Chair Menin Questions Panel on Language Accessibility and Online Application Issues

One of the major policy issues that the original council bill was meant to address is equity, making sure that every single neighborhood had outdoor dining options.

Um the fact that so many neighborhoods now do not have them because of the rollout of and the all the different uh onerous rules and regulations that some of which you've identified.

But I guess I I'm also very upset about the fact that DOT only has this application in English and in Spanish.

That's totally unacceptable.

Are you hearing complaints from restaurant owners about that?

And can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, we've we've heard about that.

We've heard about many problems with the application process, not only just language challenges and only having an online option, not having an actual window to go to and sitting down with a representative, um, but also another challenge about being able to save your application midway.

I'm not sure if DOT has changed the system yet, but a big problem was you couldn't save your application, you know.

You know, so you basically go on, you get to one part.

Has this been Max?

You know if this has changed yet?

Can you save?

Yeah, so one of the challenges you go, you get, you know, a quarterway, a halfway through the process, and all of a sudden you're told you need some other document that you don't have.

So all of a sudden you stop the progress, you have to go find that document, and you come back and you have to start the process all over again.

So you can imagine those frustrations uh for anyone, but then if there's a language barrier, it just compounds those challenges.

I can just add add to that, Chair.

You know, a number, a number of the businesses that I interface with are first generation, zero generat generation immigrants, and I just can't underscore enough the expectation that they have that there is there ought to be a place, a physical place where they can go to get answers to questions, to hand in application materials.

It's not, it's not passe or out of style to say that you know that there should be a place where people could actually bring paper and submit something, and that's been really been lost here.

Absolutely, and that is why, and and I know you're aware of this.

I objected to the original this original bill to this aspect of it that DOT should never have been given the jurisdiction over this program.