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Members of De Blasio's Small Business Advisory Council Frustrated by Lack of Communication, Progress


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Mayor de Blasio gets ice cream (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


An advisory council created by Mayor Bill de Blasio to speak on behalf of the city’s small businesses hasn’t convened in months and some of its members say their concerns aren’t being heard as the city charts a stunted recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

In April, de Blasio announced the creation of several task forces to help lead the city’s recovery efforts, including advisory councils dedicated to specific sectors such as large and small businesses, health care, education, labor, arts, culture and tourism, among others. Several statements from appointees and news reports have since pointed out that the mayor has largely ignored the voices of people on those councils.

Members of the small business advisory council have had a similar experience even as small businesses across the city are shuttering en masse. A Partnership for New York City report found that almost a third of roughly 230,000 small businesses might never reopen. After meeting with the mayor initially and thereafter with deputy mayors and agency commissioners to coordinate the city’s response, the small business advisory council has not come together since June, four of the members said in interviews with Gotham Gazette. 

That same month, Gregg Bishop, who de Blasio promoted to senior advisor for small business recovery in May, left the administration for the private sector. Bishop had previously served as commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) and was replaced by Commissioner Jonnel Doris at that time. But since his departure, the mayor has not named another senior advisor in that role. Dorris has appeared with the mayor at several press briefings to discuss issues related to small businesses.

The mayor has signed into law a small business relief package passed by the City Council in May. And SBS awarded $60 million in loans and grants to small businesses across the city. But the administration has, more recently, seemed to fall behind in responding to small business concerns.

Members of the small business council say that with the lack of a point person at City Hall to listen to their recommendations and without a steady flow of information, small businesses have been left in the lurch worrying about how to navigate the financial stresses of the pandemic as well as business regulations that seem to constantly change with little notice. They were particularly concerned that the administration hasn’t clearly communicated how businesses should handle the renewed shutdowns in certain neighborhoods that have seen a recent spike in covid cases, made all the more fraught by mixed messaging by the mayor and Governor Andrew Cuomo. 

“After Phase II happened, the meetings stopped,” said Lisa Sorin, president of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce, referring to the phase of the city’s reopening launched June 22, which saw the resumption of in-store retail, reopenings of salons and barber shops, and bars and restaurants for outdoor seating. “Since then we have not met as a committee,” Sorin said.

Sorin and the four other presidents of the Chambers of Commerce representing the other boroughs were among the signatories of a letter sent last month from 160-odd business leaders to Mayor de Blasio calling on him to ensure that the city’s recovery is not hampered by a lack of essential services and issues affecting public safety and quality of life. “We're the ones on the ground. We want to bring employees back,” Sorin added. “We want to help small businesses. Bring us to the table. We’re the experts.”

“We're in unprecedented times. It's a constant movement, and nobody really knows which direction to go, which is why we're asking to be for these committees to kick up again,” Sorin said.

Linda Baran, president of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, said that she has constantly reached out to the mayor’s office and SBS over the last few months. “However, when I reach out there’s not always clarity. So sometimes they don't have the answers, which is frustrating. It's frustrating for me, and it's frustrating for many of those small business owners that we work with,” she said.

Though she said the advisory council’s initial recommendations, mostly related to outdoor dining, were taken into account, the administration has not implemented inter-agency coordination that can help businesses avoid having to deal with multiple agencies and confusing regulations.

“I do believe that everything that's been done is more reactive than proactive,” she said, “and I feel that we really do need to be proactive because the businesses in the city, not only just here on Staten Island but throughout the city, are still very fragile.” Baran noted that the city should be better prepared for the upcoming winter season, particularly as outdoor dining has been extended throughout the year but regulations around outside heating, for instance, haven’t been publicly issued.

The New York City Business Improvement District Association recently called on the mayor to create a plan to allow an “Open Stores” outdoor retail program to boost many small, non-restaurant businesses, particularly ahead of the busy winter holiday season.

In a phone interview, former Commissioner Bishop was surprised to hear that the business council hasn’t met in months. “Oh wow! Really?” he said.

Bishop said the lack of coordination stems somewhat from the structure of City Hall, and has been exacerbated by the infighting between de Blasio and Cuomo. “You have the Economic development agency reporting to one deputy mayor and Small Business Services reporting to another deputy mayor and that in itself just led to challenges in terms of coordination,” he said. “I think that what the business community needs is clarity and unfortunately, this pandemic doesn't afford anyone clarity.” 

He said naming a point person was an important step that the administration should take. “It is important for government to listen and have mechanisms where the community feels that not only can they speak to the decision makers, but that their concerns are being heard,” he said. “And I know for sure, whether you're a large business or small business, certainty is the absolute critical thing right now.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story. A spokesperson for the Department of Small Business Services said City Hall would comment, but did not follow up.

Jo-Ann Yoo, executive director of the Asian American Federation, expressed a deep frustration with City Hall as it seems to be ignoring the needs of businesses in already under-resourced communities of color that have borne a disproportionate brunt of the pandemic -- something the mayor regularly mentions during his near-daily briefings.

In a Zoom interview, Yoo said that the fact that the small business advisory council hasn’t met in months is a moot point for her since she was on the verge of resigning from it in June. “When we were asked to serve on these committees, I said yes with all the expectations and the hopes that the things that we're talking about would be implemented,” she said. Though she did praise SBS Commissioner Doris for stepping in at a difficult time for the agency, she had few kind words for the de Blasio administration. “I think it would be an understatement to say I'm disappointed. I'm actually very frustrated and very, very angry.”

Yoo’s chief concern during all the council’s meetings was language access for the pan-Asian business community. The city was issuing new regulations and announcing new programs but she said they weren’t promptly being offered in as many languages as needed. “I sounded like a broken record,” she said. “If there was ever a time that we needed to get the information dissemination right, it was during a global pandemic.” In some cases, she said, foreign consulates were sending out the latest information about city regulations to Asian-American businesses. “This is a disgrace. And yet my call for language access went unheard,” she said.

She noted that Asian-American businesses have also been suffering for longer, having experienced lower foot traffic and plummeting sales from the early days of the pandemic, well before the city shut down. “In January, our community was devastated economically,” she said.

After repeated calls and meetings with the Department of Small Business Services, Yoo said her concerns continued to go unanswered. “At some point, SBS just ghosted us,” she said.

She added, “My pushback on SBS is, look at who are the economic contributors. Look who is suffering. But how come they're not seen and they're not recognized in any of the recovery plans? That's the question I want to ask.”

The business council was as varied as the small businesses across the city. Another member, Mohamed Attia, director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, similarly said he was excited to be included on the council to represent the interests of street vendors. But his excitement later turned to disappointment as well. “Honestly, we haven't seen much response from the administration in terms of street vending issues,” he said.

Attia did say that being on the council helped him air concerns from street vendors about being dislocated by a potential outdoor dining program, and that the plan eventually did not disrupt their business. But besides that one positive note, other issues haven’t been addressed. He said the administration should be offering small business grants and loans to street vendors, many of whom had to go months without a source of livelihood as city streets emptied and people sheltered at home.

One step the city could easily take, he said, is supporting a City Council bill to lift the cap on street vending permits in the city, which is currently 5,100 and hasn’t been lifted in decades. “In a matter of a couple of weeks, the city was able to issue 10,000 permits for outdoor dining for restaurants. So you see how that doesn't make sense at all,” Attia said.

Attia pointed to a chief example of how the administration’s lack of communication has been harmful. In June, the mayor announced that the NYPD would be removed from the role of enforcement against street vendors. But in September, as reported by THE CITY, police officers in Downtown Manhattan were handing out $500 tickets to vendors for minor violations. The mayor had promised an enforcement transition plan but has yet to release it.

“We have reached out to a lot of people in the administration and nobody had any insights about how the enforcement transition would happen,” Attia said. “It has been almost four months now. We haven't heard any concrete information. We haven't heard anything.”

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Borough President Candidates Talk Future of Manhattan Economy, Small Businesses


Manhattan Borough President candidates 2021 MBP

(l-r) Mark Levine; Elizabeth Caputo; Brad Hoylman; Kim Watkins; Ben Kallos


The five Democratic candidates running to be the next Manhattan Borough President via the upcoming 2021 election gathered by Zoom on Wednesday for a candidate forum hosted by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, with topics focused on the devastated local economy and small businesses in the borough.

The participating candidates, seeking to replace term-limited Democrat Gale Brewer, were Elizabeth Caputo, a former community board chair on the Upper West Side; State Senator Brad Hoylman; Kimberly Watkins, president of Community Education Council 3 in Harlem; City Council Member Mark Levine of the Upper West Side and slightly north, and City Council Member Ben Kallos of the Upper East Side.

“With all the immense challenges we are facing during this global pandemic, it is a critical time to provide support to our small businesses and find ways for our local economy to rebound and support more New Yorkers,” said Jessica Walker, the president and CEO of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce.

Manhattan Borough President Brewer, whom Walker described as a “living legend,” was on hand for the event. The candidates running to replace her were also unanimous at the forum in praising Brewer’s leadership.

“It is an office that has less power than it did in 1989 when the charter changed and it’s an office that you have to make something of,” Brewer said. She noted the charter-mandated duties of the Borough President include a role in the land use process, appointments to Manhattan’s 12 Community Boards and other boards, allocating some funding within the city budget, and advocating for the borough before the City Council.

Why Run
“I’m running for this office because I believe now more than ever our borough needs qualified, new executive leadership to move our city forward to make it safer, cleaner, greener, and more equitable,” said Caputo, who described herself as “not an ideologue” and a “bridge-builder.”

“Due to COVID-19, we face the largest challenges in Manhattan in a generation,” Hoylman said, noting particularly the effect the pandemic has had on small businesses and the local economy. “Unless we rely on community-based planning, our neighborhoods risk becoming on one end a Disneyland for the super-wealthy and on the other end, a burnt out shell reminiscent of the 1930s,” the state senator said, adding, “We need a Marshall Plan for Manhattan and we do that by leveraging the borough president’s role in planning.”

“I know what it’s like to deal with the frustration of government bureaucracy threatening your ability to make a profit and the pressure of meeting payroll for your employees,” said Kallos, who cited his work experience. “I’ve always made public-private partnerships a priority,” he said, believing that they help with the delivery of government services. He noted that he has refused real estate and lobbying money throughout his Council tenure, which he said has enabled him to “stand up” to those interests.

“Local government has to support small businesses now and on the road ahead,” said Levine, the Council health committee chair who described New York City as currently experiencing a “second wave” of COVID-19. “I’ve been fighting for this city my entire adult life,” said Levine, a former teacher and nonprofit founder. He cited his work on Council legislation establishing a right to counsel for low-income tenants during eviction proceedings and his science-based focus in responding to the pandemic.

Watkins said, “for the Manhattan of which I am a part, the 2021 local elections represent the chance to take back our local government because what is happening right now isn’t working.” While noting most Manhattanites are probably currently focused on the U.S. presidential election, she said that she, as a CEC chair, “has a front-row seat to the broken promises, backroom deals, and fiscal mismanagement” in local government, pointing to the recent Upper West Side school district rezoning and the de Blasio administration’s limited efforts at school desegregation. “We have to be honest about how we’re facing institutional racism and really poor governance,” said Watkins, who has called for an end of mayoral control of city schools.

Approach to the Office
Kallos said “the borough president is Manhattan’s fixer,” noting his work in the City Council to make outdoor dining permanent, among other proposals. “Together we can do better than getting back to normal that never worked for any of us and build a borough that works for all of us,” he said.

“This office needs to put forward a bold agenda and organize to achieve it. That starts with combating this pandemic,” said Levine, who pointed out that COVID-19 cases have been on the rise in Manhattan for the past ten days. He advocates that “the richest among us” pay more in taxes to help the city recover. He highlighted the Borough President’s appointment powers, saying, “Those appointments need to reflect the diversity of our borough and our city.”

Watkins described the current state of New York City as “no progress in a supposedly progressive city.” She said she likes to “under-promise and over-deliver” and plans to set up a team in the borough president’s office to address “quality of life” issues. Through her professional career, Watkins said she has taken “undefined positions,” like that of the borough presidency...turning them into fruitful, progressive, and solution-oriented roles.”

“The office of Borough President needs to be home to a visionary leader,” said Caputo. “There’s a need for a leader who can have an actionable impact in the borough and someone who can help put New York back on the world stage, something we have not done in a long time,” she added, attributing that to political infighting and a lack of leadership, although she praised Brewer’s tenure.

Hoylman said “this job is one of the most important in government. It’s going to be my unrelenting goal to build Manhattan back, fight for small businesses, and keep everyone in their homes.” He said he wants to see a Manhattan that takes on climate change, has more car-free streets, permanent outdoor dining, as well as protection for cultural enclaves throughout the borough. “So many wealthy people in this city and state have done well during covid and haven’t been paying their fair share. We need to claw that back for Manhattanites and New Yorkers in general.”

Small Businesses
“Small businesses have kept our economy moving during the pandemic and I think we owe them something,” said Hoylman. “These businesses were forced to close due to no fault of their own and we need government to step up. Hoylman added that he is currently sponsoring legislation in the state legislature to do that by suspending rent payments for nonprofits and small business with under twenty-five employees/

“Elected officials taking money from real estate have allowed [landlords] to close businesses,” said Kallos. He also touted his advocacy for outdoor dining this summer and his legislation to make it permanent as part of his record helping small businesses. “We can and must work together in a public-private partnership to build a city for all of us,” said Kallos, who cited the need to stabilize commercial rents and reduce scaffolding as top issues facing the borough’s small businesses.

“We clearly need to find a way to offer rent relief,” said Levine, who cited his sponsorship of City Council legislation to offer tax credits to landlords who reduce rents for small businesses during the pandemic. “I support a top-to-bottom review of fines and fees,” said Levine, who believes those should be about promoting safety, not raising revenue for the city.

“We need real relief from the existential threat” of COVID-19, said Watkins, adding, “We need to think of a long game of a decade or two out of what small businesses are going to be like.”

“We need to galvanize the spirit of young people in Manhattan and help them get into jobs,” Watkins said. “2020 has been such a downer. We need to bring back really big and bold ideas that trigger the return of tourism, moviemaking, parades, and different ideas.”

“I support Council Member [Keith] Powers’ plan” to reduce the commercial rent tax, Caputo said of the East Side Council member, and she prefers that sales are taxed instead of rent.

Land Use & Development
Watkins described the city’s “intentionally inept processes” for land use as “incredibly frustrating for regular New Yorkers.”

“We need to hit the pause button because the affordability issue is the anchor for absolutely everything,” she said. “When neighborhood rezonings happen, what happens? Who benefits? Not regular New Yorkers.” She also said she would want to focus on increasing homeownership rates in the borough, particularly among communities of color.

“For decades, we’ve pursued land use in a piecemeal and reactive way that has resulted in real inequity,” said Levine. “We have to preserve the character of our neighborhoods, livability, and history, but we also have to find ways to grow and increase density. I believe we need a comprehensive, multi-year planning process for the borough” with a focus on equity and affordable housing.

“As your next borough president, I will bring protections to the Central Business District and Financial District,” said Kallos. “Let me be clear and unequivocal. Business districts should be for businesses, not billionaires,” he added, noting his opposition to the luxury towers of “Billionaires’ Row.”

“From my window, I can see where the city’s approach to zoning has failed and it’s Hudson Yards,” said Hoylman, decrying the $6 billion in state and local tax breaks for the development. “I’d like to reform ULURP,” said Hoylman. “We would focus on forcing developers to engage with the community before a vote. Local input early in the process decreases contentiousness and makes for a better project.”

“We are going to need to have developers at the table,” said Caputo, alongside NYCHA residents, small business owners, and other residents. “We can’t just ignore them and we can’t just malign them.”

“I believe New York City needs to reflect an increasing homeless population, higher density housing is needed, more affordable housing is needed,” added Caputo, who noted public transportation would need to grow with density.

“Quality of Life” Concerns
“New York City has to be a place where people want to live, people want to work, and people want to visit,” said Levine, noting sanitation and parks as important quality-of-life issues, both of which have been hit with recent budget cuts. He attributed recent controversies to the “many years of failed politics that led to the current homelessness crisis” and said he would focus on solutions to homelessness instead of “moving them around like pawns in a political game.”

“On the issue of the unhoused,” Hoylman said, “one thing that we cannot do is treat homeless people as if they are subhuman. I think the city is doing a bad job.” He called the mayor’s response specifically as “disgraceful” and added, “We’re not talking about how they ended up homeless.” As Borough President, he said he would create a “quality of life” task force to focus on the delivery of government services in the borough.

“When we rely on these intentionally confused processes, we are almost asking for that institutional racism to perpetuate,” said Watkins. She is proposing a green street plan to reduce streetspace for cars and replace them with outdoor school space and community gardens, among other uses.

“The vitriol from many different sides has not been productive,” Caputo said, regarding the recent homelessness debate. “The best solutions are done through collaboration and compromise.”

She praised One Block Upper West Side and other community organizations that clean their local communities throughout the borough.

“It would be easy to blame Mayor de Blasio,” said Kallos, who noted he has never endorsed the mayor. He decried the city’s handling of people experiencing homelessness throughout the pandemic. He mentioned removing scaffolding, placing a trash can on every corner, especially uptown, and graffiti clean-up as top quality-of life concerns for him.

The Democratic primary for Manhattan Borough President will take place in June 2021 and will feature ranked-choice voting.

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by Andrew Millman, Gotham Gazette
   

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Maya Wiley Announces Campaign for New York City Mayor


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Maya Wiley at City Hall (photo: Rob Bennett/mayor's office)


Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney and former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, is running to succeed the term-limited de Blasio as mayor of New York City in the 2021 election.

Wiley, a Democrat, officially announced her campaign in a video posted online Wednesday evening, which will be followed by a launch event outside the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday. In the video, Wiley offers an initial message of a city with greater equity and unity and presents herself as “not a conventional candidate,” needed now to tackle new and long-standing crises New York City faces, especially amid the continued fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and a resurgent Black Lives Matter movement in response to police brutality.

While she provides no specifics about her background or her plans for the city in the video, Wiley strikes key themes that promise to be the foundation of her campaign. Like every candidate, she will have to offer solutions to the socioeconomic devastation wrought by COVID-19, but Wiley is also expected to place police reform and racial justice, education equity and the desegregation of city schools, and economic opportunity at the center of her candidacy.

Most recently, Wiley has been a professor of social justice at The New School and an MSNBC legal analyst, though she stepped away from both roles as she has prepared to run for mayor. Previously, Wiley was appointed chair of a police oversight board by de Blasio in mid-2016 when she left his office, where she had been his top counsel and worked on issues including internet access equity.

Pointing to the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York and “a crisis of confidence in our city’s leadership” -- a line clearly meant to differentiate herself from de Blasio -- Wiley says in the video that “some will say I don’t sound like past mayors, or look like them, or think like them — and I say, yes, I don’t, that is the point.”

“The risk,” she says, is not “changing it up” with a candidate like her, who has not held elected office before and would be the city’s first woman and first woman of color to be mayor, but in “electing the same kinds of people bringing the same kinds of broken promises over and over again.”

Wiley joins a still-developing Democratic primary field that includes declared or exploring candidates such as city Comptroller Scott Stringer, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, former city Veterans Affairs Commissioner Loree Sutton, former top official in the Bloomberg and Obama administrations Shaun Donovan, and finance executive Raymond McGuire. The primary, the first mayoral election to use ranked-choice voting, will be in June of next year. All of city government is on the ballot next year, with most offices, including mayor, seeing turnover due to term limits.

Never having run for elected office before, Wiley joins a likely field where that characteristic is more common than not -- only Stringer and Adams have run for or held an elected government post. While Wiley has no existing political base of voters, a challenging place to start, she also has the opportunity to capitalize on her many political and civic connections, relative fame from MSNBC, and large social media following. She does not have a government record to tout or defend beyond her work for de Blasio, which will likely offer several hurdles she must leap but allows her to try to make her campaign mostly about her larger resume, ideas for the city’s future, and ability to connect with voters personally.

Like declared candidates Adams and Morales, and McGuire if he runs, Wiley is seeking to become the city’s second Black mayor. Morales is the only Latino candidate in the field, while Stringer, Donovan, Garcia, and Sutton are white.

In order to win, Wiley will likely have to assemble a coalition similar to de Blasio’s when he won the crowded 2013 primary: white progressives and voters of color, especially Black voters. But she likely won’t be seeking de Blasio’s endorsement, a reflection of the mayor’s limited popularity, even among Democrats. Like other former de Blasio administration officials Garcia and Sutton, Wiley will have to navigate many questions about the current mayor’s record.

For Wiley, that will include de Blasio’s ethical problems, particularly when he tried to shield email communications with outside advisors that Wiley termed “agents of the city,” a classification that did not hold up in court when news organizations NY1 and the New York Post successfully sued to overturn denied Freedom of Information Law requests. Having chaired the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), which investigates some forms of police misconduct, Wiley will also be asked about NYPD reform, or lack thereof, an issue she has recently been outspoken about, most notably by calling for the firing of Police Commissioner Dermot Shea amid what she deemed as inappropriate NYPD response to protests against racist policing.

Wiley has a long history, prior to joining the de Blasio administration, of working to protect civil rights and foster greater racial and social equity, including at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and she appears poised to make police reform a major focus of her mayoral campaign. She may also choose to separate herself from the mayor based on her work co-chairing a task force that de Blasio assembled to tackle the city’s deep school segregation but the most aggressive recommendations of which the mayor ultimately sat on for many months leading up to the covid outbreak, which put the proposals deeper on ice.

And, among other issues, Wiley is likely to make universal internet broadband access a key tenet of her pitch after having worked on such issues both in the de Blasio administration and since joining The New School faculty.

Wiley will give more insight into the initial focus areas of her campaign at her Thursday launch event, where, according to her campaign, she will be joined by supporters from all five boroughs and elected officials endorsing her including State Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris of Queens.

Wiley’s campaign has staffed up in the lead-up to her launch. Her strategist and general consultant is Jon Paul Lupo, another veteran of the de Blasio administration. As is Alison Hirsh, a senior advisor to the campaign who has deep labor connections and other political relationships in the city. They’ve brought on campaign manager Maya Rupert, who was deputy campaign manager for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s presidential run and campaign manager for Julian Castro’s bid. Akilah Ensley, a veteran of Andrew Gillum’s Florida gubernatorial campaign and Michael Blake’s Bronx run for Congress, is also on the team. Wiley has hired consultants from Precision Strategies for communications and press, Brilliant Corners Research for polling, GPS Impact for digital strategy. New York City Council veteran Matt Gewolb is leading her policy planning; Cathy Albisa is her campaign treasurer.

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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