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Q&A
Impact of budget cuts on DEP operations
0:32:37
ยท
4 min
Council Member Restler and Commissioner Aggarwala discuss the impact of budget cuts on DEP operations, including how staffing shortages affect various divisions and daily operations.
- The 15% budget cut (peg) affected only tax levy functions, not water utility operations.
- Job titles with the highest vacancy rates include trades engineers, police, and customer service.
- DEP has relied heavily on overtime to ensure critical operations are fully staffed.
- Some non-essential work, such as police patrols and preventative plant maintenance, has been reduced.
Lincoln Restler
0:32:37
So I should be asking director Zhiha this question, but my recollection was that the 15% peg was threatened and that except for the agencies that made some sort of deal with OMB and agreed to a trade off, that that the rest of the agencies only actually suffered a 5% peg and didn't have the three rounds of five percent.
0:32:59
Is that your recollection as well?
0:33:01
Or is
Rohit Aggarwala
0:33:01
that it's not your I be honest.
0:33:03
I don't
Lincoln Restler
0:33:03
pay that much attention I just think that that should be revisited since not every agency even the agencies that were subject to the pegs that were nonexempted agencies did not suffer a 15% peg.
0:33:14
Whatever deal was made with OMB should have to be revisited so that you can restore your staffing levels and the critical functions that we all wanna see DEP more with more capacity to address.
0:33:27
So we'll follow-up with director Jihal on that, but I think that is absolutely unfair.
0:33:34
You know, as you mentioned in your testimony, DEP is largely funded by our water bills.
0:33:41
Why, therefore, is DEP subject to, you know, OMB's limitations on your why does why does OMB why is DEP therefore subject to to OMB's limitations on your hiring practices when it's not CTL money, traditional CTL money that funds the agency?
Rohit Aggarwala
0:34:04
Well well, just to be clear, the peg did not affect our water utility
Lincoln Restler
0:34:09
Understood.
0:34:09
Headcount.
Rohit Aggarwala
0:34:10
Right?
0:34:10
So that was only the tax level.
0:34:11
Yes.
0:34:12
But DEP is a city agency.
0:34:16
Right?
0:34:16
And so all of the city, all of our functions related to budget and personnel, etcetera, DEP adheres to those processes just like any other city agency regardless of the source of funding.
0:34:31
OMB has traditionally made a distinction where there is a policy that is driven by the city's tax levy fiscal situation that that at their discretion they treat our water rate functions differently as they did in September of twenty twenty three.
0:34:49
Right.
0:34:49
But the overall management of the agency, we are fully agency.
Lincoln Restler
0:34:53
Understood.
0:34:54
I just to your point, there has been no distinction made in your in how OMB places guardrails and stifles hiring at DEP than they have at any other agency despite the fact that it's the water bills that fund the overwhelming operations of the agency.
0:35:14
And I think that that's wrong.
0:35:16
So it's not your job to say that, it's mine.
0:35:18
But I just I wanna be
Rohit Aggarwala
0:35:20
I will just point out, that wasn't quite my point, Jeremy.
Lincoln Restler
0:35:22
Wasn't I'm making that point.
0:35:24
I I wanna be clear.
0:35:25
You're not saying that.
0:35:26
You've gotta be more careful than me.
0:35:28
I'm in trouble with director Jihao all the time.
0:35:30
The So could you just help elaborate for us which divisions or job titles within DEP currently have the highest numbers of vacancies or the highest vacancy rates?
0:35:40
And how are these staffing shortages impacting daily operations?
Rohit Aggarwala
0:35:44
Of course.
0:35:45
So the job titles where we have the highest rates are some of our trades engineers which is a big problem for us and for many of our fellow agencies, police and customer service.
0:36:02
Our police vacancy rate is actually 25% and so those are the areas.
0:36:08
You know I will say per your preamble to this set of questions, no one should think that we are doing a less good job of supplying water.
0:36:18
Right?
0:36:18
And we have across most of our functions relied very heavily on overtime to ensure that the critical operations are fully staffed.
0:36:30
Of course we are adhering to every regulatory requirement.
0:36:33
Of course we have not changed our water testing or our water sampling or anything like that.
0:36:40
In some cases we have had to pare back non essential work such as some police patrols, some preventative plant maintenance, things like that.
0:36:50
On two occasions over the last year we've implemented an emergency contract to address staff shortages that we could not address with those.
Lincoln Restler
0:37:00
Which emergency contracts?
Rohit Aggarwala
0:37:01
One was related to our marine unit which runs the sludge boats that transport sludge to some of our treatment plants.
0:37:10
And one was our asbestos lab.
0:37:12
That one happily resolved.
0:37:14
We were able to do the hiring.
0:37:15
So that emergency contract we only had to use very briefly.
0:37:18
But you know those are things where we have a minimum viable operation and and one staffing goes below a certain level, and once you ask people to work for six or seven days a week, you know, just they they can't keep it up.
Lincoln Restler
0:37:32
I I have every confidence that DEP is continuing to do a stellar job, but it is, as those examples indicate, it's really hard, to make do with so so such a dramatic reduction in head count.