Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
DSNY's approach to outreach and education in street vending enforcement
0:56:26
·
117 sec
Council Member Amanda Farías inquires about the Department of Sanitation's incorporation of education and outreach components in their enforcement efforts. Joshua Goodman, Deputy Commissioner of Public Affairs and Customer Experience at DSNY, explains their approach.
- DSNY conducts outreach and education through various venues, including recent improvements in language access.
- A specific team of 35 sanitation police officers focuses on street vending issues.
- These officers are knowledgeable about available resources and can connect vendors to information from other agencies like SBS, DCWP, and the health department.
- While sanitation police officers provide connections to resources, they do not conduct in-depth counseling themselves.
Amanda Farías
0:56:26
And I just wanted to highlight Deputy Commissioner Goodman from DSNY, thank you for highlighting our language access work from our corridor tours, it's super appreciated.
0:56:38
And then I wanted to ask some questions surrounding the enforcement piece.
0:56:42
I know you folks are the lead agency on enforcement and I guess for me my question is around the piece on outreach and education right.
0:56:53
As you folks are the people that are supposed to be going out enforcing whether there's what type of vending is happening and if rules and restrictions are being followed, why do you think the agency hasn't quite incorporated much of the education or outreach components?
Joshua Goodman
0:57:09
I would frame it slightly differently, and I think that our discussion about language access is a good example of how we do a tremendous amount of outreach and education.
0:57:17
It's just that outreach and education has to take place in a wide variety of venues.
0:57:23
You brought up these issues about a few languages that you believed were underserved among our team and you were totally right.
0:57:30
And we were so happy to be able to take that feedback and make the change based on that.
0:57:35
And so our there are low triple digits of sanitation police overall, but 35 of them are focused on street vending.
0:57:44
And that's by design.
0:57:46
Having a specific team that knows the issues of these laws, that knows the issues of these communities, and that is working on this every day.
0:57:54
So these are people who know what resources are available and can connect vendors to those resources.
0:58:01
They're just not the ones actually providing resources.
0:58:03
So they can say, hey, you know, here's the website where you can get more info from SBS.
0:58:07
Here's the website where you can get more info from DCWP.
0:58:10
Here's the website or the info about info sessions held by the health department.
0:58:15
It's just that a sanitation police officer in the field is not the appropriate one to be conducting that counseling, although they do make it a point to always connect people to that counseling.