QUESTION
How is the city addressing the need for funding essential maintenance?
0:56:18
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130 sec
The NYC Department for the Aging acknowledges the lack of dedicated funding for essential facility maintenance but is developing a plan to address this.
- A unit is established to inventory repair and capital needs in kitchens and major systems.
- The department is focusing on developing a citywide plan for maintenance instead of handling individual cases.
- A construction and design unit exists to assist providers with contract and bid reviews.
- Efforts are underway to estimate the needs and resources required for comprehensive maintenance.
Yusef Salaam
0:56:18
This is from a provider.
0:56:19
They shared that we have a number of annual maintenance contracts for the facilities such as the HVAC system and the boilers.
0:56:28
Which are not covered by DIFTA budgets.
0:56:31
We recently had to replace the glass front door to one of our centers and were only and we were only able to do so with city discretionary funds because our regular diff the budget didn't allow didn't have the funding to cover it.
0:56:47
Many of our facility costs are covered by private funding.
0:56:52
So what I wanted to know was what can be done to secure more funding from the city for essential maintenance.
Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez
0:56:59
In the last hearing, in our budget hearing, one of the things that we talked about was as a result of that.
0:57:06
Most are you're absolutely right, council member.
0:57:10
The repairs now are are within your budget structure.
0:57:14
Because we don't have a dedicated plan or money for for look looking at those repairs.
0:57:21
What we have done since our last council of thing is established, having our unit look at all of the repair and capital needs in the kitchens and doing an inventory of what those are so that we can come up with a plan and an submit of what the needs are to do those kind of thing.
0:57:40
That would not handle a door, a glass door.
0:57:44
We're looking at kitchens.
0:57:46
We're looking at some of the major systems and looking at what the state of those are.
0:57:53
But It came from this this committee, and so that's what we're looking at right now.
0:57:58
We do have a construction and design unit.
0:58:01
Within the department for the aging that works with each provider as they get contracts and reviews the bids and make sure that the bids are adequate.
0:58:12
But we're looking at that now in a much, much more in a broader from a broader perspective, and looking at what a citywide plan would look like rather than individual situations.
0:58:25
We can forecast what those would be.