Jamiel and Sameha Altaheri
When Mayor Bill de Blasio delivers his third State of the City address tonight at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx, he will focus on a message of unity and inclusiveness. The theme this year, "One New York: Working for Every Neighborhood," will highlight the administration's accomplishments in fighting inequality, improving quality of life and working for the future, while also outlining new initiatives.
A large part of creating "One New York" has been the mayor's support for the city's immigrant population. He has stressed it often enough: New York is an immigrant city and it looks out for its own. At the December 2015 launch of ActionNYC, a legal support initiative for immigrants, the mayor said, "New York City's commitment to our immigrant communities will not waver. While the courts delay executive action and much-needed relief, while some voices may attempt to create hostility toward immigrants, while more than 30 governors tried to resist the resettlement of Syrian refugees, New York City will demonstrate the power and values of our city."
De Blasio is set to again demonstrate those professed values at the start of his program tonight.
At the State of the City, the Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Jamiel and Sameha Altaheri and their children - a Muslim family that embodies the modern day New York immigrant experience. The Altaheris are first-generation Yemeni immigrants. Jamiel is a captain in the New York Police Department who is training with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Quantico, Virginia and Sameha is a full-time mother to their three children, Nadine, Diana, and Yasin.
The mayor's speech will also feature on-site interpretation services for the first time in multiple languages including Spanish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Haitian-Creole and Arabic. At past speeches, only sign language had been made available. (The technology was purchased by the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs and interpreters are graduates of NYCertified, the City's interpretation certification program.)
Including the Altaheris is also symbolic of the mayor's outreach to Muslims in New York City. De Blasio has been praised for adding Muslim holidays to the school calendar and speaking out against prejudicial behavior against Muslims.
The Altaheris chased the American dream to New York and it has been good to them for years. But the last few months have been especially challenging for Muslims across the country. The San Bernardino and Paris terror attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis have lent momentum to rising Islamophobia, heightened by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called for a registry of Muslims and a temporary ban on all immigration of Muslims into the United States.
It's not surprising then that ten-year-old Nadine Altaheri became a victim to this vitriol. When a fellow student used racially charged language to bully her at school, it was too much for her mother to bear.
"Personally, I go through so many incidents as a Muslim woman," said Sameha Altaheri. "I try not to say anything but when it comes to my kids, it's a red line." Sameha said it isn't uncommon to hear people yell "ISIS" or "terrorist" at her and that's something her children shouldn't have to suffer. She has tried to teach her children respect for all religions, races, and creeds, she said. She doesn't blame the bully - she blames the media for creating a toxic atmosphere of ignorance.
"My daughter said to me, 'My dad protects other people and I felt unprotected.' That really hurt me," Sameha Altaheri said.
Mrs. Altaheri approached local activists for help and they brought her to the city's Community Affairs Unit where she met Dr. Sarah Sayeed, a senior advisor appointed by the mayor last year as the first-ever dedicated liaison for the Muslim community.
Mrs. Altaheri and Dr. Sayeed have been working together to create a forum in the Bronx, where the Altaheris live, for mothers, across different faiths, to talk about issues of discrimination.
"It's not just a New York City issue," said Dr. Sayeed of rising Islamophobia. She was appointed at the CAU in June, around the same time these issues came further to the fore nationally. Dr. Sayeed has the dual task of community outreach and working with city agencies to deliver services in culturally responsive ways. She says this is just one of the ways in which the city has changed its strategic thinking about faith-based communities.
Mayor de Blasio has been a vocal proponent of immigrant protections. On the national level, he has supported Syrian refugees and President Obama's executive action on immigration. His own initiatives include ActionNYC, NYCitizenship and New American Corners, which provide citizenship education services, and the municipal identification program, IDNYC, which was largely targeted at undocumented immigrants.
Tonight's speech will put that commitment front and center with the Altaheris.
Sameha Altaheri is excited about leading the ceremony tonight. As are her husband and kids. Nadine and Diane have been reciting the Pledge of Allegiance non-stop at home, their mother said. The outspoken, younger Diane has been motivating her shy older sister. Yasin, only five years old, will not attend.
Mrs. Altaheri believes the mayor is "doing what New York needs," and she appreciates his support for immigrants. It's a message, she says, that the city is one family, one community.
"We have every race and faith and color in New York," she said. "That's the beauty of it."
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Council Members Lander, Mark-Viverito, Kallos (l-r) (photo: William Alatriste)
At the first and only City Council hearing on a package of legislation that will raise the salaries of all the city’s elected officials and reform how Council members are compensated, the Council was roundly praised for accepting several reforms long sought by good government groups, but criticized both for raising their salaries higher than recommended and for the the timing of the vote.
The proposed legislation was first announced late last Thursday, and the vote will take place two days after Wednesday's hearing, during an usual Friday session. The raises are retroactive to Jan. 1, regardless of when the bills are passed.
Asking that the Council delay the vote in order to allow more public input, Dick Dadey, executive director of the good government group Citizens Union, testified, “not delaying denies the public sufficient input on a matter that they will pay for and from which you personally benefit.” Dadey and Citizens Union had previously expressed criticism of the Council crafting its plan without a public hearing first.
The four bills largely adhere to the recommendations made by an independent advisory commission tasked with reviewing the compensation levels of the city’s elected officials, including eliminating stipends for chairing committees, making the Council member position full time, and raising the salaries of the Mayor, Comptroller, Public Advocate, Borough Presidents, and District Attorneys to the amount outlined by the commission.
Other reforms, like mandating that financial disclosure forms be published online, banning almost all outside income, and making future raises prospective, go a step further than the commission’s report had recommended. These changes are earning the Council praise from good government advocates.
Significantly, the Council’s proposed legislation will raise Council member salaries from $112,500 to $148,500 - $10,185 higher than the $138,315 salary the commission had recommended. This, Council members say, is to compensate for the fact that they will ban almost all forms of outside income.
Yet, only three Council members currently earn significant outside income, and they will be grandfathered in until the end of their current term.
“We did not recommend any additional bump in pay [for eliminating outside income]…considering the fact that only very few of the members here have an income that would be banned under the new law, and the grandfathering…no present City Council person is adversely affected by the change until the end of this term,” Fritz Schwarz, Jr., chief counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and chair of the advisory commission said during his testimony.
Dadey and Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause NY, also took issue with the bonus for banning outside income, and suggested that particular increase should only be effective after the ban on outside income affects all members, on Jan. 1, 2018.
Of the three members of the Council earning significant outside income who will get the new salary nonetheless, Lerner said, “for the next year and a half, they are also going to be collecting that outside income. So that double-dipping doesn’t really make any sense to us.”
“These raises, the first in almost a decade, are well deserved,” Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said, starting off the hearing. Saying that the Council was adopting most of the commission’s recommendations, she said, “We diverged in one area: compensation for becoming full time and giving up the potential for outside income. The commission recommended no increase for this important reform. We disagree, and have proposed a modest increase to account for it.”
Some Council members were asking for an even larger salary increase, like Ydanis Rodriguez, who used the few minutes allotted for asking the panel questions to instead talk about how hard Council members work.
“We work more than 60 hours a week,” Rodriguez said. “For me, this is a big compromise that we’re doing…Our salaries should be $175,000.”
“That, I’m not in agreement with,” Mark-Viverito said to reporters when asked about Rodriguez’s remark.
Council members, commissioners, good government groups, and members of the Conflicts of Interest Board were all in agreement that Council members work hard, yet several Council members seemed defensive about the amount of work the position comes with. Council Member Chin added that the job is “more than full time.”
“Can we agree that the commission recognizes that the Council member works more than full time?” Rodriguez asked.
“We never received time sheets, so I can’t answer specifically, but in general, it was our impression…that absolutely you are working long periods of time,” commissioner Paul Quintero replied.
Speaking with press after his testimony, Schwarz expressed frustration with the fact that, though Council members spoke passionately of their need for better compensation and the hard work that they do during the hearing, not a single one had expressed that to the commission during its two public hearings.
“We invited all elected officials to come [testify at the two public hearings] and none of them did," Schwarz said, though he noted that Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer was the only one of the city’s 64 elected officials to testify before the commission.
“It would be far better for the public, for us, and for them, if they’d come to testify,” Schwarz added.
Dadey echoed that sentiment, telling members of the press after his testimony, “This is the problem with the process - there are a lot of legitimate questions to be asked of the Council and how they arrived at the numbers. And to get a committee report two days before the vote…this is being rushed way too fast.”
The timing of the vote has raised eyebrows, as the Council rescheduled its stated meeting to Friday to vote on the legislation, at which point it will also vote on controversial legislation regarding Mayor de Blasio’s plan to shrink the horse-carriage industry. [Note: the vote on the horse-carriage deal was postponed when union support for the legislation fell through on Thursday]
When asked about the rush to vote on the salary legislation, Mark-Viverito first said, “The timing is something we cannot control…I didn’t think delaying it any further was a good thing to do.”
After members of the press pointed out that it is entirely within the Council’s control to decide when to vote on legislation, Mark-Viverito added, “Based on conversations with members there is an interest to move on this issue.” It was a sentiment echoed by Council Members Brad Lander and Ben Kallos, who co-chaired the hearing and defended the Council's plans, citing the unprecedented reforms and the value in raising Council salaries so as to attract strong people to run for office.
Dadey, however, said he has “talked to many Council members and [has] not heard any of them say they wanted it to be rushed. Many of them have a problem with the quick process.”
Two other issues that were raised several times during the hearing were whether most outside income should be banned entirely or if there should be a cap on the amount of outside income Council members can earn; and the low pay of Council staffers. Aides to Council members often make salaries between $30,000 and $50,000, with Council members deciding to hire additional people rather than pay a smaller staff more per person.
Council Member David Greenfield, who gave up practicing law and the outside income he earned from it months ago, said he is “concerned” about limiting types of outside income, saying it “may dissuade people from going into government” and asked if the commission would support a cap on outside income.
Schwarz said the commission is against a cap, adding “every other city official since 1937 have not been able to earn outside income.”
There is a possibility that some last minute amendments may be added to the package of bills on the floor of the Council during Friday’s full-body meeting. Some Council members seemed to be expecting to put amendments forward.
Good government groups have urged the Council not to accept a raise until their next term in office, if re-elected. Mayor de Blasio will not take a raise this term. As Dadey pointed out, 37 Council members said, in response to a Citizens Union questionnaire, that they think pay raises should be prospective.
Yet it seems highly unlikely that the Council will follow through on that, as both the commission and the Council support the rationale that, since it has been almost a decade since the salaries of elected officials have changed, accepting a raise this term would be fair. The Council is changing the process for the future, though, so that raises are put into effect for the next class of Council members. The timeline in part relies on the Mayor calling a compensation review commission every four years as he or she is supposed to.
While questions remain, this round of pay increases and the connected reforms move forward. As Council Member Greenfield pointed out Wednesday, “Prior councils have taken the raises, but have never done the reforms. This is a big deal…for the first time ever we’re actually taking the raises but also making the reforms, and that’s huge.”
"Just to be fair,” Greenfield said, emphasizing the desire for credit that several Council members expressed, “the Council can do whatever it wants.”
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by Meg O'Connor, Gotham Gazette
@megoconnor13 @GothamGazette
Note: Gotham Gazette is an independent publication of Citizens Union Foundation, sister organization of Citizens Union.
Mayor de Blasio & Planning Chair Carl Weisbrod (photo: The Mayor's Office)
As expected, the City Planning Commission passed two major components of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s housing plan on Wednesday morning, sending the amendments on to City Council for public hearings on Feb. 9 and 10.
Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) and Zoning for Quality and Affordability (ZQA) each passed with nine commissioners in favor, three opposed, and one abstaining. The plans, which need City Council approval, aim to change the city’s land use rules in order to spur more real estate development, but in a way that encourages new affordable housing units and improved neighborhoods.
The Commission addressed a standing room-only meeting hall and overflow annex packed with a large turnout of members from both the Hotel Trades Council and New York chapter of the AARP. Each group publicly endorsed Mayor de Blasio’s housing plan in December, citing positive implications for hotel workers and seniors, respectively.
Planning Commission Chair Carl Weisbrod, who is appointed by the Mayor, roundly praised the amendments before the MIH vote, saying that the changes would “bring affordable housing to neighborhoods where it otherwise wouldn’t be built.”
Responding to oft-repeated criticism that the plans are too broad-strokes for community improvement, Weisbrod emphasized that the plan was not intended as a “one-size-fits-all” approach. He reminded attendees that the two amendments were meant to create a “floor, not a ceiling” for housing affordability in New York, pointing to subsidies from Housing Preservation and Development and other funding programs that would round out the mayor’s 10-year plan to create or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing.
Other Commission members weren’t as optimistic. Commissioner Rayann Besser, appointed by Staten Island Borough President, and Commissioner Orlando Marin from the Bronx both voted against the MIH amendment with no comment, while Queens-based Commissioner Irwin Cantor voted against after asking that changes be made during City Council review.
Commissioner Michelle de la Uz, appointed to the Planning Commission by then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and reappointed by now-Public Advocate Letitia James, insisted that MIH “doesn’t do enough to guarantee that the lowest-income families can obtain housing.” De la Uz abstained.
De la Uz’s critique of MIH, which requires affordable housing as part of new developments obtaining a rezoning, is a frequent one cited by critics of the plan. As Weisbrod did, supporters of MIH say that the city has other tools to create affordable housing for those at the lowest ends of the income spectrum.
The MIH amendment passed City Planning with a few changes, including improvements to the Board of Standards and Appeals special permits provisions of the program meant to enhance the city’s Housing and Preservation Department’s role in reviewing hardship applications from developers, and some textual clarifications.
The ZQA vote proceeded in much the same fashion, preceded by Commissioner Weisbrod’s statement that the ZQA amendment is a “modest but essential update” to current regulations that will allow for easier construction of more affordable and transit-accessible housing for low-income residents and seniors, as well as encourage more progressive urban design and ground-floor use of residential buildings.
Commissioner Besser again voted no, citing Staten Island Borough President James Oddo’s concern about “too many unanswered questions” regarding the effects ZQA would have on neighborhood character. Commissioner Marin also voted no, without comment. Commissioner Cantor praised the “tireless” efforts of City Planning before voting against. Commissioner de la Uz again abstained from the vote.
ZQA passed with changes requiring a CPC special permit for long-term care facilities in low-density residential districts, and specification around ground-floor usage for those facilities.
City Planning moved the two zoning text amendments through to the City Council despite the fact that they had received near-universal disapproval from local community boards, which had reviewed the proposals previously.
The Council will hold public hearings scheduled for Feb. 9 (MIH) and 10 (ZQA), at which the Council’s zoning subcommittee, chaired by Council Member Donovan Richards, will hear testimony from city government representatives, housing organizations, residents, and others. After that, the City Council will deliberate and may approve, modify, or disapprove the amendments. It is all but certain that the Council will seek modifications to the plans, especially ZQA.
According to city land use modification rules, any changes to MIH and ZQA must be “within scope” of what is passed by the CPC and approved as such by the CPC. The City Council’s website defines changes “within scope” as alterations that “must be on the same topic and within the boundaries of what has been studied in the Environmental Impact Statement.”
Responding to discussion on Twitter of the City Council’s power to modify the amendments, Council Member David Greenfield, who chairs the land use committee wrote, “Suffice to say we can make significant changes on our own.”
Whatever versions of MIH and ZQA are produced by the Council will be voted on by the subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises, followed by the Committee on Land Use, and finally by the entire City Council.
While Wednesday’s Planning Commission majority vote lends a certain momentum to the changes being sought by Mayor de Blasio, advocacy groups continue to push back against both MIH and ZQA.
Community groups say that MIH does not address deeper affordability for New York’s lowest-income residents. New York Communities for Change issued a statement after the Planning Commission meeting, criticizing the commission’s decision. “Today the City Planning Commission sided with some of New York’s wealthiest developers to sell out our neighborhoods for a meager percentage of ‘affordable' units,” it reads. The statement specifically mentioned fast-food and homecare workers as being “left out of the city’s housing plans for decades.”
A cadre of preservation groups also spoke out vehemently against the CPC decision. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said in a statement, “By far the majority of our city’s communities and residents have spoken out against this plan. We call on the City Council to listen to the people and communities that elected them and to ensure this wrongheaded plan is stopped. Berman’s criticism was echoed in a press release by representatives from the Historic Districts Council, New York Landmarks Conservancy, Landmark West, and Friends of the Upper East Side Historic District.
Despite the pushback, Mayor de Blasio has expressed confidence that MIH and ZQA will be looked upon favorably by City Council members. The City Council Speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, has indicated her support for the proposals, though she has said she expects changes to be made before the Council votes them through - something repeated by several members, including Greenfield and Richards.
Discussing his plans recently in Albany, de Blasio said, “[W]hat we found in the previous approach was that there were not particularly stringent demands put on developers in terms of affordable housing and some of the plans that were agreed to with communities were not honored, so that has bred a lot of cynicism.” But, de Blasio added, “I have a very different approach."
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by Maggie Calmes, Gotham Gazette
@maggiecalmes @GothamGazette