REMARKS
Council member inquires about ideal staffing levels for natural areas
1:58:51
ยท
82 sec
Council Member Shekar Krishnan expresses disbelief at the current staffing levels for natural areas and inquires about the ideal staffing levels as recommended in a report by the Natural Areas Conservancy.
- Krishnan calls the current staffing of 60 people for 14,000 acres 'ridiculous'
- He asks about the ideal staffing level recommended in the report
- The council member thanks the testifier for their testimony, indicating his appreciation for the information provided
Shekar Krishnan
1:58:51
6 a staff of 60 for 14,000 acres is is is ridiculous.
1:58:55
And what from the report that you all did, if you remember, what was the ideal level of staffing that's needed to maintain a park system that's this large?
Emily Walker
1:59:04
I believe we would have at least 78 additional staff on the park side of things, based on the FMF or the forest management framework.
1:59:12
There is also, kind of we are happy to follow-up with your offices after this to share that report.
1:59:18
There is kind of a 25 year timescale and budget that breaks down what the capital investment would be needed and what the expense budget needs would be.
1:59:27
We are falling well short of that.
1:59:28
If I was trying to look at my phone on tiny PDF, I think we should have at least 16,000,000 in expense funding by this year, in implementation.
1:59:36
We we're in year 6 of implementation, technically speaking.
1:59:40
We have, as of this year, actually, $0 implemented for the FMF in because of the f y 25 budget cuts.
1:59:46
So we're really well below the level that should be needed to support the work that our colleagues are doing.
1:59:51
And I just wanna emphasize that our colleagues in NRG are doing incredible work with, like, incredibly paltry amount of resources, and we wanna make sure that that is, uplifted and and seen that they have a tremendous, workload that they just are really trying to do incredible work with not enough people.
Shekar Krishnan
2:00:12
Thank you for your testimony.