De La Rosa questions 911 operator staffing shortage

One of my questions is about the 911 operators.

Before I was a tech chair, I was the labor chair, and we worked really diligently on the 911 staffing shortage, 911 operator staffing shortages.

And I know that this has been an ongoing issue for this workforce.

Can we speak to the 911 operator shortage and if that had any impact on this outage or on ongoing conversations around calls?

Because I know that in one of our labor hearings, we, you know, unfortunately heard about the 911 calls going to voicemail.

So if you could speak to the status of the staffing of 911 operators at both centers, and then if there's any impact that we foresee based on staffing shortages.

Good morning.

Thank you for the question.

This police commissioner has put this as a top priority to address staffing of the PCTs.

In her previous assignment, she was the overhead boss of the 911 operators, and she knows how important they are.

She knows how difficult their job is.

So we've gone all out to hire as much as we can.

We're actually doing very well with that.

We're actually above last year by 10%.

We have 1,370 PCTs this year compared to 1,250 last year.

We're also actually above the headcount.

In the last approximately year, we added 400 PCTs, and our total headcount is up 5%, which includes supervisors and principals

from 1546 last year to 1625.

We're still doing our best to increase these numbers in any way we can.

We have a class in right now.

That class of 80 is part of those figures I gave you.

And we're also looking to hire another 100 in October 21st.

So we're keeping the pressure on to address this issue.

What is your projection for the vacancy rate at this time?