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QUESTION
How is understaffing affecting city agencies' ability to achieve their goals?
1:31:01
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Council Member Lincoln Restler highlights the negative impact of understaffing on city agencies, notably in health department inspections, tuberculosis control, and building department response times.
- Many agencies report understaffing as a primary cause of failing to meet goals.
- Specific impacts include a decline in restaurant inspections by 11%, and increased response times for building complaints by almost 20%.
- Operations Director Dan Steinberg acknowledges the issue and points to successful staffing outcomes in certain areas.
- Steinberg mentions increased efficiency in civil service exams and improvements in the housing maintenance section's inspection units.
- Efforts to address staffing issues include implementing flexible work policies and enhancing recruitment efforts.
Lincoln Restler
1:31:01
So I'm gonna shift gears to staffing, which is another one of my the things that I've been most fixated on over these 2 years, the decline in the city workforce.
1:31:13
Many agencies many agency sections in the PMMR identified understaffing as a primary cause of their inability to achieve their goal.
1:31:21
So agencies were acknowledging they don't have the bodies to do the work.
1:31:24
Staffing is explicitly cited as a factor behind several performance declines.
1:31:29
Most notably, the health department conducting 11 fewer percent restaurant inspections and their ability to control and conduct excuse me, to conduct tuberculosis control activities has been severely impacted by their lack of staffing The Department of Building's average response time for priority b complaints has decreased by 2 days, almost 20% increase sorry, increased by 2 days.
Dan Steinberg
1:31:52
That's an only alarm target.
Lincoln Restler
1:31:54
Still on target, much slower, not a helpful thing when we're moving in the wrong direction.
1:31:58
And so and I could literally pull out every line in the PMMRs, I'm sure you all looked at, where agency sided staffing is a primary factor in why they can't do their jobs.
1:32:11
His operations recommended as a result of seeing that trend, which I'm sure you all did, that agencies be allowed to fill more vacancies and hire more staff to address specific concerns like tuberculosis spread, restaurant inspections, and the like, especially to address vacancies that are impacting critical health and safety issues.
Dan Steinberg
1:32:36
I I do wanna be clear that operations is is mostly the reason you know that information.
Lincoln Restler
1:32:41
And and we have No.
1:32:42
No.
1:32:42
I'm not criticizing you
Dan Steinberg
1:32:43
for sure.
Lincoln Restler
1:32:44
Yeah.
1:32:44
I'm asking what we do about.
Dan Steinberg
1:32:45
Totally.
1:32:46
And I'm not even saying it defensively.
1:32:47
It's it's part of the process of of generating the the report is insisting that he's CCs be candid about about the roots of their performance issues.
1:32:57
And and so we're proud of the fact that staffing is explicitly mentioned many times.
1:33:02
I have a tab here an entire section.
1:33:06
So so we are involved in some of the, like, flexible work policy.
1:33:10
Our project management team has been heavily involved in that and in some of the some of the recruitment efforts that that that Decast staged to to really facilitate hiring.
1:33:23
You'll you'll see that the cast numbers have actually improved in terms of number of civil service exams and the the timeliness by which they they complete them.
1:33:32
There are some staffing success stories in the MMR.
1:33:36
I would point to the HPD housing maintenance section in terms of their inspection units.
1:33:44
Set almost every record in terms of the number of inspections, the number of complaints closed out, and the number of issues remediated.
1:33:52
And and that's a really big deal because people had been avoiding inspectors coming to their homes for several years during the pandemic.
1:34:00
So I think that there are success stories that we could point to.
1:34:04
But but that we're glad that you have this information, and and I I think it's appropriate to Are you making