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Q&A
Council Member Krishnan questions Commissioner Donoghue on Parks Enforcement Patrol officers
3:21:39
·
3 min
Council Member Shekar Krishnan questions NYC Department of Parks and Recreation Commissioner Sue Donoghue about Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) officers. The discussion covers the current budget and headcount for PEP officers, retention strategies, work distribution across boroughs, and park coverage.
- The budgeted tax levy headcount for PEP is 369, with an active headcount of 344 officers.
- The Parks Department is implementing various retention strategies, including job fairs, internal morale committees, and "stay interviews."
- PEP officers are deployed equitably across boroughs, with approximately 60 officers per borough, and are moved based on need.
Shekar Krishnan
3:21:39
I want to break down each of these lines and follow-up on some of the things that we touched on in our preliminary budget hearing.
3:21:44
So for PEP officers in particular, what is the current budget and actual headcount for PEP officers?
3:22:01
And what steps does the agency take to increase retention for PEP officers?
3:22:06
Because again that's about 60 PEP officers per borough.
3:22:08
So how are you all doing what you can to retain those PEP officers?
3:23:35
And just looking at their work schedule, it's about 60 officers per borough.
3:23:38
How many acres of park is each officer assigned to cover?
3:23:44
Are there any parks that they're not assigned to cover?
3:24:12
And are there parks that don't get coverage at all?
3:24:26
What's the optimal number you think you would need to ensure adequate coverage across the park system?
Sue Donoghue
3:21:50
So the budgeted tax levy headcount for the PEP division team is $3.69 with an active head count of three forty four PEP officers.
3:22:13
Absolutely and thank you.
3:22:14
It's an important question.
3:22:16
And we are keenly focused on PEP recruitment and retention strategies that can be used to help motivate and retain our employees.
3:22:24
We aim to recruit and hire a talented and diverse pool of PEP officers, and we absolutely welcome dialogue with the council and the larger community to help us make that happen.
3:22:36
Our recruitment efforts include attending job fairs, handing out flyers, And also in terms of retention, we have done a number of different things.
3:22:48
We have an internal morale committee, a working group that meets regularly.
3:22:52
We have annual PEP command meetings to improve communication, build relationships, try and detect issues before they escalate, boost confidence in our officers and leadership.
3:23:04
We have a platform we've put in place for employee feedback.
3:23:08
We've also implemented, not just for PEP but in our agency, something called stay interviews where we meet with folks, meet with our PEP officers.
3:23:17
We're piloting this in Staten Island to really get a sense of why you're staying, what is making it so it's just a job that you're staying at so that we can focus on discovering trends, implementing those strategies is going to make it so that we have a better retention rate for our PEP officers.
3:23:47
We don't break off the PEP assignments by acreage.
3:23:52
As I said earlier, what we're doing is we're deploying them as equitably as we can across the boroughs, and then we are moving our officers based on need.
3:24:02
If there is an increase in illegal vending, if there's an increase in illegal dumping, we are moving our officers when and where we can and where they're needed most.
3:24:15
There wouldn't be parks that don't get coverage at all.
3:24:18
As I said, they are covered on a rotating basis.
3:24:23
We're trying to in each borough cover as many parks as possible.
3:24:31
I don't think we have an optimal number that would say we recognize and appreciate your recognition of the importance of our PEP officers.
3:24:42
And right now the way they're deployed is strategic so we can get to the areas that we need.
3:24:50
But I don't think we have, I could say like an optimal number.