(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
When Jeff Novich wanted to report a honking taxi outside his apartment in 2014, he did what most New Yorkers do when making noise complaints. He filed an online report with 311.
It was the start of an ongoing relationship with the now 16-year-old city service, which in 2018 handled over 20,000 daily phone calls and 3 million individual reports equaling more than 44 million interactions in total. The service’s 400-plus employees handle everything from noise complaints to dispensing daily parking updates and inclement weather advisories via the 311 call center and app, as well as text messages and social media.
“I was annoyed [about the taxis] and wanted to do something about it, and I learned about 311 and the Taxi and Limousine Commission,” Novich said in a phone interview. “These complaints don’t fall into a black hole, and there’s a lawyer at TLC, and there’s real action.” When filing his online complaints, however, Novich realized the 311 website didn’t have TLC-specific complaints – back in 2014, 311’s reporting options were more limited than they are today.
As a product manager for tech companies, Novich spends his days creating and implementing user-friendly technology solutions. He decided to create his own solution for TLC-specific complaints: a mobile app called Reported. “A year and a half later, I have an email from the director of 311 saying we added that capability into the 311 app, largely inspired by the Reported [user experience]. And that changed the trajectory of the app,” said Novich.
Since then, Reported has evolved into an easy-to-use collection point for New Yorkers who spot and submit evidence of TLC, commercial, and private vehicles blocking bike and bus lanes. It takes less than a minute to submit a report, making it far quicker than direct 311, and the app keeps each user informed of its status, including the outcome of any TLC court hearings. The app empowers, as Novich puts it, the most vulnerable road users to hold drivers accountable for dangerous behavior.
In 2018, over 4,500 complaints were filed on Reported, which generated approximately $380,000 in revenue for the TLC as the result of fines imposed on drivers. According to Novich, complaints submitted through Reported represent 15 percent of all 311 complaints filed to TLC last year.
The Reported app is an example of New Yorkers taking matters – including the city’s open data – into their own hands, creating ‘civic tech’ to serve their needs and better understand their surroundings. While 311’s adoption of it was a major milestone for both parties and the public, some say the service is still woefully behind in its modernization.
A City Council oversight hearing in February highlighted the differing response times by agencies to 311 complaints. The Department of Buildings, for example, prioritizes their 311 complaints by threat level to public safety, taking anywhere from nine hours to over 90 days to resolve one complaint. A new version of 311 is expected to launch later this year, but it’s not clear how updated its capabilities will be in terms of accepting photos with complaints.
Open data is defined as “Free public data that is published by New York City government agencies and a few other government adjacent partners, like libraries and the housing authority,” said Adrienne Schmoeker, deputy analytics officer for the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics (MODA).
New York City’s open data law has been on the books since 2012, and updated since. It requires a great deal of public data to be made available at a single internet portal. The law was strengthened with requirements to make all open data available in perpetuity and the inclusion of dictionaries to clarify the available data sets.
Currently, over 2,000 data sets are available on the Open Data portal, with 311 contributing nearly a decade’s worth of complaints and geotags to the city’s collection. “Open data isn’t going to go away depending on the administration,” said Schmoeker. Neither is MODA. The office was added to the city charter through a City Council bill passed in December 2018, making data analytics an official part of City Hall.
Open data is important in modernizing governments, which according to Schmoeker are centuries-old enterprise-level organizations, and have pain points and legacy systems (such as 311, though it is much newer than other systems) requiring updates. “Modernization means that more and more data is going to be collected, ideally in a responsible way, thinking about not collecting data for data’s sake, but for the purpose of improving services to New Yorkers and making as much of that data available back to the public as possible,” said Schmoeker.
When a user submits a blocked bike lane report with Reported, the app combines that information (license plate, where the violation occurred, and the date) along with additional data accessed through the city’s open data portal, which verifies if the vehicle is TLC-registered, i.e. a yellow or green taxi, among other functions. After merging the user-submitted info with the backend data, the final actionable report is submitted to 311.
311’s data is also of interest to Alec Barrett, a lead developer for data visualization studio Two-N. Last month, he led a session on 311 data visualization at School of Data, an annual open data, civic tech, and design conference sponsored by BetaNYC, an independent civic tech organization, in partnership with MODA. “311 data is generated by citizens directly. Using it you can see evidence of problems being solved, or if something is an isolated incident,” said Barrett.
One of those problems, according to Manhattan resident, Community Board 6 representative, and Reported app user Rich Mintz, is parking placard abuse. It’s an ongoing issue of city employees exploiting their status by parking illegally, and mostly not getting ticketed for it. Some drivers use placard proximations, like NYPD patrol manuals or MTA vests, to park illegally, and often get away with it.
Currently, five separate bills designed to curb placard abuse have been introduced to the City Council, and Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a second round of plans to fight the problem, after his first effort proved unsuccessful.
The Reported app collects photos, but 311 currently doesn’t accept them – and placard abuse is supposed to be enforced by the NYPD. Mintz blames some of the lack of enforcement on 311’s inability or unwillingness to accept photographic evidence of placard abuse. “What happens is when the police close a [311] ticket saying they didn’t observe the violation, there’s no way to respond to that with clear photographic evidence,” he said.
It appears to be indicative of limitations not just with open data, but with 311’s lack of authority to more fully address issues like placard abuse. “311 reports, as imperfect as they are, seem to be the only way we have of lighting a fire under the police precincts,” he said. “I would say almost all the TLC complaints are resolved to my satisfaction. They do an excellent job of tending to these reports that are safety violation reports. The problem is the NYPD.”
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by Lisette Voytko
@lisettevoytko
@GothamGazette
Jumaane Williams (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
Jumaane Williams’ victory in the February special election for Public Advocate has created a ripple effect, namely a special election for his former City Council seat, representing Brooklyn’s Council District 45, set for May 14.
The district encompasses parts of the Central Brooklyn neighborhoods of Flatbush, East Flatbush, Flatlands, Midwood, and Canarsie. According to 2010 Census data, the district is majority black, at 76.1%, with Afro-Caribbeans like Williams making up the bulk of the population. Another 10.5% of the district is white, largely composed of Orthodox Jews.
There’s a crowded field of candidates that has assembled to try to replace Williams in what is a nonpartisan election, meaning candidates cannot run on traditional party lines, and there are no party primaries. The winner of the special election will subsequently have to compete in the June primary, about six weeks after the special election, if challenged by someone from their party, and the November general election, if challenged. While some have decried the calendar, Mayor Bill de Blasio had no choice by law in calling the special election after Williams resigned to become public advocate.
The special election is expected to be a very low turnout affair, making voter mobilization all the more important. Candidates have quickly been appearing at local forums and jockeying for and announcing endorsements from officials and groups.
Those in the running range from close confidantes of Williams to longtime antagonists. The new public advocate has not made an endorsement at this point, but has repeatedly stated that he is excited by the prospect of his successor being a woman of color, given the dearth of women in the City Council.
As of Wednesday, ten candidates have filed with the city’s Campaign Finance Board, while the voter-signature petitioning period, whereby candidates secure their places on the ballot, just ended. Notice for a candidate forum set for April 18 shows 11 candidates participating.
Williams’ former deputy chief of staff, Farah Louis, is seen by many as the frontrunner, with support from Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte and several other officials and groups. She recently picked up endorsements from two LGBTQ clubs: the Jim Owles Democratic Club and Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn.
Others in the running include attorney Jovia Radix and Monique Waterman, founder of the nonprofit group East Flatbush Village, who also has close ties to Williams. Radix originally had the support of Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair Frank Seddio in his personal capacity (the party itself may not endorse a candidate), but Seddio recently moved his endorsement to Louis, according to a source close to the party.
Also contesting the race are previous electoral opponents and critics of Williams, namely activist Anthony Beckford. Another Williams critic and electoral opponent, Lou Cespedes, quickly dropped out of the race according to Kings County Politics.
Other candidates include Health + Hospitals executive Rickie Tulloch; Adina Sash, often known as “FlatbushGirl,” who has a very active social media presence; Anthony Alexis, a former Assembly and Council aide who now supervises city-funded senior centers; Victor Jordan, a member of Community Board 17; Xamayla Rose, an anti-violence community activist; Hercules Reid, the legislative director of the CUNY University Student Senate and an advocate for CUNY students; and Jean Similien, who ran against Williams in 2013.
Affordable housing, a main focus for Williams, appears to be the marquee issue in the election, as residents worry about gentrification and displacement. The Institute for Poverty, Children, and Homelessness found in 2017 that 29 percent of District 45 is “severely rent burdened,” meaning those residents pay 50 percent or more of their income in rent. Candidates generally agree that more affordable housing needs to be developed and that the current methodology through which housing is determined to be “affordable” is flawed.
Candidates in the special election had until Wednesday to present 450 valid signatures from voters in the district in order to appear on the ballot -- we’ll soon know who exactly has qualified to appear on the May 14 ballot. Some candidates may see their signatures challenged at the Board of Elections. And the first filing deadline with the Campaign Finance Board is on April 12, which will give the initial indication of how fundraising efforts are going for each official candidate.
A closer look at each candidate in the mix (in alphabetical order by last name):
Anthony Alexis
Alexis has worked in both the Assembly and the Council as a staff aide, and in 2001 unsuccessfully ran for Council, losing to Kendall Stewart. He currently works in a supervisory role at city-funded senior centers.
Anthony Beckford
Beckford is a longtime activist in the district who has been critical of Williams. He ran against Williams in 2017 on the True Freedom party line, calling attention to the fact that Williams, who has worked on issues of police accountability, had voted to add 1,000 police officers to the NYPD despite record low crime rates and instances of police brutality, though he has also discussed working with Williams in support of various causes more recently.
In 2018, Beckford unsuccessfully ran for Assembly in the 42nd District on the Green Party line.
According to his Facebook page, Beckford leads the Brooklyn CopWatch Patrol unit, a group that monitors law enforcement officers for instances of police abuse and brutality. He is the president of Black Lives Matter Brooklyn; though the group is not affiliated with the larger nationwide network, Beckford’s group has lobbied state and city government on numerous issues, such as for a bill to criminalize discriminatory 911 calls and against the 421-a tax incentive program for real estate developers. He is also affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America.
Last month, Beckford excoriated Mayor de Blasio for proposing to cut social workers for homeless students in the upcoming budget. “The Mayor has truly abandoned our children and we should not be surprised,” Beckford said. “His loyalty is only to those who are against our communities and our schools.” He called for adding $1.4 billion in funding for city schools, to remove police officers from schools and cease payments by the Department of Education to the NYPD, and to hire more counselors and psychologists.
Victor Jordan
Jordan is a small business owner and economist originally from Guyana; he has taught either high school or college level economics and math classes in Guyana, Jamaica, and New York, and also once worked as a trade economist for Trinidad’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, according to a video he recorded for the Campaign Finance Board in 2017. A former chair of the land use and education committees of Community Board 17, Jordan has unsuccessfully run for the Assembly seat in District 42 three times, in 2014, 2016, and 2018, and most recently got 28% of the Democratic primary vote against incumbent Rodneyse Bichotte. He also ran in the open 2017 primary for the 41st City Council district seat, winning 5% of the vote and losing to Alicka Ampry-Samuel.
At Community Board 17, Jordan helped establish and leads a local chapter of the Community Emergency Response Team, an organization that educates community members about disaster and emergency preparedness, according to his CFB page. At a recent candidate forum, Jordan identified gentrification and high foreclosure rates as major problems in the district that he would attempt to tackle in the Council.
Farah Louis
Louis, described by Kings County Politics as the “early favorite” in the race, most recently served as Williams’ deputy chief of staff after filling other roles in his Council office, including as budget director. Previously, she worked as both a reporter and an organizer.
In an interview with Gotham Gazette, Louis said that there’s “room for change” in the mayor’s affordable housing plan, but did not display the outright opposition to it that Williams has regularly shown.
“I believe that there’s room for change. The former Council member had his views, I do believe that there’s room to change,” she said. “And it’s not just the mayor, but it’s working with those agencies, HPD in particular regarding AMIs [area median income] and MIH [mandatory inclusionary housing], to really fit the character and the income of the folks that really live in our district.”
Asked what work she was proudest of from her tenure in Williams’ office, Louis noted her work on the Community Safety Act, which created the NYPD Inspector General’s office and new protections against racial profiling by police; anti-gun violence initiatives; and her work in constituent services. She singled out issues related to small businesses as an area where she would like to improve upon Williams’ work, but she did not take a position on the Small Business Jobs Survival Act when asked about the long-stalled legislation that would institute new rules around commercial lease agreements to help small businesses with more favorable terms.
Jovia Radix
Radix is an attorney who has previously worked for the Brooklyn Democratic Party and as Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Brooklyn Regional Representative, handling constituent affairs. She most recently was a vice president at Kasirer LLC, a consultancy.
In an interview with Gotham Gazette, Radix identified the quality of sanitation service as a major but less discussed issue for the district, noting that residents and business owners she speaks to often complain of poor or infrequent service. She also named major issues defining the race, especially affordable housing and the ability of seniors to stay in the district. On affordable housing, Radix said that the use of AMI, which is an average based on the whole city and wealthy suburbs, in the district has resulted in the development of unaffordable units, and that AMI needs reform.
“We too often find that young people leave our district, go to college, get good jobs, are making money where they should be able to sustain themselves but they can’t afford to live in the communities where they grew up,” Radix said. “That’s a concern of our community. We want to ensure those young people come back and are able to put into the community what the community put into them.”
Hercules Reid
Reid, who at 26 is the youngest candidate in the race and would be the youngest Council member if elected, currently serves as legislative director for the CUNY University Student Senate and has been a long-time advocate on behalf of CUNY students, particularly for increased funding of CUNY and tuition-free CUNY. Reid is a critic of “predictable” tuition increases at CUNY and of Governor Cuomo’s Excelsior Scholarship, and helped lobby successfully for a tuition freeze at CUNY in 2015.
At a recent candidate forum, Reid spoke of how homeownership should be encouraged as a means of building generational wealth within low-income communities, and for expanding access to senior affordable housing. On his website, Reid’s campaign notes his support for the “No New Jails” movement opposed to building borough-based jails to replace Rikers Island.
In a campaign video and at the recent candidate forum, Reid spoke of how young people are often discouraged from participating in politics by the older people who run the show. “Young leaders like me are ready to lead and are often discouraged by the ‘wait your turn, you’re too young, you have no experience,’” Reid said in the video. “We have heard it all, and enough is enough.”
Xamayla Rose
Rose is a community activist who was spurred into her role after the 2005 killing of her brother Christopher over an iPod. In the wake of that, she and her family founded the Christopher Rose Community Empowerment Campaign (CRCEC), which aims to prevent youth violence and to provide community development for local youth.
The organization has three programs: CAMERA, which facilitates neighborhood watches to observe and prevent violence; PACE, which provides after-school “physical, academic, and cultural enrichment” to young people to keep them away from violence; and HOPE, which provides resources to the families of victims and education to others.
Rose has served as the chair of Community Board 17’s education committee. She previously worked for the Brooklyn Borough President’s office, where her work centered on juvenile justice issues.
At a recent forum, Rose said she believes that AMI needs to be reconfigured to more adequately reflect the income composition of the community. She is also in favor of ending third party transfers.
Adina Sash
Sash is a comedian and activist, active on Instagram with over 45,000 followers on the platform (more than double that of Williams), who has become well-known for challenging gender norms within the insular Orthodox Jewish community. She previously ran for District Leader in the 45th Assembly District but lost to incumbent Margarita Kagan.
Sash has released several policy proposals on her Instagram account, many affecting the district’s Jewish community, though not all. Despite controversy surrounding a lack of mandatory secular education at some yeshivas, Sash calls for increasing public funding for STEM education at the religious schools, arguing that yeshiva students are unfairly denied funding that public school students receive.
She is also pledging to donate half of her $148,500 Council salary, which she argues is too high, to local nonprofits, in both the Jewish and non-Jewish parts of the district, and to maintain a staff reflective of the district’s diversity. She also believes that the Met Council on Housing should receive greater funding to prevent evictions.
Despite her alignment with the conservative Orthodox community on certain issues, she has defied the community on several others. For example, she defended a lesbian comedian who was bumped from a performance at a kosher restaurant due to her sexual orientation.
Jean Similien
Similien has worked as a union representative for SSEU Local 371, the social services employee union. In 2013, he ran in the Democratic primary against Williams but came up far short, winning 12% of the vote. In his 2013 run, Similien’s platform included measures to reduce crime, lower the size of classrooms, and opposition to a neighborhood rezoning.
Rickie Tulloch
Tulloch currently serves as the Senior Director for Capital Contracts at NYC Health + Hospitals, the city’s public hospital network, where he has filled various positions over 33 years, including as Deputy Chief Financial Officer at Harlem Hospital, he told Gotham Gazette in an interview. He also served on Community Board 17 for 18 years, with terms as land use chair and treasurer, and unsuccessfully ran for the 40th Council District in 2009 and the 42nd Assembly District in 2014.
Tulloch, who said he immigrated to Brooklyn from Jamaica as a teenager, stressed in the interview that his experience sets him apart from his opponents, noting in particular his experience at H+H managing large budgets and procurements and his long community board tenure.
Like his opponents, Tulloch noted in the interview that affordable housing and the district’s rent burden are the top issues in the election. He proposed upzoning commercial corridors for more housing while downzoning residential areas to preserve the “essence” of the neighborhood. He also castigated the use of AMI to determine affordability thresholds, noting the city’s AMI is higher than that of the district.
“We want it to be based not on the AMI, but the poverty level,” he said. “That way it captures just about everybody in the community and makes it affordable to folks."
Monique Waterman
Waterman is the founder and CEO of East Flatbush Village, a local nonprofit dedicated to combating violence in the community through a variety of after-school and civic programs for low-income youth; she is currently on a leave of absence from the organization to focus on her campaign. Waterman has been profiled several times by local media as head of the organization, including by NY1 and the Brooklyn Paper.
At a recent candidate forum, Waterman took a similar line to Williams on rezonings in the neighborhood, arguing that the rezonings needed to be tailored to the district and not haphazardly applied.
The Waterman campaign did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
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by Ben Brachfeld, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
Note: after publication of this article a source close to the Brooklyn Democratic Party contacted Gotham Gazette to explain that Frank Seddio, in his personal capacity, not on behalf of the party, had expressed support for Radix but had then changed his endorsement to Louis. The article has been adjusted to reflect that information.
Council Member Kallos (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
New York City Council Member Ben Kallos is moving forward with a bill to increase the amount of public funds a candidate running for elected office can receive from the city’s campaign finance program, in order to further reduce the influence of big money donors in local political campaigns.
New York City’s voluntary campaign finance program matches small dollar donations in order to afford candidates without deep pockets or wealthy donors a more level playing field in elections. In November, voters approved a ballot question that increased the matching ratio from 6-to-1 for the first $175 of a contribution to 8-to-1 for the first $250 for citywide offices ($175 for all other offices), and increased the maximum amount of public funds that could be paid out from 55% of the spending limit for an office to 75%.
The changes also reduced individual contribution limits across the board and gave candidates running in the 2021 city elections the choice to opt in to the new rules, which otherwise go into mandatory effect beginning 2022.
Following the charter change, Kallos, a Manhattan Democrat, quickly advanced legislation that Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law to implement those rules for special elections taking place before the 2021 primaries, giving candidates the same option to choose between the old and new rules. In the February special election for public advocate, a majority of the candidates opted in to the new system and larger donations dropped.
[Read: Report: Under New Law, Small Donors Drove Public Advocate Special Election Campaigns]
Encouraged by those results, Kallos is pushing his new bill, which goes even further and would increase the maximum public funds payment from 75% to 88.8% of the spending limits for the 2021 elections, further encouraging candidates to raise $250 and below from individuals, and effectively leaving no gap for candidates to fill with larger private donations. The 2021 elections will be a massive undertaking with the mayor, comptroller, five borough presidents and about three dozen Council members, including Kallos, term limited out of office. Kallos, who is expected to run for higher office, told Gotham Gazette in an interview that his bill already has 34 sponsors, a super-majority of the 51-seat Council, and is scheduled for a committee hearing on April 15.
“It is going to do what the Charter Revision Commission should have done to begin with but couldn’t,” he said, noting that the bill would also place the new rules in the city’s administrative code. “We’re going to put things where they were supposed to be if we hadn’t had to go around the City Council,” he added, referring to the fact that the charter change approved by voters could have been done through City Council legislation and did not need to be made through referendum.
Mayoral spokesperson Raul Contreras said the mayor’s office would have to review the bill. “The power of your voice shouldn’t depend on how deep your pockets run. Public financing empowers the voices of the average New Yorker, which is a belief the majority of voters reaffirmed when they overwhelmingly voted for public financing in the 2018 general election,” Contreras said in a statement.
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s office did not return a request for comment but Johnson has previously supported a version of Kallos’ bill that was introduced in the prior legislative session of the Council and that would have accomplished the same result.
Though the bill has plenty of support within the Council, Kallos nonetheless expects some opposition. Any effort to expand the public matching funds program is inevitably criticized with similar refrains about the cost to taxpayers. Public funds payments come with thresholds that candidates must meet to show that their campaigns are serious and viable, and strict penalties for the misuse of public funds.
“Candidates who are not serious would be well-advised to stay away from a full public matching system,” Kallos said. “Candidates who have sought to abuse the system have found themselves fined and had to pay back the public dollars...and I think that is enough of an incentive for people to not do it.”
He continued, “We want our elected officials to work for us and getting in arguments about whether or not somebody’s opposition is credible, or whether they should take public dollars defeats the point that we want elected officials taking clean money from the government that is coming as a multiplier on small dollars instead of spending all of their time raising money from big donors.”
After the April 15 hearing in the Council’s government operations committee, of which Kallos was formerly chair and is now a member, it could be tweaked, and would need to be passed by the committee and then the full Council in order to face approval or veto by the mayor.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Note - this article has been updated.