Council Member Morano on zero summonses before July and DOB data cross-check
Morano questions the jump from zero summonses in May-June to 180 in July, and asks why DOB-DOHMH data cross-referencing wasn't routine before two clusters involving unregistered towers. Martin says the system improves with each cluster experience.
Council staff also found that in the three zip codes that became the outbreak area, the Department of Health issued zero cooling tower summonses in May, zero in June, and then 180 in July.
What changed in July?
What did the city suddenly start looking for after people were already sick?
We, as a...
mentioned issued over 100 violations in this cluster region.
Many of those were public health hazards.
Many of them were critical violations.
But I also want to share that the violations that we issue are just one layer in a multi-layered system that helps to keep
New Yorkers safe and reduce the risk of Legionnaire's disease.
The first two layers are what the owners must do.
They must do daily, weekly, and monthly actions.
They must, as the second layer, submit their Legionella sampling to us.
And the third layer is we actually go and investigate.
So these three layers are all happening at the same time.
The fourth layer, as you've described, the corrective actions and the fines, are certainly one piece of the puzzle, but it's not the full picture.
Finally, your testimony says the administration will now cross-reference DOB and health department records to identify unregistered cooling towers.
You also acknowledge the city already has the capacity to do that.
Why wasn't that basic data cross-check already routine before this outbreak?
Why did it take two Legionnaires clusters involving unregistered towers for the administration to implement it?
Because strong systems can improve when they identify new ways to do things better.
And we identified in 2025 that an unregistered cooling tower was at the source of that.
cluster.
We immediately put that knowledge into place in practice in 2026 and picked up an unregistered cooling tower at the start of the cluster.
But we want to now formalize that.
We want to make it automatic.
We want to have the systems talk to each other.
New Yorkers shouldn't have to depend on
staff members across two different agencies working together to figure this out.
We should have systems that are automatically doing this work on the back end.
Council member, council member now.
Council member, we went over already.
I have to go to other members.
Okay, I'd love to be in the second round just for one brief comment as well.