Council Member Restler Questions Concentration of COMPASS Contracts

Thank you so much to the esteemed and impressive co-chairs of this hearing.

Really appreciate your great leadership.

Um and congratulations again, Commissioner.

I really enjoyed sitting down with you some weeks ago and checking in on some of the compass concerns that we've been hearing from our communities.

And uh, you know, I just think it's a it's a great thing to have somebody with such deep expertise in youth development leading the agency.

Um we know there's a really strong bench uh uh supporting you uh at DYCD and look forward to working with you and your team.

Uh I continue to be concerned about uh kind of the compass process.

I I fully appreciate that you know, whenever we put out a new RFP, I mean part of the reason we haven't put out this RFP for 10 years is because they're winners and losers, and it's an incredibly bumpy process to go through.

And so the last administration handed you this, you know, um hot potato, I guess I'll call it for the purposes of being diplomatic.

Um but you know, as I've shared with you, we have just to give one example, a provider that serves the the Hasidic community in Williamsburg that's been an excellent provider for many, many years.

They had hundreds of seats, they now have dozens, um, and they were the one provider that served that community.

And they scored really well.

Uh I know you're not gonna speak to an individual provider, but I'm gonna just give you the specific context for my district to make this real.

Um so I think we want to I it would help me to understand like how could one provider score excellently at one location and above the threshold, but not at a different location when it's the same team providing the same excellent services across the board.