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Q&A
Council Member Carr discusses NYPD recruitment and migrant shelter costs with OMB officials
2:10:40
ยท
4 min
Council Member David Carr engages in a Q&A session with OMB Director Jacques Jiha and First Deputy Budget Director Kenneth Godiner, focusing on two main topics: NYPD recruitment challenges and the city's migrant shelter costs. They discuss potential incentives for police recruitment and the projected decline in migrant shelter occupancy.
- Carr expresses concern about NYPD overtime budget and suggests hiring incentives to address officer shortages.
- OMB officials discuss authorization for recruiting 1,600 new officers and openness to commissioner's suggestions for attracting qualified candidates.
- The conversation shifts to migrant shelter costs, with OMB projecting a significant decline in occupancy by the end of the fiscal year.
David Carr
2:10:40
Thank you, chair director.
2:10:41
Good to see you as always.
2:10:43
You know, I share the concern of colleagues with respect to controlling the NYPD overtime budget because to me it's a function of the need to hire more police officers.
2:10:52
We're several thousand below the maximum budgeted headcount that the PD is allowed to have for uniformed officers, and I believe my understanding is there's about 5,000 officers who will reach their twenty year milestone in the course of the summer of this year.
2:11:08
And historically, you know, recruitment has never exceeded separations from the department mostly because of retirements.
2:11:15
So given that history which predates this administration, what can we do financially as part of the budget to incentivize recruitment?
2:11:23
Are we gonna be considering things like hiring bonuses, working with Albany to allow for better FAS calculations for pensions, better pay?
2:11:32
What is OMB's role, or do you see OMB's role in trying to incentivize recruitment?
Jacques Jiha
2:11:38
In this preliminary budget, we gave the PD the authorization to recruit 1,600 police officers, and we gave them a head count of about 35,000.
2:11:50
So we understand the challenges that they're dealing with, and we're open to any suggestions that new commissioner has in terms of what kind of things that she needs to put in place, okay, to see how best she could attract the best qualified folks to the department.
David Carr
2:12:08
Well, think that what we've seen is there's been a commitment from the administration from the start to do more hiring, but it never has exceeded the pace of people retiring.
2:12:17
And I think that, obviously, it's not just a function of dollars and cents, but I think that is an important component of what we can do to incentivize people to consider a career in the police department.
2:12:28
So do we could we consider something like hiring bonuses?
2:12:31
Can we revisit things for collective bargaining agreements down the line?
Jacques Jiha
2:12:34
I'm open to all ideas that the commissioner put bring to us, okay, because I understand the challenges that she's dealing with.
2:12:43
And again, as I said, we will discuss with her any great ideas that she has in terms of trying to bring as many people in as possible.
2:12:52
As I said, typically the class is about maximum 1,000, but knowing the challenge that she's facing in dealing with the attrition, we give her the authorization to hire up to 1,600.
David Carr
2:13:05
I appreciate that.
2:13:05
So this final question because I'm running out of time.
2:13:08
I appreciate the administration's efforts to control migrant shelter costs, among other things.
2:13:13
You know, we've seen a precipitous decline in in the census since the beginning of the year.
2:13:19
At what point do you see, you know, a zeroing out the this component of the budget so that it could be spent on on other items that we all care about?
Jacques Jiha
2:13:28
Yeah.
2:13:28
I believe our forecast for the end of this year is, like, 30,000?
2:13:32
By the end of this year is like I can't tell you exactly when we're gonna get to zero, but our goal is 30,000, was it?
Kenneth Godiner
2:13:44
Yeah.
2:13:44
I think that's about where our last forecast was, and we're gonna continue the policies and continue to monitor the trends.
2:13:53
We've seen something of an uptick in in net exits over since we released our forecast.
2:14:00
Although, I mean, the thing with this is if you look at the data every day, which sadly I do, it's very variable.
2:14:06
So, you know, the question is will that slow as the as the as you have fewer people in care, right, it would mean in order to to have the same number of net exits, a greater percentage would have to be leaving, right, all the time.
2:14:21
If you think about x percent of 45,000 versus now 42,000, it's going to make a difference.
2:14:29
So we could, you know, depending on what's happening, we could be in the 25,000 to 30,000 range, but we have to keep monitoring.
2:14:37
Yeah.
2:14:38
And we'll have a new update forecast in exec that reflects what we've learned in terms of data.
2:14:44
Because, you know, I was telling people for a long time, in the first eighteen months of going up, it was always brand new.
2:14:49
Right?
2:14:49
And now that it's been trending down, hasn't been doing that for that long either.
2:14:54
So it's hard to have like a solid trend that you can rely on, but we keep looking at it and and making updates to our forecast.
2:15:01
So if things continue at pace, we'll probably have a lower forecast at that time.
Jacques Jiha
2:15:06
The plan assumed that we would be at 42,000 by the end of the fiscal year, but we're dropping much faster than that.
2:15:12
So we're looking maybe 25,000, 30 thousand by the end of the fiscal year.
David Carr
2:15:16
Thank you.
2:15:17
Thank you, chair.