The City Council unleashed its ire on dog owners who tie up their canines outside for hours on end yesterday by approving legislation to prohibit tethering for more than three consecutive hours.
The bill (Intro 425), which was approved by a vote of 47 to 1, would not only ban dogs from spending long hours tied up outside, but it would also force owners to tether their animals humanely for short periods.
Pointing to images of dogs in New York City with gashes along their necks from being tied up with chains, Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the legislation would target dog owners who systemically tie up their pit bull, yorkie or mutt outside.
"This chain is embedded in the dog's skin," said Quinn looking at the graphic images. "We really don't have tough enough laws on the books to prevent this."
The only council member to vote against the bill was Councilmember Charles Barron of Brooklyn.
The council also approved legislation (Intro 328-A) by a vote of 41 to 7 that would drastically increase licensing fees for owners who refuse to get their animal spayed or neutered.
Under the tethering law, owners could tie up their pet when running into the grocery store or when having brunch at a sidewalk café.
An owner also could keep a dog tied up for nearly three hours, take them off of the restraint, then put them back on later, officials said. The bill, council members said, is meant to send a message.
"This is a really good step. … It will help educate people as to the ills of tethering," said Michelle Villagomez, the senior manager of New York City advocacy for the ASPCA. "We hope to be able to continue this dialogue." Villagomez said in an ideal world owners would not be allowed to tie up their animals outside at all.
To ensure any tying up be done humanely, the bill bans the use of restraints that are too heavy, like steel chains, or that could easily become entangled. It would also prohibit the use of choke or pinch collars.
A first time violator could face a fine of up to $250 if the animal is injured. If a dog owner violates the law again within a year, he or she could face a fine of up to $500 and three months in prison.
Enforcement of the bill will be complaint driven and under the jurisdiction of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, officials said. Agents of the ASPCA will also be charged with enforcement. For all of the five boroughs, the ASPCA has 20 agents.
While the tethering bill received support from the vast majority of council members, legislation to increase licensing fines for dogs not spayed or neutered was more controversial. One council member called it a "regressive tax increase."
"I really don’t feel like spending $68 [to] license my dogs to stay in my house and stay in my yard," said Councilmember Dan Halloran, a Republican of Queens. "Now we are taxing our dogs."
Under the bill, anyone who refuses to spay or neuter his or her dog will pay $34 for a license instead of $11.50. The excess funding will go to a fund to subsidize animal control programs.
The storm will come down again on the Bloomberg administration this morning as the City Council kicks off the first of seven hearings on its response to the Boxing Day blizzard.
At least five members of the administration will testify at the Emigrant Savings Bank today, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg's second in command, Deputy Mayor of Operations Stephen Goldsmith. Goldsmith's whereabouts during the blizzard and whether or not he was at the reins controlling the city's response has been the subject of controversy since the 20-inch snowfall. The deputy mayor only joined the administration in April after serving as mayor of Indianapolis.
With the hope of digging out what went wrong during the December storm, which left trains at a standstill overnight and streets unplowed for days, council officials will likely throw icy snowballs at administration officials, who are still trudging to catch up with city services.
For instance, recycling pickup resumed only this weekend and delays in all sanitation pickups continue to plague certain neighborhoods.
"There are big questions," said Council Speaker Christine Quinn Friday on the John Gambling Show. "I think New Yorkers are angry, but they are also scratching their heads a bit. Usually we handle snow well. To see it go so off course you can't really understand what happened."
It will be tough to shovel out of this one.
Administration officials can prepare to be hit from all sides by City Council members, who have called the city's response unacceptable.
Quinn said last week she hoped to get answers on the city's emergency management plan, what responses the plan should trigger from the administration and when the city diverged from those actions.
A spokesperson from the Office of Emergency Management would not provide Gotham Gazette with a copy of the city's snow plan, saying it was not policy to release the document publicly.
For a snowfall the size of the Boxing Day blizzard, the Office of Emergency Management starts preparations the day before the storm by holding a conference call with stakeholder agencies and departments, the spokesperson said. The call gives agencies an opportunity to request any assistance to prepare.
Before the blizzard, not a single agency requested help, according to the Office of Emergency Management.
The day of the storm, representatives from stakeholders meet at the city's emergency command center to coordinate the response efforts.
According to the spokesperson, ambulances stuck in unplowed, snow-inundated streets created the largest problem in the command center on Boxing Day. That issue has been thrust to the center of the blizzard debate. [See our accompanying story.]
"[The mayor] thinks the response was inadequate, and I think we feel that way as well," said Chris Gilbride, a spokesperson at the Office of Emergency Management.
Council members don't hesitate to agree.
Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr., the chair of the council's Public Safety Committee, hopes to find out why the city failed to call a snow emergency, which would force drivers to move their cars from certain narrow streets. He also plans on hammering the administration on the large backup of calls to the 911 system. On Dec. 27, the day after the storm started, the city had 49,478 calls to 911.
Other officials are taking a broader tact.
"What information did the mayor have when decisions were made and who provided it to him?" asked Councilmember Jumaane Williams, the chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations, last week. "What was the communication between agencies and inside agencies, and did they have a plan before the storm, and was that plan adjusted?"
The council's review of the city's response is just one of four separate investigations into the blizzard. Both the city Department of Investigation and the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office are examining whether workers at the Department of Sanitation intentionally slowed down plows and shovels to protest recent demotions and budget cuts. The administration also is conducting its own internal review, led by Elizabeth Weinstein, the head of the Mayor's Office of Operations.
In addition to Goldsmith, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty, Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Joseph F. Bruno, Fire Department Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano and a high-ranking official from the New York Police Department are all expected to attend today's hearing, according to the council.
On Friday, as a fresh blanket of snow covered the city, plows were out as the first flakes fell. Bloomberg deployed the city's SCOUT teams to monitor the cleanup's progress and 50 sanitation trucks were equipped with GPS.
About two inches fell in the five boroughs, but the administration wasn't taking any chances. (The day before the latest snowfall the mayor's approval rating dipped to an all time low of 37 percent.)
The actions on Friday have not stopped council members from proposing other solutions to snowfall.
Williams plans to introduce six bills in response to the storm, including a measure that would waive all parking tickets from Dec. 27 through Jan. 3. In the future, Williams wants to suspend alternate side parking after a certain amount of snowfall. His legislative package would also waive any tickets given to senior citizens who didn’t shovel their snow and require the Office of Emergency Management to provide City Council members with an action plan 24 hours before a major storm.
Vallone is exploring a bill to force the mayor to file a certificate with the City Clerk if he leaves town for more than 48 hours. To this day, Bloomberg refuses to say where he was in the lead up to the storm. The bill, Vallone said, would also require the mayor to say who is in charge.
Councilmember Letitia James, who will chair today's hearing, said her office is considering legislation to prevent a similar snowstorm response in the future. But she declined to provide specifics until after the administration's statements today.
Today's hearing starts at 11 a.m. The council will hold a second hearing on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's response to the storm on Friday.
The council will not take public testimony today, but it will hold five separate public hearings in each borough next week.
New York has been the home to generations of artists who drew inspiration from the city and in turn gave New York much of its character and energy. Over the years, though, escalating rents and unemployment have forced many to leave, threatening the city's standing as a cultural epicenter. Now, though, some hope that the recession -- which has made the situation for artists in New York even more precarious -- could help boost the arts here. The creative sector hopes it can turn the real estate downturn into an opportunity.
"We were somewhat inspired by President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, who famously said that a good crisis should never go to waste. And with that in mind, we thought about the bursting of the real estate bubble," explained Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future at the recent "Time to Be Creative” conference.
Simply having vacant buildings on the one hand and artists who need them on the other is not enough. The Center for an Urban Future now has published a report with 17 recommendations to help the arts sector take advantage of the real estate crisis to secure more affordable spaces. The question remains, though, whether policymakers, property owners, developers and arts organizations can and will invest the time, resources and energy to bring these solutions to fruition. If bold steps aren’t taken soon, most agree, New York could continue to lose artists and arts organizations to other cities.
The creative sector play a significant economic role in New York City. According to a recent report published by the Alliance for the Arts, the nonprofit arts industry generated more than 40,000 jobs and $2.2 billion in wages in 2005. However, the arts community has experienced considerable setbacks as the recession forced arts nonprofits, according to projected 2010 figures, to reduce their budgets by 61 percent, lay off 18 percent of their employees, and cancel or postpone 42 percent of programming.
Forced to scale back during the recession, art groups have sought more affordable space. In a bit of a silver lining, the economic situation has created new opportunities for artists and arts groups to find reasonably priced places to work, live, rehearse and perform as vacancy rates rise and residential properties foreclose. The report by the Center for an Urban Future states that the vacancy rate for Class B office buildings, which are generally older structures, had spiked to 14.7 percent last March in Manhattan in addition to a 13 percent rise in residential inventory between 2008 and 2009. In the city as a whole, the report found 515 stalled constructions sites and 48 defaulted commercial properties. On top of the commercial and residential properties that remain unused, a number of shuttered parochial schools throughout the city could easily be redeveloped for studio space or administrative offices for the arts sector.
Efforts already exist to put some of this vacant space to use.
For over a decade, Chashama, an art nonprofit supported by foundation, corporate and government grants, has transformed more than 40 vacant properties such as abandoned factories and empty storefronts into subsidized studios and workspaces for 7,500 artists. Most recently, the New York City Economic Development Corp. in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Affairs launched a new initiative, Artists as Entrepreneurs, which provides artists with skills to tackle business plans and marketing. After completing the pilot program artists have access to low-cost studio space at the Brooklyn Army Terminal operated by Chashama. The Economic Development Corp. and Cultural Affairs worked with Chashama to expand its space at the Brooklyn Army Terminal by 40,000 feet to accommodate 30 additional artists from the program.
The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has also been a pioneer in finding creative ways to use vacant ground retail spaces, upper level office floors and subterranean bank vaults as incubators for artists. After scouring the downtown real estate, they converted these abandoned properties into exhibition and performance space and studio residency programs such as Workspace and Swing Space.
"We make it easy for property owners to partner with us. We are flexible space users, and we are always the liaisons between property owners and participating artists. And we come to the table prepared with the logistical elements like license agreements, contracts, and insurance,” wrote Melissa Levin, director of artist residencies at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
In the report by the Center for an Urban Future, Bowles recommends that the Real Estate Board of New York and local Business Improvement Districts organize workshops with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Chashama to engage building owners in a conversation on how they can capitalize on their empty commercial spaces and turn them into temporary studios, galleries and performance venues.
Bowles also suggests, "City and philanthropic leaders help provide the administrative support that groups like Chashama and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council desperately need to expand their own initiatives. Both organizations have developed significant expertise in handling these types of projects and arranging for contingencies from liability insurance to building IDs for artists." While these two organizations have been hugely successful in salvaging and reusing vacant spaces, they do not have the staff and funds to grow at the scale the Center for an Urban Future suggests. An expansion of that magnitude would require extra resources and manpower to locate and renovate the space and negotiate with landlords.
Christine Adkins, operations manager of Chashama, expressed an interest in reaching out to other arts organization. "When you look out and see people trying to figure out things like getting commercial insurance, you just want to help and show them how to do it because it seems like it is a pretty good fit and there is a ton of vacant real estate. It is just getting the resources together is quite difficult," she said.
In a phone interview, Adkins suggested the creation of a database that could connect organizations with property owners and vacant space. It would, she said, be "a system almost like an artistic Facebook where you make matches. Right now, it is so elusive. Who owns what? What is vacant? You really have to know people and know how real estate works to understand that. If there is a way to make information accessible, I think it would make the process a little more fluid."
Eric Gural, executive managing director at Newmark Knight Frank, a global real estate advisory firm, stresses that a partnership between arts nonprofits is key to resolving the space needs for the creative sector. Ten years ago, the Alliance of Resident Theaters, an organization that provides low cost office and rehearsal space to the nonprofit community, approached Gural. He made a deal with A.R.T. and found them a home at 520 Eighth Ave. With over 2,000 square feet and 23 companies residing in the building, A.R.T. offers storage space, shared facilities, and rehearsal studios.
Gural reiterates that, while he is open to these types of partnerships, they rarely happen. "I got to tell you, I don't get approached by many arts groups for that kind of project," he said.
That lack of communication between the creative sector and developers is only one of a number of obstacles that continue to make the search for affordable space exceedingly difficult.
Another is a lack of resources. The New York Economic Development Corp. and the Department of Cultural Affairs have provided a great deal of support for the arts community through grants and several recently launched initiatives. However, the development corporation fears that the expiration of the civic facility authority, which has enabled New York City Industrial Development Agency to provide tax-exempt bond financing to non-profits, will limit the city's capacity to help arts organizations with financing. Until the state reauthorizes the civic facility authority, nonprofits might face additional hurdles in finding an affordable home for their organizations.
Developers have an incentive to work with nonprofits, Gural points out. Under New York zoning codes, developers that provide space for a community facility such as an arts nonprofit can get permission to construct a larger building than would otherwise be allowed. Unfortunately, arts nonprofits are often unaware of these special density regulations.
"There should be some kind of partnership that gives a developer an advantage or benefit so that he can build space that is good for a theater or good for a school. I think the arts community needs to get together with the developers and make sure that everyone understands what the ramifications are and what the possibilities are," explains Gural. "What you need is collaboration, not confrontation."
Driven out of their offices again and again by escalating rents, arts nonprofits are constantly on the move. The only solution is buying or securing a permanent space -- something beyond the reach of many groups. In the Center for an Urban Future report, Bowles proposes conducting a study to assess the feasibility of a cultural land trust. The report recommends that government officials, foundations and corporations join together and raise funds to purchase property that would serve as permanent homes for the arts.
Gary Bernstein, founder and executive director of Wingspan Arts, agrees. "This report really gives it [recommendation] the credence, the promise and the weight that it deserves as a really viable way to create buildings that are part of this cultural land trust," he said. "You've built the equivalent of a park space -- it would function in the same way, a fixed asset in a community that everyone could leverage."
A cultural land trust, Bernstein believes, would relieve the strains of negotiating short and long-term leases and perpetually chasing affordable space.
"There are no shortage of examples of organizations that were doing great work and that were happy and should have stayed where they were, but the landlords said, 'I can get $8 more per square foot and if you don't pay this, I will lease it to the retail store or office space or to whomever can make more,'" he said.
Finding a building that meets an organization's spatial requirements is an ongoing challenge. Theater groups usually need a relatively large space with no windows or columns. This is often impossible to find in older Class B or C buildings, therefore, the groups must look to newer developments or Class A buildings that can accommodate their needs. Bernstein spoke with several developers when he was looking for a new home for his theater group, but repeatedly ran into the same problem.
"Our magnitude of vision was always bigger than they really wanted to offer. We would say that we need 25,000 square feet of space. And when they would hear that, they would say 'that's a retail tenant. That is not something we're going to give away for zoning bonus for. It is too much space,'" Bernstein said.
The real estate crisis has opened the door for more collaboration between the arts sector and real estate industry. If even a few of the recommendations from the report were adopted, significant progress could be made, but the high cost of living in the city will remain a challenge for artists.
"What's to lose? We have 17 recommendations in our report. Some are things that can be done immediately, like ... seeking a building owner to give their building or a floor of their building over to artists or arts groups in return for city incentives. Others are more immediate and long term, like suggestions for preserving Class B and C buildings, using upper floor retail spaces and allowing more public schools to be used for small arts groups to rehearse," Bowles explained in an email. "If a few of these were accomplished, it'd be really positive for the arts in NYC."
Nicole Gates Anderson is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn.