Q&A
Public safety concerns and DCWP's focus on the licensing scheme
0:38:07
·
171 sec
Council Member Julie Menin raises public safety concerns related to hotels, citing the Umbrella Hotel case and alarming crime statistics. DCWP representatives discuss their focus on the licensing scheme and enforcement capabilities.
- DCWP emphasizes its expertise in licensing businesses across various industries
- The agency aims to create a licensing scheme that deters bad behavior and illegal activities
- DCWP discusses potential challenges in revoking licenses or shutting down hotels due to safety concerns
Julie Menin
0:38:07
Reporter: OTHER QUESTION, I MEAN, 1 OF THE INTERESTING PARTS, OBVIOUSLY OF LICENSING AND ONE OF THE REASONS WHY I THINK THIS SPILL IS SO IMPORTANT IS THE INFINITES AMBRILLA HOTEL my colleague council member, Schulman's district, where there were hundreds of neighbors who complained about bad actions, crime happening at that hotel.
0:38:25
They constantly were complaining.
0:38:28
And finally, in 2021, there was a murder on January 1st at the umbrella hotel.
0:38:33
Then Mayor De Blasio said I'm gonna shut the umbrella hotel down.
0:38:37
Well, it wasn't that easy to shut it down when the city jurisdictionally was not licensing that entity.
0:38:44
In terms of licensing hotels, and public safety.
0:38:47
Do you have any comments on, you know, with this 14,000 NYPD criminal complaints, 39 murders?
0:38:54
You know, there are really alarming public safety data that we have here.
0:38:57
So there's obviously the very important public policy reasons, which is why the 5 district attorneys for the city and our New York attorney general have all come out in favor of the bill.
0:39:07
Is there anything you can add in that vein?
Vilda Vera Mayuga
0:39:10
Thank you, Chairman.
0:39:12
And I would say that our focus with the legislation has been on the licensing scheme.
0:39:17
Right?
0:39:17
And we we do a lot of licenses.
0:39:19
Right?
0:39:19
We license over 45,000 businesses across over 40 industries.
0:39:24
And so we have a real expertise in that, right, decades of experience, tweaking that process across different industries.
0:39:30
And, of course, each one is gonna have its particularity.
0:39:33
So the way we've been looking at this is how do we ensure that that licensing scheme makes sense so that we can actually also enforce it?
0:39:43
And it will deter the bad behavior and illegalities, right, that we're trying to address, making sure that we are tackling the goal of the legislation protecting consumers, protecting workers, right, as that is the mission of our agency.
0:39:58
In terms of public safety, you know, we're not a criminal law enforcement agency.
0:40:03
So I think there there probably will be always some components that will be better handled by another agency that's not us.
0:40:10
However, we do have some recommendations in terms of how do we make the licensing scheme be most effective.
0:40:19
And for example, in terms of revocation of a license, even being able to shut down a hotel.
0:40:26
Right?
0:40:27
If we have silly authority, right, pat locking businesses in some industries, but it's certainly different for a hotel because we obviously not gonna, like, literally put a lock when there's people inside a hotel.
0:40:40
So we wanna be, you know, we wanna keep all of that in mind as we really think through what this ultimately looks like so that we can operationalize it in the best way of based on those learnings we've had also from our decades of experience in this in this space.
Carlos Ortiz
0:40:58
Counsel Mara, if I could also add to to other points to this.
