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Opinion

A New Deal for Public Safety


A street renaming (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


New York City is experiencing multiple overlapping public safety crises. The city has crisis levels of homelessness, record levels of drug overdoses, ongoing COVID-19 challenges, and widespread concerns about evictions, wage theft, climate change, and more — but the city agencies doing the most significant hiring are police and corrections.

We need new investments in producing safe, healthy, and economically secure communities that will also create thousands of new jobs for New York City residents. We propose the creation of a New Deal for Public Safety that would both invest in new infrastructures for community safety and create thousands of new jobs in professions designed to help lift up individuals and communities rather than criminalizing them.

The newly-adopted fiscal year 2023 New York City budget shows reductions to funding for various essential services while giving police and corrections budgets a pass. Compared to the latest modified budget for the current fiscal year (FY22), Mayor Adams and the City Council have reduced spending on homelessness services by $414.5 million, parks by $11.5 million, education by $215 million, sanitation by $171.8 million, and public hospitals by $1.6 billion, while holding the budgets of the NYPD and Department of Corrections steady at a combined $13 billion.

Part of the support the mayor has received is because many working class families -- including his own -- have come to rely on jobs in policing and corrections as a ticket into the middle class. Police officers make over $40,000 to start and within six years can see earnings as high as $100,000 with overtime and differentials, not to mention excellent benefits and the possibility of retirement after 25 years. These are very high salaries for young people with only two years of college or similar military experience; and correction officers earn even more.

The high salaries and employment stability operate as a kind of “poverty draft,” drawing in young people who see few other options on the job market for those with sometimes minimal qualifications. It also offers the allure of “doing something positive for the community.” Many young people from struggling neighborhoods want careers where they can be part of the solution and since the police and correction departments are often hiring and pay high wages, they are drawn to them.

I, David, have faced these pressures first-hand. I wanted a job that would help my community, had potential for advancement, and that would be able to support my growing family. I worked as a home health aide — a caring profession that the community needs —but that didn’t pay enough, and I had to supplement the income by driving for Uber and Lyft.

My family and friends experienced similar constraints. Loved ones who had initially wanted to work in health care or education found that the low salaries those jobs offered, as well as the expensive education needed, simply squeezed their families too tight, and instead turned to jobs as cops or correction officers — careers that have high wages, security, and good benefits.

The constant availability of policing jobs relative to other professions reinforces the idea that policing is how we produce safe and secure communities. Young people look to criminal justice academic programs because they know there will be jobs in this area. Jobs in libraries, youth services, parks and recreation, public health, and other related professions either require significantly higher educational certification or pay much less, and none of them are as readily available. We need to change that equation.

To start, we need to move away from the idea that policing is the primary way to create safety.

Over the last several decades we have seen that there is inadequate funding for basic social needs. We have closed down recreation centers, defunded mental health services, skewed housing markets to benefit wealthy developers in ways that produced mass homelessness, underfunded schools, and turned a blind eye to predatory lending practices, environmental degradation, stolen wages, and discriminatory and exploitative landlords.

Instead of trying to solve our city’s problems by investing in community programs, we’ve put a huge amount of money into policing and used the police to manage the consequences of disinvestment in communities. We have turned the problems of homelessness, mental health challenges, harmful substance use, youth unemployment, and failed schools into problems of crime and disorder to be managed by policing. There are more NYPD personnel in New York City schools than counselors of all types combined. This is a crisis of priorities that must be addressed.

The solution to our challenges is not more policing and incarceration. It is more community-based mental health services, substance abuse specialists, school counselors and support staff, community-based violence interrupters, construction of supportive housing, and creation of good-paying jobs.

By rethinking the delivery of public safety we can also create new pipelines for employment for young people. We propose that New York City commit to a long-term hiring plan in professions that will create real public safety.

Under our proposed New Deal for Public Safety, we would create 5,000 new positions a year over the next five years for a total of 25,000 permanent new community-based public safety jobs in government agencies and local non-profits.

We could immediately expand the number of jobs that directly contribute to building healthier and safer communities. Many of these jobs would not require any more education or certifications than police officers, including jobs as youth recreation workers, community anti-violence specialists, library support staff, homeless outreach workers, and drug related harm-reduction workers. Wages, benefits, and job security for these jobs should be increased to match what we pay police. We also need new investments in building, rehabilitating, and maintaining public housing, community centers, and schools that could put thousands to work in well paid unionized construction jobs.

In addition, we need to expand hiring in areas that require more education such as mental health outreach workers, school counselors, drug treatment specialists, and trauma counselors. These jobs are essential to any plan to reduce violence and disorder. In order to prepare young people for these careers we need to partner with CUNY to create new programs to train and certify those who are interested in helping foster public safety. Once it is clear that these jobs exist, students will flock to them.

New hiring could take place in schools to meet the national standards for school counselors (4,000 hires) as well as placing restorative justice coordinators in each city school (2,000). We could create community-based mental health outreach teams (1,000), expand the city’s community violence reduction programs (2,000), enhance harm reduction efforts like needle exchange, safer usage facilities, and peer to peer outreach (1,000), expand parks and recreation programing (5,000), build and staff supportive housing (5,000), create community-based family support centers to address the problems of domestic violence, teen runaways, and children entering foster care (2,000), expand youth programs in libraries (1,000), create a network of rape crisis centers (1,000), and increase additional drug treatment capacity (1,000).

This would need to be baseline funding, not one-time investments and should come from both local and state government. Too often, community-based support services are seen as short-term add-ons or discretionary priorities for a particular City Council member. This leads to inefficiencies due to turnover, start-up time, and lack of consistent support for people in crisis.

I, David, have worked with several community-based family support programs in Brooklyn that were consistently under-funded and ultimately shut down based on the whims of policymakers. The result is a lack of confidence in these types of programs and an inability to produce robust long term positive effects.

Creating a new, permanent community-based public safety infrastructure will not only improve the quality of life of all New Yorkers, it will also create important new pathways for stable careers, allowing us to move away from our reliance on policing and jails.

***
David Alexis is a candidate for New York State Senate in Brooklyn’s 21st District. Alex S. Vitale is professor of sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and the author of The End of Policing. On Twitter @David4BK & @avitale.

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With the Stroke of a Pen, Governor Hochul Can Bring Smaller Classes to New York City Schools


Gov. Hochul's signature (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of the Governor)


The families in my district need – and deserve – smaller classes for their children. The Legislature has overwhelmingly approved a measure that will set new class size limits in New York City public schools. It is now up to Governor Hochul to ensure that the city brings these benefits to our kids.

For years New York City’s children have had to deal with class sizes among the largest in the state, and my district in Queens is no exception.

Pre-covid, average class size in the more than 30 schools in my district was significantly over the new proposed limits -- 20 for most elementary classes, going up to 25 for later grades and high school academic subjects. 

Despite enrollment losses since the pandemic – losses that lower class sizes could help address -- most of my district’s schools are still above the new limits the Legislature has proposed.

Lower class sizes have been a long-term goal of the state, part of our efforts to finally bring the city into compliance with the goals of the Contract for Excellence, enacted by the Legislature 15 years ago to help make sure that the state fairly funded our neediest schools. Instituting these changes on the city level is about equity -- it’s about bringing the standards that so many of the rest of our state’s children already benefit from to children living in the five boroughs.

Parents know that smaller classes can make a huge difference in their children’s lives. National studies of well-run programs in places like Wisconsin and Tennessee have shown the potential for children’s academic growth when teachers have more time to devote to each student.

The narrative that we have to choose between programs like music and small class sizes is a false choice rooted in a dishonest austerity mindset, especially given the windfall of unspent federal covid funds. It is unfortunate that the city government has been so quick to say that we cannot give the best to our children. 

First of all, the city and the Department of Education – with more than $1 billion in additional state funding and more than $4.5 billion in unspent federal covid funds -- can afford to lower class sizes.

The program will be phased in over five years, so the cost of an additional 2,000 new teachers each of those years is not a budget-breaker. Even when fully implemented, the estimated $1 billion in new salary costs amount to less than one percent of the overall city budget.

Space for smaller classes will undoubtedly be an issue, but one that can be solved. 

The teachers union, working with the system’s annual space survey of school principals, has found that nine out of ten school buildings could meet these new class size guidelines by better using their current space, including by using rooms now devoted to administration and other purposes.

Eventually, new construction will be necessary, but the number of new classes needed is well below the new rooms the system has already planned to build over the next five years.

New York’s history is full of things that ‘couldn’t be done’ – for logistical, financial, or administrative reasons – until we decided that they could.

Take universal pre-K and 3K, for instance. For years officials complained that these programs were too expensive, there wasn’t enough space or demand, there weren’t enough teachers -- the objections went on and on.

But eventually, the political will was found. Last year, more than 90,000 children – including more than 500 in my district alone – took part in 3K and pre-K programs, a huge benefit, particularly for working families. In the same spirit, this year’s enacted state budget allocated a total of $7 billion over four years to expand these efforts statewide.

The fight for fair funding for New York City students has been going on for decades. The promise of lower class sizes was made in 2007. Now, in the form of Senate bill S9460, my colleagues in the Senate and the Assembly have, with a nearly-unanimous vote, made good on that pledge.

That bill is ready and waiting for Governor Hochul. Her signature can make the promise of smaller classes a reality.

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State Senator Jessica Ramos represents the 13th district in Queens. On Twitter @JessicaRamos.

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New York Must Take on Massive Packaging Waste


Garbage (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


In a recent TikTok video, a woman opens a giant cardboard box and pulls out layers and layers of bubble wrap, only to reveal four more tiny cardboard boxes, each of which contain a single napkin ring. The caption reads, “Am I on PUNK’D? Ashton… Sweetie… you can come out now…” 

Videos regularly circulate on social media that demonstrate these kinds of egregious examples of excess packaging from online retailers. To make matters worse, these types of materials are often either not recyclable or aren’t accepted in most curbside recycling programs. While some companies have been taking steps to create more sustainable packaging, this viral shaming hasn’t been enough to enact meaningful change. 

Policymakers in Albany have sought to make companies accountable for the packaging waste they create by forcing them to cover the cost of recycling the materials they ship out. But as the legislative session ended and officials returned to their home districts, bills from State Senator Todd Kaminsky and Assemblymember Steven Englebrigh that would do just that failed to work their way through the Legislature, and that was after a similar policy had already been stripped from this year’s final State Budget.

These bills would have brought New York in line with states like Maine, Colorado, and Oregon that already have policies like this called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Those states have seen positive results: local governments can afford to provide recycling services to residents and companies are encouraged to cut back on the amount of packaging they introduce into the waste cycle in the first place. 

On the national level, the EPA recently announced $375 million in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to be dedicated towards grant programs for public service announcements, education, and other initiatives that will support a circular economy. This funding will further incentivize the adoption of responsible recycling practices across the nation — a blueprint on how government should tackle our most pressing challenges. The urgency for advancing recycling practices is being heeded by states across the country and our partners in the federal government; New York should not hesitate to follow suit.

Many may be thinking: how will this work? After all, this is a drastic — and needed — change to a practice that touches the lives of almost every single New Yorker. How will this be enforced efficiently, especially for companies like Amazon that ship out millions of packages on a daily basis? In short, through direct or indirect reimbursements, companies will pay the state for carrying out the recycling process; the government will also incentivize the use of environmentally-sound packages by offering a lower fee to those who use or decide to implement sustainable packaging.

Here at Recycle Track Systems, we provide haulers, corporations, and professional sports organizations with actionable metrics and education to improve their diversion programs for recycling and organics (or food waste). We’ve found the large companies we work with, similar to the many who would be impacted by policies around Extended Producer Responsibility, have not been resistant to refining their waste management practices; most simply need some direction and the tools to execute on their plan.

This leads me to believe in the companies who do business here, and that they will be receptive to this piece of legislation that benefits the state, environment, and even their operations in the short and long term.

At the same time, it has become abundantly clear that we haven’t been able to rely on industry as a whole to adopt a more sustainable approach to packaging — nor do we have the time to wait for such an epiphany. The climate crisis is arguably the biggest challenge facing New York, the United States, and the world; it is incumbent upon us to adopt an all-hands-on-deck approach to meet this challenge.

Although EPR legislation didn’t make it over the finish line in Albany, it rests on the shoulders of our elected leaders to continue to push for this legislation so they can work alongside packagers to lead New York towards a cleaner, more sustainable, and prosperous future.

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Gregory Lettieri is CEO of Recycle Track Systems.

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