for our placement in the lien, particularly in areas where the market had changed. So that's an issue that's very important 71 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. to us. The other issue that I've been working for in the last year has been about us being able to, through your contracting of PHS, be able to lien their work. Have we made progress? Has that been finalized? Again, PHS does about $2 million of work. They manage a million square feet of land for us, and we want to -- there was a technicality because they were your sub around can they lien. Did we get that resolved? COMMISSIONER BURNS: A lot of that is through Deputy Managing Director Tom Conway, and I'd have to see. I am aware of the issue, and he may actually be providing some of the billing for PHS, which then may lead to the fact that we can lien it. I'm just not a hundred percent certain on that, but I do recall having heard that that was probably happening.
Again, that's another area where given the 72 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. General Counsel's opinion that we've received on the NTI, where we can go back several years, and I think that's also an important piece for us, to be able to capture that, because that money will help us generate a fund to be able to continue to support their work and their expansion, and through these budget negotiations, I'm always concerned because those are the ticket items that are important to me and Jannie and Donna Reed Miller and Darrell, because so much of that land maintenance is done in our district. So to the extent that we can -- because I think if we can close that loop -- NTI was $125 million in demolition. PHS has been doing this for a decade, two million a year. It's an ability to capture a lot of money. So it's important to us. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
I'll make sure to also circle back around to 73 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Tom as to how he's doing that. I wanted to talk a little bit about for you to describe what will be L&I's role in our Pressure Point and how you see this working and helping us be more proactive and preventive on quality of life issues. COMMISSIONER BURNS: In Pressure Point specifically, there's the Nuisance Task Force, which reports to the Police Department, has been extremely effective and supportive there. We also are well represented and attend the Police public service areas, and mainly what we're doing is, there's a holistic look at where are the vacant properties, what are the problem nuisance properties and then what within L&I can we do to either clean and seal, make sure we get the violations out in those areas. So we've been coordinating and cooperating, and we're at all the meetings and we have -- we keep track of with each of those distinct projects what 74 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. do we have in terms of our responsibility there.
Okay. What's our current backlog as it relates to clean and seals and demos, and does this budget address even our backlog? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We really benefited from the Recovery funds to help with our clean and seal backlog. We actually only have 220 properties that we currently consider in a backlog that are from 2007. We got through all of 2009, all of 2008. And, actually, to the extent that that 220 is real, sometimes we find that we've actually already done those properties, because they're from three years ago.
So that's the only backlog we have, is that -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
How much does it cost us to clean and seal a property? 75 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Our current average is $1,338.
And so that's about the amount that we lien on properties? COMMISSIONER BURNS: If the bill is not paid.
If the bill is not paid. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. That's the average. But it, again, depends on what is the actual bill of the work at each property.
So that's the average of pretty much -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's the average. It can vary dramatically, yes.
Have we looked at whether we need to be increasing the amount that we lien for clean and seals? I find that in Year 3 there's certain properties that we've done over and over of how to go in. So how does the second and third billing add 76 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. up to those properties? COMMISSIONER BURNS: They get billed every time and each time.
The same amount? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Whatever the amount is to do the work, which could vary depending on if -- depending on what we see at the property in terms of the challenges and how it's changed from the last time we cleaned and sealed it, that an administrative fee is added.
Okay. Thank you very much. How much is the administrative fee that we're adding? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It's actually percent. 19
Thank you. I'm just a little curious. When we demolish a building, we usually 77 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. put a lien against the property owner. Who collects the liens? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We --
How does that whole process function? COMMISSIONER BURNS: The lien is only placed if the bill isn't paid, and the collection is --
Ninety-nine percent of them are not paid, right? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Right. But just in terms of the step, I want to make sure that -- but the collection is actually done through the Revenue Department.
That would be at the time of the sale of the property, but I'm just wondering how much of that do we actually collect? COMMISSIONER BURNS: In terms of our demolition and/or our clean and seal? We did look at this, because we know that it's an item. We looked at 78 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. this last year, and the percentage rate of collection on the demolition liens was 1.79 percent. So I don't think that that rate probably doesn't fluctuate much. It's the same challenge that we face in terms of the work that we do in L&I with property owners and properties sitting.
And I know that the price of demolition has really, really come down in the last two years. However, I will tell you when it was costing a lot more, when a property was demolished, the dirt was cleared of any bricks or concrete or whatever. A tree may have been planted on that lot and we had a fence erected. I know we're not doing that anymore. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, the property should be graded and free and leveled and free of bricks. And that's something that --
Well, I think your office may have received a complaint from my office -- 79 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
-- that that was not done recently, and it is a disgrace, because it is in a residential area and children are just going to be having a brick fight. So I would appreciate that being cleared up immediately. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Absolutely.
The Chair now recognizes -- Councilman Clarke is not here. Councilwoman Sanchez.
You're finished? He wants to go last. Councilman Jones.
I love our civility. Thank you, Madam President. I have one last issue. First of all, I should start with a thank-you about your staff's participation with our 80 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. office and the community to deal with town and gown issues revolving around university living. You have been a part of a task force that has really, really made a difference in the communities of Wynnefield and East Falls by way of letting our welcomed students know that we are serious about being good neighbors and not having houses that are overly occupied and not having the loud parties that we all once enjoyed but now find reprehensible. But we're thankful that your staff has been a participant in that, and it has made a difference, and I think that should be on the record. I can't thank you enough for that participation. My question was, similar to last year, I asked that is there a tipping point when renters because of a transient nature, short-term renters, meaning college students, put an additional burden on the municipal services that are required, trash, L&I 81 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. inspections, those kinds of things, that might warrant some additional action by this body to have almost a renters community, that we do an assessment, which would allow you the additional resources you need to make those time-consuming and expensive inspections of student housing. Is there some kind of way that we've evaluated, quantified it? I asked it last year. I'm asking it again this year, to kind of look at particular communities surrounding Temple, surrounding Philadelphia University and St. Joe's and University of Penn that might qualify for that kind of assessment. Have we begun the study? Because I got it on the testimony that you said you would look at it. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, we have, but I think that in terms of looking at -- because where this -- we've talked about this before. And if we're 82 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. thinking as a city or as a body, if you're thinking about maybe a fee structure to rental properties because of what the answer may be, I think that it is more holistic than simply what is L&I services. So we can -- I know where we've been, why we've been there, and we can compare that to rental properties and to possibly some university life in that area and help form what you would look at as the total picture.
One of the things that we do -- and probably the best part of this job -- is that when we see a problem and that we see a pattern, then we change public policy. When we see a problem, then we see a pattern, then we change public policy. What we need from you is to quantify what the difference once a community -- is there a tipping point where because of the transient nature of that area, does it cost us more to service that area. 83 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Now, if we multiply that by trash, sanitation pick-up, L&I inspections, other kinds of services that the City provides, there is a justification for an assessment or fee, but until we start to really measure our costs, as Bill Green always says, if it ain't measured, it ain't managed. If we don't measure it, then we can't kind of determine where the need is for additional resources. So your particular area of focus helps us to kind of craft that kind of public policy understanding. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilman Clarke.
Thank you, Madam President. 84 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Good morning. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Good morning.
Just real quick. What's the process in terms of, and how long does it take, in terms of identifying a nuisance, not necessarily a nuisance that requires a demolition, but a general nuisance -- first of all, let me thank you for your quick response yesterday to my phone call. This kind of leads me to this particular question. You have these situations where people, they get a notice of non-compliance or a notice of some CVN or whatever, some code violation, and they essentially take the position that I'll wait it out, I'm not going to do anything, because it costs me more to comply with the nuisance issue than it does for me to deal with this issue, and they just let it go on and on, but meanwhile, the adjacent property owner, like the situation yesterday, is burdened 85 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. with a situation that in their case is dire. Can you talk to me about the timeline when we send an inspector out and how many times we actually have to issue a code violation notice for either non-compliance and how long it takes to get to court, and then how long it could actually take for in the event that that person doesn't do anything, that the City abates the nuisance or does whatever it is and as it relates to curing the problem associated with the adjacent property owner? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Everything varies based on --
I know that was a long question. COMMISSIONER BURNS: -- the actual -- everything varies based on the actual nuisance itself or the actual violation of the code. In our Operations Division within the Department, we have a very clear three reinspections, send it 86 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. to Municipal Court. Three reinspections could take 90 days. Then getting the court date could be like another 30 to 60 days. That's for people --
Is that best-case scenario, realistically? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yeah, realistically it is. And that's in the case where we don't have property owners that are complying with the violation, and property owners actually do comply with our violations as well, and I think that's partially in the windows and doors question. I got at that a little bit. For the instance that you -- yesterday we're referring to. That was a construction site, and that one we can be more effective at issuing the stop-work order and trying to get it into court if the construction is not going to continue to either fill the hole in this case or restart the construction activity. And we saw --
If you 87 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. don't mind me jumping in. In this particular case, because the construction order was stopped -- and I know Mike probably knows a little more about it -- it actually exacerbated the problem, because it's a property that's open, without getting into -- I don't want to get into the specifics, because I know you have an active case. So I'm assuming he told you that we stopped it because we were in non-compliance of the construction aspect, so now they basically said, Well, I'm not going to do anything. And this thing -- I just found out after I talked to you, happened to see another neighbor that said this has been going on for 15 months, and I got the senior citizen who is next to this property and she called my office crying, as I told you yesterday. I mean, what's the point -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, in that one, we already had been to Municipal Court, and the Court issued a 88 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. $3,000 fine. That still didn't get this person. So Equity Court is really the vehicle, that we have to then take it that step. If the violations don't work, the stop work doesn't work, the fine of $3,000 doesn't work, Equity Court can actually compel someone to make -- to fill the hole or make the repair, or in some cases actually when we go to Equity Court, the Court will order the Department to make the abatement.
So my question is, how long does all of that take? And my follow-up question to that, just in case the bell rings, is that governed by statute within the municipal code or within a State code? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I think it's fair to say that all of that can take six to nine months going through the court system if we don't get compliance, and on our end, what I need to make sure is that our inspectors, if they get something into Municipal Court, see that 89 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. even with a $3,000 fine, that wasn't effective. They've got to see that immediately and try to get us into Equity Court in those situations.
So we have to go to Equity Court before we can consider abating the nuisance ourselves? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
So what establishes that? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That is actually a factor of -- we have broad abatement powers within the Code. That's a factor of really wanting to stress that we've got -- we don't want contractors to think that they can get the City of Philadelphia to do their work. So that's really a factor of trying to get the contractor, the property owner, to be responsible as they should and use the courts to get that done.
Well, if we abate the nuisance, we lien the property; am I correct? 90 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
So essentially we become the de facto owner, assuming that -- in that particular case, abating the nuisance is actually constructing the house. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yeah. At this point in time --
I guess I'm just trying to find out at the end of the day, through no fault of their own, the adjacent property owner is suffering immeasurably, in this case for months, 15 and at what point -- and I guess I'm trying to understand if there is a legal remedy as it relates to shortening the timeframe as relates to getting to the point where we can either abate the nuisance or take it to Equity Court, or whatever the ultimate remedy is. Because this happens too often, as you know. In this particular case, the person basically is waiting it out, because he happens to be in an area where he can 91 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. probably sell that property easily even in its condition for six figures. So a $3,000 fine to that person, no big deal, I'll make it up on the sale of the property. And if you can't answer now -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: I can't right now. I think it's --
Because if there's something -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: It's in the same area of the --
-- within the Code that Council can do to accelerate that process, to make sure that a person either complies in a timely way or the City then has the position where it's authorized to abate the nuisance. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
Can you do that for me, please? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Certainly.
Thank you, Madam President. 92 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Sanchez.
Thank you. I wanted to end with this, because I didn't want to be remiss and not thank L&I, in particular McDade, who is here, on all of your help and support around our recovery house challenges in West Kensington and Frankford, and just wanted to let you know for the record we are looking at putting together some sort of regulations, looking at where we don't have enough authority on your code enforcement pieces to deal with some of the situation. That community is extremely frustrated, and rightfully so, but I wanted to acknowledge that L&I has done what it can with what we have. It's a situation that's very complex, because there is a community need that's very hard to explain, and we had an opportunity last week to meet with 93 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Mr. Fairbanks, who wrote a book about this and was actually in the City lecturing around post-industrial Philadelphia and kind of the recovery revolution that's been going on for ten years in particular parts of the community. And I am a supporter of recovery and I do -- but I do want to find some sort of happy medium. So I just wanted to acknowledge all of your work. I know it's hard, but we are going to be working on some sort of regulations. We don't know what that looks like. At some point we'll reach out to you and look at what are the potential health code issues that we can shore up to help us kind of deal with the bad ones that are only a few as opposed to the folks that are doing some good work out there. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. Thank you. We look forward to working with you.
The 94 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Chair recognizes Councilman Greenlee.
Thank you, Madam President. Councilman Green was getting all anxious over there. I'll just be a minute, sir. Just a follow-up on Councilman Clarke and actually Councilwoman Sanchez's point. I know when a building is particularly dangerous, you can do the curbside bid, right? You can make a decision there to demolish the property because it's that bad; is that right? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
You don't need a court for that? COMMISSIONER BURNS: No, we do not.
But is that the only way you can take action without going to court -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: No. 24
-- take direct action? 95 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: No. 3 That's why I -- I somewhat said it. We do have broad abatement powers under the Code.
Okay. All right. Because I'm just seeing -- and I know what you're saying, you don't want to have to do all the work, because there are -- most people don't pay. So I know you don't want to get into that. So you do have a certain leverage right now, but it might help if there was more given through us. Would that be fair to say? Or maybe that's our call. I don't know. All right. Never mind. Thank you. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 96 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. First of all, I want to commend you and Anuj and the team at L&I for a proactive business district inspection program. I think you guys are doing a good job with that stuff. I think you know that I've been asking each department to go over the budget reduction scenarios we received from the Administration. The scenario for L&I lists items totalling $1.79 12 million. I think we could all agree that 13 L&I has taken serious cuts and is 14 stretched, so I'm not suggesting that 15 these positions are unnecessary, but I'd 16 just like to go through them with you and 17 try to understand them. 18 COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
So in the budget reduction scenarios, I'm sorry, you listed $1.79 million, and this was the seven and a half percent that you shared with the Budget Office and they sent over to us. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. 97 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Are any of these reductions included in the proposed budget? COMMISSIONER BURNS: They are not.
They are not? Okay. If not, could you go through the items and describe the impact on citizens of actually making the cut? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Of making a whole seven and a half percent cut? Okay.
Well, just the different items that are listed there as potentials, what would be the impact of making those cuts in the context of getting the rest of your budget. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. Well, the impact of the seven and a half percent when we looked at this for the submission was a total of 27 positions, and it's really a lot of the conversation that we talked about today. If we're not on the street making inspections, issuing 98 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. violations, getting people into court, then we're not going to be an effective agency. So when we talk about -- I have averages by each inspector of what they would and can do if we lost that. I can talk through that. We have data on the amount of calls that we get and how we need to respond to those. I can talk about some of our -- the success of some of our programmed inspections, which is really something we should be doing more of, and how we can accomplish that. And also one of the things -- I don't know if you noticed this in the budget. I hope you did. But we really have taken a lot of our opportunity to shift where our hires will be and are occurring into the inspector positions. So that's -- really when we talk about 27 positions, right now we have -- we 23 really have 29, but four people are going 24 to retire within the month. We have 25 25 housing inspectors in the City of 99 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Philadelphia. So we talk about 27 positions. I got to figure out, all right, does that come in housing inspectors, does that come in some of the business district inspections that we're doing where, again, in terms of data, we think we get about 35 percent in terms of revenue -- 35 percent of maybe an inspector's salary and fringes is covered by the work that we do. So anyhow --
So you do have data about each inspector, what kind of -- what the responsibility is, whether it's electrical, housing, whatever, and the revenue that them being out inspecting generates by type of inspector? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We've looked at it and we have what we feel is the best estimate given the tools that we have to try to determine that, yes.
Could you please share that with the Chair? 100 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Sure.
What about on the sort of collection side or L&I's revenue side in terms of license fees? Do you know the information by type of license fee? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
You do? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. What we know is, we know how much revenue comes in by type of license fee. We don't -- I can't necessarily say how much of that is directly by license type by the actual inspection. I can give like broad parameters.
Do you know fines by that category also? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
If you could please provide that to the Chair also. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Sure.
That's good. We've been asking for that, not you directly, and weren't aware that it 101 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. existed. So the Operations Division, Section 52, has a Clerk Typist II position, $29,000 a year. How are those functions getting performed now? I'm sorry. You've already testified that you're not going to fill that position. In the Commercial and Industrial Fire section, it looks like there's an unfilled $39,000 Commercial and Industrial Fire Inspector position. How are those job duties being performed now? Is that filling a vacancy? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That one Commercial and Industrial Fire Inspector was actually in anticipation of a possible promotion. If you look at Line under Housing Code Enforcement, Line 21 26 is a Housing and Fire Inspector III 22 and you see that reduced from two to one. 23 That's a possible promotion from that to 24 that position. 25
Thank you. 102 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. In the Housing Code Enforcement section, a Code Administrator I position, the two were vacant in November. Are those filled? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yeah. Those actually are again an internal transfer and an internal promotion. I can tell you those lines. Line 27, the Housing and Fire Inspector Supervisor, see how that goes from five to four? One of those is a promotion into Code Administrator I.
Okay. COMMISSIONER BURNS: And then Line 65 on the Code Violation Resolution 17 Unit, we have a Code Administrator I. You'll see that reduced from four to two.
Yes. If they're internal transfers, I'll take your word for it. With respect to the 19 new L&I Code Enforcement Inspectors, the chart from the Budget Office indicates that these positions, quote, will replace 103 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. numerous departures over the last year due to retirements and resignations, and also that L&I is at a ten-year low for the number of housing inspectors at 25. I am supportive of the important work the Inspection Department does, which supports the quality of life in the City and also secures revenue through fines for non-compliant property owners. During last year's budget process, I asked some questions about the number of inspections performed by L&I in '08, '09 and projected in '10, which I don't think were answered before the budget process ended. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
How difficult is it for you to gather that information? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It's not difficult at all. We have it, we look at it, and we can provide it.
That's great. 104 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. To help make the case that the positions are needed, could the Department -- I think providing that information will be helpful. Can you include a projection for the number of inspections in FY11 with and without the additional 9 positions? 10 COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. 11
And what you 12 would expect that to look like from a 13 revenue perspective? 14 COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. The 15 revenue part is a little bit harder, but 16 yes. 17
Do you know 18 if the current revenue estimates for the 19 license fees and for fines assumes -- was it increased over last year? In other words, if we hire these people, will it be a higher number than is currently in the budget? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It wasn't -- no. These hires are not tied 105 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. to the revenue projection and --
So the revenue projection was not increased over last year for -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: What we had to take into account with our revenue projection was the decrease in the economy right now and the impact here. So the revenue projection was decreased when comparing Fiscal Year '11 to Fiscal Year 2010 original budget, but it actually was increased when comparing Fiscal Year 2011 to Fiscal Year '10 current estimate.
Actual, yeah. Okay. So with the work that these kind of inspectors do, though, could you make an estimate as to how much you would expect in increased revenue -- when you give me that increased revenue number, it will be additive to what's in the budget; is that correct? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yeah. I 106 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. don't think it's going to be substantial, but it would be, because I don't think that we tied these potential hires to revenue increase.
But we would expect there to be a revenue increase as a result of additional inspections and violations and fines? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Minimal, but yes.
I mean, a hundred thousand dollars is -- we're picking up pennies on the street here in Philadelphia. You know that. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
Okay. Great. So going back to the budget detail, the Clerical Services section, it looks like there is a new Word Processing Specialist position for FY11. Is that a transfer? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's another transfer, yes.
Okay. In 107 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the Clean and Seal section, there's an unfilled Abatement Worker position. Same question. COMMISSIONER BURNS: That will be a new hire. It's really important to -- let's see. We were at in Fiscal 8 Year '10, and that's really where we want 9 to be in '11 as well. 10
Okay. So 11 can you make an estimate as to the number 12 of additional properties that will be 13 able to be cleaned and sealed as a 14 consequence of making this hire? 15 COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yeah. 16 Right now with our clean and seal, one 17 person -- we have to see what one person 18 does to the actual amount of crews that 19 we can put out on the street. Any given 20 day we have to deal with obviously if 21 people are in work or out of work. 22
If it wouldn't change the number, though, that gets cleaned and sealed, it probably wouldn't make sense to make the hire. 108 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay. We'll take a look at it.
Okay. Vacancy allowance of 174 -- sorry. Development Division, Section 52, 28, there's a Code Administrator II position. Is that a transfer or is that a promotion of a vacant position? Actually, the chart indicates it's likely filled through an internal promotion, because you drop a position. I just want to confirm that. COMMISSIONER BURNS: I'm sorry. What line was that again?
It's Section 17 52, , Code Administrator II. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yeah, that was an internal transfer.
In the License Issuance section, there are three new Service Representative positions. Have they been filled? This is still on . COMMISSIONER BURNS: I don't 109 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. know how I missed that one. That has to be an internal transfer, because we didn't do any new hires there at all and we don't intend to do any new hires in that unit. I know we did a transfer --
You don't have to figure it out now. If you can just point us to where the transfer came from, that would be great. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
If they are new positions, you've testified about the significant and commendable reductions that L&I has achieved in wait time at the MSB license area, a drop from 26.6 minutes to 9.82 minutes in January. So I just want to -- if we're going to hire people, is that because we don't think nine minutes is fast enough, or if we're going to hire additional people, what can we expect to bring the wait time down to? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
This is District Operation section, Construction 110 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Plans Review Specialist position, it looks like it's new. COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's another one that is an internal promotion. If you look at Line 73, L&I Construction Code Specialist Trainee -- I mean, Line 72, L&I Construction Code Specialist, there was eight at the increment, in 2010, then that goes to 11 eight. So those six positions were 12 actually promotions into that title, 13 Construction Plans Review Specialist. 14
Okay. Well, there's new L&I Construction Code 16 Specialist Trainee. Do they perform the same -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: Those are considered new hires, and since November 9th, we've actually hired eight of those 16. So eight are currently filled of those 16, but, yes, those are new hires. I'm sorry.
And how are they going to improve operations in L&I? 111 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Well, I have estimated that inspectors could 4 potentially do 38,400 inspections a year. 5 The eight that we have brought on, so 6 half of that, would be about like 17,000 7 inspections from the eight. But one of 8 the bigger things that we can do with 9 this title -- 10
So these are 11 inspectors? 12 COMMISSIONER BURNS: These are 13 inspectors in the field, construction 14 inspectors, yes. 15
Construction 16 Code Specialist Trainee is an inspector? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It's the first title to come in as an inspector in construction, yes.
So this is in addition to the 19 inspectors. So every question I asked about the 19 inspectors with additional revenue, et cetera, what 17,000 additional inspections would mean in terms of 112 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. revenue -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
-- based on sort of averages. Seventeen thousand is a big enough number that whatever the average you come up with should be pretty accurate. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Okay.
Administrative Division, Section 52, 52, it looks like there were -- it looks like two Deputy Commissioner positions have been eliminated that were filled as of June 30th, but there's a new 100,000 per year Deputy Commissioner position. Is this an internal promotion or transfer? COMMISSIONER BURNS: One of the Deputy Commissioners, Line 6, you see is actually Director of the Nuisance Task Force. Line 7, Deputy Commissioner Evans retired. She was a Deputy for Administration. And then Line 8 is sitting next to me on my left here, Anuj. 113 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Well, he's a nice fellow. In the 3-1-1 Contact Center section, there are two new Service Representative positions. Have they been filled? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I know we were helping through the interview process, so I know we were conducting the interviews, but I'm not sure if they've been filled since November.
Do you know what are the job duties of these people? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. They're serving either -- they'll be serving as call agents.
And they're in your budget? 114 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yeah. When we -- that's actually where some of the prior question on one of the service reps I could show you to. But anyhow, when we consolidated with 3-1-1 in July of last year, July 2009, we transferred five employees to 3-1-1 that were in our Call Center, particularly because they had the knowledge of our business and also we wanted to augment and make sure that 3-1-1 could take on our additional calls.
So do you know what the -- but these are new positions. So do you know what the average wait time for a caller to 3-1-1 is? I'll tell you, it's one minute and 45 seconds during Calendar Year 2009, but down 18 seconds by December 2009. So why do we -- I'm not sure I understand why we need these positions. COMMISSIONER BURNS: These aren't -- well, we have two filled. The 115 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. two would be new positions. But in terms of the budget, these are four positions we've had on our budget that if you look at Line 59 --
Well, it seems to me, though, the job is getting done without them. COMMISSIONER BURNS: It's a shame, because Rosetta was here at 10 o'clock and she actually beat me here. She waited it out just in case. So we'd have to respond --
Okay. My understanding is that if an inspector cannot enter the property after two visits, it's L&I policy to close the case; is that correct? COMMISSIONER BURNS: If we get a complaint and we've gone to that complaint, yes, two times and we're not able to get entry if we have to get inside, we consider the complaint as unfounded.
So in the 116 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. statistics -- and that's a change in policy? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It is, because we had problems there.
So in the statistics that you're providing as to number of cases resolved compared to the past and all that stuff, it includes items like this where you're sort of, never having inspected the property, making a reasoned judgment that if you went twice, it's unfounded? COMMISSIONER BURNS: No. I think it's -- it comes up as unfounded, not as being resolved. We'd look at it -- what we're measuring is really those cases that we open as a result of inspection.
Has the problem been corrected about "resolved" appearing in 3-1-1 when it's transferred to the department, like L&I? COMMISSIONER BURNS: To my knowledge, yes. 117 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
One of my constituent services people asked me to ask you a question. We often hear from constituents about cases where a property is strewn with trash and debris and even though multiple violations have been issued by L&I, there's been no attempt by the owner to clean the property, and some of these have five, ten, 15, 11 violations. When the property owner is 12 not attempting to become compliant, how 13 long does it take from issuing a 14 violation until the case is listed for 15 court, and how do you make that 16 determination? Is there any policy with 17 respect to the number of violations and 18 how long you wait before taking it to 19 court? 20 COMMISSIONER BURNS: We did institute a policy on the number of times that we'll actually inspect before we take it to court, and that's three inspections before we take it to court. With those three inspections, plus the 118 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. time in court and if they do not comply, that could be a period of six months.
I mean, we're aware of properties where there's more than three inspections and they're not in court. COMMISSIONER BURNS: It is a fairly new policy this past year. So I expect that -- I know that's out there, yes.
I mean, can you go through your database and rather than just every case that now comes up that gets three, take a look at if you have 16 violations on a property, bring all them to court as well? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We're doing that right now.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Thank you.
Thank you, Councilman. 119 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Any other questions for this witness? (No response.)
I think I still have to deliver testimony on the Boards.
You still want to hang around? I was trying to let you get out of here. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Just to read it into record?
Okay. Next the testimony will be for the Board of L&I Review. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Good morning, Council President -- Councilman Clarke and members of Council.
Be careful with that. COMMISSIONER BURNS: I am Fran Burns, Commissioner of the Department of Licenses and Inspections. I appreciate 120 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the opportunity to present the Board of Licenses and Inspections Review Fiscal Year 2011 Operating Budget request. The Board of Licenses and Inspections Review is requesting a total Fiscal Year '11 budget of $155,721 in the City's General Fund, of which $140,645 is Class 100 and $15,076 is Class 200. The Fiscal Year '11 request will fund two full-time General Fund positions. I am available to answer any questions that you may have at this time.
Thank you, Commissioner. What was the Fiscal '10 appropriations? COMMISSIONER BURNS: It's the same. Let me just look over my shoulder and make sure that's right. It's the same.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Any questions of this witness by members of the Council? 121 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. (No response.)
There being none -- COMMISSIONER BURNS: There's two more Boards.
Go ahead. COMMISSIONER BURNS: The Board of Building Standards -- good morning again. I'm Fran Burns, Commissioner of the Department of Licenses and Inspections. I appreciate the opportunity to present the Board of Building Standards Fiscal Year 2011 Operating Budget request. The Board of Building Standards is requesting a total Fiscal Year '11 budget of $71,601 in the City's General Fund, of which $71,542 is Class 100 and $59 is Class 300. The Fiscal Year '11 request will fund one full-time General Fund position. And, again, I'm available to answer any questions.
Thank you. Any questions by members of the 122 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Committee for this witness on this particular Board? (No response.)
There being none, please proceed. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Again, this is the testimony for the Zoning Board of Adjustment. I'm Fran Burns, Commissioner of the Department of Licenses and Inspections. The Zoning Board of Adjustment is requesting a total Fiscal Year '11 budget of $377,871 in the City's General Fund, of which $334,333 is Class 100 and $43,538 is Class 200. The Fiscal Year '11 request will fund five full-time General Fund positions. And, again, I'm available to answer any questions on this.
Thank you. Just quick. I wanted to 123 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. know -- I know with the addition and the changing of the Board, what is our schedule and backlog for scheduling hearings? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Right now in front of the Board it takes days to 8 get an accelerated hearing and six weeks 9 for a regular hearing. 10
And 11 that's from -- what's the improvement? 12 Because I know at one point we had 13 like -- 14 COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's 15 actually, I think -- and just our understanding, and a lot of this is anecdotal. We can look over the past two years, but I think even anecdotally, that's about as fast as it's been in terms of getting a hearing. I think standard we were looking at regular hearings in like eight- to ten-week range and accelerated in three- to four-week.
So 15 days is the accelerated? 124 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes.
If there's ever a case that's accelerated but then gets continued, do they still get the opportunity to get accelerated on their continuance? COMMISSIONER BURNS: I don't know, and we can provide you with that answer.
One of the practices around the expediters has always been kind of controversial. How have we kind of streamlined that so that folks don't feel a need particularly when they don't need a lawyer or an expediter? Do we see an uptick in people just filing their own cases or is there still this dependency on this other part? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We only require lawyers if it's a corporation. Honestly, I don't think we're tracking data on whether someone is representing themselves or being represented in front of the Zoning Board. In fact, I know 125 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. we're not.
Yeah. I think it's important. It's one of the issues we've worked aggressively on, because there's so many issues that don't require legal representation and people don't know, because the forms are pretty intimidating in terms of the Zoning Board. That's all. Thank you.
Thank you, Councilwoman. Commissioner, real quick. As you know, there is a Charter question on the ballot this spring on changing the configuration of the Zoning Board. Currently there is currently a member of L&I sitting on the Zoning Board. Is it the same person designated for all of the Zoning hearings? COMMISSIONER BURNS: We've been --
This is an L&I designee. 126 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. COMMISSIONER BURNS: It has to -- our understanding of the Charter requirement is, it has to be the Commissioner or a Deputy Commissioner that sits.
Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner. Under the change, will you continue to have that level of -- in the event that they're needed as a result of being an alternate? COMMISSIONER BURNS: That's my understanding from the Law Department, yes.
So it will be either the Commissioner or a Deputy? COMMISSIONER BURNS: Yes. And it's actually a different section of the Charter I think that regulates who can sit on behalf of or be delegated on behalf of the Commissioner, and the interpretation is that it's specific to the Commissioner or Deputy.
Okay. The 127 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Zoning Code Commission, would that be more appropriate for City Planning, questions? Because you guys are up later.
Okay. We'll wait until Planning. COMMISSIONER BURNS: Thank you.
Thank you so much. We will be in recess until 2:00 p.m. (Luncheon recess.)
Good afternoon. MR. McPHERSON: The next department will be the City Planning Commission. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Good afternoon, Councilwoman Tasco and Councilman Greenlee. I'm Alan 128 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Greenberger, the Executive Director of the City Planning Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to present the City Planning Commission's proposed Operating Budget for FY2011. Gary Jastrzab, our Deputy Director, is with me. The City Planning Commission's Home Rule Charter-mandated functions are to, one, prepare, adopt and modify a Comprehensive Plan for the City; two, prepare an annual Capital Program and Budget; three, prepare proposed zoning ordinances, maps and amendments; four, prepare regulations concerning the subdivision of land; and, five, make recommendations to City Council on the foregoing, in addition to the acquisition or sale of the City real estate. In addition, the Commission is also charged with reviewing and making recommendations concerning the School District's proposed Capital Program. The Department's responsibilities also encompass economic, 129 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. community development and environmental planning concerns. New emphasis has focused on issues of sustainability, neighborhood conservation and preservation, and humanizing the scale of the City through urban design. 497,598 million is comprised of three components, a General Fund request for $2,251,249, a Community Development Fund request for $408,186 and an appropriations request for $1,538,163 in the Grants Revenue Fund. This is $1,172,899 more than the Commission's FY2010 estimated obligations due to a $1,227,832 increase in requested appropriations from the Grants Revenue Fund and an increase of $241,467 in requested Community Development funds. Our General Fund request is reduced by $296,400. The appropriation increase for 1,227,832 from the Grants Revenue Fund reflects $945,000 130 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that was expected to be used by the Planning Commission for bicycle and pedestrian counts, healthy communities and active living studies, healthy communities planning coordination, sidewalk condition assessment, and tobacco retailer database development. The remaining increase in grant appropriations will support the Hunting Park West planning, bicycle and pedestrian planning, the Citizens' Planning Institute and the Comprehensive Plan. In regard to grants, I'd like to mention that the PCPC staff has aggressively pursued opportunities for competitive planning. 744 million for 22 transportation and land use planning studies. In March, the Commission was awarded a foundation grant to establish a 131 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Citizens Planning Institute as a means to engage citizens and teach planning principles, provide a common language to discuss planning issues, and build the capacity of individuals and civic organizations for participating in their communities' planning process. We are now laying the groundwork for CPI and we will have a pilot project up and running before the end of the calendar year. These grant funds have allowed the Commission to maintain its productivity while other revenue sources have declined. In FY2011, the City Planning Commission is anticipating a staffing level of 42 positions, 38 General Fund positions, three Community Development Fund positions and one Grants Revenue Fund position. This is a reduction of one budget position relative to FY2010. Under the proposed cuts of two and a half, five and seven and a half percent, the Commission will preserve 132 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. core functions, but jeopardize progress on key initiatives. 5 percent would eliminate a third position. Particularly, the capital budget process would be comprised severely. Progress on Philadelphia 2035, the Comprehensive Plan, which forms a critical basis for Charter-mandated zoning reform, will be delayed.
During the past year, the Commission completed our Imagine Philadelphia project establishing a foundation for a new Comprehensive Plan, the first undertaken in Philadelphia in 50 years. We have recently kicked off this comprehensive planning effort, entitled Philadelphia 2035, which will be composed of a long-range citywide plan and beginning a five-year program to prepare 18 implementation-oriented strategic district plans covering the 133 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. City. The Citizens Planning Institute I mentioned a few minutes ago will provide a means to engage individuals and civic organizations in the planning process. Once the Zoning Code Commission completes its work and a new code enacted into law, the PCPC will begin a district-by-district remapping of the City. Full funding of our FY2011 budget is necessary to ensure the Commission's contribution to the City's financial recovery and overall long-term economic development, with a concurrent impact on new development, job creation and efforts to achieve neighborhood sustainability. I believe that to remain competitive among cities, Philadelphia must maintain a focused priority on planning and must continue to fund the effort as aggressively as possible. The City Planning Commission staff has always prided itself on its ability to provide fast and efficient 134 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. service to individuals and community organizations seeking planning-related information, property owners seeking review of development plans and City department and City Council requests for data and analysis. Adequate funding of the City Planning Commission is necessary if we are to continue to perform these functions. The Philadelphia City Planning Commission is committed to supporting the Administration's goal of percent 14 minority, woman and disabled-owned 15 business participation in City contracts. 16 Based on the available contracting 17 opportunity, the City Planning 18 Commission's projected FY participation 19 goal is 31 percent. PCPC's FY08 20 participation level was 20 percent, its 21 FY09 level was 30 percent, and its 22 anticipated FY10 level is 18 percent. I 23 have a footnote to that -- 13 percent. 24 I'm sorry. 25 I have a footnote to that, but 135 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. I'll deal with that during questions. This concludes my testimony. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the City Planning Commission's Operating Budget and would be pleased to answer your questions. Should any Councilmember wish to engage in further discussions on any of these matters, my staff and I are happy to meet with you at your convenience.
Thank you very much for your testimony. I'm just looking at the first page of your testimony where you talk about the appropriations from the Grants Revenue Fund, which includes a number of areas that you were going to work, but the one around tobacco retailer database development, could you give --
Yeah. I can explain that. A number of these grant opportunities at the time that the testimony was written, these are 136 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. coming -- a number of these things are coming through the Health Department through a Healthy Communities grant, and at the time the testimony was written, we weren't sure where some of these would be placed. So they're placed in here as an appropriations request to authorize us to do it, but they're also -- I think they were also placed in the Health Department's. We've subsequently decided that these are being run through the Health Department.
Okay. Thank you. In the proposed Citizens Planning Institute, have you -- I know you say you're going to -- you're laying the groundwork for that, but what preliminary ideas do you have for implementing that institute?
Thank you for that question. We're very excited about Citizens Planning Institute. There aren't too many examples of this in the 137 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. country, and they tend not to be in big cities. But because we're rewriting a Zoning Code and doing a Comprehensive Plan with a lot of subsequent mapping that has to go on, we thought that this was a very important thing to get people really educated on what planning is, what its implications are and also how to manage and understand these new tools that will be available in Calendar '11. So what we did is in talking to the William Penn Foundation, who is giving us this first grant, it's a start-up grant really to develop the curriculum, and this is so at the end of this year, we anticipate and will report back to both Council and to William Penn on basically a curriculum of what we think it is we need to provide to communities, with the intention of asking them for seed money to really start the program. Long term, however, we believe that this needs to be part of the normal operating position of the Planning 138 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Commission, with educational components offered up to both individuals and communities as needed.
Well, do you plan to include the various communities throughout the City in your development of the curriculum?
Yes, we will. We've already been -- in fact, when the idea was floated the first time, we received a number of requests from community groups, who said sort of sign me up, and I think their concern, although we're not certain that this is the pattern -- this is what we'll find out as we develop this curriculum in coordination with their feedback -- is what is it you think you need to hear from us, as well as what do we think we need to put out there, and it will be a combination of both. I suspect that there'll be a lot of crossover. I think what we think we need to put out there is probably what most communities think they 139 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. need to hear.
To get a broad view of input from a broader perspective of the City, because we know that people who are more engaged in planning will respond, but some of the small neighborhood groups or neighbors don't really respond. Can you think of a mechanism to reach out to the neighborhoods that are not responding as you review who is responding, how do you connect with the small neighborhood organizations and/or -- well, because some neighborhoods don't have organizations in an organized fashion, but how do we reach out to the broader community to get their input.
I think there are three ways we'll do this. One is, we'll take advantage of community meetings that the Zoning Code Commission is running anyway to get feedback, direct feedback, sort of person to person, and these meetings are in neighborhoods. 140 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Secondly, for the first time I think in anybody's memory, we actually now have a list of every self-declared community organization in the City, complete with boundaries, self-declared, leadership --
But leadership, contact points. So I think what we will do, which is what we do through our Community Planning Division anyway, is reach out to them directly to get direct feedback from them, and then in the comprehensive planning process itself, we'll also be running neighborhood meetings, and so we'll reach out there.
Sounds good. In terms of your minority participation, who do you do business with? What kinds of goods and services do you engage in that would promote this 141 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. diversity that's required?
Pretty much a hundred percent of it are professional design and planning services. Just to give you an example of the range, we've retained a firm to help us develop the Hunting Park West Master Plan. They have a number of subcontracts on that. We've engaged another firm who is helping us with our pedestrian and bicycle sort of citywide plan. It's always those kind of firms. They almost invariably -- in fact, they do invariably come through grant opportunities that we garner. So in a given year, it will change. Some years we'll have a very low number of contracts, other years we might have a higher number of contracts depending on the grant opportunities that are out there and what we have explored with grantors based on what we think our needs are.
Okay. 142 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilman Greenlee.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, gentlemen. (Good afternoon.)
One question. In the middle of your testimony, Mr. Greenberger, you reference the strategic district plan. Can you go into that a little bit, exactly what that is and where the district -- I don't know if you've actually figured out what the districts are, but if you go into a little more detail.
Sure. In order to do -- what we're calling the Comprehensive Plan really consists of these two parts. We're looking at the City as a whole and trying to understand what are the big strategic citywide things that we need to be thinking about over the next 30 years, and they might 143 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. involve -- to pick sort of the obvious examples, they might involve underdeveloped waterfronts, they might involve key passageways that link multiple regions in parts of the City. They'll include the relationship of land use to the transportation network, things like that. But at some point, we're going to have to get down to parcel level and actually consider remapping of the City relative to the new Zoning Code. In order to do that, we need to take a more -- it's a sort of up the level on the microscope, you might think, you might say, to look at areas of the City at a more detailed level that will help us guide what to do about remapping. Now, the remapping -- and I can't remember, Councilman, if you've heard me say this before. The remapping is not going to be a wholesale remapping of every parcel in the City, because there's a lot of things that are right and we don't want to remap. But there 144 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. are particular subject areas that we think probably form the heart of rethinking, and they would include things like commercial corridors, transit-oriented development and how we sort of make that stick better. We're not very good at it.
Yeah. I thought you would. I didn't say it for that purpose, but that happens to be a key thing. And I think that this is a city that had an enormous -- has an enormous amount of land zoned industrial based on experiences from 50 to 100 years ago that we need to rethink. So the strategic plans are going to allow us to do that. They're not a neighborhood -- they're not a neighborhood-level plan. They're bigger than that. We have an internal sort of working map that divides the City into 18 different areas, and 145 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. they're largely based on, you might say, a kind of empirical sense of how people live their lives in the City. It's the kind of thing that if I -- if I said to you when things happen around where you live, good and bad, when are they part of what you think is your kind of territory and when are they not. And so it's a kind of -- some of that is enforced by geography, neighborhoods that butt up against rivers or against the City boundaries. Sometimes it's very much about people who live on one side of a major arterial through the City kind of think about everything that happens on the other side is not their world. It's kind of that. It's a bit of a convenience for the Planning Commission. We have to divide it up somehow, and we didn't think that it was going to work to just say northwest, northeast, center, southwest kind of thing. We needed a more fine-grained approach.
So these 146 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. areas, that covers the whole City of Philadelphia?
Now, I 6 guess as a Councilman at-large, obviously 7 I'm addressing all that, but I assume 8 there will be direct contact with the 9 District Councilpeople in that area? 10
Absolutely. 11 And they're not defined by Council 12 district, so there'll be crossover. Some 13 of them have majority one Councilmember, 14 but many of them -- most of them have 15 two, sometimes three. 16
Right. 17 Okay. And just last question. How 18 did you -- I guess you kind of said this, but how did it come to 18 and why?
We kind of -- working -- we did this actually as a group with our Community Planning Division, who know the City the best in our agency, and we just started saying, All right, if you had to try to 147 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. understand the City in terms of how people think about how they live, where the kids go to school, assuming it's neighborhood based, where they routinely shop, how they measure the good things and the bad things that happen in City life, where are those boundaries. And to pick a kind of easy one, Manayunk and Roxborough, which are hemmed in by a lot of geography -- that's why it's an easy one -- is a kind of natural territory that people think of as a place in the City that they relate to if you live there.
A defined area kind of thing, yeah. Right. I got you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Sanchez.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I only have one question and 148 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the rest is actually a comment. I just wanted to thank the Planning Commission. It has been great to see it take its rightful role in the planning process as it relates to neighborhoods, and I want to personally thank Mr. Greenberger for all of his patience in dealing with the multitude of my groups, those informal and formal --
-- in the discussions around community planning. I appreciate that, and I look forward to, as even we do the zoning overlays and stuff, your thoughtfulness in that process is so very important. Civic organizations, whether -- I have about a dozen of them and the CDC world are very much involved and vested in what happens in the neighborhood, and our ability to show to them that we really do care and want to be thoughtful is so very important. So you've made that process 149 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. less painful than it could be. As it relates to the Citizens Planning Institute, I wanted to -- going back to what Councilwoman Tasco was saying, I think that there's some less organized vehicles and even some vehicles that are very organized but maybe for all the wrong reasons, and I really want to look at how we ensure that we grab those folks. I mean, there's some folks who just focus on zoning for all the bad reasons, for everything they're against. I see Eva shaking her head. And then there are some folks who have just never been engaged because they just feel like it's too much of a complicated process. So I'm encouraged that you're looking at how you do this plain language so kind of folks get involved, and I want to just offer up, because I do have many languages in my district, to the extent that we can help ensure that we're doing this, also providing --
That would be 150 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. very helpful.
-- language access. It's very important. So as we're developing these things, that we think about language and how that gets translated.
Okay. As it relates to the minority participation, you talked about some of the firms and you said you had a footnote on that, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to share it.
Well, thank you. I was going to ask permission from the Chair to do that anyway, but thank you for asking. The footnote is a simple one. One of our major prime contractors is a woman-owned firm who is registered with, I believe, State PennDOT, transportation planning firm. They're registered with PennDOT, but that registration has not 151 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. been put into the City system yet, so our numbers do not reflect their participation either in '09 or '10. So the '09 number will be somewhat higher than the 30 percent. The '10 number will actually be 41 percent when that firm gets itself -- when we finish its paperwork. But we didn't want to put it forward without the paperwork done yet.
Well, we thank you for that, and we encourage you to, whenever possible, to continue to engage not only minority and women firms, but Philly-based firms. That's important to us. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other questions? (No response.)
Thank you. I think I'm staying for the next one. 152 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. MR. McPHERSON: The next department is the Zoning Code Commission.
I'm sorry. I'm getting rid of everybody. (Witness approached witness table.)
Good afternoon, Councilwoman, other Councilmembers. My name is Eva Gladstein and I appreciate the opportunity to testify today as Executive Director of the Zoning Code Commission and to present its Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2011. Alan Greenberger is next to me, and he serves as Chair of the Zoning Code Commission, and I'd also like to recognize that we have excellent participation directly on the Commission from Councilmembers Clarke, DiCicco, Green and O'Neill and they provide a great service to the Commission and its work. The Zoning Code Commission's 153 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. proposed Operating Budget of 500,000 is comprised entirely of a General Fund request - 150,000 for staff salaries, 330,000 for purchase of services and 20,000 for materials and supplies. As you know, the Zoning Code Commission was created as a result of a Home Rule Charter change approved by the electorate in May 2007. Initial appointments to the 31-member body were made in August 2007. The authorizing legislation directs the Commission to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Zoning Code and specifies some of the elements of that analysis. It also directs the Commission to make recommendations to City Council concerning proposed changes to the Zoning Code before the end of Fiscal Year 2008. In 2008, City Council granted a two-year extension of this deadline to June 2010. Later in this Council session we will return with a request to extend this deadline. 154 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. The authorizing legislation set forth goals for the reform of the Zoning Code as follows: Philadelphia Zoning Code should be consistent and easy to understand, should help shape future construction and development, and should enhance and improve Philadelphia's development approval process while encouraging positive development and protecting the character of Philadelphia's neighborhoods. In July 2008, the Commission contracted with a team led by nationally recognized consultants, Clarion Associates and Duncan Associates, to participate in the first phase of the work. The team also includes the participation of a number of local firms, including CH Planning, Claflen Associates, Portfolio Associates, and Wallace Roberts and Todd. The ZCC issued an RFP in April 2009 and selected the same team for its second phase of work. Our work is well underway, and 155 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. we expect to be able to deliver a proposed new Zoning Code for City Council's consideration in the fall of 2010. We've published a number of documents, including an Assessment of the Existing Code, Best Practices Report, Detailed Recommendations for a New Zoning Code, Module on Administration and Procedures, and as of this morning, we released the draft of Module on Districts and Uses. This work has been informed by an extensive civic engagement process, which many of you have participated in. It has included two public hearings in City Council Chambers, community-based 18 meetings attended by 800 residents, interviews with 125 professional code users and a web-based survey that has been completed by 1,600 individuals. We also have a robust website and have made presentations to a number of interest groups. We're planning another round of civic engagement activities that will 156 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. begin later this month, in which we will seek feedback on the second module on Districts and Uses and yet another round accompanying the release of Module 3 on Development Standards in July of this year. Supplementing these activities, we've also been an active participant over the last year in the integrated planning and zoning process that Alan spoke about in his testimony. We've been weaving together the comprehensive planning and Zoning Code initiatives, and this has been the inspiration behind the creation of the Citizens Planning Institute, an ongoing educational arm of the Planning Commission.
In 2011, in addition to providing the proposed Zoning Code to City Council for its consideration, we'll help develop and implement a training program on the new Zoning Code for City staff and other code users and publish a Zoning Administrative Manual that will 157 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. accompany the new Zoning Code. The Zoning Code Commission is committed to supporting the Administration's goal of percent 6 minority, woman and disabled-owned 7 business participation in City 8 contracting. In support of those goals, 9 the Commission currently has one 10 professional services agreement in the 11 amount of $330,000 and some change, of 12 which 17 percent has been subcontracted 13 to minority business enterprise and 11 14 percent with a woman business enterprise, 15 both local firms. And that exceeds the 16 ranges that were set for this contract. 17 This contract extends through August 18 31st, 2010, and based upon the available 19 contracting opportunities for Fiscal Year 20 '11, we anticipate being able to meet the 21 same goal. 22 This concludes my testimony. 23 Again, I appreciate the opportunity to 24 appear before you today and would be 25 pleased to answer any questions you may 158 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. have. And, again, I'd just like to express my appreciation for the assistance that members of Council have been giving to us as we try to lead a very complex, complicated process and make sure that we hear all voices and can consider them and have their input, and members of Council have been critical to that process up until now and I know will be as we move forward. Thank you.
Thank you very much, and we thank you for the work that you're doing. When we first, I guess, passed the resolution or ordinance 17 to establish the Zoning Commission, it was going to be done in six months. I said, Oh, I don't think so. So here we are how many years later, three, going on four. That's fine. It's better to not act in haste and repent in leisure. So we'll see what the end product will be. Hopefully it will be better for the City of Philadelphia in terms of this whole 159 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. zoning issue. Councilwoman Jones -- Councilman Jones.
Thank you. I want to thank you. We are getting in a habit of thanking Commissioners this year, and you are one of them. I absolutely have been involved in economic development for most of my professional career, and just the notion of predictability for developers, that you can go from a book that is maybe this thick to the possibility of it being something in a Reader's Digest understandable fashion is like night and day by way of the ability to attract developers. Now, we disagree on the role of the District Councilperson in that process a little bit, but it's been my experience with you that it's going on 160 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. just fine. We have not gotten everything we wanted. We have gotten a lot of what we wanted, and at the end of the day, I think we always got or are able to achieve a good product, particularly around the reclassifications by way of increasing density, which is something that urban areas need in order for old parcels to be marketed better and more profitable to developers, particularly in a recession. I am optimistic about your vision about transit-oriented development and what it will mean to the future of this city. I'd like to wrestle with where those things are a little more. Although I respect the location of 46th and Market in the Third District, my argument always is that the first thing you see when you come into the City of Philadelphia is 63rd Street, which is the gateway of the City. But in general, I am pleased and optimistic about your level of work. Recently Lancaster Avenue 161 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. was the beneficiary of that, soon to be Hunting Park, where I believe that even in a recession the development of fire stimulus is about to happen. What I'd like to get a little more clarity about is where the transit-oriented development strategy is heading and what some of the early signs or successes have been.
If I might answer that. That's a good question, and here's what we're going to do: Through this Healthy Cities Initiative that the Health Department has organized, one of the aspects of that is increasing the walkability of the City. We do pretty well right now, but we can do a lot better. And the person that we just retained through that grant, one of his critical jobs is going to be to look at every single transit node in the City, map them and also start to categorize them relative to the kind of use pattern certainly, the sheer numbers, but also 162 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the potential, so that we can start to understand what sort of, I'll use the term, transit-oriented development guidelines ought to be applied, since you would not apply the same one for every single category. So to pick an example, Broad and Erie is a very big transit node, has a lot of commercial activity around it already. The kind of density and design controls we would put on that would be very different than the Stenton R-7 station in my part of East Mount Airy where there's no commercial activity and it's purely a walk to your house kind of operation. So we're going to do that. We'll categorize them, and we'll be happy to share them with you and actually seek your opinion on do you think we have this right. Then we'll figure out which controls belong where.
I think 163 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that's going to result in rezonings.
I think the communications process is key, particularly with the District Councilpeople, who had their kind of feet on the ground, boots on the ground, if you would. We also understand -- like you have information, we have sources of information and have a better indication sometimes of interest that has been piqued by people in particular areas. So if you know where peanut butter is and we know where jelly is, if we get together, we just may make a sandwich. And the idea there is that one begets the other. When we make a capital investment in a rec center, seemingly unrelated, but when we put in a walking track, or in the case of the 7th District, Astroturf, it creates a viability for a neighborhood that is synergistic. So if we work together on how we can apply these things, if you know 164 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that there's a senior center about to happen there, then me putting a skate park in the rec center doesn't quite make sense, but a walking track does. So that kind of working together and communication is key. Thank you, Madam Chair.
You're welcome. Thank you. Are there any other questions? (No response.)
There being none, thank you very much. No, we have someone else, right? MR. McPHERSON: The Historical Commission.
Good afternoon. Would you state your name for the record, please, and begin with your testimony. 165 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Good afternoon. My name is John Farnham. I am the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Historical Commission. I present for your review and consideration the Historical Commission's Operating Budget request in the amount of $403,942 for Fiscal Year 2011. The request includes $385,995 in Class 100 employee compensation, $11,906 for Class 200 services, $4,181 in Class 300 materials and supplies, and $1,860 for Class 400 equipment expenditures. 2 percent, less than the original appropriation for Fiscal Year 2010. The number of approved staff positions, all of which are filled, remains at six. Created by City Council ordinance in 1955 and reorganized in 1985 under Section 14-2007 of The Philadelphia Code, the Historical Commission is responsible for ensuring the preservation of historically significant buildings, 166 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. structures, sites, objects, interiors and districts in the City. The Commission identifies and designates historic resources, listing them on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, and it regulates preservation through the City's building and other permitting processes. With its federal certification, the Historical Commission performs federally mandated environmental clearance and historic preservation reviews for public and quasi-public municipal agencies. During all of its reviews, both local and federal, the Historical Commission balances historic preservation with the economic development as it safeguards the City's unique heritage and wealth of cultural resources, fosters civic pride, promotes healthy and sustainability communities, enhances property values, provides educational opportunities, and attracts new residents, businesses and tourists. Under Section 14-2007, the 167 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Commission has designated 21,178 properties as historic, many of which are located within the Commission's 5 historic districts. Additionally, the 6 Commission regulates 469 properties in 7 Manayunk under Chapter 7 of the Property 8 Maintenance Code. To protect historic 9 resources, the Commission reviews 10 building and other permit applications, 11 ensuring that work proposed satisfies 12 preservation standards. In Calendar Year 2009, the Commission approved 1,102 applications. It also conducted ten reviews for the Historic Home Repair Program, a City-funded program, which provides preservation grants to low and moderate-income homeowners. During the year, the Commission designated two historic districts with 320 properties total, seven individual sites and rescinded the designation of one site. Under a programmatic agreement with the state and federal governments, the Commission conducts reviews, commonly 168 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. called Section 106 reviews, for programs funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development through the local office of Housing and Community Development and other agencies. Performing this task, the Commission conserves City resources, conducting reviews at the municipal, not the state or federal, level and obviating the need for expensive consultants. In 2009, the Commission conducted 2,492 federally mandated eligibility determinations and 245 work plan reviews for projects undertaken by these agencies. These projects include rehabilitation of housing for elderly, disabled and low-income persons and adaptive reuse of commercial properties. In addition, the Commission advises City programs and agencies such as the Streets Department on state and federal historic preservation compliance. Finally, the Commission serves as a consulting party in all other federal historic 169 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. preservation reviews conducted in the City, and a recent example is the review of the proposed American Revolution Center.
The Commission also serves as a clearinghouse for information on history and preservation, providing technical assistance to property owners, developers and design professionals, and information on the history of Philadelphia and its built environment to cultural resources, management professionals, educators, students and the public. In 2009, the Commission serviced 290 walk-in research requests and numerous other telephone, e-mail and mail requests. The Commission is committed to supporting Administration's goal of 20 percent minority, women and disable-owned 21 business participation in City 22 contracting. The Commission anticipates 23 limited contracting opportunities for 24 very specialized consulting services in 25 Fiscal Year 2011. 170 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. In addition to the many accomplishments summarized above, the Commission completed or continued several important projects during 2009. First and foremost, the Commission developed regulations, processes and forms to implement the new authority conferred by this Council to designate publicly accessible interiors. The Commission looks forward to designating its first interior later this year. In response to numerous constituent requests, the Commission restarted its long-dormant historic district program and designated two historic districts, Tudor East Falls and Parkside, during 2009. The Commission will consider a third, the Awbury Arboretum historic district, in Germantown shortly. The Commission plans to process additional district nominations in 2010 and '11, but before considering any district designation, the Commission will meet with community 171 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. leaders and other interested parties to ensure that its designation plans coincide with the plans of the community. The Commission completed a series of projects to increase efficiency and effectiveness and improve customer service. The Commission entirely rewrote its rules and regulations, making them easier to use, eliminating unnecessary reviews, reducing review times and costs for many types of applications, and promoting the use of green technologies, energy-efficient replacement elements and low-maintenance materials without degrading historic appearances. The Commission is also improving its efficiency and customer service as a partner in the reform of the City's development review process. In addition, the Commission is working closely with the Zoning Code Commission to ensure that the historic preservation ordinance, which is located in Title 14, is successfully integrated into the new 172 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Zoning Code. Completing a two-year project, the Commission verified all addresses on the Philadelphia Register as compliant with official City addresses -- to ensure that all addresses are compliant with official City addresses. To ensure continued compliance, the Commission developed an automated system to periodically compare those addresses with City tax records. The accuracy of these address which are listed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places is essential to the Commission's business and also to the interested property owners and potential property owners, buyers. The Commission is providing this data now to the Department of Licenses and Inspections and to the public through the Board of Revision of Taxes' website and TREND, the region's real estate industry's Multiple Listing Service. Also with funding from a non-profit, the Commission will shortly send letters to 173 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. every owner of a historically designated property reminding those owners of their responsibilities under the preservation ordinance, thereby educating property owners and reducing unnecessary legalization and enforcement actions.
The Commission created the content for a new website during the past year to provide more and better information to the public in a timely manner and is working with the Division of Technology to implement the website, which will replace its current inadequate website and integrate with the City's Business Services Center. The Commission digitized 41,251 essential documents to enhance office efficiency, ensure their preservation and provide more and better information to property owners and the public. Finally, and importantly, the Commission is making great progress in its privately funded, multi-million-dollar, public-private 174 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. partnership with the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia to develop a comprehensive historic preservation plan for Philadelphia. The plan, which will include a citywide survey of historic resources and a broad framework for evaluating and interpreting those resources, will allow the Commission to plan and designate strategically for the first time in its 50-year history. Thank you, members of Council, for your attention, and I'm happy to address any questions that you may have.
A couple of questions I have. Would you explain what the -- in Paragraph 3 where you say the Commission regulates the preservation of 469 properties in the Manayunk area under Chapter 7. Explain that, please.
Yes. Prior to 1985 when the current historic preservation ordinance went into effect, the Historical Commission did not have 175 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the authority under the earlier ordinance 3 to create historic districts. It only had the authority to designate individual sites. There was a movement in the early 1980s to create an historic district within the Main Street Manayunk area, but the Historical Commission did not have the legal authority to do that. Therefore, City Council itself, through an amendment to the Property Maintenance Code, created that historic district and authorized the Philadelphia Historical Commission to regulate that district. And that idiosyncratic piece of legislation survives today and we still operate under it, regulating properties in Manayunk, much as we do under the standard preservation ordinance, but with a slightly different authority.
Okay. And one other question. You're $9,178 less in your budget. What did you cut?
That money was 176 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. transferred to the Division of Technology as part of the IT consolidation that the City is undergoing. So that will cover IT services that the Commission currently paid for out of its budget through the Division of Technology budget.
So instead of you doing your own technology, it pays for the services of IT?
I think my last question is, you talk about providing technical assistance to property owners, developers and design professionals. Do you charge a fee for that?
No. Currently, the Historical Commission charges no 20 fees. The service is provided to owners of historic properties.
What would be the height of your technical assistance?
Typically we 177 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. receive inquiries from owners of properties, both designated as historic and not designated as historic, but older, people looking for information about, for example, how to replace an historic roof, the best ways to treat historic masonry facades, how to replace brick or point brick. We provide those services. We have a staff of four preservation planners. They all have degrees in Historic Preservation Planning and are really experts in maintaining older buildings, and they provide those services to Philadelphians.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Mr. Farnham. Just briefly could you kind of explain how a district gets established and how it's designated.
Certainly. Currently and for, I would say, the last ten years or so, the Historical Commission has acted reactively in that it has not initiated the designations of historic districts, but has actually reacted to requests from communities, typically from community groups or other interested groups in preservation. The Historical Commission typically works with community groups, community activists who are interested in seeing their neighborhoods preserved, helps them prepare the documentation that's necessary for submission to the Historical Commission, often works with third parties; for example, the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, which has the funding to assist community groups, to prepare the documentation that's necessary, and once 179 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that documentation is prepared, describing the boundary of the district, the different important historic resources within that district and explaining how one or more of the ten designation criteria that are laid out in the historic preservation ordinance are satisfied by the historic district. Once that documentation is complete, it is reviewed by the staff of the Historical Commission. Once the staff determines that it's complete, it's forwarded to an advisory committee, the Committee on Historic Designation, which reviews it, and then from there, with the recommendation from the Committee to the Commission. Now, before any public meetings take place to review a nomination, the Commission is bound by law and does provide notice to all property owners within the potential historic district at least 60 days in advance of any meeting, and it provides that notice through 180 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. newspaper advertisements, two letters, one to the property owner as his or her address is listed by the Board of Revision of Taxes and one to the property itself, and then finally signs, one per block in the district.
And then the Commission reviews the nomination and determines whether or not the case has been made that it meets one or more of the ten designation criteria laid out in the ordinance.
You answered what was going to be another question, but I'm glad you did, about the notification of all property owners. So they all know or the best attempt is made to tell them that this is being planned?
Because every once in a while, you'll you get people to say, I didn't know. So I just wanted to see how they're informed. 181 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Absolutely. The notification requirements are laid out very precisely in the ordinance, and we use those three methods, signs, newspaper advertisements and then the letters. And I think the letters are the most effective.
Okay. And the last question, the Historic Home Repair Program, how do people know about that? Is that somehow advertised? I know you say you're sending things out this year to all designated properties.
The Historic Home Repair Program is in part funded by the City and in part by private non-profit, and it is administered by the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia through a contract with the Office of Housing and Community Development, and part of that contract with OHCD stipulates that the Preservation Alliance has an obligation to advertise this program. So the 182 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Preservation Alliance advertises it in numerous ways, and I think the most effective way was that it sent out literally tens of thousands of letters to potential historic property owners, property owners who reside both in locally designated historic districts and also are eligible if they reside in nationally designated historic districts.
Do you have any idea how much money, particularly City money, we spend on that last time?
I don't have the numbers before me. I could get that for you, but --
The Chair 183 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. recognizes Councilman Jones.
Thank you. I only have a few questions. Your testimony was enlightening as to the process, but generally when there's a historically certified home on a block, what does it do to property values one way or the other? Does it impact it at all?
We believe that it does, and this is a question that has been asked of the historic preservation community with great frequency, to the point where we felt like we really -- about two years ago, we needed to find the answer for ourselves, and we contracted with Econsult. Actually, we had the Preservation Alliance contract with Econsult. It wasn't City money that paid for the study. But Econsult did a study looking back over about 20 years at every arm's length property sale within the City of Philadelphia and looking at whether or not that property is 184 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. designated locally or designated through the National Register of Historic Places, and determined that across the board, across the City, property values rose slightly faster within a designated area. So there's a slight advantage to property owners who own designated properties in that their property values rose slightly more than comparable properties very near to those but outside of historically designated areas. Another interesting fact that the reviewers at Econsult discovered was that property values were also much more stable within historic districts. They didn't see the radical swing, so the radical gains but also the radical losses that some other neighborhoods had seen. So I think in general, the study proved what we all in the profession believed, that in fact designation stabilizes and protects property values.
Could you 185 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. speak to the myth that to become historically certified -- I gave a hint, myth -- that once you're historically certified, it costs more to renovate your home. And what safeguards, grants, provisions are there to offset original architect material, designs and purchases.
Absolutely. Philadelphia is a very diverse city with a very diverse stock of historic buildings, and we are very sensitive to the fact that it can be expensive, whether designated or not -- I live in an old house not designated -- can be expensive to maintain. Our goal is not to add any cost to the maintenance of an historic building, and we work very hard with property owners to find ways to maintain the historic appearance, and generally that's what we're trying to do. Property values, neighborhood stability I think depends on the maintenance and the 186 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. restoration of the historic appearance. We find ways to help property owners maintain the historic appearances of their properties without increasing cost. We've heard this myth many times and are very sensitive to it, and the Historical Commission took a step over the last months or so to actually 10 go back and revise its rules and 11 regulations to make it easier for the 12 Historical Commission to allow, say, a 13 wider range of products; for example, 14 windows and doors and roofing material 15 and masonry repair material, allow a 16 wider range that would protect that 17 historic appearance, but not necessarily 18 cost as much as it may have cost during an earlier review. So I think we're at the point where we can say that we're working very hard not to add cost and we hope we aren't adding cost, and we don't think we are. So we asked someone to study it once, and the conclusion was it was 187 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. really a very difficult thing to put a number on. In terms of safeguards, the historic preservation ordinance includes within it -- and this is really what makes the ordinance constitutional -- a safeguard, a pressure valve, let's say, that allows the Historical Commission to approve applications that don't necessarily meet historic preservation standards in cases of financial hardship, and there are a couple of different types of financial hardship, but one related to the property. There are some properties that simply can't be profitably rehabilitated, and the Commission understands that and takes that into account. But then there are properties that are owned by people of low and moderate means, and the Historical Commission has within its rules and regulations the capacity to allow for work that does not meet the standards if enforcing the standards would in any way 188 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. be a hardship on the property owner. And I think the process works very well. The good news is, we don't see applications of that type very often, because I think we work on the front end very hard to find ways to help people maintain their properties without putting hardships on them.
Finally, is there a problem when you try to restorate historical properties and also achieve greening? Have they come into conflict with one another?
I've read a few articles here and there that there is a potential conflict between preservation and green, but I really -- I have not seen that, and I think in fact -- and I've heard people also say that, and I've said it myself, that historic preservation is a very sustainable practice, it is a very green practice, because we're not removing a building and putting it in a landfill and building a 189 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. new building, but we're reusing what we have. It's essentially recycling. And as I noted earlier, the Historical Commission amended its rules and regulations, and one thing that it did was, it amended them to allow for the introduction of green technologies, alternative energy technologies into buildings. The Historical Commission approved a project in Society Hill recently that really is a showcase of green technology. So I think there are ways and we're working to find ways. We've actually had a consultant in from Washington who came in pro bono and gave all of the Commission members a day-long seminar on ways in which historic preservation and green technologies can be integrated. I think we're moving in that direction, and we made some big strides and we're going to continue to work in that direction, because it's the future for historic preservation. 190 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Thank you very much. Any other questions? (No response.)
Thank you. MR. McPHERSON: The next department is the District Attorney. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Kindly identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam President. My name is Seth Williams, and I have the good fortune of being the District Attorney of 191 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the City of Philadelphia. First, I want to thank you for allowing me to change the date that I was to testify. Originally the date I believe was April the 24th, and as you know, I'm a member of the United States Army Reserves and I'll be away with my Army Reserve unit from the 21st of April until the 30th. So I'm very thankful for you accommodating my schedule. And before I begin my testimony, I am surrounded by many members of my tremendous staff. I would just for my own purposes like to introduce them to you. Sitting with me is Mr. Ed McCann, the Deputy of the Trial Division, and Mr. Greg Rowe, who is the Chief of our Legislation Unit. Also with me today is Mr. Joe McGettigan, who is the First Assistant; Ms. Sarah Hart, the Deputy of our Performance and Policy Division; Ms. Tasha Jameson, the Director of Communications; Mr. Brian Grady, who is 192 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the Deputy of our Special Operations Division; Mr. Curtis Douglas, the Deputy of our Investigations Division; Mr. Ron Eisenberg, the Deputy of our Law Division; Ms. Doreen Rooney, our Budget Analyst; Ms. Jessica Cohen-Nowak, a Performance and Policy Analyst; Mr. Will Stewart, a Law Clerk; Mr. Bob Petraglia, our Budget Director; Mr. Matt Braden, the Director of Administration; and Mr. Vernon Price, who I'm sure all you know, is currently our Director of Government and Community Relations.
And, again, I have submitted my formal notes and remarks. I hope you will add them to the record.
I will not read from them in their totality. I wish not to bore you, place all of you to sleep 193 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. right now, but I think you will find it very thorough, and hopefully it will address the questions and issues most pertinent and germane to the members of Council. I want to thank my staff for helping me prepare for today. Anything that I do that is right and good I would assert is a result of their hard work. Any mistakes that you may hear are the result of my own frailties. So, again, I'm very thankful to be here, and, again, good afternoon, Council President Verna and City Council members. This is my first budget hearing as District Attorney in Philadelphia. I am very appreciative to be here this afternoon. I think it's fitting and only fitting that my first visit as a District Attorney comes on my 100th day as a District Attorney, and I am very excited to discuss some of the improvements that we have already made to the District Attorney's Office, the impact those 194 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. changes will have on the criminal justice system, and to detail initiatives I would like to implement in order to further repair our system. Today, I will offer some ideas on how working together we can make targeted investments that will reduce crime and save millions of dollars. At the outset, I want to tell you that Philadelphia invests far less money in its District Attorney's Office than most other major municipalities invest in their respective DA's Offices. Attached to my written testimony is a chart that illustrates just how little we spend per capita in general revenue in the District Attorney's Office in Philadelphia. I'll explain how a relatively small investment for improvements to my office will begin almost immediately to pay dividends in improved justice delivery and cost savings. Being smarter on crime, what I 195 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. have accomplished in 100 days. I've already made a number of significant changes to the District Attorney's Office that will allow us to be smarter on crime and to make us -- and to allow us to make better use of our existing resources so we can target and prosecute violent criminals. Let me describe some of them to you. And I have attached as an amendment to my notes of testimony, my comments, a complete list of bullet 13 points that I believe are the most 14 significant accomplishments that we have 15 made in the first 100 days, but I'll just 16 address a few of them. 17 On my first day in office, I 18 revamped our Charging Unit. The Charging 19 Unit, of course, is where the District 20 Attorneys review all of the arrests made 21 by the Police and approve or decline 22 arrest warrants and search warrants. 23 Prior to January the 4th, many of the 24 attorneys that staff that unit, while 25 they were members of the Bar, had never 196 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. been trial attorneys, had never been in courtrooms. They were merely reviewing three paragraphs possibly sent to them by the Police Department to find what are all the possible charges in the universe that they could apply. It was my goal that if we're going to make real and substantive changes in the criminal justice system, I can't just ask you, members of City Council, or the Mayor or the Police Commissioner or the courts to make all the changes. I recognize that I have to get my own house in order, and that began with the Charging Unit and placing -- doubling the number of prosecutors that were there and taking attorneys that had a lot of trial experience and putting them there so they can review all the cases. I wanted to put people in our Charging Unit that had demonstrated good judgment, and that's what we've done. I think that will make significant changes in the types of cases that come into the system and will allow 197 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. our District Attorneys to have credibility when they're in court.
Because for far too many years, everyone perceived that the DA's Office approved everything and overcharged, which required the Municipal Court to review everything and to be a filter of what really should go forward. Well, I won't allow that. I'm not going to abdicate my responsibility to anyone else. We're going to only charge people what we believe they should be charged with and only charge people that should be charged with criminal charges. So we began that on Day 1. I also created a new Performance and Policy Division to, among other things, create performance measures to track and improve the Office's performance and increase the conviction rate. We need to know what works and what doesn't and what we are doing right and wrong. When I sit before you next year, I will be able to not just 198 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. anecdotally tell you that we are doing this better or we're doing this or that or we need to change this thing, but when Councilman Greenlee asks me a question, I could actually put to charts and numbers to show you how the changes in charging have affected the criminal justice system or how this investment you have made has allowed us to reduce the prison population. So we'll no longer be just smoke and mirrors and me winking at people, but we will actually be able to use evidence-based, attrition analysis, numbers, things that people like Councilman Goode did much better than I did in math class at Central High School, can actually look at the numbers and analyze them and realize what we're doing and how, which policies and programs need to be continued, magnified and which ones possibly need to be eliminated. I've begun the implementation of the Back on Track program, which is a recidivism-reducing alternative to 199 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. incarceration. Back on Track is a comprehensive employment and education reentry program that provides jobs training, education and other important life skills as an alternative to incarceration. It works in San Francisco, where it started. It will work here. I've begun working closely with public-private ventures and the Lenfest Foundation to replicate this program in Philadelphia. So those of you who may not be aware of this program, it's a tremendous program that works very well in San Francisco. In Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania, we have, as you know, mandatory minimums for people who sell crack cocaine, and we send about 200 people to State prison that have either no prior record or records that are less -- prior records that -- they're non-violent people. These are people who go to State prison at a cost of about $40,000 a year per person. They return 200 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. as convicted felons, which in many ways is an economic death sentence, prohibiting them from any future hope of employment, and many of them return home as violent people. The Back on Track program is an alternative to that. It will give them hope. It will reduce the amount of money that we're spending on the prison system, and has a recidivism rate much lower than that we have now. In San Francisco, the Back on Track program costs about $5,000 per person per year. They receive the drug and alcohol treatment that they need. They get the literacy skills, trainings that they need. They'll do community service, and, most importantly, they'll learn a real skill, to be a carpenter's assistant, an auto mechanic, work in the hospitality industry, some real job here in the economy of Philadelphia. And if they successfully complete the program, they have no record. 201 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Five percent of the people in this program in San Francisco failed by getting rearrested. In Philadelphia, 73 percent of the people that come out on probation or parole get rearrested in one or two years. So what we're doing now currently does not work.
The Back on Track program I think is a way that we can reduce recidivism, reduce the amount of money we're paying on prisons and will help us be smart on crime. Helping to reform our court system, I began to address the enormous problems in our criminal justice system highlighted by the Philadelphia Inquirer in December, the day I took office, by assisting Chief Justice Ron Castille and Justice McCaffery of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, who have both demonstrated enormous leadership and knowledge in addressing the systemic problems in our court system. Working together and with input from the Defense Bar, we've already made great progress, and the Supreme 202 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Court has instituted new rules that will ensure that cases are heard and victims have their day in court. Diverting low-risk non-violent drug processors: In order to move thousands of non-violent cases out of our main court system, I am creating a proactive pretrial diversion program where those who possess less than 30 grams of marijuana, which amounts to about 3,000 out of the criminal cases in our system every year -- we are not de-criminalizing marijuana. Firstly, everyone arrested and convicted for possession of small amounts of marijuana will receive the same kind of sentence they would have in the past, just more rapidly and efficiently and with a guarantee of a drug education component. So this is something that's not happening right now. We have about 75,000 cases every year in our criminal justice system. About ten percent are cases in 203 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. which the lead charge is the possession of marijuana. About 7,500 cases. Of those 7,500, about 3,000 of them the defendants possess such a small amount that by statute is referred to a di minimis amount, less than 30 grams. And operationally now those cases that do go to conviction, the judges are giving about three months of non-reporting probation. It's a total waste of our City's money, in that we are arresting these people, they're being photographed, we're sending all of the discovery to the defense attorneys, all the paperwork, all the copies are being made. Police are coming to court over and over and over, standing in the Criminal Justice Center for hours when they could be out protecting our City streets and our loved ones. We're spending thousands of dollars for cases in which people possess about $5 or $10 worth of marijuana. So I believe this is an example of being smart on crime, something we've 204 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. implemented -- we'll hope to implement by the end of this month or the middle of May. I think just that act alone will be able to save us between anywhere from $300,000 to $600,000 based on just the overtime reduction to the Police Department. Investing in the District Attorney's Office to improve public safety and save taxpayers' dollars: I am appreciative to Mayor Nutter for recognizing an enormous amount of work that we need to do in order to make Philadelphia safer by providing even a modest budgetary increase. The budget proposed is much better than a reduction, so I'll start with that. I'm very thankful for the Mayor and his staff and Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison for identifying that we need more. However, I cannot accomplish what I have set out to do to improve my office, make Philadelphia safer, save Philadelphia money and bring us more in line with the 205 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. investments other big cities make with their District Attorney's Offices with the Mayor's budget recommendation. I am asking you today to allow me to make two targeted investments. 5 million and possibly close to six million. That's a win-win. Improved public safety, savings for our taxpayers. I would like to begin a proactive diversionary program where we identify cases that should be diverted and pled out before trial.
This investment will allow us to get more offenders to plead guilty more quickly, identify the highest risk offenders whom you must concentrate on locking up for a long time, get many of our police out of the courtroom earning overtime pay and back patrolling our streets, and identifying those for whom intermediate punishment and other diversionary 206 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. programs are most appropriate. This proposal is evidence based. In San Diego, defendants enter guilty pleas in felony cases in about 75 percent of all the crimes before preliminary hearings. Think of the cost that we would save Philadelphia if 75 percent of our criminal cases resulted in guilty pleas without police, without victims having to go to preliminary hearings. It's enormous. It will not be easy. My office's present system of maintaining and updating and transferring case files is antiquated. We do not exchange discovery electronically. We spend a large amount of time tracking down paper files. The technological revolution seems to have passed over the District Attorney's Office. If we could automate our system so that we could spend more staff time reviewing cases and trying to resolve them earlier in the process rather than hunting down file after file 207 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. after file, we will save money in the long run and achieve better results. I also need to begin planning for community courts, which Councilman Jones and I have spoken about many times and have visited many sites that could be appropriate across the City. Community courts will allow us to dispose of a large number of cases even more efficiently, as well as help offenders receive treatment, counseling and other critical services in the neighborhoods where they live. In order to reap the enormous cost savings and improved efficiencies of such a plan, we would need an investment of approximately $1,015,000 to cover additional personnel, implementation of electronic discovery, creation of an offender risk instrument and planning and feasibility grant for community courts. This investment will save us money. It will reduce prison costs, permit the closing of the Cannery and reduce money 208 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. spent on police overtime. 6 million in savings. That means for investing a million dollars, the City will save about five million. When I spoke of the Back on Track program, once we create that, it will cost us about a million dollars a year to do the Back on Track program. That's $5,000 a year for approximately 200 defendants. Currently, we're spending on those 200 defendants $8 million incarcerating them, so that would be a savings of $7 million. I ask that you allow us to relocate as many as -- I'm sorry. I'm also asking that you invest in expanding and enhancing our witness relocation program and allow us to go after the thugs that intimidate witnesses. Witness intimidation affects every homicide case and is now affecting other violent cases as well. It strikes at the heart of prosecution and the very core of our 209 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. justice system. I ask that you allow us to relocate as many as an additional 4 families by providing $400,000 in witness 5 relocation money to supplement the 6 approximately 600,000 we get from the 7 State. 8 I also ask that you allow me to 9 aggressively prosecute those who commit 10 acts of witness intimidation by allowing 11 me to dedicate three prosecutors and two 12 detectives to go after those who 13 intimidate our victims and witnesses. 14 Currently, we only have about 20 15 prosecution for witness intimidation per 16 year, and that's because we basically 17 pick the lowest hanging fruit. By 18 increasing the number of detectives and 19 investigators that we would have and 20 prosecutors, we'd be able to investigate more cases. Because it's much more than just prosecuting an auto theft case.
It requires often the review of cell phone records and doing all types of things, a little more complicated. So we believe 210 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that we will have more of this investment and send a strong, clear message that those who intimidate will be caught and prosecuted. We will protect our witnesses. To fund this investment, we would need to spend $400,000 to cover the cost of three prosecutors and two detectives. Again, Council President Verna and members of Council, I thank you for your attention. I believe that I'm attempting to really create a real partnership with Council. I was astonished after I invited you to our office and I was very proud that 16 of the 17 members of Council came to meet with me and my senior leadership. I was surprised when I was told by so many of you you had never been invited to the District Attorney's Office before. I was surprised -- I invited the Mayor and the Police Commissioner to address all of the Assistant District Attorneys. Both of them shocked me when 211 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. they told me that they had never been inside the District Attorney's Office before. That's unacceptable to me. I think we have to create a real partnership. All of us have the same constituency, Philadelphians, who want to make sure that they, their families can be safe and our city can be a safer place to live, work and play. So at this time, I just ask if I could submit the statement that I presented you with, and I make myself available to any question that you may have or that my staff may assist me in answering.
Thank you. And I totally concur with you that we certainly have to work together, and I think for years, I guess I preached the same song how all of the law enforcement agencies should be working together, and I don't think that happened until rather recently when CJAB actually came out with 212 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. a report, and it was amazing to learn -- we have been also talking about the detainees at the Prison System and how wonderful it was to hear that they have indeed worked something out where the detainees issue was addressed. You have indicated that there is a need -- a need, not a wish, but a need -- for an additional $1,815,000 in your budget. Have you discussed this with the Administration?
Well, I briefly discussed or made the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety aware yesterday briefly and sent him a copy of these notes this morning as well. It's something that I believe we'll have to, of course, have further discussion. But as a result of discussions with many members of Council and being prepared to answer questions and to know that you would be asking me what would you do to make the City safer if we had more money, I had to think of every 213 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. possible option, and in so doing, I recognize that the District Attorney's Office in many ways serves as the fulcrum point for the criminal justice system. You have seen a tremendous reduction of individuals that are incarcerated on State Road in our county prisons. That wouldn't occur without the District Attorney's Office. We have seen tremendous and just since January the 4th -- and Mr. McCann has been working very closely with Chief Inspector Flacco of the Police Department. Commissioner Ramsey sent him over and other Deputy Commissioners to talk about how we can reduce police overtime, and we're making tremendous progress, and they have already realized significant savings in police overtime. Well, we can help. I mean, it all starts with the DA's Office in the Charging Unit. We're going to see real changes. The pretrial diversionary program that I talk about, if we can have 214 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. more DAs spend just a little bit more time evaluating the cases earlier and then making reasonable offers to defense counsel earlier, putting defendants in programs that they need earlier so they can get the help that they need so they don't become repeat offenders, it will have tremendous savings on us, from police overtime, overcrowding in the prisons and all the lawsuits that have historically affected us because of that. So, yes, we're asking for that increase. Part of it is for, as I stated -- and we're getting a lot of help right now free. I'm going everywhere hat in hand, trying to get people to help us so that we can make the system safer. I've been to DC on several occasions. I've visited with the Director of the National Institute of Justice, people at the Bureau for Justice Assistance, people at the Center for Innovations of Courts. I might have that name wrong. It might be the Center for Court Innovation. But 215 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. they have them coming to give us technical assistance as we move towards community-based prosecution, community justice centers in different neighborhoods, to provide technical assistance. But also we need help. The courts are moving towards a paperless system. Well, that's fine for the courts, but it would be helpful if the District Attorney could do the same, because we have to send the discovery. I brought with me some props, as you noticed. I have a box of files that the average Assistant District Attorney takes with him or her to court when they go. And these are the same files -- I went to court -- I was sworn in on January the 4th, and I went to court on January the 6th so I can show the young ADAs that work for me that I'm not going to ask them to do anything that I won't do myself and so that I can see again the files. And the files are 216 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. exactly the same as when I started September the 8th of 1992. Mark Gillison, I've appointed him the Chief of our Major Trials Unit. His father was a prosecutor. The files are exactly the same. The paperwork is almost identical to what it was when he was a DA. He could come back right now and go to court and everything is exactly the same. The DAs have to mark on the files everything that happened. They have to mark on the run sheet -- it's a piece of paper that they get -- everything that happened. The police have electronic discovery. They send us information via e-mail. We then have to print it out. We have time-intensive paralegals that get black markers.
I don't know if they get them from Staples or where, and they just cross out the information about the victims, their phone numbers and where they live. We then make copies and send that to the Defense Bar. Well, in many other jurisdictions, I would say almost 217 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. in most other jurisdictions, they do that electronically. There's no paper. It saves times and saves the resources of our local government, and I think an investment, a minimal investment, about $325,000 to allow us to get the hardware and the software to do that would be a tremendous savings for the City long term. I understand I believe that the Department of Technology recently got a $25 million improvement. I think out of the whole looking at the City giving us just 325-some-thousand dollars to do what I think we could do to improve our technology would have a tremendous windfall for the City in the long term.
-- when I worked there many, many moons ago. What would your priority be as 218 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. far as funding?
Well, I think us being smart on crime. And being smart on crime doesn't mean being soft on criminals. It means recognizing that we have to treat violent criminals differently than we have to treat people that are non-violent knuckleheads, and we try to help the non-violent knuckleheads as best as possible, like we're trying to do with the 3,000 marijuana cases, to get them through the system, so that we can use those resources for those people that are truly violent. I think that we need to do all that we can to target those that are intimidating witnesses. That really strikes to the core of our criminal justice system. We have a culture in Philadelphia that many of you have spoken to me about, and when I go out -- we've had four town hall meetings in the 100 days that I've been the DA. I've gone to many of your ward meetings and your 219 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. community meetings. People talk about this no-snitch culture that we have in Philadelphia and people being afraid. We had members of your office came over to our office, and they talk about their constituents, how afraid they are to be involved. Well, I tell everyone when I go out, I ask people how many of them have watched the TV show Law and Order. Everybody puts their hand up. I talk about how the first 30 minutes of that is what the police do, and everybody understands what the police do, but the second half of that show is what happens with the prosecutors, what happens in the court, and we have to have our witnesses and we have to protect them, and we have to do a better job. So, of course, one of my priorities of that would be to better protect witnesses, to relocate those that need relocation, to prosecute those defendants, those thugs, that have intimidated our witnesses and to make a 220 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. quick statement. But a lot of what I'm saying is, we can no longer just talk tough on crime. We have to be smart on crime. And it's not the threat of a serious sentence. It's the severity. It's not the severity of the sentence that changes behavior. It's the certainty of punishment that changes behavior. And by us investing in this pretrial diversion system, we'll have more DAs reviewing the cases. We'll be able to move to a swifter and a more certain sense of justice. And that's something that I think we really have to do, and currently I just can't do it because we still have all those courtrooms to staff, and as a result of the reduction in the budget over the last several years, we have fewer staff members. I've taken a significant amount of the members of the Trial Division to put them into the Charging Unit, because I realize we had to do that, but to be 221 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. able to really staff appropriately a Case Assessment Bureau where they could assess these new cases and get them the appropriate offers and then staff the courtrooms for those pleas would take an investment in personnel.
The backlog of cases? Well, I'm being advised by Mr. McCann there really isn't a backlog of cases.
I think that in civil -- when I was a civil attorney, there are many cases that takes slower than some maybe the plaintiff or the defense wants to get to court, but in the criminal justice system, we have rules of speedy trial, and if the defendants do not get their trial in a speedy fashion, the case gets thrown out.
How 222 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. about when these cases are continued every time they're listed because, being very frank, I think that many of the attorneys go judge hunting? If they have more than one case that day, they're going to look for a judge who they think will be more lenient toward their clients.
And we always had a backlog in the DA's Office. I can't believe there's not a backlog now.
Well, I think we might have been using different terms for what you're talking about now, and that I clearly recognize that there are a lot of games that go on at the preliminary hearing. And I stated earlier -- I didn't want to go too far in-depth, but the criminal justice system in Philadelphia in many ways has been broken. Fifty-nine percent of all the 223 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. felony cases in Philadelphia get dismissed for lack of prosecution at the preliminary hearing, because those hearings never go on, because for many reasons, either the victim isn't there or they show up and then the defense attorney asks for a continuance, and the victim, who maybe their car was stolen, they didn't choose to be a victim. They took off one day of work. Now they have to go back another time. Maybe their boss isn't going --
Well, let's go beyond the preliminary hearing. Okay?
We have worked with Chief Justice Castille and Justice McCaffery and we have instituted -- they have instituted within these first 100 days new policies and procedures at 224 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. preliminary hearings that we believe will make it a more expedited process and one that is more just and fair to the victims. We'll be allowed to hear hearsay evidence more so now in preliminary hearings. Philadelphia has one of the highest fugitive rates, because a lot of the defendants just don't show up at the preliminary hearing. They know they can just go turn themself in a couple days later. And if the victim was there, that thwarts them and makes them frustrated. Well, now we're going to start putting more of those preliminary hearings on in the absence of the defendant. The law says we can and shall. It's just the practice has been that it wasn't taking place. The defense attorneys are going to have to say what their status is first at the preliminary hearing. Often they would wait to see if the DA was ready, and if the DA said they were ready 225 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. because the victim was there, they would say they weren't ready. Well, they've changed that now. The defense has to say that they're ready first. So these changes, I think, are going to make it better for our victims and witnesses. It will make it so that we don't have as much police overtime, police having to come to court and victims having to come to court over and over again.
I would ask you if you would follow that now, let's go beyond the preliminary hearing. What happens then?
A case is held for court, then there's a formal arraignment, then it goes to the Court of Common Pleas if it's a felony.
226 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Exactly. So how many cases that go before Common Pleas Court do we have a backlog of? I'm not talking about preliminary. I'm talking about cases where the preliminary hearing is behind the defendant. They now have to go before the judge in CP or MC. What kind of a backlog do we have? MR. McCANN: Madam President, there was roughly 16,000 cases disposed of in Common Pleas Court last year. So the beginning -- the beginning inventory at the beginning of the year was probably roughly that, maybe a little bit more than that. So if you're talking about cases that are getting carried over for more than one year, that's really the minority of the cases. Most of the cases are disposed of within roughly that year point of time, the felony cases. Homicide cases take longer. They take typically between 12 to 18 months to dispose of. So I would say typically on a case that's held for trial 227 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. in the Common Pleas Court, it would typically be disposed of in less than a year.
And, Madam President, the model that I would like to move to -- and after I won the Primary last May, I visited with the District Attorney in Brooklyn, I visited the DA in Montgomery County. Risa Ferman was very polite and showed me a lot of good stuff. I visited the DA in Dauphin County, Allegheny County. I went to San Diego and San Francisco. And in San Francisco, as I mentioned earlier, 75 percent of all their cases -- and San Diego is a jurisdiction larger than ours. There's three million people in San Diego County, 1.5 million in San Diego city proper. Seventy-five percent of their cases, as a result of them putting qualified, experienced prosecutors in 228 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. this Case Assessment Bureau, they result in 75 percent pled guilty before they would go to the Court of Common Pleas, where there is either a backlog or not a backlog, but they wouldn't be going there, saving the police and victims all that time and their resources and the court's and the DA's Office and the defender's. So that's the model I would like to move to, so that then we can -- the majority of the cases in our system are non-violent cases. People are selling drugs, stealing cars, breaking in commercial establishments, all things in which we need to address, but we have a very small percentage are the violent crimes, and those are the ones I think we need to focus on like a laser so that we can reduce the violent crimes in our city and really deal with those individuals that are committing those offenses. And by doing this, I think we will be able to move towards that model. 229 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
I see you have a map there. I'm rather curious. Do you mind explaining what it is?
Madam President, this is a map of the City of Philadelphia. It's police divisions and districts.
I don't think all of the Councilmembers could see it.
We can put it right in front of you and I have a laser and I'll point at it, how's that? Madam President, what you see demonstrates the six detective divisions, each of -- the dark green represents the Northeast Detective Division and Patrol Division, which has four police districts. The light green is East 230 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Division, which has three police districts. This color here -- I have pollen in my eyes. I don't know what we would call that color, but that is, of course, where the 50th and the 10th Wards are, isn't that right, Boss Tasco? So this is the Northwest where we have four police districts as well. The dark brown is Central Division where there are three police districts now. This green is where Councilman Curtis Jones, Jr. and Councilwoman Blackwell represent. This is the Southwest Division. And, Madam President, you represent parts of, of course, South Division, which now has three police districts.
And also parts of, right, the 12th District. Crime occurs geographically, and my desire for us to move towards community-based prosecution will allow us to staff the District Attorney's Office 231 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. geographically. The police are assigned geographically. You have police officers that are assigned to the 18th District every day for several years. They're not assigned to the 18th District for one week and then the 8th District or the 5th District the next week. Crime occurs geographically. There are patterns. There's an entire branch of criminology known as the ecology of crime. There are biorhythms to crime. More cars are stolen every day from one place, the Franklin Mills Mall. You have more shootings and homicides in Philadelphia in the 25th District and in the 12th District. I grew up, as you know, in the 18th District, and where I grew up, if your car got stolen, everybody knew the family of brothers that probably stole your car. They lived on the 6100 block of Catharine. Crime occurs geographically. 232 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Currently, the District Attorney's -- Councilwoman Blackwell knows the family I'm talking about. I won't mention it now because this lady is typing everything I'm saying, but the point is -- but if we're going to more effectively prosecute our cases, we too have to work geographically, so that we can work with the Town Watch groups, the block captains, the clergy, who are working so hard to protect their investments and the City that they love, but it will also allow us to see the criminals and the patterns of crime based on geography. So if ten percent of the crimes were to occur in the Southwest Division, then I would assign approximately ten percent of the DAs assigned to our Trial Division to the Southwest Division, and they would vertically handle the cases from that division. Currently -- you saw the box of files that I have. The DAs gets those 233 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. cases, for the most part, the night before. They prepare the cases. Derek Green worked for me in the Municipal Court Unit and he's nodding his head. So you get those cases the night before and then go to court and do the best job he could with these cases that came from all over the City. But Philadelphia, as you know, is a very parochial city. If I go to your ward meeting and can't pronounce names of the streets in your neighborhood, people will look at me like I have three heads and I don't care about them. The DAs are assigned geographically. They will also become more accountable to the public. And I tell everyone, I hope I can have the stamina that my predecessor had in going to so many community meetings, but what I think is more important is not just does Seth Williams go to these meetings, but do the 300-plus DAs that work for him, are they accountable to the public, do 234 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the public know who they are, do they know how to pronounce Passyunk, where do they get their favorite cheese steak, do they know what goes on in the Northwest and what goes on in these different parks and what streets run -- that Walton Street runs one way towards Cobbs Creek Parkway. That's very important in crime fighting and it's very important also in gaining the confidence of the public that we serve. So that's why I bring this map to every community meeting I go to. And I'm very thankful now that -- I thought it was going to take a long time to get buy-in from the Judiciary, but I'm very thankful as the result of the hard work of Joe McGettigan, Ed McCann and Charlie Erlich and Sarah Hart that Chief Justice Ron Castille and Justice McCaffery want the courts of Philadelphia to move to community and geographic prosecution as well. I believe that will offer tremendous savings both to the victims, 235 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. but also financially, because we lose a lot of cases because the police officer, we just can't find where they are.
Well, if we move to a geographic prosecution, we might have all of the cases from the Northwest might all be on the ninth floor of the Criminal Justice Center, so all of those police officers and detectives subpoenaed that day would be in one location, and we could have all the files from maybe the 14th District would go to Courtroom 907. That would make things much easier and the way I think we would be able to save money, because the DAs would know who to overnight, which police officers need to come to court the next day. They would continuously have the cases. And many victims are just revictimized, because every time they go to court, they get a different Assistant District Attorney, and that will end hopefully with community and geographic-based prosecution.
That 236 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. sounds very good. At this time, the Chair would like to recognize Councilman Jones.
Thank you, Madam President. Mr. DA, this is your first time over here. Welcome.
I read your testimony, and it was extensive. I appreciated the comparisons from Seattle to other cities, and I looked at a lot of your initiatives, the top dozen or so initiatives, but one of them -- and I also was one of the 16 members that came over to the DA's Office at that inexpensive but wonderful lunch. Don't want to impress the press that we ate lavishly, but it was nice. But I remember distinctly when you were giving us an orientation and with the other Assistant District Attorneys, many of whom are here, that 237 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. when we talked about the issue of witness intimidation, there was almost unanimous head nodding from them, which said to me we were onto something that mutually is important both to you as the District Attorney and us representing constituents that are sometimes often victims of crime. If there is two things in your platform that I'm hoping you get enough resources to have success at, one of them is that witness relocation and witness protection legislation.
Because when I talk to people on the street, it is not the court cases that are backlogged. It's not whether or not -- the uncertainty of this or that. It is the fear often of retaliation of bad actors that they are forced to sometimes live among, go to school, work and play around that pushes people to the point where live and let live or I'll seek my, worse, 238 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. I'll seek my own street justice. So I want to know how we can help you to deal with that when you cited that you are only able to do -- and this probably includes your predecessor -- to get cases of witness intimidation. It 8 is a common practice in barber shops and 9 beauty salons, commonly known that that 10 is a part of the, quote, game, and we 11 have to send the message. 12
You have to 14 send the message, we have to send the 15 message that that is unacceptable. 16 So how do we kind of move that 17 process forward and how does a City piece 18 of legislation interact with the State 19 witness intimidation stuff? How will 20 that help?
I appreciate the question. I also thank you for your leadership, and that after that meeting, your staff spoke frequently with my staff about ways in which we could address 239 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. witness intimidation. So I'd like to thank you for that. I think really, again, it cuts to the core of people's belief that the system works and if it's going to be fair and if it's going to be effective. And we have to ensure that witnesses are protected. We have to ensure that people that try to intimidate, try to harm, try to kill our witnesses, that they're prosecuted. That's not just talking tough. We have to do that to protect those people who chose -- they didn't choose to be a victim. We have to ensure that they come to court, like we have to ensure the protection of the judges. Like my protection is secured every day now. And we have to invest to make that happen. We're very lucky that to date some judges, like Judge Renee Callwell Hughes, she's almost created a bench book, a book for other judges on what to do so they can identify intimidation that 240 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. might occur in the courtroom. So when that happens, she has a book she tells the judges what to do, how to ask the people in the courtroom what their names are, how to direct the police to investigate it and do things right there in the courthouse. Well, it's rare that judges do that. So I'm very glad that she's sensitive to that. So we have to educate the other judges, but that's, like I said earlier, the lowest of low-hanging fruit, those cases that happen right there. The majority of these cases happen out at 54th and Berks while people are waiting for the bus or on the school yard. And we have to ensure that witnesses that have been intimidated know what to do, that they can call this hotline, that they can call 9-1-1 maybe, and that there's a follow-up and that we investigate those cases and that they're not just put at the bottom of the wheel for the next time around for the 241 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. detective to be assigned. Those are cases almost similar to the homicides that we have to act on immediately. And so this investment that we're asking -- and if you care to give more, make a love offering, that would be great, so that we could have more prosecutors and more investigators investigating that.
So that we could investigate those cases, because, again, they're time intensive. There are a lot of issues involving those witnesses to ensure that they want to come, and so that we can ensure them that they're protected. And there's a lot that our victim service advocates have to do to befriend them and to cajole them and to get them to come and feel they're going to be safe. It takes a lot of work. So that's how I think that investment would help us make a statement and prosecute 242 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. those individuals and make our victims safer.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Greenlee.
Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon. That Back on Track program certainly sounds like a great program, but just so I'm clear on it, this is something that would -- would the defendant agree to participate in it ahead of time?
Right. I didn't want to go into all the weeds earlier, but I'm glad you asked the question. The Back on Track program, like many of our programs, is a diversionary program where we would identify defendants that we 243 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. think are appropriate. So that everyone knows, the District Attorney in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is given the sole discretion as to who gets prosecuted. No one can make a District Attorney prosecute anyone, no matter what the crime is, but we also have the sole discretion to determine how to handle those cases. So we have the Accelerated Rehabilitation Diversionary program, ARD, across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania where we put people in the program where if they don't do a bad thing during this period of time, we expunge their record. Well, the Back on Track program is like the ARD program on steroids, because ARD really doesn't address whatever the issue is that caused the person into their criminal behavior. The Back on Track program focuses on those young, most likely non-violent offenders that are selling drugs, primarily young men that have made a poor decision because either 244 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. they feel as though they have no hope or they have no opportunity for economic advancement, no jobs, but they're making a bad decision because they think that if they start selling crack, they're going to get speedboats and become millionaires, but the reality is that they're the people who are most at risk of getting arrested, most at risk of getting shot. The young kid selling crack on the corner is making about $8 an hour. It's a bad economic decision. They'd make more money if they went to ShopRite, bought a case of water and sold them for a dollar a bottle. The Back on Track program, we identify those individuals that we think are appropriate, non-violent offenders who are selling an amount of drugs that could send them to the State prison. We then have them go through an orientation program with a community group that we identify, like OIC or the National Fatherhood Comprehensive Center, an 245 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. organization we've identified, to go through orientation. We help them get literacy training, because, again, the number one thing people have in common that get arrested in Philadelphia, they didn't finish high school. They're going to do community service. They're going to go out and clean up crack vials and remove graffiti and do public service. They're going to learn a real job skill. And then after they complete the program, if they complete it successfully, then they have no record. So, yes, we identify the people, or some of their lawyers, I'm sure, will ask us to review the cases and see who should be in it. Then we identify who should be in it. They complete the program and then they have no record. And it costs $5,000 per person per year in San Francisco, where the cost of living is higher than here. And there's only a five percent recidivism rate, as I said earlier, where 246 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. we're spending $40,000 a year for these same people to go to State prison and 73 percent of them re-offend.
So this will actually be ordered by -- it would be a court order sort of?
Well, this would be a program where we identify them. I'm sorry. I did not answer that, you're correct. We identify them. They enter a no contest plea to the charges, and if they successfully complete it, we expunge their record. If they do not, then they're going to go to jail for that year. So that's like the sort of Damocles over their head that if they don't do it, then they are going to go up. And we'll take them on a trip one day during their orientation up to Graterford to see what is possibly in store for them if they don't complete the program.
The old 247 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. scared straight idea. On one other issue, and I know a number of us, Councilwoman Miller, Councilwoman Sanchez and myself, have been real concerned about the whole property theft, false deeds issue, and I know you have indicated you want to kind of ramp up the enforcement of that. Can you go into that just a little bit?
Right. We have -- and Curtis Douglas is here. He is the Deputy for our Investigations Division. There's a Special Investigations Unit, an Economic Crimes Unit, and one of the Assistant District Attorneys recently successfully prosecuted a case in which a corrupt organization had stolen what I believe is several hundred properties.
Eighty-one properties were involved in the actual case. It came down --
I'm sorry. You need to come to the 248 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. microphone, please.
So I'll ask Mr. Douglas to come forward. But we prosecuted that case, and I think he said there was 81 properties that ended up being as a part of it. (Witness approached witness table.)
Good afternoon, Councilman and Madam Councilwoman, as well as Councilpersons. Curtis Douglas from the District Attorney's Office. That case involved 81 properties. We got approximately 323 guilty counts on three persons who were involved in that case. It was 81 properties that were stolen, resold and use of notarized documents and deeds that were used. And we also have other cases that are in the system right now in which we're actually prosecuting or will come to trial on other cases involving property theft. But that one case in particular -- and the sentencing is April 249 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. 30th, and courtrooms are free to the public. I invite all to come and see the sentencing April 30th.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Miller.
Great. I have a couple questions. I was at a community meeting last week regarding a drug house, drug activity, and there were two DAs there, one from the Nuisance -- I don't have the cards with me, so I can't remember their name -- and one that's assigned to the 14th District. Now, the DAs are assigned to the police district, correct, not the detective district? 250 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
Well, we have a Public Nuisance Task Force, Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, and the DAs in that unit are assigned geographically, and there is a District Attorney who is assigned to handle cases of nuisance properties in the 14th District.
Only. Well, that individual, I believe, handles four districts throughout the City, one of them being the 14th.
Okay. And then we had another DA who actually described herself as being the District Attorney assigned to the 14th. She wasn't Nuisance. I know her name --
Most likely that was a prosecutor who was assigned to the Repeat Offenders Unit that handles repeat offenders in the Northwest Division, of which the 14th District is one of them.
I was just trying to figure out whether -- when 251 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. you watch Law and Order, as you always ask people if they watch Law and Order, when you watch Law and Order, you do see the same District Attorney.
And I know it's a TV show, but you still see the same District Attorney. So I'm just wondering if this is -- because I do think there's some value of assigning District Attorneys to districts, because then they become familiar, people become familiar with them, the issue of trust, all that is really good. I was just wondering as a follow-up to that particular meeting, my office did some research, and I gave it today to Vernon and I'm going to give him the name of the DA so we can figure out how we work together, along with the Police Department, to address this particular drug house issue.
Very well. Well, then before I leave, I'll give you 252 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the phone number for Beth Grossman. She is the Chief of the Public Nuisance Task Force.
Right. I do know Beth. I know Beth, but I wasn't familiar with the two that came to the meeting last week.
Right. But, see, there you see the benefit of community-based prosecution by having the specific District Attorneys handling cases. Council, you are assigned geographically, the ten of you that represent councilmanic districts geographically. You handle those areas. You know the names of everyone in the West Mount Airy Neighbors, the East Mount Airy Neighbors, all those different folks. You're assigned geographically. You handle those cases, those constituents. Similarly, if we assign our DAs geographically, they'll come to those 253 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. meetings, they'll be more accountable to the public. They'll also hear the problems, because there are different types of problems, as I was trying to show with the map earlier, geographically. The people in Pine Valley have different concerns maybe than people in Mantua or the people in --
In Germantown. And so assigning those DAs geographically, they can then work with those communities to solve the problems in their neighborhoods.
And you will also get to know the names of the DAs that are assigned and the chief of the geographic area that you will have direct contact with.
Now, they won't be the ones doing the prosecution, though. As your example, say, if the 254 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. 14th District cases are being heard on the ninth floor, that would be a different group of DAs.
Now, the Public Nuisance Task Force DAs, they don't prosecute those criminal cases. They handle the cases in which individuals are -- they have a crack house or they have a house of ill repute or there's a speakeasy. They handle taking those cases to civil court and getting them forfeited civilly. But the DAs that will be assigned geographically will be handling the criminal prosecutions from those neighborhoods, both in going to meetings and learning what the problems are in the community groups and also trying those cases at the Criminal Justice Center or at Broad and Champlost, as it were for 255 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the Northwest Division.
I have another quick question before the bell goes off. When you talk about those people being arrested -- the rearrest record is 73 percent, and then with your Back on Track program or your diversion program, do you work along with the Parole Department or Probation Department to decide what is a violation? For example, if you don't want to prosecute low-level marijuana, but if I'm on probation, if I have marijuana on me, doesn't that mean that I violate it?
Judges have -- you can be in violation both of a direct violation -- that means you have a new case that you are convicted of -- or you can be in technical violation. A technical violation is when a judge has determined to put you on probation, which 256 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. is in lieu of going to jail. So they put you on probation. They might tell you, you have to get your GED or you have to try to get a job or you have to -- whatever they say, you have to try to do, and if you don't do those things, any of those things could be a technical violation. One of them the judge might order that you remain drug free. If you are found to test positive for some form of a narcotic or some sort of drug, then the judge could find you in technical violation and then could impose a sentence of incarceration. So that's totally up to the discretion of the judge. Now, the probation and parole officers, they work as the arm of the judge in the field, because Judge DeFino, Judge Renee Caldwell Hughes, they can't just go out checking on people in the neighborhood, so that's why they have the Probation and Parole Department to do that for them. 257 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. So, yes, if you have the narcotics on you, that could be a direct violation. If you test positive, that would be a technical violation.
So then when you talk about getting people to not be incarcerated but maybe in a program, then who makes that decision? Because I personally know that some people that are violated -- commit a violation on parole/probation, the violation is not all that great and wonderful. I mean, it's like they really need to go to drug rehab versus being put back in prison and incarcerated. And when you talk to some of the people that have been incarcerated and they talk about why people are returned to prison, which, of course, impacts our recidivism rate, some of the reasons that they were rearrested are just not that serious, and I'm wondering who eventually has an impact on that. Because until that changes, we're going to have a lot of people that are in 258 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. prison versus being in treatment.
That's a very good point, and that's something that Ms. Sarah Hart, who is the Deputy of our Policy and Performance Division, is working on so that we can reduce the number of people that are being incarcerated on State Road that are non-violent, who -- and you're right. There's two ways those things happen. You can get rearrested, and what happens, you go -- the judge -- you could have a detainer, which once you get arrested for this new thing, a detainer is lodged and you go to State Road to live there until the judge will have a hearing for you. So we can change some of the policies so that if fewer of those detainers get lodged possibly by working with the Probation and Parole Department, the judge is to come up with a different protocol for which cases that would result in, and then also the District Attorneys are in the courtrooms making an 259 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. argument, as does the defense attorney, when the judge is having a hearing, a violation of probation or a violation of parole hearing. So at the VOP hearings, the DA can make an argument as what should happen or what shouldn't happen. And so, again, it's going to be a cultural change to start arguing that we have to ensure that we're putting people in county facilities that are more violent or that people who are going to stay in prison are violent people and we're not sending or maintaining an inventory, we'll say, of 60 percent of the people being non-violent. But those are policies that we'll have to work on.
And that's something that we are committed to doing so that we can ensure that we can reduce recidivism and that we have truly violent people incarcerated and we find alternative means, either electronic monitoring, ankle bracelets for different 260 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. people, day reporting programs, all of which might be alternatives to us incarcerating them on State Road.
Good afternoon, and thank you very much for your strong commitment to fixing the justice system.
You're doing a good job, and I certainly appreciate the initiatives that you have set forth. At the end of the day, if it saves money, saves time and saves stress, it will be money well spent. My issue is the Nuisance Task Force.
Well, 261 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that's done. We had a dedication the other day. It's going commercial.
But what we see in the community are -- I just had a shooting up on Rising Sun Avenue, at a bar at Rising Sun and Alcott. Across the street is another establishment where we believe there's activity going on there. I want to, not now, but talk to you about how aggressive we can be, which sends a message that we're not going to tolerate the kind of activity that they use houses for, that houses can be forfeited under -- can they be forfeited under the Nuisance Task Force, that bill?
And if the bill is not strong enough, how can we strengthen it.
Because like you said, you talked about change their behavior. 262 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc.
So you change behavior if people understand that what they're doing, they will lose their property, their business. And if we do more of that, because I'm going to -- I will be sending you more cases and working with your -- who is Nuisance in here?
Beth Grossman works for Mr. Brian Grady. Brian Grady is the Deputy for the Special Operations Division and she comes under his supervision.
Right. I did meet with her. I have several places I want to just sit down and talk with her about, because I think once we send that message, because constantly we report it, we report it. The police even tell you what's going on at the site, but even if the people get arrested, they go away to come back, and it's the same site over and over and over again. I think we need 263 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. to -- while the Jaguar is an example, there are many more sites that can be handled under your department, so we will be talking to you about that.
Very well. Thank you. And I think, again, as we do community-based prosecution and with the Public Nuisance Task Force, I think it's imperative that we change the culture, we change the perceptions, that people know that the District Attorney's Office is a protector of the community and not an oppressor of the community. In too many communities people look at us as an oppressor, and we have to make sure they know that we're the protector of the community. And working with community groups -- another issue that we have to make sure you understand is that it takes the cooperation of the community.
We have to work with the community, because the community 264 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. has to help us identify those problem places. The Public Nuisance Task Force works with them to build up a strong case, showing what's going on in those properties, so that we can then go to civil court, have members of the community come to court and to identify how that property has had a deleterious effect on the quality of life in that neighborhood. Not how it just violates zoning, but how it is the source of crime and violence in that neighborhood. And so, again, a common theme is that the District Attorney's Office has to be a real partner with the community and the community groups to prevent crime.
Well, I also believe that we have to help the neighbors understand, because a number of them want something done, but they don't want to personally get involved.
And under the Code, we have to have witnesses from 265 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the community testify.
With the Jaguar, we had a meeting with 60 or so people in the rain, and I think we only had two or three people to testify. So that's another problem. So I explain it to them when they complain that they have to be involved and they got to -- but they also have to feel confident that you're going to protect them.
That's correct. And, you know, for ten years I was the President of the Overbrook Park Civic Association and Town Watch, and we worked with then-Councilman Nutter and now Councilman Curtis Jones, Jr. to ensure that the neighborhood stays safe. But that's an example of an organization where the District Attorney's Office works with them and works with the Councilperson. We can get rid of those nuisance properties.
Thank you 266 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. very much, Madam President.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Blackwell.
Thank you. Let me also say thank you. We love your creativity, the fresh energy and all that you are doing in this office. I just wanted to mention two issues. One is our Night Court. You know in the 18th, we love Night Court. We had Night Court every Friday to the extent that people wouldn't -- with those who were drinking out of open containers and all kind of nuisance and misdemeanors. They wouldn't do them on Fridays, because they knew that's when they'd get picked up, so that kind of hurt us, but that works well. We like that. I want to know your opinion on that, and also we've been concerned and 267 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. we've talked about it in past years about probation/parole offices in schools where there are a lot of young people who are and who are on parole, so that they 6 don't have to leave school and then we 7 can keep them there and try to do 8 something with them. I wanted to know 9 your feeling about that and what you 10 think the possibility of it is for it 11 being expanded. 12
Councilwoman 13 Blackwell, I think, one, the idea of 14 Night Court has been very effective in 15 Philadelphia. I think, again -- that's 16 an example of community-based justice 17 that you, I know your husband was a 18 proponent of it in its time, and Councilman Jones is a proponent of it now as well. Having -- and Mr. McCann, Ms. Hart from my office, many of my staff went to Brooklyn to visit the Community Justice Center. I know some of you had. We had a presentation here last, I 268 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. believe, March for Council to see what works in Brooklyn. We went to the Midtown Community Justice Center in Manhattan. Those are examples of being able to address problems quicker in the community right where the things happened. In Brooklyn, often people will get arrested for graffiti one night, they're held in a little holding cell overnight, then they come before the judge the next day, and maybe later that day or the next day, they're out removing graffiti. And that's how we're going to change behavior. Again, it's not the severity of punishment that changes behavior. It's the certainty of punishment. And doing it quicker in the community where people might not get -- they're not going to go to jail for 20 years, but they know that something happened immediately, that's how we can change behavior. That's how the community will see that something happens 269 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. and something positive happened as a result of that defendant going through the system in the community. So that we have youth aide panels in the community, as you know, the different police districts, but I think having more Night Court but, most importantly, having community-based justice centers will be very effective.
We liked all of it, and we did assign them to help clean up alleys and --
Right. And the second part of your question, Councilwoman, dealt with parole officers and probation officers in schools. Now, I'm not the biggest proponent of militarizing schools and having more police officers in schools. I think we need to ensure that the school teachers and the non-teaching assistants, the NTAs, when I was in public school here, that we give them the authority to do what's necessary to ensure the safety of 270 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the school. I don't want police officers and lots of weapons in schools patrolling schools, but I do think we have to work with the Department of Human Services, Judge Kevin Dougherty to ensure that we're cooperating. And I had them come to my office and meet with my senior staff. Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose from DHS came to talk, so we can begin that process. I think we have to, of course, find ways to reduce truancy. Fifty percent of all the public school students in Philadelphia drop out, and we're not going to have an economy of the future if our people are illiterate, if they can't function in society, if they can't use even Lotus Notes, which we have in the DA's Office, which is an outdated computer system. So we have to move forward and we have to reduce truancy. I believe having the DHS workers and truancy courts throughout the 271 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. City and that many of the clusters would be very helpful. Having the truancy officers and having the juvenile probation and patrol officers in close proximity can be very helpful as well.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilman Jones.
Thank you. These questions are submitted on behalf of Councilwoman Maria Sanchez, which I gave you a copy of, so the opinions expressed today don't necessarily reflect those of the Councilman of the Fourth District, but we're going to get them in the record.
Number one, she had an issue of consumer protection and mentioned that you are a strong proponent of making sure that there were consumer protection laws and a unit that dealt with that and that you would add personnel to a unit to do that. That was the first question.
Currently, if there are issues of consumer protection, that could be handled in our Investigations Division, in the Economic Crimes Unit. We also have a Government Fraud Unit. We have an Insurance Fraud Unit. So those units and that division could handle those cases. We will continue to search for grants and funding so that we have additional staff to prosecute those types of cases, which I think we have to protect Philadelphians. I received a letter from one of the City Commissioners today where that City Commissioner wanted me to be aware 273 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. of how she thought she might have been the subject possibly of a fraud. So we investigated that. But for the most part, the prosecution of those cases is taken care of by the Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and that we primarily have dealt with more of the street crimes that are so rampant here and affect Philadelphians in a greater and a more tangible way. But if we had more funding, if she wanted to foster -- put forward some sort of resolution to fund us additional prosecutors for that, then we'd try to find a way for them to do just that.
I will forward that comment to Councilwoman Sanchez. Her second issue was that the DA's Office has not historically taken wage theft cases on and that these cases particularly target vulnerable immigrant 274 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. communities involving usually businesses such as contractors or downtown restaurants, who then steal wages from people who are working there that have language barriers often and other things like that.
Right. And that's important. Again, that comes down to information and communication and education. And we do have -- approximately various languages are 13 spoken by members of the District 14 Attorney's staff, but, of course, we have 15 to be able to produce pamphlets and get 16 information out so that individuals that 17 are in Philadelphia that might work in a 18 restaurant where maybe their boss is 19 stealing wages from them, not paying them 20 what they deserve, that is a theft, and 21 those crimes will be prosecuted by our 22 office. But, again, many people just 23 don't know. Many of those people are 24 just glad to have a job and think if they 25 tell someone, they might just get 275 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. deported back to wherever they came from and they're afraid -- and their bosses know that and, in some ways, prey upon them for those purposes and those reasons. And so, again, we have to try to find a better way to educate the public, to educate that population of people that might fall into that crack so they know how to go about receiving some form of justice when that has happened to them.
Councilwoman Sanchez's third issue is language access, which you touched on a little bit, but also wanted to cite that it is required under the federal Civil Rights Act that people be provided translators and issues like that and wanted to know how you were addressing that.
Sure. Today is my 100th day. I think I'm making my First Assistant lose hair and his hair is getting even whiter, because I demand we 276 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. move faster, do more things, and he really wants me take a breath every now and then. But I would like to create a program maybe in conjunction with the Temple University Center City campus where we get people who are earning a Master's degree in the education of a language to be able to come over as part of maybe them getting their Master's degree or their certification to teach members of our staff, be they support staff or prosecutors, some of the various languages that the victims speak, if it's Spanish or Korean. We have a very large and growing Russian population in Philadelphia, to teach those languages so that our prosecutors, our victim witness coordinators, our support staff could better communicate with those individuals in Cambodian, Vietnamese. We have a very large Cambodian and Vietnamese population in Southwest Philadelphia, so that we can better serve the people that live in 277 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Philadelphia.
Councilwoman Sanchez's fourth issue was expungements and said that some of the ADAs refuse to grant expungements, and I'd be interested also to know what the policy is on expungements.
In statute it talks about expungements and the right of expungements. If you've been convicted, you can't get your record expunged. The only way you can get that cleared up is if the Governor will take care of that for you, and that rarely happens. But people who have been arrested and there was no conviction can file a motion. A defense attorney has to file a motion for them on their behalf on the second floor of the Criminal Justice Center. They go ahead and then have a hearing in Motions 278 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Court, and if the District Attorney, if a member of my staff, feels as though it's inappropriate for that person to get an expungement for whatever the reason is, then the argument is made that it's inappropriate. For the most part, when the person -- their record is such that they were arrested, there was a not guilty verdict, for the most part we won't in the future oppose that person getting their record expunged. But people that go into the diversionary program sometimes don't recognize the extra steps that they might have to take.
I think that's her point, Mr. District Attorney, that why wouldn't that be an automatic kind of thing when someone is found not guilty.
Right. And that's why in case -- like now I'm a proponent of Senate Bill 99, which has been the parent accountability act, which 279 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. has been proposed by State Senator Anthony Hardy Williams. There was language in that bill that would make -- after the defendant -- after the parent completed the programs, that their record would be expunged. Well, when we gave testimony in support of it, we said that we had to make the language even stronger so that when the person finishes that, it's automatic expungement and that we really detail how that gets done. So we're going to actually more proactively work in the appropriate diversionary programs to ensure that the defendants' records are expunged.
Is that something that this body can do or is that at the State --
No. That is something that the General Assembly has to address.
280 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. Councilman, I'm sorry. Your time is up.
Thank you. Councilman Green, Councilman Kenney would be next. Are you going to keep up to the five-minute --
Thank you, and I will remind you of that. Please proceed.
Thank you. Hopefully that talk didn't cost us any of my five minutes.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. District Attorney, it's 281 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. good to see you here.
I enjoyed your testimony and I think -- I just want to note for the record that you're the first department that has come before City Council seeking additional funds -- many departments are -- that has specifically told us what the return on that investment would be. It's a significant return, $7 million for $1.8 million.
Right. And we think that's a conservative estimation on our part.
Well, I was just going to say I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit, because as pointed out, you're at the fulcrum of the criminal justice system and we can't achieve savings anywhere without you being -- you're sort of the keystone really of the system in the sense that you're required to agree to every change 282 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that's happening. I mean, I don't think you gave yourself enough credit with the 3,000 marijuana things that are going to essentially become the same sentence but without having to go to court. I think the diversionary programs when -- I'll just give you a few examples. When Everett Gillison testified about some of these programs, day reporting, he'd like to see that grow to two to three hundred people. Frankly, I think that's conservative. That wasn't mentioned in your numbers. There's GPS for pretrial detainees who --
That's several hundred people that he'd like to see it grow to three to four hundred people. We went through a bunch of things and he rattled off quickly six to nine hundred people who won't be in the Philadelphia Prison System as a result of 283 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. CJAB's policies and specifically we talked about your new policies --
-- in his view. And then if you look at those 3,000 people, I got the Prison to break down sort of how many of those would be in prison at one time, and the average pretrial detainee is there for three or four months, so you can say that reduces the population by another 750 people, because that's how many people -- if it's 3,000 over the course of a year, the average stay is three or four months, divide 3,000 by four. That's 750 people fewer in our Prison System. So that gets us close to 1,500 fewer people potentially within a year, but let's be conservative and say it's not 400, as you're suggesting, but 750 less. We're talking savings within the Prison System of at least $10 million, I think, and police overtime. The impact on police 284 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. overtime of all of the policies you mentioned is tremendous.
It's 18,000 court appearances for police just for those 3,000 marijuana offenses at four hours per person per appearance. So I just want to be completely supportive of you and thank you for coming in with numbers, that they're conservative, because you probably would guess that we'll hold you accountable to them if we give you the extra money, so I think that's wise, but I enjoyed your testimony and I look forward to supporting you in this effort.
With respect to -- you and I spoke the other day and we talked about community courts. For the record, could you just describe what you think -- you visited Red Hook. Could you describe what you think we would be 285 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. able to achieve in Philadelphia over the next couple of years? I recognize that we have to involve all stakeholders and it will take some time.
Right. Well, I would envision in a Community Justice Center, it might be best to try to identify one place to start first and to then find a location that was easily accessible to many people in that division, that one of the six detective divisions via public transportation and a facility that would also be allowed -- that would allow us to have enough space where we can have all the different social service agencies, DHS, the Parole and Probation Department could have a facility there, there would be places for possibly job training, literacy training and a courtroom office space for the District Attorney, office space for the Defenders Association. And so the time to identify that, we're beginning to work with -- I'm 286 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. going down to the National District Attorneys Association this week to talk about community-based prosecution and justice centers. I think, though, that with the proper funding and an intensive use of our resources to make it a reality, if we had the political reality to get it done, that we could do it within two years, and then to be able to, in the years after that, to see the real benefit of expediting cases through there. The misdemeanor cases can go there, and it would have a tremendous savings, I think, in the long term. I'd like Mr. McCann to answer a little bit more. He just got back from Red Hook. MR. McCANN: One thing in addition to what the District Attorney said, Councilman Green, is that we can get to, as the DA likes to say, the Saturn model before we get to the Rolls Royce model, and we're already having discussions with the Municipal Court and 287 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. the Defenders Association about getting to an arrangement-based model to dispose of misdemeanor cases. As the District Attorney has said many times, it's the surety of punishment. And as you know, these misdemeanor cases are typically listed multiple times, two, three times, court overtime, multiple appearances by victims, defendants, defense attorneys. What we want to get to is, before we get to the total community court model, to at least have a model where there's a chance of disposing a significant number of misdemeanor cases within hours of 17 arrest. And we have been discussing that 18 already and hope that we can get to that 19 in a shorter period of time than the time 20 period that the District Attorney is 21 talking about. 22
And that's 23 terrific. And would that have an impact 24 on the prison population also? MR. McCANN: I think it would 288 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. have a tremendous impact on the prison population. And there's another thing that we're doing with the Defenders Association, and, that is, on misdemeanor cases where a defendant is on a Municipal Court judge's probation, not a Common Pleas probation, they're listing these cases in the crash court and doing video hearings. We're going to increase that number hopefully within the next few weeks up to 60 to 80 cases a week. So that should have an impact on the prison population as well, because typically those cases are disposed of by the video hearing and a defendant is no longer in custody after that.
Thank you, Mr. McCann. Being conservative, what would you say the impact of those two programs, which are not mentioned in the testimony, would have on the prison population? MR. McCANN: Well, certainly if 289 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. we can do 100 or 160 video crash court hearings a month where, say, 140 of those defendants are released from the prison, I mean, you can do the math from there, but I think that that's a possible outcome here. Because both sides, we've talked about this, the Defenders and us. We've met face to face several times. We're meeting again next week to set this up.
I will be much shorter, I promise. 290 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. I don't have a question. I just want to make a comment. Within the last hundred days, there has been a leap of change in this department and in the environment that I think you and the team that you put together have helped foster. It's not just lock them up. There is another side to your approach and to your philosophy. I've admired the way you've handled the police shooting as quickly as you did and as forcefully as you did and I think obviously the correct decision. The flash mob prosecutions and cooperation with the court and the message that was sent to the community I think has been very effective. I don't know if it will stop it forever, but at least people know that the law enforcement folks and the DA's Office are serious. But there's a whole different attitude and a whole different atmosphere I think not only in this body because of 291 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. your cooperation with us and bringing us over to your shop and spending some time with us and inviting our staffs to come over and spend some time in your shop to let us know what you do, because to tell you the truth, I don't think I had ever been in the District Attorney's Office until I was invited by you and your folks. But I think that the atmosphere on the street is one of trust and it's also one of understanding that wrongdoing is going to be dealt with forcefully and fairly, but not capriciously and not in some crazy extent, that there's room to recover, there's room to improve, and if you're really a bad guy and you need to be away, we're going to put you there, but if you have a chance to redo your life, reshape your life, we're going to give you that opportunity too. And I think that that message sent out there in the community is just -- it's been a wonderful experience. And I commend you 292 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. for your efforts and your work. I don't care if he tells you to slow down or not. Just keep on coming with these ideas. I just really think it's a different environment, a different atmosphere, and I think you've -- obviously your philosophy has helped to foster that. I don't have any questions. I listened to a lot of what you had to say down in my office. I know there's been a lot of questions asked. I know you've been here a long time, but congratulations. It's been a great thing to watch.
Thank you very much. I'm very appreciative of your kind words. I really think for Philadelphians to know that the criminal justice system is going to be fair, they have to know that we're applying the same standard of justice to everyone.
I've told all throughout the campaign -- it wasn't just 293 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. a platitude for the campaign -- that no 3 matter where you are on Germantown Avenue, if it's at Germantown and Erie or Germantown and Evergreen up near where Mr. Green lives, we're going to have the same standard of justice for everyone, no 8 matter what your title is, and that in the ecosystem of the criminal justice system, if people see that we're being fair to everyone, we're applying justice the same way, then they won't think that we're just being unfair to the kid who is selling crack at 52nd and Florence and we're giving a pass to the police officer that shot and killed someone. And so I appreciate that. It's going to take a while really to really change the culture, but I think it's something that we have to do and it's something that I can't take care of alone for, that my colleagues and I that sat at the District Attorney's Office every day at lunch, that's what we talked about, if we could do it. And so now I'm very glad 294 4/14/10 - WHOLE - BILL 100115, etc. that I have the opportunity to do just that.
Well, it's apparent in a short period of time. So congratulations.
Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? (No response.)
Seeing no one, again, I thank you, and good luck.
Yes. This Committee will stand in recess until Tuesday, April 20th at 10:00 a.m. Thank you. (Committee of the Whole recessed at 4:45 p.m.) 295 CERTIFICATE I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings, evidence and objections are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me upon the foregoing matter on April 14, 2010, and that this is a true and correct transcript of same. ______________________________ MICHELE L. MURPHY RPR-Notary Public (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)