Hankerson asks who hires event meteorologist
Hankerson asks whether Parks or the applicant hires the meteorologist. Cerrone says the applicant does, and he describes one meteorologist who previously worked at NY1 and advises on storm timing.
if someone wanted to do an event for 20,000 people and the park historically has not done an event for more than 2,000 people because of its size, that would be an area where we would
ultimately need to deny if they did not want to relocate the event to a more appropriately sized park.
Understood.
What factors determine whether the department has to shut down an event?
How often has this happened in the past for large events, and how many instances in the last year has DPR prematurely closed?
That is a good question, Councilmember.
You know, we have not tracked it on an ongoing basis.
We could certainly do that looking back.
As was in the press, the Global Citizens event of last weekend was canceled due to weather.
And I think weather is the most common occurrence as the reason for why an event would be shut down or be in any way impacted in terms of its plan.
Even with all the technology we have, sometimes the weather surprises us.
And I can say that's happened to us a number of times.
And so we work really closely with the event producer and with other city agencies, including Office of Emergency Management, with NYPD, with CECM.
And depending on what the forecasts are.
Oh, and I should add, for larger events, from years of experience, we've now required larger events to have a meteorologist on site so that they can advise us of exactly what the weather is.
And if there's cloud to ground lightning, that's a very big concern for us.
So there's times when we've advised to hold the opening of the show.