Hankerson presses on late denials for small community groups
Hankerson asks how a small community group with limited resources can plan when it may be denied days before its event. Cerrone cites denial rates from 2022-2025, all under 1%, and says Parks' directive is to find a pathway to yes.
I mean, I appreciate that.
But if it's typical for you all to not approve or deny until closer to the date, let's...
Just say if I'm a community-based organization, a small group, and we have limited resources and we've worked hard to plan this event that's supposed to happen within our local park,
and then it's not until a few days before that we hear, hey, you can't have your event, it's been denied.
Does the Parks Department not see that as problematic?
So I think in instances like that, when we think about denials, denials have been historically, we've looked back over the past several years, it's been less than 1% of the permits that we've processed.
So we're in the range, actually.
My eyes are not as good as they were, I'm realizing today.
No worries.
In 2022, we processed 23,948 permits.
47 were denied.
In 2023, we processed 23,844 permits.
18 were denied.
In 2024, we processed 23,507 permits.
37 were denied.
And in 2025, we processed 24,241 permits.
And 23 were denied.
So it's a small percentage.
I want you to know that when we approach a permitting,
Our goal and the directive from our commissioner is to find a pathway to yes.
So we work as hard as we possibly can to find alternatives so that we don't have to deny.
But it's true, Council Member, there will be instances exactly like the one you described.
And we want to keep working to make sure that we're doing better and doing as well as we can.
And to that end, you know, one thing that we're proud of, and I know the commissioner is proud of, is that if you were to look us up on the website and you wanted to find your borough office, right away you would find a phone number.
You would find a person to call.
And you could get on the phone and you could speak to a special event coordinator and ask them about your permit.
And they would tell you what the latest was and try to work with you to a solution.
But also, if you know, if there's an organization that you're working with that has called you, please tell Ann and I, and we want to work with them because we deeply care about them having the best experience.
And we want to make things work for them as well.