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Q&A
Council member thanks testifier and asks about budget cut impacts
2:14:05
ยท
123 sec
Council Member Shekar Krishnan expresses gratitude for the testimony and work of parks workers. He then asks about the concerns of parks workers regarding budget cuts and their impact on the workforce.
- Emphasizes that investing in parks budget is investing in workers
- Requests description of coworkers' concerns about budget cuts
- Seeks to understand the impact of cuts on the parks workforce
Shekar Krishnan
2:14:05
Thank you so much for for your testimony, for your work, for your membership's work too.
2:14:11
One question I have is, you know, as a union leader as well, representing so many different parks workers in our system, when we don't it's my view, and I think a lot of my colleagues would agree, that investing in our parks budget, as I've said, is investing in our workers.
2:14:25
And the cuts that you all face directly impacts workers on the front lines.
2:14:29
Can you describe what you hear from also your coworkers too about their concerns about when the parks budget gets cut?
2:14:37
What is the impact?
2:14:38
What does that have on the workforce?
2:14:40
Well,
Dilcy Benn
2:14:40
I've been in parks thirty point two years and I gotta give a lot of my members credit because we don't get paid a lot of money to do what we do, but we do it every day and we do it with a lack of equipment, a lack of I have 12 homeless people.
2:14:57
We have homeless people that work for the city of New York.
2:15:00
It's a lot of things that and I'm quite sure everybody know how cold it was this winter.
2:15:05
There's no part of parks that's inside.
2:15:07
We work outside.
2:15:08
This has been a brutal winter for us where we had a short shortage of equipment and like I said to you to be homeless at that time and have people that don't have food to eat is insane.
2:15:21
But they do it every day.
2:15:23
This is what they come back to.
2:15:24
But I have a lot of seasonals that come back every year, they have to leave and these jobs could help them have some kind of stability in their lives.
2:15:35
Alright?
2:15:35
So we could have seasonal that come back.
2:15:37
We could have other people that have families that don't have permanent jobs.
2:15:44
And like I said to you, the main thing is taking care of all the ground that we have to cover.
2:15:49
It's a lot of ground.
2:15:50
And there's no way for us to cover it with the amount of people that we have to work.
2:15:54
But and I appreciate all the help that we're getting from the city council, especially from you, the PayFear Coalition, and that come out for us every year.
2:16:04
Like I say, Mark Levine and everybody that comes out to try to help us, but it's just not enough.