James Hendon
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My name is James Hendon.
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I serve as commissioner of the New York City Department of Veteran Services.
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And, you know, in the interest of time, I'll be reading selections from our broader written testimony, which has been formally submitted to the council.
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Good afternoon, chair Holden, members of the Veterans Committee, other city council members, all who are here today.
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My name is James Hendon.
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I serve as commissioner of the New York City Department of Veterans Services.
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Joining me today is Lamar Wheeler, our agency's senior executive director of housing support services along with Michael Bokini, senior executive director for veterans support services.
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We are happy to join you to discuss the speaker's state of the city report card program, specifically the inaugural report that was least released about DBS.
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I wanna start by saying thank you for taking the time to put this analysis together.
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A great deal of consideration, diligence, and care went into drafting this document.
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We appreciate the report card, and to its creators, we appreciate you.
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Now to get into it, the speaker released a 76 page written report, a document that was roughly one year in the making.
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We're responding to that report through delivering testimony during a city council hearing.
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There's asymmetry between what was written and how we're responding to it.
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And for that reason, we will not be able to address every single item written in a report that's nearly 20,000 words long.
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We will honor the spirit of the report while addressing its feedback through four key themes.
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I urge the council and all who are interested to review our most recent city council testimony.
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This was delivered during the preliminary budget hearing held on Tuesday, 03/25/2025.
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That testimony, which can be viewed at legislator.council.nyc.gov, speaks in detail about our department's history, how DVS has arrayed our primary services, and what we do to fulfill our charter mandate.
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It reviews our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and it relays current priorities.
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In the interest of time, I'll try not to speak too deeply about things that were already mentioned there.
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And then another flag, there are execution approaches made in the scorecard that claim to have been informed by municipal and higher level government work in Australia and Europe.
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Some of these norms, while purportedly common outside of The United States, have no precedent for being done at the city, state, or federal levels inside of America.
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And then a final flag, I, you know, pray that we have a healthy discussion.
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Everything that follows is not born from a place of let's blame this person for this or that person for that.
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It comes from a place of let's speak openly about what's going on, what has gone well, what needs work, and what does the path look like as we navigate towards a better tomorrow.
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It is clear from the report, those who contributed to the scorecard acted with benevolent intentions, kind hearts, and good faith.
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They acted in a way that removed ego and maintained focus on the veteran community.
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We aim to embody that same mood.
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Now to some of those major themes I mentioned.
