Via Generocity | By Albert Hong / STAFF
Rebuild is a $500 million citywide initiative that’s seven years in the making, so you can bet that there have been a lot of questions in recent months about how the whole process is going to roll out.
Like how local nonprofits can get involved with the improvement projects, or how the city plans to engage the communities that will ultimately be the ones most impacted by whatever changes are made to their libraries, recreation centers and parks.
To its credit, the Rebuild team has been regularly hosting informational meetings over the past few months throughout the city’s neighborhoods to gauge local businesses’ interest in the initiative. (The next one is this Thursday, Nov. 2, at the Mayfair Community Center.)
Now, the Rebuild effort has its own oversight board, which is “charged with reviewing Rebuild’s progress and making recommendations on program implementation,” according to a statement. It’s made up of 17 members, all of whom seem to be stakeholders with the project’s mission of bringing about equity to public spaces, something that more and more nonprofits are thinking about when it comes to seeing who is actually using these spaces.
Here are the board appointees:
- Michael DiBerardinis, managing director of the City of Philadelphia
- Councilwoman Cindy Bass, chair of the Commission on Parks and Recreation
- Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell
- Councilman Bobby Henon
- Rob Dubow, director of finance for the City of Philadelphia
- Harold Epps, deputy managing director of commerce for the City of Philadelphia
- Anne Fadullon, director of planning and development for the City of Philadelphia
- Ellen Kaplan, chief integrity officer for the City of Philadelphia
- Kathryn Ott Lovell, commissioner of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation
- Siobhan Reardon, president of the Free Library of Philadelphia
- Greg Allen, chair of Rebuild committee for the Commission on Parks and Recreation
- Valerie Cofield, president and CEO of the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council
- Janet Haas, board chair of the William Penn Foundation
- Stacy Holland, educational consultant
- Floyd Lebron, risk manager for the Dale Corporation
- Belinda Mayo, former director of neighborhood program coordination for the Office of Housing and Community Development
- Antonio Valdes, CEO of the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center
The oversight board is set to meet quarterly throughout the next several years and for transparency’s sake, the meetings are also available for anyone to attend and find out more about the initiative or ask questions. The board’s first meeting is coming up quick too, set for this Wednesday, Nov. 1, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Kingsessing Recreation Center.