Wong questions Rudin on library, computers, and culinary school

Three questions, yeah.

Miss Jody Rudin?

Yeah.

You're based out of 125 Broad Street.

Is that right?

Yes.

How often do you visit the Borden Avenue facility?

Multiple times a year.

It depends.

Some years I've been there a dozen times.

Some years fewer times.

It varies.

When was your last visit?

Last night.

Okay.

Okay, so I have two questions.

Can, like, when I was there with Council Member Julie Wan,

There were residents there who told me they have no access to the computers and no access to the library.

And there's a gentleman that walked out a couple minutes ago before you testified that they still have no access to the computers.

Now, is my understanding that...

The part of the contract is to have computers there so veterans could use them.

So can you tell me why that they cannot, they have no access?

Absolutely.

And I appreciate your question.

And we enjoyed what I think was an enormously productive relationship with Councilmember Holden.

And we are ever grateful for his investments in the facility, including at the library.

The library is open on a 24-7 basis.

There may be some specific exceptions to that if there's a meeting or if we're hosting visitors.

But in the ordinary course of business, it's open on a 24-7 basis.

There have been a few things that you've said or that I've heard on the panel that just aren't true.

And I would welcome a relationship where you're bringing those issues to us.

We can figure out the source of the disagreement or misunderstanding and fix it immediately.

So the residents now have free access to the library and the computers.

Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And hearing that this has been a source of misunderstanding, we'll post flyers just to clarify the hours.

Okay.

Finally, I raised the question before.

Could you answer?

How come the culinary schools could use the cooking facilities there but not the veterans?

Yeah, thank you.

This was another point I wanted to clarify, so I'm grateful for the question.

So the culinary arts training program has cohorts of 20 people at a given time.

That number is determined based on the size of the kitchen and how many people can comfortably fit.

There is no cap on the number of veterans who can participate from Borden.

If we had our druthers, all 20 would participate from Borden.

In this current cycle, we don't have any veterans from Borden in the cohort.

So we would love your support in drumming up interest.

Now, my question was.

When they say their cooking classes are not in session, how come the veterans have no access to the facility to cook their own food or eat or to heat up their own food because they are hungry?

Yeah, so I think actually both Chair Hudson and our colleague from DSS, Sonia Russell, clarified it is not customary for people who live in shelters to access the commercial kitchen for their cooking use.

It is incumbent upon us to provide them.

three meals a day, consistent with the New York City food and nutrition standards.

So I've never heard of a scenario where people living in the residence would access the commercial kitchen.

Now, we have heard feedback on, can we have an air fryer?

Can we have more microwaves?

And that is something that we're working on bringing into the cafeteria so that people can have more autonomy around bringing in food, heating up food.

But it's not traditional practice to let people gain access to the commercial kitchen where there's all sorts of mechanicals that they may or may not know how to use and would introduce, I think, health and safety concerns.

Okay, thank you.

I'll be in touch.

Yeah, I genuinely look forward to it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Ms.

Foster, thank you for your patience.