Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Minimum standards and criteria for NYC cooling centers
0:33:23
ยท
93 sec
Council Member Keith Powers inquires about the minimum standards and criteria for a facility to be eligible as a cooling center. Christina Farrell outlines the basic requirements for cooling centers in NYC.
- Centers must be open to the entire public
- Air conditioning is required, but not to a specific temperature
- Facilities must provide seating, access to water, and a contact person for coordination
- Accessibility is preferred but not mandatory, with about 90% of centers being accessible
Keith Powers
0:33:23
Got it.
0:33:25
The last question here.
0:33:27
What is the minimum standard to be won?
0:33:29
And are there things that you need to have?
0:33:31
Like, you need to have access to public bathrooms?
0:33:33
Do you need obviously, I would imagine you need central air air conditioning or some other cooling mechanism.
0:33:38
But, like, what is the criteria to actually be eligible for one?
Christina Farrell
0:33:41
Sure.
0:33:43
Again, we keep it pretty low because we want to encourage different types of organizations to be a cooling center.
0:33:49
You need to be open to the public, to the entire public, not to just a you know a specific population.
0:33:56
You have to have air conditioning, it doesn't need to be 65.
0:34:01
I think it has to be you know in the range of the mid seventies.
0:34:05
You need access to seating and access to water and you have to be able to have a contact that is willing to work with our staff because sometimes, you know, we do have warning that heats coming, but the if we're on the margins, can change over the weekend, it can change on a holiday.
0:34:24
Like I said last year, we were activated on Juneteenth, we were activated several Sundays and not all organizations you know run 20 fourseven like our organizations.
0:34:35
And we prefer obviously that they are accessible, about 90% of cooling centers are accessible since they are mostly adult, older adult centers and libraries but not all of them are.
0:34:46
So you know we work with them.
0:34:48
There are once people have air conditioning, we can probably work through the other things if they really would like to be a cooling center.
Keith Powers
0:34:55
Got it.
0:34:55
Thank you.
0:34:56
Thanks to the chair.