Chair Menin Questions DOT on Staffing Levels and Budget Allocations

Have all of those positions been filled?

Yes.

Do you think that you need more staff to address the backlog?

I don't think we need more staff, so maybe I'll just talk about that for a moment.

We have obviously this is our biggest year in order to address the applications that are coming in this year.

We have our 24 staff that are funded as part of the program.

We also trained some other staff within the department and put them on loan into this program.

And we also hired some consultants for a number for several months in order to help review applications.

So we think that the staff in the program is probably the right number going forward, but we're also prepared to take measures to bring in more staff if we ever need to.

I just think when you have the number of complaints you have, and we know that there have been tremendous number of complaints, despite what your testimony is saying, there are enormous amounts of complaints.

There is a huge backlog.

It also, I do want to point out that records show that from 2017 to 2019, it took DCWP an average of 177 days from the filing of an application to the approval of a sidewalk cafe license.

And the one of the whole intents of this law was to try to speed up this process, but now we're seeing that many applications are still in this backlog.

So why do you think that eight staff members is enough to address this program?

Okay, the reason the program is taking so long is really because of the steps in the process coming back to some things required in the city charter, other things required in the local law.