Council Member Narcisse on Office of Deed Prevention staffing and interagency work
Council Member Mercedes Narcisse asks about staffing for the new Office of Deed Prevention. Commissioner Lee reports one of five positions filled (director Peter White), with a deed ombudsperson pending and two more positions to be posted, and describes outreach to HPD, DYTA, district attorneys, and the state attorney general.
Thank you, Chair Lee, and thank you, Commissioner Lee.
And I'm happy to see you.
But one thing I'm going to tell you, honestly, I miss you because I cannot come and bother you all the time.
You can still bother.
It's no problem.
To tell you my vision.
So Nathan got it.
So in the preliminary plan, DOF received the new position to create the Office of Deaf Prevention.
Can you please provide an update on how many positions have you fulfilled so far in the new office?
What specific work will be done with other city agencies?
And is there any need to increase the size of this office, or is five positions enough?
So, so far, so it's for five positions within the Office of Deaf Prevention that sits at the Department of Finance.
We have only filled one position so far, which is the director, Peter White.
We are in the midst of appointing the Deaf Ombudsperson, so that should be coming soon.
And we'll be posting shortly for two more positions, the deputy director, which is pending, as well as a community coordinator.
In terms of the work of the Office of Deaf Deaf, the office will primarily serve as a liaison across of our agency,
across all our divisions, and working with enforcement entities and advocacy and legal groups, as well as other agencies to tie together a lot of the incoming that we have related to the deaf prevention.
Some of the other agencies that we do currently or we have already reached out to as part of this office has been HPD, DIFTA, the mayor's office.
of mass engagement as well as beginning the stages to forge relationships and alliances with the district attorneys offices across the five boroughs as well as the state attorney general.
Your last question was if it's enough, right?
It was enough.
So right now we are budgeted for five.
We're in the process of onboarding additional three.
We're going to keep working within our agency.
A lot of the work that we're doing for this office is really uplifting it from internal, utilizing all the resources that we have at DOF in our land records, office of taxpayer
advocate, and across the board to work within Department of Finance to help uplift it.
If we do feel that there is an additional need, we're happy to get to that conclusion and reach out to the budget office should there be a need to do so.
Thank you.