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Involuntary assignment of businesses to awardees in Queens Central
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Council Member Abreu questions DSNY about the number of businesses involuntarily assigned to awardees in Queens Central. DSNY officials provide data and clarify the assignment process.
- Total businesses in Queens Central: 8,000 (including 1,500 identified through outreach)
- Approximately 5,500 businesses were assigned by DSNY
- Nearly 700 businesses chose a carter between the pre-assignment and assignment date
- Businesses were allowed to negotiate and switch carters even after assignments were made
Shaun Abreu
0:53:36
Some businesses as discussed earlier did not choose an awardee to contract with for their waste collection needs so DSNY assigned assigned awardees to businesses as required by law.
0:53:47
How many businesses were involuntarily assigned in Queen Central because of an initial failure to choose an awardee?
Javier Lojan
0:53:55
So approximately 5,500 businesses were assigned a Carter in Queen Central.
Shaun Abreu
0:54:02
Wait.
0:54:03
So does that mean that 900 were were voluntarily assigned?
Javier Lojan
0:54:09
No.
0:54:10
That's the number, right?
0:54:11
Five hundred?
0:54:12
Six hundred
Frank Marshall
0:54:16
five.
0:54:16
Six hundred five.
0:54:17
Were assigned.
Javier Lojan
0:54:18
Oh, right.
0:54:19
685 chose a Carter between the pre assignment period and the assignment period.
Shaun Abreu
0:54:25
So more than 80% were involuntarily assigned?
Javier Lojan
0:54:29
That's correct.
Frank Marshall
0:54:31
The question.
Shaun Abreu
0:54:32
I'm trying to figure out what percentage were involuntarily assigned and what percentage were voluntarily assigned.
Frank Marshall
0:54:39
So just to back up a little bit just to get our baseline numbers correct.
0:54:44
Earlier the commissioner mentioned that in the BIC registry there's approximately 5,500 or 6,500 customers that were identified in the BIC registry.
0:54:53
But due to our outreach we identified an additional 1,500 bringing the total new customers of Queen Central to 8,000.
0:55:02
To what?
0:55:02
To 8,000 customers of Queen Central.
0:55:05
Combination of our outreach and a combination of the big registry.
0:55:09
So our baseline number is 8,000 known customers in Queen Central.
0:55:13
The number of customers that we assigned end up being, just bear with me, 5,500.
0:55:22
So out of the 8,000, 50 five hundred businesses were assigned through DSNY.
Shaun Abreu
0:55:27
I mean I think that this big, it's a big number of businesses that involuntarily do it.
Frank Marshall
0:55:31
Yes.
Shaun Abreu
0:55:32
So I think that raises I think a lot of red flags.
0:55:35
I mean obviously folks are participating and you guys did what you had to do in terms of voluntarily assigning but I'm concerned that businesses weren't voluntarily assigning and in a way you're a market participant when most of these when borough y now gets that share as well.
0:55:53
It's I don't know it's just strikes me as there's something going, there's something weird here.
Javier Lojan
0:55:59
Chair just one of the things I do wanna highlight is that we even after they were assigned to Carter, it's not like they were locked in for the remainder.
Shaun Abreu
0:56:08
That's right.
0:56:09
They can still negotiate
Javier Lojan
0:56:09
Even after the start of the zone after January 3, they were able to then because at that point they some people might have not realized like, oh, this is actually happening.
0:56:20
Correct.
0:56:21
Busy lives, you run a business, you got a lot of stuff going on, we recognize that.
0:56:24
We gave them multiple opportunities to switch Carter's and encourage them to negotiate.
Shaun Abreu
0:56:29
Do you have the numbers on businesses that were assigned but then decided to switch by virtue of just negotiating?
Neil Eisenberg
0:56:46
Hi, chair.
0:56:47
Nearly 700 businesses chose a carter between the pre assignment and the assignment date.
0:56:53
So of the ones that were assigned, almost 700 of them
Shaun Abreu
0:56:55
That went somewhere else?
0:56:57
They chose their
Neil Eisenberg
0:56:57
own carter at that point.