Title
June 3, 2010
To The President and Members of
The Council of the City of Philadelphia:
For the following reasons, I am returning herewith to your Honorable Body as disapproved Bill No. 100158, which was passed by Council at its session on May 20, 2010.
Bill 100158 would amend The Philadelphia Code to provide that any organization seeking a permit from the City for a parade or assembly in any street must enter into an agreement with the City to pay for the use of any City equipment, and for personnel costs for services, such as sanitation services, that the applicant specifically requests from the City in connection with the event. I am in agreement with that portion of the bill.
The bill further provides, however, that the City shall not charge any person who obtains such a permit for any City costs associated with the need to maintain public order and safety in connection with the parade or assembly. This would mean that the City could not charge for overtime and other special costs of staffing for the public safety needs related to these events, even when the City would not otherwise bear those costs absent the holding of the parade or assembly.
Each year there are hundreds of parades, festivals and special events that take place in all parts of the City. Some are local community events, but many are large productions that attract thousands of people to locations like the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In order to ensure that these events are safe, successful and enjoyable for the participants, the City provides a great number of resources. As public safety is a paramount concern anytime there is a large gathering such as a parade or festival, the Police Department deploys sufficient officers to patrol the event as well as to provide for street closures, traffic control and emergency management. Additionally, the Fire Department ensures that emergency medical services are standing by ready to assist.
Because of the City's serious financial constraints in the past two years, caused by the global economic downturn, the City began to enforce a long-standing policy statement to bill for its substantial costs in connection with these events. For 2009, the City billed event organizers almost $3.5 million. Of that amount, more than $2 million was for overtime costs, largely for Police. Generally speaking Police costs represent approximately 80% of the costs billed to event organizers. These additional Police costs are precisely what Bill 100158 would prohibit us from charging to event organizers.
To date the City has received more than half of the amount billed for 2009, demonstrating that event organizers were able to work with us and pay a substantial share of the City's costs. (Incredibly, the bill provides for refunding to those entities amounts paid for public safety services in 2009.) It is clear that the practice of billing has not had a Page chilling effect on special event celebrations in the City, as the hundreds of parades, festivals and special events in 2009 demonstrate.
I fully realize that parades and street festivals are important celebrations of civic pride and that many of them are long standing traditions woven into our community fabric. We have been, and remain committed to, reducing the City's costs to ensure that cost does not prevent any events from going forward. But we simply do not have the financial ability to continue to subsidize all of the additional public safety costs borne by the City as a result of privately organized parades and street festivals.
This year's budget package, which I signed into law yesterday, contains more than $50 million in new budget cuts. It also required the adoption of almost $100 million in new revenue measures. Even so, because these revenues will not provide sufficient funds to ensure that the City will have an adequate fund balance at the end of the year, or even to ensure that the City will have sufficient cash flow throughout the year, I have announced that an additional $20 million in cuts to planned expenditures in the Police and Fire Departments, the Free Library, and many other departments must be made. These are cuts I did not want to have to make. But they are required by the City's financial circumstances.
In this very difficult economic climate, it is counter-productive to require the City to bear the added public safety costs to the City of these parades and festivals. For these reasons I am returning Bill No. 100158 to you disapproved.
Respectfully,
Michael A. Nutter,
Mayor
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