Phil Wong asks about unused athletic field permits
Phil Wong introduces concerns that field permits are reserved but unused, causing children to lose playtime. He asks whether Parks can inspect fields and reduce or revoke unused permits; Cerrone says he does not have the numbers but will work with Wong's office and Ken Conyers.
I'll ask a couple more questions, and then I'll turn it over to the council member.
I want to go back.
I probably want to end my questions on this.
I want to go back to the sensitivity training and the customer service piece.
I know you mentioned that all park staff have to go through sensitivity training and or customer service training when they are hired.
If someone is hired, let's say, in 2010, would they be required to go through training again?
Let's say they've been on the job now for 10 years.
Is it annual or is it just that one time, you know, the point to which they were hired?
That's a really good question, and I think it's going to depend on the office and how often that office is interacting with the public versus doing something internally.
But I can speak, as I mentioned, for the citywide team.
We will be doing that training again at the end of this year, and that's something that we will also talk to all the boroughs about to make sure that we have renewed training and continue to keep it updated from there.
Is it uniformed?
Would it be uniformed?
The training?
Mm-hmm.
I believe it would be, but I think we would have to discuss the exact kind of like parameters of the training with our Parks Academy.
Okay.
As I mentioned before, I think it would be a good field trip for this committee.
As you see, we did have more than two members for this committee to sit in on Parks Academy, if allowed, just to see what the training is like.
You know, and to really...
just kind of get a different perspective.
I think for many of us, whether it is the CBOs that we're dealing with or our offices, our office staff that's, you know, working with the permit offices, whether it be borough or citywide, we do run into challenges.
And one of the things that I, you know, I would be remiss if I did not mention,
In Southeast Queens in particular, we have received a number of complaints from CBOs when dealing with the permit offices.
And that's disheartening, especially because these groups do great work within the community.
Many of them have recurring events every year.