Committee on Workforce Development

Good afternoon. Welcome to the Committee on Workforce Development. At this time, we ask that you please silence all electronics. If you wish to testify, please see one of the sergeant-at-arms in the back, and at no point, please do not approach the dais. Chair, you may begin.

Good afternoon and welcome to today's oversight hearing of the Committee on Workforce Development. My name is Julie Won and I have the privilege of chairing this committee. Before we begin, I'd like to recognize my colleagues who have joined us, Councilmember Hanif and Councilmember Epstein. Today we're looking at the Office of Community Hiring. The idea behind community hiring is simple.

The city spends billions of dollars each year on contracts, and the companies and nonprofits that get awarded those contracts should be hiring New Yorkers who need the work. In 2023, Albany gave the city the power to set hiring goals on city contracts for low-income New Yorkers, NYCHA residents, and people living in our highest poverty neighborhoods. The city's own rules took effect in January 2025.

When the program launched, the administration projected 36,000 jobs a year once it was fully up and running. In February, New York City Talent told this committee that more than 200 procurements were already out on the street, And that program could reach upwards of $20 billion in city contracts each year. But then we started looking at the Office of Community Hiring's own reports.

OCH's latest quarterly report was posted just last week, and it shows 179 contracts worth about $3 billion carrying a community hiring goal up to— up from 60 contracts worth about $1 billion in March. That's real growth, but unfortunately the progress hasn't kept up. Of the 83 construction contracts, only 8 reported any progress, and 6 of these 8 were below the 30% community hiring goal.

On all 5 contracts from the apprenticeship goal that reported progress, the share of hours worked for— by apprentices from these communities was zero. For service contracts, 94 contracts now carry community hiring goals that add up to more than 3,000 hires, but more than half of them Still have no progress reported at all. And some of the numbers that have— that are reported don't add up.

One Department of Social Services workforce development program in Queens has a goal of 31 hires, but OCH's report shows it at more than 1,200% of that goal. Either something remarkable is happening or OCH is counting something other than new hires. And nowhere in these reports does the city say how many people have actually been hired. The law requires these reports to show how many people were hired, what they're paid, and who they are, and that information still isn't in there.

So today I want to understand what's behind these numbers where nothing has been reported. Has the work already started and vendors just aren't reporting, or is it that OCH doesn't have the staff or the systems to follow up? In February, New York City Talent told us that 30— it has 37 staff in total. I want to know how many of them are working on community hiring and whether that's enough to keep up with the program that's nearly tripled in size in a single quarter.

I also want to know what happened to the program's very first procurement. In June 2024, the city announced $1.2 billion in procurement for security guard and fire safety services as its first community hiring effort, and the city expected those contracts to be placed by 2025. They still don't appear in any of OCH's reports. This isn't the city's first try at this.

Back in 2019, under Hire NYC, about 80% of job referrals were marked as pending for years because employers never told the city whether anyone was hired. We can't afford to repeat that. What we'll be looking for today is a real count of how many New Yorkers have been hired through community hiring, a date for when the city will publish the data the law requires, and a plan for holding vendors accountable when they don't meet their goals.

Before we turn it over to the administration, I'd like to acknowledge the Workforce Development Committee staff, Senior Counsel Alex Polonov, Senior Policy Analyst William Hognek, and Financial Analyst Spencer Kuhn. And I just want to continue to acknowledge that the mayor has been very vocal and very upfront in the news, as well as on his social media and in public press, that he wants to hire from the City of New York, and that these are job openings that we want to continue to have this conversation.

So with that, I'll turn it over to committee counsel to administer the oath.

Thank you, Chair. Alex Polonoff, Senior Counsel. Will all members of the administration testifying today please raise your right hands? Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in your testimony today and to respond honestly to councilmember questions? Thank you. You may begin when ready.

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Chair Wan and members of the New York City Council Committee on Workforce Development. My name is Douglas Harre, and I'm the Executive Director of the New York City Office of Talent and Workforce Development, or NYC Talent. I'm joined today by Gee Lee, Executive Director of NYC Talent's Office of Community Hiring, or OCH.

Thank you for inviting us to testify today. NYC Talent's mission is to ensure that the city's workforce system connects New Yorkers to good jobs and helps employers access local talent. Our public workforce ecosystem includes more than 120 programs administered by nearly 30 city agencies, including the, including the Department of Small Business Services, the Human Resources Administration, the Department of Youth and Community Development, the City University of New York, and New York City Public Schools.

While each agency focuses on its own core mission, NYC Talent works across these partners to align the city's workforce strategy with job seeker needs employer demand, and a changing economy. Community Hiring exemplifies NYC Talent's efforts to design and launch interagency initiatives to deliver a better workforce system. Community Hiring is a first-of-its-kind program in the nation that aims to embed equity and opportunity into city contracting.

New York City's local government has many city agencies that provide a wide, a wide range of services for New Yorkers, from designing parks and playgrounds to providing healthcare and childcare to repairing roads and bridges. While some of this work is done by city employees, the city also contracts with vendors, which include businesses and nonprofits, to deliver billions of dollars in services every year.

Community hiring allows the city to leverage its purchasing power by setting workforce goals on these contracts for vendors to hire low-income individuals and residents of low-income communities, including NYCHA housing. Community hiring was authorized by state legislation in 2023, and NYC Talent was tasked with transforming the framework established in the law into an operational program that has a tangible impact on New Yorkers.

While there are similar programs in other cities and states that are generally limited to the construction industry, the city's program goes further and applies to a broad range of contracts, including construction, human services like healthcare, standard services like cleaning and moving, and professional services like technology and engineering. OCH manages the rollout and implementation of the program, supports city agencies and vendors, and reports on progress toward community hiring goals.

We are proud to share that, as a result of these efforts, 528 contracts have community hiring goals, which represents $13.3 billion in contract value. Despite most of these contracts being recently registered and early on in their contract term, we already have approximately 1,200 community hires employed by vendors to date. I want to take this opportunity to walk you through the work that has made these accomplishments possible.

After the state legislation that authorized community hiring was signed by the Governor in November 2023, We were required to complete the city's formal rulemaking process to establish the operational framework for the program. This included determining details about what type of contracts are covered, how city agencies set goals, and what vendors need to do to comply with goals.

OCH worked collaboratively while developing these rules so they would be informed by the perspectives of the many stakeholders impacted by community hiring. OCH heard from 120 unique external partners through one-on-one meetings, information sessions, roundtables, and panel discussions. discussions. These groups included organized labor, elected officials, workforce development organizations, industry groups, pre-apprenticeship programs, human service providers, and community organizations.

OCH also engaged with 47 different city agencies and offices through one-on-one meetings and biweekly agency working groups. After this process, the community hiring rules went into effect January 23rd, 2025. Since community hiring is tied to city contracting, our major priority in 2025 was ensuring that city agency staff were aware, trained, and prepared to set goals on their agency applicable contracts.

We reviewed contract information from Passport, monitored procurements being released by agencies, and held approximately 200 meetings with city agency procurement staff to discuss opportunities to set goals. We held training sessions that were attended by over 115 city agency staff representing 27 agencies, developed an agency-specific FAQ document, and created standard contract language. After a phased rollout, by September 2025, we had supported all mayoral agencies to ensure they were prepared to implement community hiring across their applicable contracts.

We also focused on preparing city vendors so that they had the information they needed to understand, comply with, and benefit from community hiring. These efforts included publishing a vendor-specific FAQ document on our website, attending community and procurement events to conduct vendor outreach, and presenting during pre-solicitation conferences to provide guidance to vendors interested in responding to solicitations for procurements with goals.

To date, we have presented at 77 pre-solicitation conferences. To help vendors fill their workforce needs and meet their community hiring goals, we established a network of referral sources, which are entities authorized by our office to connect vendors with qualified job seekers in search of opportunities. We intentionally designed our referral source network to drive more employers and more jobs to the public workforce system.

Currently, our network includes 81 organizations, including labor unions, SPS's Workforce ONE Career Centers, HRA's Business Link, and dozens of community-based organizations that have contracts with agencies like DYCD for job placement services. Referral sources conduct outreach to their communities, provide free job placement and recruitment services, determine job seekers are eligible as community hires, and help ensure that candidates meet a vendor's employment needs.

Accountability is embedded into the design of community hiring, as we are required to publish quarterly reports on contracts subject to community hiring goals. These reports include aggregate and vendor-specific progress towards goals and information about placements and demographics of community hires. Regular reporting will not only increase transparency, but will also provide a long-term opportunity for the city to continuously improve the program by identifying opportunities for targeted outreach or where training programs could be developed to better align the skills of job seekers with the needs of city vendors.

While we are still building some of the necessary digital infrastructure, we have published 9 quarterly reports to date, all of which can be found on our website, nyc.gov/communityhiring. Under the leadership of Mayor Mamdani and Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su, we are committed to strengthening the workforce system as essential public infrastructure to connect New Yorkers to opportunity.

Community hiring is an important tool that strategically leverages city contracts to drive employers and jobs to the public workforce system while also improving interconnectivity across city agencies, vendors, and programs so that job seekers and businesses mutually benefit. I know firsthand from working many years at the Mayor's Office of Contract Services that city procurement is an extremely complicated process that offers immense opportunity.

Embedding community hiring into this process, developing multiple digital systems for data tracking and analysis, strengthening collaborations with our partners in organized labor through project labor agreements, and preparing numerous disparate stakeholders for program implementation has been an enormous effort. I'm incredibly proud of the progress we have made to date, but know we still have a lot of work to do.

We look forward to answering your questions and discussing how we can work together to realize the full vision of community hiring and connect more New Yorkers to quality employment opportunities. Thank you, and we are happy to take your questions.

Thank you so much for your testimony. I also want to acknowledge we've been joined by Councilmember Phil Wong. Okay, to jump right in, for community hiring goals, OCH's rules took effect in January 2025, and as of January 2026, 179 registered city contracts worth about $2.96 billion carried community hiring goals. OCH's quarterly reports do not state how many people have been hired under any of them.

So could you please respond by answering how many New Yorkers have been hired as community hires since January 2025 across all contracts? And how many were residence-based community hires under— on construction and building service contracts? And how many were income-based community hires on service contracts? So to date, based on our public reports, we have about 1,200 community hires have been hired to date, and we're really proud of the work that has been done.

Many of these contracts are that we've reported on so far are early on in their contract term. So we anticipate that that number continues to grow. And also, as we— as you mentioned, Chair, the contracts that we published are just a subset of all the contracts that have registered to date. We will continue to publish the quarterly reports that will have even more contracts in it.

Most of the contracts— or sorry, the hires have been the income-based community hires. That's about a little over 1,100 or 1,136, and almost 70 residence-based community hires have been hired based on the data we have available today. And how many hours have community hires worked on construction contracts to date, and what percentage of hours on those contracts does that represent?

The total number of hours I'm not sure if we have that exact number available, but we can get that number and get back to you. Okay. And if you could also circle back with the percentage of hours on those— that those contracts represent, if you have staff that could do that within our hearing time, that would be great.

I know that we are also joined by our Consumer Protections Chair, Harvey Epstein, so I'm going to let him ask questions before he has to leave. Thank you, Chair. I, I don't need to go right now if you have other questions, but I'm happy to jump in. Um, thank you for, um, for being here. Can you, can you tell us about what the outreach process looks like for these community hires and how we make sure that people in our districts know about the— that this is— that hiring is happening?

Yeah, so we, as I mentioned in my testimony, we have a network of referral sources. And the referral sources include the city's public workforce system, like SBS and HRA, as well as many labor unions, as well as many CBO providers, like about 28 so far. And so much of the outreach about community hiring is happening on the ground through those entities.

Right. And they vary depending on the type of organization, whether that's— and some of that is proactive, some of that is people walking into centers and learning And why not us? Like, why not have us as partners? Like, we all— we're 51 members, we all have e-blasts that we send out. I send an e-blast out every week to 40,000 people in my neighborhood.

No one's asked me to, like, be a partner in this, so why not join— have us join in this effort? We absolutely welcome your partnership and being able to help amplify the work. Like I mentioned, we are early on in the program, so many of these contracts are recently registered. And so we do anticipate that as more contracts get registered, we'll want to continue to increase the outreach and definitely happy to partner with the council on that.

Yeah.

And can you give us a list? You said there's 28 CBO partners. Can you— do you have a list of those partners? Yeah, we do have a list. We can provide the list. Yeah, it'd be great because there are great organizations like United Neighborhood Houses, which go throughout the city. which a lot of our— we have a lot in our districts across the city and wanted to make sure that we're doing this in the way that gets the biggest reach.

Henry Street, for example, by me, has a Jobs Plus program and they do a lot of community hire. I've actually hired staff from the Jobs Plus program at Henry Street because I want to make sure that we're hiring local people, especially in our council offices, that people care deeply about this. I wanted to see if those type of programs that are doing that work are really partnering with you.

Yeah. Could you share the name of— could you read the names off to us now? Of all of the— The 12 CBOs? The 28 CBOs. Oh, the 28 CBOs. And then also, I would love to understand, how did you determine them? Like, is it by borough? Is it by how many people they serve? How are they chosen?

Yeah. So I'll start with answering that question first. and then happy to give a readout of the providers. So we started in terms of growing our referral source network with starting with the public workforce system, and that's SBS who operates the Workforce One Centers, HRA's Business Link team, which also does job connection services, particularly for clients who are receiving public benefits.

But we've also expanded to city agencies who are contracting with nonprofit providers for this work. And so many of the providers now are— have contracts with DYCD, but we also have NYCHA and their REACH program. We're looking to expand for CUNY as well as other city-contracted vendors. And so in terms of the process for identifying, we work with the city agencies and we continue to work with the CBOs of making sure they are plugged in and authorized to become referral sources.

Our goal is to have as much expansive connection across all of the city, all the populations. We're proud that there are referral sources in all 5 boroughs. And so the, the process is really trying to maximize the amount of opportunities for New Yorkers through these referral sources. So I can read The— okay, sorry, this is a clearer list.

Okay, there's 28 of them. So I'll read them all and happy to provide the list as well after. So as of now, in terms of the CBO providers, these are under DYCD contracts. We have Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services, Children's Art and Science Workshops, Chinatown Manpower Project, Inc., Chinese American Planning Council, Inc., Comprehensive Youth Development Career Academy, East Side House Settlement, Edith and Karl Marx Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, Hanukkah Jewish Community Center of Staten Island, Mashalu Montefiore Community Center, Queens Community House, Real Stories Teen Filmmaking Inc., Renaissance Technical Institute, Roads to Success, St.

Nick's Alliance Corporation, Uplift Communities, Vanguard Digital, NYS ARC Inc., BronxWorks, Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, Housing Works, Jewish Home Life Care, Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow, Phipps Neighborhoods, Rockaway Development and Revitalization Corporation, Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center, The Door, and United Activities Unlimited. So that's the current list, but again, we are continuing to work with our agency partners to see how we can continue to expand this.

I would encourage you to reach out to us Like, like I, I mean, I'm, you know, Councilman Wong, she knows the groups in her district. I can tell you, I don't hear Henry Street, Grand Street Settlement, Asian Americans for Equality, University Settlement. These are settlement houses just to operate in my district that have a big wide, you know, swath of contact to people.

They have, like, like I mentioned, we have a Lower Side Employment Network. We have the Jobs Plus, training program. So we have things that exist, structures that exist that I think would be really helpful. So if you reach out to our offices, you can get that information. And you can reach out to our comms people and be like, hey, put this in your e-blast so people know that we exist.

We want to be able to reach out to people. We all get— I get calls every day. I got a call the other day from a veteran in my district. He's like, I've been looking for 6 months to try to find a job. This is someone who served our country. lives in my district and can't find a job, a perfect person who's got a great track record working in nonprofits to be able to be in this cohort.

They don't know that it exists because the poor communication up to date. We're happy to work with you, Councilmember, and all the whole council to really expand some of the outreach and awareness. Some of the organizations you mentioned, we do as an office have relationships with like Lesson and Henry Shoot, etc. And like I said, where we are right now today, we're at this, the list that I shared, but I do anticipate that that will continue to grow over the coming weeks.

And so happy to have that partnership and have you help amplify that messaging both for the CBO community as well as for job seekers.

How many employment opportunities do you expect to be available over the next 3 years for, uh, that are going to be flowing through you? So that's a good question. All of the job opportunities and the goals are driven by city procurement, and so it depends exactly on how much an agency or the city agencies covered by this are procuring each year.

And so it will vary over time depending on what the procurement looks like, but we are Excited that we have already $13 billion worth of city contracts registered to date. It's 528 contracts. And so the types of organizations that are getting those contracts vary, and so their hiring needs may vary, right? Like, every contract doesn't necessarily necessitate hiring a certain amount of people.

But we are continuing to look at the data and collect that information and work with the vendors to see how So in these 585 contracts, how many potential jobs are there available? Right now, I don't have that exact number of potential jobs available. Many of these contracts, like I said, the, the data that we've published in our most recent report was only at 179 because that was based on the quarter that we were mandated to publish.

Since then, we're already at 528, so a lot of new contracts have just been registered. We have yet to do exactly the analysis that you're looking for in terms of what those job opportunities are, but we are now beginning to work with those vendors to make sure that they are working with the system, working with referral sources to help identify what those job opportunities may be.

When can you get us the information about how many jobs for the 528 contracts you have might be available to New Yorkers? We'll work on getting that information to you as soon as we can. We'll have to go back and see where all of those contracts are in the particular status and what some of the outreaches look like to date from our partners, but we will be able to get— Is that like 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 6 months, a year and a half?

I think— I don't think it'll be a year and a half, Councilmember, but I do think it really depends on where these contracts are. Can you just give us an update in 2 weeks to say this is the information we have to date? These are the contracts that we have available. This is what we know so far.

These are the types of jobs we're seeing available. Because I think the real data is going to help us. I mean, I don't want to speak for the Chair, but I think if it's 5,000 jobs versus 5 jobs, it's a very different conversation. And if it's 5,000 jobs in a variety of industries, it's a very different conversation about Excuse me.

Our role and how we can be helpful. I think what we're trying to do is say we want this to work, we want it to be successful, but we want to make sure that you're doing the appropriate outreach so people I talk to get help. I can't tell you how many times I hear from people like, the city did this hiring hall for jobs, I went, the line was out the door, I waited for 3 hours, never met with anybody, and I left.

That level of frustration I hear is a problem that we're not right-sizing what we're trying to do, and this is a way to try to right-size it to help people. Absolutely. Happy to follow up in 2 weeks with what we have as of then and welcome the continued conversation. I do also want to note that because of the nature of the contracts, and many of them are multi-year contracts, even the vendors might know not know all of their hiring needs on day 1 of the contracts.

But that's why we're working with them continuously to try to assess that. But we're happy to follow up and continue to partner on this. Can I just— Chair, can I just one more question? So when you send us the list of 528 contracts and the potential jobs available and the potential areas where these jobs might be, it would be great to know what the expertise we're looking for.

Because if it's all— if there's in these contracts the same type of positions we're looking for, that will send a message. You mentioned, you know, Lesson. That will send a message to Lesson, be like, oh, we know these type A— making up something— these hotel jobs are really coming down the pipeline. We see a lot of these jobs.

We should be educating and training people to be ready for these jobs. As we move forward. So when we're doing job retraining, this is something important for us. This kind of data, since you're saying most of these are multi-year contracts, will be really helpful for the nonprofits we partner with to be able to help assess what they need to be doing in training and education.

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that we're particularly excited about with community hiring, which as I mentioned is unique here in New York City, is that it's not limited to only entry-level jobs. It's not limited just to construction, which these types of programs typically are. It's the professional services jobs, it's the human services jobs, it's the standard services jobs and construction.

And so we're excited about the diversity of different types of job opportunities, and we'll continue to work with our, uh, all of our vendors and our referral sources to make sure that we are getting that information out.

I appreciate that. Thank you, Chair, for the time. Thank you so much. And I want to acknowledge that we've been joined by Councilmember Caban. On September 28th, 2026, DCAS and SBS opened a Jobs NYC Center at 2 Lafayette Street in Lower Manhattan. While the mayor was praised for converting a long empty building into a space for career services and workforce development, multiple attendees have cited that event was poorly organized, leaving many job job seekers are scrawled into the process, as Councilmember Epstein has described.

Are recruiters at these halls recruiting individuals for community hiring needs? And if someone walks into a hiring hall inquiring about a community hiring opportunity, how are they being serviced? Can you help me understand how many staff are on site at all times? What are the hours? And what is going on? Because I get so many complaints as well where we've seen it in the news where over I think over 50,000 people have applied to jobs in the City of New York, and they haven't even heard back at all, and they're really upset.

And I think a single digit was hired into this new administration's agencies. So there's just so much confusion and so much frustration. If you could help us understand better. I think I lost— oh. So specifically as it relates to community hiring, that new Jobs NYC Center is focused primarily on city jobs, and the nature of community hiring is non-city jobs because these are city-contracted vendors.

And so in terms of community hiring direct services happening at that site, it's not designed to do that. However, SBS, who is staffing that And we're happy to work with you, Councilmember, work or get that information back from SBS in terms of like the details on how many people there, the exact hours, etc. But again, that is geared towards city jobs, whereas community hiring is non-city jobs.

However, because it is run by SBS, then they operate the Workforce ONE system for people who are entering, looking for job opportunities. I believe SBS is able to help route them to— back through the Workforce One Center and then make sure that the job opportunities or training opportunities that people might be interested in, whether it's city or non, they can get connected to those services as well.

Can you help me understand how this administration separates Office of Talent and Workforce Development versus community hiring versus SBS on who's doing what workforce development? Like, how are you guys deciding who's covering what scope? Because I, for me, I think workforce development covers all of this. Yeah, so our office, the Office of Talent and Workforce Development, the Office of Community Hiring— I recognize it's confusing to have an office within an office, but the Office of Community Hiring is part of NYC Talent.

And so the work around community hiring, everything that I've shared in my testimony and here today, is part of NYC Talent. NYC Talent generally works across all of the city partners who are doing workforce development, and that includes SBS. And so like the Workforce One centers that SBS operates are run by SBS staff, by SBS through SBS contracts, etc.

And we at Talent work closely with SBS and the many partners. For community hiring specifically, while it's run out of our office, the intention and design behind community hiring is really to bring more jobs, to bring more employers, to bring better jobs, the diversity of jobs into the public workforce system. And that, again, based on our referral source network, right, we want to make sure that HRA, SPS, DYCD, the many CBOs, labor unions are all plugged in to help kind connect job seekers to these opportunities.

On construction contracts covered by a Project Labor Agreement, how does OCH check whether contractors follow the agreement's referral process, not just whether they reach the 30% hiring goal? So for any contract subject to goals, we and the contracting agencies, we're monitoring progress towards the goals. And so for PLAs specifically, our city PLAs right now have a goal of 30% directly in those PLAs.

The way the state legislation is written, it requires us to follow what that goal is in the PLA. And so we will monitor the progress towards the goals like any construction project. That's through collecting digital certified payroll reports and the data that is on those certified payroll reports to track towards the goal. We have a really strong partner with the building trades, and they're committed to doing community hiring.

We're excited that it's embedded directly into our PLAs. And so far, what has been the result for construction contracts covered by PLAs as of late? Based on the data we have now, let me see if I can get the specifics. The goals to date. Well, so I do have the— I was able to get to your earlier question, the percentage of hours.

So right now, 23.75% of all the hours have been performed by community hires. That's based on the available data that we have now. We're continuing to collect more data about these contracts as these contracts progress and as we get more contracts registered. I can see if we have that broken down by PLA and non-PLA contracts. I'm not sure, but generally across all of the construction contracts, it's about 23.75% of hours worked have been performed by community hires.

Okay. If your team can also check how they're differentiating and tracking the metric for PLAs, that would be really helpful. And if a PLA-covered contractor falls short, who decides whether it made its best efforts and what happens next? Like, who's doing the regulations and standardization checks for quality control on these contracts? Yeah, so our office works with the contracting agencies to help assess the progress towards the goals and compliance with the goals.

Like you mentioned, it is a best efforts-based program, and so best efforts will vary depending on the type of vendor who is doing the work, right? It is not a one-size-fits-all The big megacorp might have more resources and their best efforts might be a little different than Mom and Pop Inc., right? And so we will work closely with the agencies.

We will work with the vendors to make sure that they are making best efforts. And that will be working with, and say on PLA contracts, working with labor, working with the city's public workforce system to try to make sure that community hires are connected to these job opportunities. But again, it's somewhat of a bespoke process that allows for us to take into account the specifics of the types of organizations who are holding these contracts.

Okay.

And I'm also going to pass it over to Councilmember Wong for questions. Thank you, Chair. This is my data over here. As of July 2026, 179 registered city contracts worth about $2.96 billion carry community hiring goals. My question to you is, how do you identify city contracts that carry community hiring goals, and what are you doing to reach out to the other contracts that that do not have these hiring goals?

Because 179 contracts is a very small figure compared to all the contracts I've seen in, like, an open data or Passport. Sure. So many of the contracts that we have to date, they're just newly registered. And so because we're early on in this process, we anticipate that our— or we know, rather, that that contract count will continue to grow.

For example, between that last report, which has 179, we already actually now have a total of 528 contracts registered. They just haven't been yet reflected in the report, and that's valued at $13.3 billion. In terms of applicability, much of the applicability and structure around community hiring is rooted in state law, and so it applies to all service contracts, and there are some exceptions, but generally that's construction services, professional services, standard services, and human services.

So it's like all services excluding goods contracts. And so our rules that we put into place, and like I said in the testimony, the rules were shaped by many, many different stakeholders, external and internal, of putting the structure of rules into place. Generally speaking, It is all services contracts valued at $3 million or more, with some exceptions.

And some of those exceptions, like I said, are in state law. And so right now, in that report, there were just 179. It will grow in the next report to 528 once we publish that data. But generally speaking, in terms of the types of contracts that get procured every year by the city agencies, we think almost like 90% of the contract value of services contracts that get procured every year will be covered by community hiring once all of those contracts go through the full procurement cycle and cycle through.

And so whereas the contract count is one piece, the contract value is the piece that we are most focused on because, you know, 5 contracts that that are only $1 million is going to be less than one contract that's $50 million, for example. And so we think that the vast, vast majority of services contracts that get procured by city agencies will be covered by community hiring.

Thank you.

My follow-up question is regarding outreach, because you take any person graduated from college or from high school that decides not to go to college, how are you What kind of outreach are you doing to let them know here you can work for these city vendors and here are the here are the ways to to to get hold of them and what what what exactly is being done because like I I never heard of until today New York City Talents Office of Community Hiring this is total news to me and I can tell you that a lot of community-based organizations in my district would certainly want to reach out to you.

Either they need— they need looking for talent, or they want to be part of this community hiring process. So we've done outreach ourselves through our office to a variety of vendors, but most— and community partners as well. However, most of the outreach and connection is done through our referral source network through the city agencies who operate the Workforce One Centers, SBS, and HRA, who does its Business Link, and the CBO providers.

By design, we want to drive more people to the workforce system, and community hiring is designed to do just that— increase the amount of employers that are partnering with the workforce system, increasing the amount of jobs. From a job seeker perspective, we obviously want them to know about that community hiring is here and that there's an opportunity for more jobs coming through.

But at the end of the day, we really just want to make sure that people are being connected to the workforce system and that those CBOs are able to provide them with whatever services they may need, which may be a community hiring job, but it may be a different job that is not necessarily directly tied to community hiring.

And so with that being said, we do have some— we do partner with our partner agencies. On September 30th, we actually were— had a partnership with HRA for a community hiring job fair. We had 25 employers who participated in that, 388 job seekers, and there were even 16, like, on-the-job conditional offers made. And so we're happy to partner with you, Councilmember, on increasing the outreach and having more events just like that.

Come to my district and do a job fair. I would love it.

Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, Chair. 13 of the contracts that were held by the Department of Social Services for the Pathways to Access Careers and Employment and Wellness Comprehensive Assessment, Rehabilitation, and Employment, so PACE and We Care programs, which provide employment services to cash assistance clients In OCH's 4th quarter report, a PACE contract in Queens with a goal of 31 hires shows the progress of 1,229%, and an ACS non-secured detention contract with a goal of 12 shows 18.67%.

What do these figures represent? How many people were actually hired under this contract? And is that a typo? Because the math ain't mathin'. So The goals are based on the contract value for those types of contracts. And we did confirm those numbers. They are just hiring many, many people. And so we're proud that those vendors have been able to help.

So can you quantify many, many, many? What is many, many, many that it comes out to be 1,229%? I forget the— I don't have the exact math. And forgive me, I can't do the math on the spot right here. However, across all of the contracts, we have about 1,200 community hires employed to date. For those contracts, the non-construction contracts is a little over 1,100.

And so if 31 was the goal on that, I— 300. You know, it's maybe a couple hundred folks have been hired on that. Don't quote me on the exact math there. Okay. Because the contract amount is $15,685,874. And the hiring goal was 31. And the community hiring goal percentage progress is 1,229%. So— They are exceeding their goal.

And that's because they just have, based on the— and again, the way that community hiring works is we set the goal based on a formula essentially, but we know that the way that employers hire is not necessarily rooted based on some contract value formula. It's rooted based on their needs. So that employer had a higher need and we're glad they were able to work with the Public Workforce System to hire community hires for those jobs.

So for all these contracts, what is the process for reporting? Are they self-reporting back to you or are you going and inspecting and collecting data? How's this working? So we are early on in the process of having these contracts, but we are able to collect this information digitally, right? And so on construction contracts, we have a digital tool that— well, rather, contractors on construction are required to submit certified payroll reports.

That's state law. We've digitized that process and we are collecting information from those certified payroll reports, and we are able to use that information to addition to tracking all of the prevailing wage requirements and things like that, to track community hiring. We are still ramping up the implementation of this tool, and so we anticipate that more and more contracts will be using it.

We'll increase our reporting for community hiring as well. That's on the construction side. For the non-construction contracts, there's a couple different ways that we're able to collect that information. We can work and are working directly with the referral sources who have that data. and sharing it with us. We are able to collect information directly from the vendors themselves, and we are also in the process of implementing a digital tool to collect that information and share information across the various agencies to streamline some of the data collection and reporting to try to minimize the burden on vendors, on our referral sources and agency partners.

And so that process is underway and putting into that digital tool so we can collect that information and report. So as that tool is coming into play for non-construction contracts, how are you collecting the data now that you've shared with us? So that's been a mix of information collected directly from referral sources as well as I think we have some information that we've been able to collect directly from vendors as well based on their reporting and telling us we work with so-and-so referral source.

In those instances, we would And for accountability for those who have failed to provide the reporting, what happens to those vendors? Yeah, so there is a penalty mechanism under the law and under our rules. With that being said, for true success of this program, we want to make sure that we are working with these employers and, and helping them to improve their reporting.

Meet their needs. And really, so understanding what are their hiring needs, and are they actually working with the public workforce system? Are they working with referral sources? Are they publishing these jobs and making them available and accessible to, to New Yorkers? So that's core to it. If in the case where vendors are failing to do that and failing to make best efforts, there is the ability for the city to assess financial penalties on these vendors for failing to do that.

And so we intend to use that if we need to, but for many of these contracts, they're pretty early on in their process. And so while we're monitoring on a constant basis, we know that hiring needs are not necessarily driven directly by the contract term. And so we're not at the point yet where we have to do that, but we are prepared to do that if we need to.

And for the penalty, is it a percentage of the contract sum? What is the penalty amount? And how's it calculated? That's a good question. I'll have to share— we can share the rules and the contract language for that exact amount. But it is a— there's a certain dollar amount and it can scale up depending on the severity and the value and the lack of participation by the vendor.

Because we don't want it to just be a cost of doing business, right? We want to make sure that people are— Yep. Okay, great. This all sounds good. I look forward to the new system for non-construction contracts for reporting.

In June 2024, the former administration projected that the community hiring would create an estimate of 36,000 jobs annually once fully implemented. Is this projection still accurate? When does OCH expect the program to be fully implemented, and how does OCH measure the program to meet those projection goals of 36,000 jobs annually and that you are on track? Yeah, so this number at the time was analyzed based on a variety of like estimated procurement spend, budget documents, labor market analysis.

So it was reflective of what the program may be when it's fully, fully implemented. All contracts that have— that could have community hiring have community hiring. They're actually fully going through the full procurement cycle, which means all of not just the procuring of that, but the actual service term, right? So the many, many years. And so that projection was made many years ago.

We are continuing to look at procurement spend and what is in the procurement pipeline, and most importantly, working with the vendors and really understanding the hiring needs, because we do know that hiring is not exclusively based on what a contract amount is. As you mentioned, Chair, there is one vendor who has an exceptionally high hiring need, and they were able to dramatically exceed their goal, which is great, but it makes it a little tough to estimate the exact amount.

But we are very excited that even with the 179 contracts that were registered to date and published in the report, that's hit nearly 1,200 community hires so far.

Okay. The Health Department is the largest service agency in all the program, yet health-related jobs in Community Hiring Reporting Framework are displayed under Human Committee on Workforce Development Services— oh, sorry, on Human Services, Professional Services, or other classifications depending on what the city purchases. What does OCH determine whether community hiring represents requirements are aligned with actual employer demand, and given significant works workforce needs in healthcare and other essential industries.

What is the city's strategy for ensuring these sectors benefit from community hiring? So for all of the contracts that are subject to community hiring, the way that goals are set— and this is for largely ease of administration, uh, on both for agencies and vendors— it's formula-based, right, which not necessarily, as I said, tracks exactly to hiring needs.

And so for services that the city is procuring, we're excited that we're able to drive more of those employers to the workforce system and get them to, you know, continue to bring jobs to the system, bring higher quality jobs to the system, and help meet the, the needs of, uh, their— those employers, right? With that being said, we know that these are not the only employers And so that are working within the city and are hiring from the system.

And so community hiring is part of that, and we're able to bring more of those employers, but there are needs beyond just city-contracted providers. And so the city does a lot of work to help connect New Yorkers to all of those opportunities. And we're always looking at, even separate just from our community hiring team, but we have industry partnerships that work specifically, one that works in healthcare.

And so we're looking at data, both what are hiring trends, what are hiring needs today, what are the hiring needs tomorrow. And so that's something that is a focus of our office, to make sure that we are working with our agency partners to build a workforce system that is both responsive to the needs today of employers but also the needs of the employers in the future.

Where are contractors having the greatest difficulty meeting hiring goals and why? And are there barriers related to available vacancies, required credentials, candidate preparation, recruitment process practices, or contracting funding, and what is OCH doing to address them? So because we are early on and many of these contracts are still recently registered, we don't have all of the answers to that exactly, but we will continue to work with the providers to— or rather the employers— to understand what their hiring needs are, where there are challenges, and where they think that they might not be meeting their goals, and if that's because of something that the city needs to improve upon, we'll use that data to inform how we are making sure that, say, we are increasing training opportunities.

And so we will continue to monitor that, but I don't have quite a sector-specific analysis on that yet. Okay, because it's been public in the news how we're short in social workers and nurses, especially in the healthcare sector. So are there any efforts from the City of New York in partnership with CUNY to make sure that there are programs to allow people to finish their education, especially since the federal government has declassified them as public servants?

Yeah, so that is something that, like I said, beyond community hiring, that our office is always focused on, of trying to increase opportunities, help make sure that we are connecting more New Yorkers and improving job quality and things like that through apprenticeships. And so that is something that we are Okay.

The fiscal year 2027 adopted budget includes a budget of $1.7 million and 16 positions for OCH, with $388,200 being for contractual services. What is OCH's vacancy rate? Are there any key positions that have been difficult to fill? And I would also love to hear from OCH's Executive Director, Ji Lee. You know, she's been sitting here for a while.

Sure. I'll let you speak to the staffing of the OCH team. Thank you, Chair. So the Office of Community Hiring is currently a team of 8. There are 6 full-time employees. We have 1 civic corps member and 1 intern. And are there any key positions that have been difficult to fill? Is there any vacancy? Or is the— because we're supposed to have 16 positions and you're saying that there's 8.

So are you vacant for 6 positions? I mean, for more than 6 positions? So the $1.7 million was for 16 positions within OCH. you have 8 people. That means that you have vacancy of 50%, correct? So we have, uh, some of our headcount is actually at other agencies that are supporting, uh, the community hiring initiative. So we have, uh, because by design we want to make sure that this actually, this work is embedded into the city system.

So there are 2, uh, community hiring headcount that are really staffed most directly at, uh, SBS who help support community hiring, but they are— so they are not part of that 8. They are part of our headcount but are doing the work in support of community hiring. And again, that is intentional because we want to make sure that this is not a side effort.

This is embedded into the public workforce system. Okay. And where are the rest? Because 8 plus 2 is 10. So we're missing 6 other positions that have been allotted for. And the $1.7 million. So are there other positions that we should know about in other agencies? So we do have other vacancies at the moment. Okay, so you have 6 vacancies?

I think we have— I'm not sure exactly which data you have, but we right now have a total of 3 vacancies on the community hiring budget. Okay, so we'll have to follow up because the adopted budget has a $1.7 million Allotment or allocation for OCH, and it's for 16 positions. All right, happy to follow up with, with the data that we have and make sure it's all up to date.

But to your knowledge, there are no key positions that have been difficult to fill? So what are the 3 vacancies that you're trying to fill? So we are continuing to evaluate the needs based on putting our digital systems into place and making sure that we are meeting all of the needs around community hiring. And so we're continuing to evaluate what exactly those needs will be.

Okay, so the vacancies that you have that you believe are 3, which we have as 6, they don't have titles? Right now we are continuing to look at what those needs may be in terms of— Okay, so they're not even job openings? Right now we do not have active postings on the community Okay. And do you believe that additional positions or funding can help OCH reach the goal better of 36,000 jobs created annually?

We would never say no to additional resources, but we're really excited about the progress we've been able to make to date. And like I said, with our digital tools, we're really trying to maximize the ability for us to use— collect data digitally, which will reduce the person power to make sure that we have a good and successful program.

Okay, and out of the $1.7 million, there's a set-aside of $388,200 for contractual services in the OCH budget. How many and what type of contracts does this funding support? So our office is investing in technology to Effectively and efficiently implement, scale, and track the program. So these investments are not only going to support community hiring, but the data that we're able to collect will really be used for broader impact across the workforce system.

Got it. So the entire $388,200 goes to one technology budget? We're trying to budget for all different types of How many contract— how many tech contracts are we talking about? There's nothing currently in the works, but we're working through that. Okay. So the money is unspent? We have some money under contract for a consultant who's helping on some of the technical implementation.

So they're not a tech contractor per se. Okay. So it's an individual LLC, not a firm? Like a freelancer? It's a consultant. It's a consultant firm. Which firm? JKA Consultant. Okay.

And the city charter requires each quarterly report to include the demographic and compensation of community hires, the total number of community hires by contract type, and the program's financial benefits. None of the information appears in OCH's published reports. Why has OCH not published this information, and when will you become— when will you begin publishing it? So in the most recent reports, we don't have some of that information, but we are— we do have some of that information that we hope to reflect in the future reports, and we will continue to collect this information as we implement those tools to make sure that we have it.

But we do know that we have community hires from all 5 boroughs, neighborhoods across the city from Harlem to Stapleton in Staten Island to East New York to Corona. And so we're hiring, we know, from across all 5 boroughs. We know that specifically on human services contracts, approximately 27.5% are from the Bronx, 36.5% are from Brooklyn, 12% are from Manhattan, and 22% are from Queens, and 1.5% are from Staten Island.

And that's based on the available pool preliminary data now. And so we know that we want to continue to make sure that we are collecting this information, being mindful of privacy and sensitivity of collecting and publishing data. And so we will continue to collect that information and be able to publish it. When will it be published? We will publish the data as soon as we're able, in accordance with the reports, as we have the data based on those contracts, we will publish the data.

And so we will continue to improve what those information that is in those reports to make sure that we are getting all the information that we can have out in our reports. Can you at least share it internally to the council so that we understand the demographic breakdown? We're happy to, happy to provide you, Chair, with, with the data that we have so far and contextualize it with what that is relative to the But again, because of the way that the quarterly reports are, it's always, you know, a little bit behind from when that quarter of what we're publishing to what we actually do.

And so since that last report, we still have more data that we've been collecting. And so some of that information that we've been able to do has just yet to meet or be reflected in those reports, but happy to share that with you. Okay. And OCHS 4th quarter report for fiscal year 2026 was posted this past week, and it still does not state the number of people hired.

Why is that statistic always missing? So, like I mentioned, we do have about 1,200 hires to date. I'm not sure exactly of what the data point, but in terms of the— what specific is in the reports and what you're referencing, but we're happy to share that information with you and make sure that our reports have all the information that is required.

Okay.

As of June 30th this year, 94 contracts, service contracts, carried combined goals of about 3,150 income-based community hires. 53 of them showed no progress data at all. Does that mean no community hires have been made under those contracts, or they have just not been reported? And how— I'm sorry. Well, you already answered this question of how the vendors on service contracts report the hires to OCH.

So can you just answer, does the community— has there been no community hiring under those contracts, or have they just not been reported? So this is for the 94 service contracts carried combined goals of 3,150 income-based community hires, and 53 of them do not show any progress. So I, I don't know the exact details of all 94 of those.

However, I'll say that it's a mix of both, probably, right? Because some of the contracts are very, very recently registered. They might be multi-year, maybe as long as like 5-year contracts. And so all of their hiring needs may just not happen yet, right? They might not have a hiring need today, but they might have a hiring need tomorrow.

In some cases, we just might not have collected all of that information yet. information from them just yet. As I said, we're early on in trying to capture all of that information, so we will continue to work with those providers. And so it will run the gamut in terms of how they're— whether— I guess it could be either/or in that case, or both.

Okay.

In OCH's most recent quarterly report, only 8 of the 83 construction contracts reported any progress. 6 of these 6 of those 8 were below the 30% community hiring goal. What have OCH and DDC done about the contracts below the goal, and how many of the other construction contracts have begun their work? So I don't have all of the information of exactly where each of these contracts are.

Sorry, many of— losing connection. Many of these contracts are not complete right now, right? And so the hiring needs are different and the goals are different. And especially in the construction trades, it's different types of job opportunities that might be on the project later in the project versus earlier, right? You're not painting the building until after you build it kind of thing.

And so we will continue to work with the agencies, work with those vendors, and work with our partners in labor for PLA contracts to make sure that we are meeting hiring goals. Because we're very early on, you know, we are heartened to see that there is progress already towards those goals based on the data that we've been able to have.

And we will continue to monitor those contracts and work to make sure that the vendors are meeting their goals or making best efforts at least. Okay.

All 5 contracts with an apprenticeship goal that have reported progress showed no hours worked by apprentices who are community hires against the 9% goal. Why are no community hire apprentices working on these contracts? So apprenticeships is really an important part of the work that we do in the community hiring team, but even beyond. We believe that the apprenticeships are a really good tool for talent development because they're paid on-the-job training.

So far, we don't have data on any apprentices working to date, but again, since we're early on, we do anticipate that we will continue to see and get more apprentices who are community hires working on these projects. Like I said, we have a really strong partnership with the building trades and through our PLAs, and so we're always looking for good ways to get more New Yorkers into the trades, working as apprentices and advancing to journey In November 2025, the city announced an agreement with the building trades to fill 700 pre-apprenticeship positions with residents of NYCHA housing and low-income communities.

How many of these positions have been filled, and how many community hiring contributes to the city's goal of connecting 30,000 New Yorkers to apprenticeships by 2030? I don't have the data on the specific pre-apprenticeship numbers, but happy to get back to you based on the information we're able to collect. But that is something that we are definitely excited about, connecting more New Yorkers and getting them into the trades through the pre-apprenticeship programs.

Okay. So we'll follow up.

Under OCH's rules, a vendor that misses the community hiring goal is not out of compliance if it shows that it's made best efforts to find community hires. A vendor that does not demonstrate best efforts can receive a notice of noncompliance and a penalty of $2,500 plus $1,000 per week for failing to take required corrective action. How does OCH decide whether a vendor has made a best effort?

Who makes that decision and how is it reviewed? And can you define best effort? Because we've seen this in contracting over and over again with bad actors, and the vague language of best effort is extremely hard to define. Yeah, so the best efforts framework is rooted in in the state legislation. And so that language specifically comes from the state law.

With that being said, one of the things that is unique to community hiring, which is not common across many types of structures, is our ability to actually assess penalties. And as I mentioned earlier, the best efforts analysis is somewhat unique depending on the type of vendor, because vendors who have more resources have the more ability to actually do more in terms of making best efforts.

And so it's not a one-size-fits-all, and we will continue to work with the vendors to make sure that those who are not meeting their goals are actually, you know, working with the Workforce ONE system, posting their jobs publicly, meaningfully participating in events like hiring events and things like that. And so there's not just like a check-the-box thing.

If you do this, this, and that, you'll make best efforts. And that's by Right? We want to make sure that vendors are meaningfully actually participating in the system. And as you mentioned, the penalty framework does allow for— there's a penalty that allows to scale over time. So, if people are continuing to flout the rules and not make best efforts and not work with us, the penalties can actually grow to quite a large amount.

Has agency issued notice of noncompliance under the community hiring rules yet? And if so, how many and which agencies? And has any penalty been assessed? Not yet. Not to date. How will a vendor's community hiring record be considered in performance evaluations on future contract awards? Yeah. So— Hello? Hi. Sorry, I'm just testing the mic. Sorry, guys. It works.

So, the performance of— sorry, I lost my train of thought. The ability to meet the goals will be considered in a performance evaluation, like many of the other factors, and it can be considered. So, if a vendor fails to meet their goals, fails to make best efforts, and is assessed penalties, those are the types of things that would definitely be considered in a performance evaluation and would be part of, you know, their future contract as agencies consider performance evaluation and look at things like cautions, et cetera.

And so, it will— if a vendor fails to do that, that will be reflected in their performance evaluation. We would work with the agencies to make sure that those types of noncompliances are reflected in performance evaluations and any necessary disclosures, et cetera. And then that information is always considered by contract— or by agencies in any future contract And so, we do take seriously the compliance piece of this and wanting to make sure that people are meaningfully participating and trying to meet the community hiring goals.

Okay.

In February, New York City Talent testified that you all were over 200 procurements out already on the street, and that the program could reach upwards of $20 billion a year. As of June 30th, registered contracts with community hiring goals totaled $2 billion. How many solicitations with community hiring goals have been released to date and how many have been awarded?

So I can give you the number on registered contracts and right now, and this was actually as of last week, so it probably went up a little bit, but we had 528 registered contracts for a total value of $13.3 billion. And so, as you know, Chair, the procurement process is not always, like, exactly the same across every single agency, and it varies.

And so while the last reporting cycle had the data that we published in that one, we've since seen a spike of contracts that have been registered in this last quarter. And so we anticipate— or we know that the next publication, the numbers will go up quite a bit in terms of the total amount of contracts that have been of awarded.

Thank you. registered contracts and registered contract value. In total right now, in terms of procurements, in procurement we have 362 procurements that have been released valued at $18.4 billion so far. And again, that's reflective of our initial phased rollout and ramping up these contracts. So we're excited that that's a lot of contracts, which means there's a lot of vendors and more job opportunities And which agencies have released procurement with community hiring goals and which agencies have not?

So, I know that I have the data from our last quarterly report, and so that has 14 agencies from DDC, who has the most, down to, you know, some of the smaller agencies with fewer contracts. But data that is not yet reflected in in our report for the last quarter, but will be in the next one once we publish it.

We have nearly all mayoral agencies— I think there's upwards of 20 different agencies that have contract goals subject to community hiring. And again, that's not necessarily reflective of anything other than the types of procurements that agencies are doing, the volume, does it meet the requirements, and the time in which that contract is is procured and registered. And so, we're excited that all of the agency— our agency partners are working with us to make sure that they are setting goals appropriately and releasing contracts subject to goals.

OCH's referral source directory names 2 referral sources: SBS's Workforce ONE, career centers, and HRAs BusinessLink, along with several union referral systems. Has OCH approved any community-based organizations or other— yeah, you shared the community-based organizations. And other workforce providers as referral sources? And does OCH plan to issue a solicitation to expand the network, and if so, when? So we do, like I mentioned earlier and read through the list of the 28 CBOs, we do, because we are early on in the implementation, we're continuing to work with our agency partners to make sure that the CBOs, and like I said earlier, we're really happy to work with the hustle to make sure that we are getting more CBOs plugged into this.

And so we look forward to continuing to expand opportunities for more CBOs to connect with community hiring. And so we're happy to continue to collaborate on that. And how does OCH track the outcomes of these referrals? What is your tracking system for referrals? So as I mentioned, the, the same system that we are trying to, or that we rather putting into place and working to implement in terms of collecting information is what we hope to use to help better track referrals and information that is coming from the various CBOs and the agencies that are doing it.

And so we're putting the digital infrastructure into place to really try to streamline the coordination and interagency working and connecting all of the CBOs because there are, are many CBOs and many players, and we want to make sure that it is a streamlined process of trying to use technology where we can.

Okay, this one is very disappointing to me. When adopting the rules, OCH declined to lower the income threshold for income-based community hires from 300% to 150% of the federal poverty guidelines, stating that referral sources may prioritize lower-income job seekers. So does, does that remain the case in practice? So we did have the ability to set the specific threshold for what meets an income-based community hire.

That decision was not made by us alone. We work very closely with many agency partners, many CBOs to get to a place that we thought was appropriate. And so 300% was the one that we were hearing the most amount of feedback and recommendations that we do that because it allows CBOs and the city workforce system to continue to serve the lowest income, but also people who are just getting 200%, 300% also being able to serve those.

So it expanded the pool a bit, and intentionally so. And that was based on feedback largely from our CBO partners, as also our agency partners who are serving these populations. Also, I apologize, I misunderstood because I'm thinking about AMIs. So 300% poverty line means that you're actually hiring people with lower income than 150%, correct? So the range is anyone who is up to 300% of the federal poverty threshold.

And So I forget what the exact income is, the dollar amount, and it varies obviously depending on household size, but it is expanding the pool. So we're able to still hire people who are only at 100% or 150% or 200%, 250%. But 300% means that they are even lower income, correct? It would mean that they are higher income.

So they're at 300% of the federal poverty level. So I think it's about Okay, it's about a single household would be like an income of $47,000, $48,000. And how much is $150,000? It would be about like half of that. So we've expanded the population with the 300%. Okay, so then my initial understanding was correct, that 300% below the poverty line means that they have a higher income.

Correct. Okay. So I take it back. I retract my apology. Understood. But as I mentioned, Chair, that was a decision that we did not independently just decide upon. We worked closely with our agency partners, particularly at HRA, who are serving a low-income population. And, you know, we want to make sure that they can continue to serve that low-income population.

We know that of the many 1,200 New Yorkers, that many of them are on public assistance, which also just in terms of the definition are lower than that 300% level. And so while it is a little higher, it was intentionally so based on feedback from our CBO partners and agency partners. Okay.

In February of this year, New York City Talent testified that it had 37 staff and 3 apprentices, and in fiscal year '27 program budget of approximately $2.7 million. How many of the— of your 37 staff work on community hiring? Yeah, so I mentioned that we have— or, and my colleague mentioned that the team of 8 right now, but we do have other staff, like particularly around data, that help support the reporting and data collection.

And so we, uh, there's the core staff of We have a team of 8 right now, but we also have other staff that help support both from the data side, some of the external side, and some of the general operational side. And so our office, you know, community hiring is one of the real core initiatives of our office, and so there's a lot of support, but it's a core team that supports it as well.

OCHA's November 2024 Instructor Report described work to integrate community hiring into the city's procurement and workforce systems and to digitize paper-based reporting. What has been completed so far and what remains to be done? So I would— I don't want to rehash all my testimony, but we really are proud of the work that has been done to date.

This went from zero contracts, zero anything, and no rules whatsoever to now we have over 500 or 500— over 528 contracts already registered, estimating at $13.3 billion worth of contracts. And so we're incredibly proud of that work that has been done to date, the 1,200 hires based on the only that 179 contracts that have been published in our reports.

And we've already begun digitizing a lot of this process, particularly on the construction side, trying to transform a paper-based process into collecting information digitally. And we are continuing to work to put the digital technology in place to really better collect data, share data across agencies. And so there's definitely more work to be done. We're still early on in this process, and this is not a subtle effort, right?

This is a really big systems change for all the city agencies doing procurement. And so proud of the work to date, but certainly more, more work ahead of us.

What is the average salary one can expect from a community hiring opportunity? So, the types of jobs that are through community hiring are quite varied because it applies to such a broad range of different types of contracts, from construction to the human services to standard services to professional services. So, it really depends on the type of job and the hiring needs But we know that many of these jobs are prevailing wage jobs, good union jobs in many cases, and so we are excited about those opportunities and making sure that we are driving more jobs to the workforce system.

For OCH Executive Director Lee, since becoming Executive Director, what have you made your top operational priority and what updated results should should this committee expect to see in the next quarterly report? Thank you, Chair, for your question. So my priority for our team is to continue building out the infrastructure of our program. That includes, as Executive Director Lapre mentioned, finalizing and putting into place digital systems to improve data collection, tracking of community hiring goals, Additionally, we want to broaden our vendor outreach.

As we've heard today, we see the importance and we recognize the importance of continuing to meet with our stakeholders and see how we can better support the job seekers who are across the 5 boroughs. Additionally, we also want to strengthen our referral source network. We recognize that they're key players to making community hiring a success. So, we are thinking through how to build out that structure to ensure that we're not just growing the number of referral sources for referral sources' sake, but just really thinking through how we can all work together and not compete off of one another for one community hiring opportunity.

Okay. How does OCH identify and engage small businesses in specific neighborhoods beyond vendors that are already bidding on city contracts? Next. So, our team has also been involved in a lot of vendor events like procurement fairs where we educate our MWBEs about the community hiring program so that they understand how it works for city procurements that are subject to community hiring.

Additionally, we've done newsletter outreach. through our agency partners. And we also publish our own newsletter that goes out on a quarterly basis. So we try different ways from different mediums to reach out to the public and vendors. Do you have language access in all of your efforts? And if so, what languages are available for your outreach? Currently, English is the primary language.

Do you have plans? To expand to other languages? Yes, of course. And also, like, our referral partners also are equipped to provide other languages, so we lean heavily on our referral source partners and agencies to support us there. Okay, I hope you expand to at least 5 languages, not just leaning on the referrals.

I'm going to pass it over to Councilmember Wong to ask a second round of questions. Thank you, Chair. Can you define what exactly is a community hire? Like, do they live in the city or some other qualifications would qualify the 1,200 positions as community hires? So community hire is defined under the state legislation that established community hiring, and it's based on economic factors.

So we look at 2 types of community hires. those who are low-income individuals and those living in low-income communities. So does that— do they have to live in New York City or they can live anywhere? So they do. Definitionally, it is based on economic criteria, and again, that is rooted in state law. With that being said, the core work of talent and community hiring is to really connect more New Yorkers to jobs.

And so through our referral source partners, they are largely serving, and like I mentioned earlier, within all 5 boroughs. And so our outreach is primarily targeted towards New Yorkers and connecting it. But because of the way that the state law is written, it is definitely economic criteria. Yeah, but okay, so the The contractors, the vendors are definitely New York City-based, but as a community hire, it's all like income-based rather than looking at where they live.

Is that right? So for— as my colleague mentioned, there are 2 different types of community hires. So one of them is based on low-income zip codes as well as NYCHA residents. So NYCHA residents are the one population that is part of that residence-based community hiring. For the others, it is income-based, and again, that's rooted in state law.

And so it's not geographical, but it is income-based. Are the income baselines based on state guidelines or something that your office determines? It's based on the federal poverty guidelines. I see. Okay. And Okay, so let's say a vendor is part of the community hire. What percentage of their jobs have to be community hires? Is it 100%, 50%, 75%?

Yeah, so for the construction projects, those ones are— the goal right now is 30% of the hours worked by community hires. That's the goal. On the other side, it is not based on on a percentage. The intention behind community hiring is to really drive these employers to the workforce system and make sure that they're working with the workforce system.

Ideally, we want them to be working with the workforce system for all of their jobs. That's not exactly what's required. There's a specific numerical goal that will be attached to it based on the contract value. And so, but it's based on hiring needs, right? And so sometimes a vendor has to hire no one to actually serve a contract and then they won't have to hire anyone.

But where they have vacancies, we want to make sure that they are working with the public workforce system for all of those if possible, but certainly at least the ones to meet their goals. Yeah, maybe I'm confused over here. So how— what is, what is the incentive for becoming a vendor that's doing community hires? Like, like, why bother?

So I think there's, there's 2 things that I think are relevant here. One is we believe that, you know, there's a lot of city dollars that are being invested and that city vendors have a responsibility to, if they're getting these contracts, right, and that we're talking about the billions of dollars every year, we want those vendors to have an obligation to really hire from the workforce system.

In terms of an incentive, I think that's incumbent upon the city to really make sure that we are helping serve them, right? And so that's one of the things that certainly over time we want to work with the vendors to make sure that the city's workforce system is meeting their hiring needs. And if that means, uh, that meeting their hiring needs and we can place someone today, great, fantastic, we want to do that.

But that also may mean working with particular vendors or working with particular industries that have not historically worked with the city public workforce system to help, you know, make sure that the city's workforce system are meeting those employers' needs. And so the incentive is we have a lot of talent here in New York City, and talent is not limited by factors of income, right?

And so we want them to connect to that talent, and we want to connect the talent to these job opportunities. So the incentive of working with the public workforce system is that there's an enormous amount of talent that can fill the needs of these employers, and there are free services to these businesses, right? They don't have to pay to go in and work with the Workforce One centers.

Those are free services that are offered to those businesses to help fill their hiring needs. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you so much to Executive Director Lapari. Lapari? Lapari. Lapari. LePere, and Executive Director Lee. I look forward to working with both of you. Don't be so shy. You're going to be here all the time. All right. We're going to move on to panelists. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I now open the floor for public testimony. I remind the members of the public that this is a formal government proceeding and that decorum shall be observed at all times. As such, members of the public shall remain silent at all times other than when they're testifying. And the witness table is reserved for people who wish to testify.

No video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table. Further, members of the public may not present audio or video recording as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the sergeant-at-arms for inclusion in the hearing record. If you wish to speak at today's hearing, please fill out an appearance card with the sergeant-at-arms to wait to be recognized.

And when recognized, you will have 2 minutes to speak on today's hearing. hearing topic on the Office of Community Hiring. If you have a written statement or additional written testimony you wish to submit for the record, please provide a copy of that testimony to the Sergeant-at-Arms. You may also email written testimony to testimony@councilnyc.gov within 72 hours of this hearing.

Audio and video recordings will not be accepted. And I will now call the first panel, and it is Gregory Morris. Good evening. And Anthony DeCarlo. And does anybody else wish to testify? Please let us know. Welcome back. It's good to see you. Thank you for making this time. It's much appreciated. Madam Chair, it's nice to see you.

Thank you for putting this conversation together.

I'm Greg Morris, the CEO of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition. I have testimony that's already been submitted, so I'm just going to share a couple of quick notes. First and foremost, NYCETC, the organization I represent, was actively engaged in support of community hiring. We see it as an opportunity to use public spending to support folks from disadvantaged, economically disadvantaged communities, and I appreciate the way NYC Talent and the previous administration worked to try to maximize the number of folks who could fall into those categories.

So I just want to start by saying it's the right opportunity. I think where we see challenge, and that's sort of what I think you were poking at and probing here, is how it is that we actually can see whether or not it's making an impact, how it gets maximized across agencies. As you noted, there's a number of agencies who don't participate in this, and that is also a strike against, I think, opportunity.

I also want to just add one or two other notes, and that is to say, you also flagged what is the consequence. And if we rewind the clock to the history with HireNYC, part of the reason why that didn't work is because folks weren't held accountable in a meaningful way for not following through on the expectations related to hiring.

And I think there's a concern here As you noted, the rules say you can hold an entity accountable for $2,500. What's the incentive for an entity to say, I must pay that because that's going to affect my bottom line? I just don't think we see that. So I think this accountability conversation is particularly important. I wanted to note too, related to community partners, the executive director talked about a number of organizations within the coalition who are community partners.

However, I just want to note NYCETC, which represents 220 organizations, wants to see success, and I think we can be an effective intermediary in trying to hold folks accountable to be able to meet these needs and expectations. But that only happens, as one of the council members said, if there's active communication. You also flagged the size and scope of NYC Talent in managing this particular effort.

You highlighted that more staffing needs to be in place to be able to support that. I'd love to see NYC Talent be resourced the way they need to be. They have vacancies. They have vacancies. Do you want to come work there? And not for nothing— well, look, I got my hands full as it is right now. But not for nothing, let's just put it this way.

If there are thousands of vendors that have these contracts, and it's NYC Talent and the other agencies who have a responsibility for holding those vendors accountable, not just for communication, and community partners for training and engagement otherwise, can the team of 6, 7, 8 be able to accomplish that as effectively as we would want? That's nothing against the individuals.

It's just about saying you have— your budgets have to reflect that particular investment. Last but not least, I just want to note for you, as someone who has spent some time at the hiring halls recently, taking a look and seeing how things work, I just want you to be aware that I am appreciative and grateful for all the agency commitments that are made in supporting hiring halls.

I do have this data and you've referenced it and you know it, but I'll just— I just want to state it for the record. The hiring hall model, the job fair model that the city put in motion, served close to 20,000 individuals. And we know of that— that was over the last year. And of that 20,000, 2,000 had conditional offers made.

That should tell you there's a lot of people looking. And it's not so easy to get hired. Job fairs and hiring halls aren't necessarily the answer, especially for individuals who come from backgrounds or haven't had access to opportunity. So I just want to note, like, we missed that in some cases. And I would also suggest to you that the vendors that are being held accountable, they may need an adapter to be able to understand how it is that they can commit to support and ensure the success of individuals who live in the community that they might want to hire.

I want to highlight that as well. I think the coalition has a responsibility in that. Last note for you in terms of those hiring halls, and I think it counts here in this conversation, um, based on the data that we have for the last year, uh, of everybody who attended the hiring halls in the city, which presumably could be individuals from the communities we're talking about, um, more than half went to those hiring halls with a bachelor's degree or a master's degree in hand, which just leads me to the question Is this model related to community hiring working to solve a problem of unemployment, underemployment, or just a transition to a better wage?

Those are different things that we have to talk about in the job space. I thank you, Chair, for bringing to the table the investment in workforce development. This administration, as it currently exists, has not clarified how it will continue to elevate workforce development. and instead has been filling potholes along the way.

Thank you so much, Gregory. And as always, if you have ideas for legislation to codify any of the things that we have to push for, I think we're going to have to advocate for them to expand their office because as you heard directly from the executive directors, they do not seem to feel the need to hire any additional staff from what they have.

And I believe right behind you is Anthony DeCarlo. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. You can come up and testify.

Good afternoon. Sorry, I'm going to be reading from my phone, just to be clear. Good afternoon, Chair Wan and members of the committee. My name is Anthony DeCarlis. I'm a former hospice hospitality worker, 10-plus years in New York City restaurants. I run Clear the Records. It's a free education site that teaches hospitality and gig workers to check and dispute the records employers report about them.

I'm here about a right that takes effect 12 days from now. On November 8th, New York labor law Section 210 gives every worker in the state the right to see their own personnel files. A worker can demand it in writing, and the employer must hand over a free copy within 5 business days, twice a year. If something negative goes into the file, the worker must be told within 10 days.

The worker's written response becomes a part of the file, and it travels with them wherever the record is sent. It applies even when the background check vendor holds the records. I know what this law is worth because I've lived the version without it. When I lost my job, my unemployment was held up for months by the employer that said that there was misconduct for my work history to the Department of Labor.

Which later withdrew the misconduct report from my record in June of this year. My wages were reported under the wrong company and the wrong subsidiary. Every error was invisible to me until it cost me money and work to find out what was happening. Community Hiring cannot place workers whose files are wrong. Until November 8th, workers could not even look at them.

So my simple, my simple ask is, as this community over— committee oversees the Office of Community Hiring, make Section 210 part of the pipeline. Every worker who walks into a city program should walk out knowing they can demand their files before a database decides their future to harm them. A right workers don't know about deserve to be hired anyway.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Is there anyone else who wishes to testify? We do not have anybody online, so I now Declare that this hearing is over. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you.