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District 2: Planning for a Better - And Quieter - Community


City Council district 2 is a diverse and vibrant area, which includes communities as rich and unique in history as the Lower East Side, Gramercy Park and Murray Hill. While each neighborhood has its own distinct needs and priorities, there are some unifying issues that face all of the residents of this area.

DEVELOPMENT THAT MEETS THE COMMUNITY’S NEEDS
I am particularly concerned about the loss of scarce affordable housing through conversions, buyouts, and gradual elimination of rent regulations. As a former resident of public housing myself, I am keenly aware of poor maintenance, privatization and discriminatory occupancy rules that current residents face. Out of scale housing developments, massive community facilities and new commercial uses are also straining our public transit, parks and schools, and often change the character of our neighborhoods.

In order to address these issues, the residents of these neighborhoods must develop community-planning guidelines that balance development pressures with the rights of existing residents and the need to preserve economic diversity.

I will assist community board 3 in its current work to discourage buildings that are designed under outdated planning principals.

I will create a mandatory affordable housing component.

And I will assist in negotiations between community residents and the universities and hospitals, which currently have or are likely to have plans to build facilities to ensure that they are in scale with the community fabric.

NOISE CONCERNS
The neighborhoods of district 2 are also characterized by lively bars and restaurants, which contribute substantially to the area’s appeal. When responsibly managed and when licensed in reasonable density, these establishments are tremendous community assets enjoyed by patrons and neighbors.

In certain areas, however, some of these establishments, often with outdoor cafes and backyard gardens, can create excessive noise and crowding that make it difficult for nearby residents to quietly enjoy their homes and sidewalks.

Some of the owners of these bars and restaurants are unresponsive to residents' complaints of noise and music at late night hours or have not made adequate provisions for soundproofing. Some are unwilling or unable to control their patrons who often crowd sidewalks, strain sanitation services, and become rowdy and sometimes dangerous.

Licensing of bars and restaurants that sell alcoholic beverages is currently the purview of the New York State Liquor Authority. The city has no power to control the proliferation of such establishments. The only local control rests with the New York City Police Department, which can enforce legal compliance in existing establishments with such matters as underage drinking, occupancy limits, and noise infractions, and the Department of Consumer Affairs, which licenses sidewalk cafes, but not backyard gardens.

Although the police department is increasingly aware and sensitive to the problems resulting from bar proliferation, most precincts do not have the resources to adequately address the problems.

Reasonable standards must be established which will limit the number, size and character of establishments which may operate in residential districts.

Local law enforcement officials and community boards, which have the most direct information about each establishment's character, must have a meaningful power over licensing approvals.

Adequate resources and streamlined administrative sanctions must be established to enforce realistic noise and nuisance ordinances.

I intend to work cooperatively with my colleagues and the city delegation of the New York State Legislature to find means to increase local control of this very serious problem.

Rosie Mendez represents City Council district 2, which includes Alphabet City, Gramercy, the Lower East Side and Murray Hill.

 

District 13: Improving Education and Reforming the Department of Buildings


Education and reform of the New York City Department of Buildings are two key issues that I hope to address as an incoming member of the New York City Council.

MAKING REAL PROGRESS IN EDUCATION
As a product of the public school system and a public school parent, I want to build upon the recent reform of the school system and assess the effectiveness of changes made to date.

While I support the mayor's initiative to end social promotion, I want to make sure that improvements in test scores are not just sufficient enough to move a youngster on to the next grade, but can be sustained in future years through follow-up and mentoring. In particular, we must look at what happens when children enter the intermediate school years and recognize that their experience during these years often dictate their success in high school as well.

Any discussion about the future of public education must also include the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, in which a court ruled that New York City schools are entitled to more funding. While we await further action on the lawsuit, the City Council must effectively oversee the allocation of resources, because additional funding is not the sole answer to the problems plaguing our schools.

Meaningful oversight by the legislative branch is needed to assure accountability. We must listen and work with teachers, supervisors, support staff and parents. I know what to look for when I visit a school, and I intend to visit all the schools in my district and use my knowledge to assess school tone and learning environment.

Too many schools in my district are still overcrowded. We have high schools with 4,600 students, and elementary schools where children with special needs are forced to hold class in the hallways. This is unacceptable. Crowded classrooms have a direct impact upon academic results. We need more than portable trailers; we need long-term solutions.

I believe we call upon our schools to do so much because they often provide the stability and structure many children cry out for and may not receive at home.

I believe we must stress character education with specified learning strategies for each grade. It is important that we build on basics - not just reading, writing, and arithmetic - but respect for each other, brotherhood and positive socialization. We must teach them at a very young age what is right, what is wrong, and how to know the difference.

I also want to restore meaningful adult education programs because I realize that learning is an on-going process. As someone who returned to Queens College and received my Masters Degree in Urban Studies in 2001, I can attest to the fact that more and more adults see continuing education a priority. It is important that community-based initiatives provide training in computer literacy, resume writing, and job training, and that certificate based programs be expanded or established where they do not exist.

REFORMING THE BUILDINGS DEPARTMENT
Overdevelopment is a serious issue in the Bronx. In recent years, single-family homes have been torn down, and three-family homes have been put up in their place. New buildings are often built without adequate parking and without thought for how they affect our schools, roads, and mass transit, and how they change the character of our neighborhoods.

One of the problems lies with the New York City Department of Buildings, which too often does not enforce existing zoning regulations. I firmly believe that the buildings department can do better.

Currently, the Buildings Department allows architects, who are hired by developers, to approve their own new construction permits with no review by a Buildings Department plan examiner through a process called self-certification. Effectively, this process allows developers to approve their own new plans with no oversight by the Department of Buildings. We must eliminate this practice.

As district manager of community board 10, I found time and time again that too many applications were flawed. By challenging many of them, we successfully reduced developments that would have placed an even greater strain on infrastructure and the character of residential blocks. As a policy, self-certification is wrong.

We must intensify our efforts to professionalize the buildings department and provide them with the expertise needed to enforce the zoning resolution before and after a permit is granted. I want to take a look at each of the borough offices and review their staffing levels, because these offices deal most directly with the public. It is their operation that directly impacts on communities throughout our city.

I also want to advance pending downzoning proposals, which would limit the size and density of new construction for neighborhoods in my district such as Ferry Point, Pelham Bay and Zerega.

James Vacca represents City Council district 13, which includes the Bronx neighborhoods of Morris Park, Pelham and Throgs Neck.

 

Political Agendas, 2006


All in the same week, Governor George Pataki delivered his final State of the State address; Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver issued a scathing response a few minutes later; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave his inaugural address; and Christine Quinn spoke after she was elected the new Speaker of the City Council. The re-elected public advocate and city comptroller also presented their inaugural addresses. What’s more, eight new council members were sworn into office -- four of whom (so far) have written essays specifically for Gotham Gazette.

Speeches and Essays

• Governor George Pataki's State of the State Address
•Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's Response To Pataki's Speech

• Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Inaugural Address
• Comptroller Bill Thompson's Inaugural Address
• Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum's Inaugural Address

• District 2: Planning for a Better - And Quieter - Community by Rosie Mendez
• District 4: Creating Open Space and Solving Transportation Woes on the East Side by Dan Garodnick
• District 5: Garbage Stations, Water Tunnel Shaft, and Affordable Housing by Jessica Lappin
• District 13: Improving Education and Reforming the Department of
Buildings by James Vacca

 

The political convergence gave elected officials at all levels of government an opportunity to put forth at least initial agendas for 2006 (both Bloomberg and Quinn plan more detailed State of the City addresses soon) -- and a chance for their constituents to discern both common concerns and differing approaches:

CRIME

With the shooting deaths of two New York City police officers coming within two weeks of one another at the end of last year, crime seems to have been put back as topic number one for New York's elected officials. It was the subject on which Bloomberg spoke at the most length in his inaugural address, focusing on guns: “Our most urgent challenge is ending the threat of guns and the violence they do," he said. "Now we have a duty…, one that rises above all partisan politics and one we will pursue relentlessly. And that is to rid our streets of guns and punish those who possess and traffic in these instruments of death.”

“We will take our message to Albany, to Washington, and to every capital of every state that permits guns to flow freely across its borders,” he said. Demanding tougher gun laws in states other than the one in which he serves has already earned the mayor new critics across the country.

But at home, there seems near unanimity in favor of a tough stance against gun trafficking. “Mr. Mayor,” said newly elected Speaker Quinn in her speech, “I will go anywhere you need to stop the flow of illegal guns into this city.”

The state assembly is on board, too, and Silver called on his partners in state government to do more: “When it comes to halting gun violence, the governor and the legislature have much more work to do. We must remove illegal guns from our neighborhoods. We must prohibit the sale of assault weapons. And we must ban armor-piercing bullets once and for all."

Even Pataki seemed to approve the effort against guns, with a passing reference to state laws just passed.

Pataki's primary focus on crime, however, involved tough talk about sex offenders. He promised to push for longer sentences, a stronger Megan’s Law and the elimination of the statute of limitations for sexual assault. He also proposed to re-introduce legislation to keep some sex offenders confined after they’ve served their prison sentences.

Despite Silver’s criticisms of Pataki on other issues, he backed the governor’s move to crack down on sex offenders, as he has in the past.

EDUCATION

Education remains a subject on which all office-holders express concern, though here there is less consensus. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's harshest attack on Pataki's tenure involved the governor’s handling of education, specifically his treatment of the lawsuit by the nonprofit group Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which claimed the state was shortchanging kids in New York City schools. The courts agreed, ordering the state to increase funding for the city's schools, but the Pataki administration is appealing the rulings.

For his part, Pataki's only reference to the lawsuit or the court decision was indirect: "Let's start out by renewing our commitment to providing additional funding to high-needs schools -- in New York City and across the state."

Then again, Mayor Bloomberg did not mention the lawsuit either.

Instead, Bloomberg touted arts education and otherwise promised to stay the course of his controversial school reform. For her part, Quinn hinted that middle schools need to show the same improvement that grade schools have seen since the overhaul of the system.

One of the new council members addressed the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case in his essay. James Vacca calls on the city council to monitor how funding from the lawsuit is distributed. That’s because council member involvement can help ensure accountability, he writes. What’s more, he says, “I intend to visit all the schools in my district and use my knowledge to assess school tone and learning environment.” He also stressed a need to restore adult and continuing education programs.

HOUSING

Not much gets a New York City politician more fired up than the need for affordable housing. “We face a housing crisis that is pricing too many tenants and homeowners out of their neighborhoods,” said Chris Quinn in her acceptance speech. Bloomberg promised to push forward on “the most ambitious affordable housing initiative in New York’s history.”

All of the new council members mention affordable housing as a need in their districts. Councilmember Jessica Lappin says that as two middle-income developments on Roosevelt Island prepare to exit the Mitchell-Lama program, and as other buildings consider privatization, residents on the island face a housing crisis and “are questioning the future and fate of the place they call home.”

“[C]onversions, buyouts, and gradual elimination of rent regulations” threaten affordable housing for residents in Rosie Mendez’s district, which includes parts of the Lower East Side and Gramercy. She says neighborhoods “must develop community-planning guidelines that balance development pressures with the rights of existing residents and the need to preserve economic diversity.”

City Comptroller William Thompson weighed in, too: “We will ensure that the innovative Battery Park City Housing Trust Fund we established with Mayor Bloomberg and housing advocates honors the decades old commitment to create affordable housing units."

The topic seemed off the radar of the much wider constituencies of Pataki and Silver, despite affordable housing needs throughout the state. Pataki didn’t mention it at all, and Silver made only a passing reference to it when he blamed Pataki for providing inadequate funding for housing.

LOCAL ISSUES

Pataki's address, packed as it was with specifics, included several promises for New York City, such as the creation of an Empire Zone in Lower Manhattan, and "an unprecedented bio-tech research challenge grant initiative that will leverage $600 million in public/private matching funds" for the city's medical research institutions.

But it was the city council members who largely focused on specific economic development and land use issues in their communities.

“One of the biggest challenges facing the area is the future of a plot of land where the Con Edison Waterside Plant currently sits,” writes Dan Garodnick, new council member for Manhattan’s District 4, which includes parts of mid-town along the East River and the Upper East Side at the edge of Central Park.

Lappin is concerned about a plan from the city’s Department of Environmental Protection to dig a new water supply shaft in her district, which runs along the waterfront of Upper East Side. The proposed Shaft 33B would link the area with the city’s No. 3 water tunnel, the biggest capital construction project in the history of the city.

James Vacca, who represents Pelham Bay, Throgs Neck and other parts of northeastern Bronx, proposes a big-picture fix for problems he says stem from land use processes. He lays out tactics to reform and professionalize the city’s Department of Buildings in order to ease overdevelopment in his and other neighborhoods.

Speeches and Essays On The 2006 Agenda

•Governor George Pataki's State of the State Address
•Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's Response To Pataki's Speech

• Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Inaugural Address
• Comptroller Bill Thompson's Inaugural Address
• Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum's Inaugural Address

• District 2: Planning for a Better - And Quieter - Community by Rosie Mendez
• District 4: Creating Open Space and Solving Transportation Woes on the East Side by Dan Garodnick
• District 5: Garbage Stations, Water Tunnel Shaft, and Affordable Housing by Jessica Lappin
• District 13: Improving Education and Reforming the Department of
Buildings by James Vacca

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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