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Q&A
Lessons learned from Queen Central zone implementation
0:31:36
ยท
3 min
Acting Commissioner Javier Lojan and Assistant Commissioner Frank Marshall discuss the key lessons learned from implementing the Commercial Waste Zone in Queen Central. They explain how these insights will inform future zone implementations.
- The initial four-month outreach period was found to be too long, with most engagement occurring in the last two months
- Businesses tended to wait until closer to the deadline to make decisions and sign up
- The process of obtaining contracts from every business was time-consuming
- DSNY successfully ensured all businesses were under a CWZ contract by January 3
- Data showed a correlation between outreach efforts and customer sign-ups, with most movement occurring in the last 6-8 weeks
Shaun Abreu
0:31:36
has the I know you mentioned you've you've learned a lot about the implementation and I'd like to learn more about that.
0:31:42
What what have what has the department learned from Queen Central about the time needed for implementation of a new zone?
0:31:49
And how many new zones does ZSNY anticipate can be implement can be implemented at one time?
Javier Lojan
0:31:55
So one of the things that the main things we learned was the the the initial outreach and communications period.
0:32:06
We started in September of twenty twenty four and that ran all the way through December of twenty twenty four.
0:32:13
So we anticipated having a four month period where we were gonna go out and canvas all the businesses and make sure they were aware of the program, the law, their rights, and how how it was designed.
0:32:26
And we noticed that the first two months we really didn't gain much from it because a lot I guess was too far out.
0:32:34
You know, the nature of of a human being is that they wait close to the deadline to make a decision and that's what we learned that once we got closer to December is really when we started noticing people taking us seriously and saying, okay, wow, this is actually happening.
0:32:47
So that's one of the biggest things we learned and then that's when like going forward with our plan, we cut out the four month, you know, period into two months.
0:32:55
The other thing we learned that was from Queen Central was the contracts.
0:33:00
So every carter had a have a contract which with every business.
0:33:07
So that's very time consuming obviously for us and the Carter's and even the businesses because a lot of the businesses, the decision makers aren't always available so they have to find time in their busy schedule to kind of you know have that.
0:33:19
So that's one of the things.
0:33:21
There's a portal that they sign that they upload that you know that for our reviews so that's that's very time consuming.
0:33:28
And I'll just pass it to assistant commissioner Frank Marshall for anything else on on on the Queen Central lessons learned.
Frank Marshall
0:33:36
Yeah.
0:33:36
I think one of the one major factor was that we wanted to make sure that on January 3, all businesses were under a CWZ contract, no disturbance.
0:33:47
Happy to report that occurred.
0:33:50
So one of the lessons that we learned from that was, as commissioner mentioned, is that even though we had extensive outreach, I just wanna kinda build upon that, was that our outreach actually started in July of twenty twenty four.
0:34:03
So not even in September, '3 months prior, we found that many of the customers in Queen Central did not sign up when we opened up.
0:34:13
It was a trickle effect and until the last six to eight weeks that's when we saw the most movement in regards to customer sign ups and I just wanted to give a little bit more color in regards to why we decided to get into schedule to to a two month sign up period rather than the initial four with the plus three months of outreach.
0:34:32
So we did we have proven and have gathered data in regards to correlating the outreach efforts to the actual sign ups of the customer.
0:34:44
And the results is that it was a long period.
0:34:47
It didn't move the needle.
0:34:49
But once we got down to the last two months, that's when we saw movement and I think that's has informed us that moving forward let's try this two month well out rather than the four.