Prospect Park

The Daily Plant : Friday, November 1, 2002

CONGRATULATIONS EMPLOYEES OF THE MONTH

The following individuals were awarded Employee of the Month for October on Tuesday, October 29, 2002. The other awardees will be written about in The Daily Plant next week.

PEP Officers Mercedes Velilla, 6/10/96

Steven Merrill, 7/10/00

Robert Torres, 5/26/00

On October 8, while on routine patrol of Prospect Park, these officers were approached by a park patron who stated that he was confronted by three individuals, one with a firearm. These officers chased down the suspects on foot, catching all of them and placing them in custody. While keeping themselves and park patrons safe, they removed these threats to public safety from the park. For this, these three officers receive our Beyond the Call Award.

Peter began with Parks on September 8, 1997 and is the Supervisor of GIS, Geographic Information Systems, at MIS. Peter began with Parks by helping to develop Tree Manager and is still our resident expert, helping to trouble shoot and quality control the work at our forestry offices citywide. Now, he is bringing Parks into the future by developing our GIS capacity. Already, thanks to Peter, all Parkies can access aerial photos of any part of the city. Peter is now working with all parts of Parks and other agencies to integrate GIS into our current inventory and information systems. He helped create maps for the Daffodil planting projects, and is plotting out the distribution of Greenstreets. GIS offers enormous additional analytical and outreach opportunities, and Peter is opening up this new frontier for Parks. For his skills and effort, he was nominated by Comptroller David Stark and Director of MIS Martin Brenner.

Shaniece L. Cromer is the Bronx’s Employee of the Month for October. Shaniece joined Parks on April 2, 2001 and works as a City Park Worker with Bronx Shops. Shaniece helps maintain the Work Order Tracking system (WOTs). She enters over 1,800 work orders per month and ensures these get properly relayed to trades staff. Shaniece has also taken on other projects including helping to coordinate purchases for the trades shop and assisting with POP orientations at St. James. In her short time with Parks, Shaniece has demonstrated WOTs and WOTs of enthusiasm and effort. She was nominated by Bronx Chief of Operations John Bachman.

Hui Mei first worked at Parks from 1978 to 1985 when she helped design the reconstruction of Union Square Park. She joined a private firm for awhile until returning to Parks on April 25, 1994. She currently works as a landscape architect with Design. She is currently the project manager for the $10 million reconstruction of the Ederly site in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Hui Mei also designed an imaginative tall ships play unit for Brooklyn Bridge Park and completed the design for the creation of the Soundview Park bikeway. She’s a talented and imaginative designer and we’re happy we got our Grove back. Hui Mei was nominated by Architect Nancy Prince.

(Friday, November 10, 1989)

Strap on your skates and get ready to roll! Parks is sponsoring the first Central Park rollerskating race on Saturday, November 19, for wheeler-dealers young and old.

The race will start on the East Drive at 90^th Street and Fifth Avenue at 9 a.m. and will take skaters on two loops around Central Park. Skaters will be divided into competitive and non-competitive categories in three age groups: 16 and under, 17 to 39, and 40 and over. T-shirts will be given to all participants, and trophies will go to the fastest competitive and non-competitive skaters in each age group.

"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be,

because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget to pose,

and then where will you be?"

(1891-1951)