PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia City Council has given itself a very busy public hearing schedule for this fall.
Council approved nine resolutions at Friday's meeting, all calling for hearings on a wide variety of issues.
Two of the hearings will explore safety conditions in school buildings. Councilman David Oh proposed a hearing on the history of asbestos mitigation in schools. Councilwoman Helen Gym, along with ten co-sponsors, called for hearings on funding a comprehensive renovation of public school buildings.
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"It’s not enough to do repairs. We need a large scale modernization plan," said Gym.
"Major cities that are embarking on this work don’t put it all on the school district."
There are independent authorities that work in collaboration with the city, with planning, with the school district.
Other topics council committees will tackle include the intersection of public safety and commercial vitality, what to do about Philadelphia's epidemic of tangled titles that can result in the loss of home ownership for families; and a shortage of trauma counselors for residents caught in the city’s gun violence epidemic and worker safety on construction sites.
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Councilman Bobby Henon has long pursued the worker safety issue, but said his desire for hearings were prompted by the death of a worker building an Amazon facility during the summer.
"Job site safety standards were not met," said Henon.
Councilmember Cindy Bass got a hearing on the Promise Trust Fund, an idea she floated last spring to corral some federal COVID-19 money into an ongoing fund for underserved neighborhoods.
Council approved Curtis Jones’s resolution to holding hearings on the city’s $400 million to rebuild city facilities.
Rebuild director Kira Strong says she’s looking forward to giving an update.
"We feel pretty proud of the work we’ve done," she said.
Strong added that in three years, 10 facilities have been overhauled, a dozen are under construction and more than 40 others are in the pipeline.
