CENTER CITY - An energized and motivated crowd of activists and council members are calling on the Kenney Administration to properly fund Philadelphia Parks and Recreation and the Free Library of Philadelphia as a hot and humid summer draws near."We’re constantly being asked to do all of these different things, and our budget always seems to get smaller and smaller or stagnate, despite the fact that the needs of this community are ever growing.
At Christy alone, we lost four kids last summer," said Quan Brown, a local volunteer at Christy Park. "I don’t mean lost like on a field trip, I mean they were gunned down."16-year-old Kahree Simmons was one of those teens.
Found by police with a fatal gunshot wound to his neck at Christy Park last March. Many people then wondered how could such brutality happen there.Councilmember-at-large Helen Gym says many rec centers are in desperate need of staffing. "They are not just staffed with one person, but they have a social worker there.
They have support staff that are there. Right now we only open rec centers with one individual person that could go on all day," said Gym.Gym says to make that reality, the city needs to more than double pre-pandemic budget levels."We would be looking at, probably, close to $8 to $10 million.