Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Parks Pruner Suspended After Ex-Pol Rats Him Out About Moonlighting

 Ex-City Councilman James Gennaro called a Parks Department deputy commissioner when he spotted a city worker picking up tree debris from a private home on a block where he lives.
Ex-City Councilman James Gennaro called a Parks Department deputy commissioner when he spotted a city worker picking up tree debris from a private home on a block where he lives.
View Full Caption
Facebook/Jim Gennaro

JAMAICA ESTATE — A Parks Department pruner will likely be clipped of more than a month's pay after a former city councilman from Queens dropped a dime to his supervisors that he was doing an extracurricular job on agency time, records show.

Otis Softleigh should be suspended for 40 days for picking up tree debris from a private home in Jamaica Estates when he was supposed to be working for the Parks Department, a city administrative judge ruled last week.

Softleigh's supervisors were able to bust him for the private work on Aug. 22, 2014, because Councilman James Gennaro, who lives on the same Jamaica Estates block, spotted the pruner and called the Parks Department.

Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings Judge John Spooner said in his decision that an unnamed city councilmember "contacted the department complaining about Parks employees picking up tree debris at a private address on the corner of Chevy Chase [Street] and Radnor [Road], near where the councilmember resided."

While Gennaro left his council seat in 2013, he lives on Chevy Chase Street.

Gennaro's call prompted a deputy chief at the Parks Department to contact Softleigh's supervisors, who determined that the pruner and another agency worker had gone far off their assigned route and used an agency vehicle to remove the remains of a cut-down tree from the Jamaica Estates home.

The Parks Department is responsible for only pruning and removing trees on city property. Private property owners must hire a commercial tree removal service to prune and haul away trees on their land.

During the OATH trial, representatives for the Parks Department contended that Softleigh was either paid by the Jamaica Estate property owner or a commercial pruner to remove the debris.

Spooner said that the Parks Department did not prove that money exchanged hands, but it did show that Softleigh violated city rules by picking up the wood at the private property.

Softleigh gave multiple excuses for picking up the wood during the trial, including that he was helping out a colleague and that he thought Parks workers had left the wood behind cutting down a tree on city land. But the decision said that none of his explanations rang true.

Softleigh, who has trimmed city trees for 16 years, did not respond to a request for comment.

Gennaro, who now serves as the deputy commissioner at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, declined to comment. 

The Parks Department must still approve Judge Spooner's recommendation of a 40-day suspension. Before the trial, Softleigh already served a 30-day suspension for the unauthorized work. That time would go toward the 40-day punishment.

The agency declined to comment on the OATH decision.

But a Parks spokesman said that the agency's swift response to Gennaro's complaint was not because he was a councilman.

"Be they congressperson or kindergartner, NYC Parks makes every effort to address citizens’ concerns and correspondences with all due consideration and speed," the spokesman said.