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Crowded Field Forms for Special Election to Replace Ritchie Torres in the City Council


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Council Member Ritchie Torres (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


With City Council Member Ritchie Torres declaring victory in the Bronx’s 15th Congressional District Democratic primary and all but assured to advance to Congress at the start of next year, a special election to replace Torres in the City Council’s own District 15 looks likely for sometime in February or March of 2021. The race in the heavily-Democratic Council district is already shaping up to be hotly-contested, with community leaders, the son of a state senator, and at least one member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) all jumping into the race.

Since Torres, who declined an interview request for this story, was term-limited from seeking another Council term in the regularly-scheduled 2021 city elections, candidates had already started running to replace him. His presumed victory only moves up their election date by about four months, though even with a special election early in the year to see who finishes out the last year of the four-year term, there will be a primary in June 2021 and a general election that fall to see who will represent the district as of January 2022.

The special election will also likely mark the first use of ranked-choice voting in New York City, probably along with a special election in Queens’ District 31, where Council Member Donovan Richards is on his way to becoming Queens Borough President. The new voting system approved by voters in 2019 is mandated to go into effect at the beginning of 2021 for all special elections and party primary elections for city government positions.

Council District 15 straddles Fordham Road, which is frequently used to demarcate the northern boundary of the South Bronx, and encompasses the neighborhoods of Belmont, Fordham, Tremont, Norwood, Parkchester, West Farms, and Williamsbridge, as well as some of the largest greenspaces in the city (the New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo, and Crotona Park), Fordham University, and Arthur Avenue. It is also home to St. Barnabas Hospital, which was one of the most inundated medical facilities during the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City.

According to the 2010 Census, the district is 66% Hispanic, 25% Black, and 5% white, with 63% of adults under the age of 45. District 15 is also among the poorest in the city with a poverty rate of 38.5% in 2014, which was third-highest among City Council districts. Torres earned an upset win in a competitive 2013 Democratic primary then cruised to reelection in 2017. He made public housing and oversight of the de Blasio administration main priorities during his tenure.

Candidates & Possible Candidates
Four candidates are now running to succeed Torres: Ischia Bravo, district manager for the Bronx’s Community Board 7; Elisa Crespo, an education liaison for Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.; Oswald Feliz, a district leader and housing lawyer; and, Julian Sepúlveda, who works in intergovernmental affairs for the city’s Department of Education.

Bravo challenged longtime Bronx Assemblymember Jose Rivera in a 2016 Democratic primary, but prior to that spent seven years as executive director of the Bronx Democratic County Committee. Crespo, who is seeking to become the city’s first Council member of trans experience, is a member of the Bronx/Upper Manhattan branch of the NYC-DSA and a board member of the Stonewall Democrats. Feliz has worked in State Senator Gustavo Rivera’s office and for Congressional Rep. Adriano Espaillat’s campaign, with both of those districts partially overlapping with Council District 15. Sepúlveda, who is the son of Bronx State Senator Luis Sepúlveda, announced his candidacy within the last week.

Additionally, John Sanchez, district manager for Bronx Community Board 6, told Gotham Gazette that he is “seriously considering running for the seat” after “being approached by community members and community leaders” about a potential candidacy. He does not currently have a campaign committee open and would be a first-time candidate for elected office, but said he would be making a decision “shortly.” However, he has recently advertised for intern positions for a Council campaign, so an announcement appears imminent.

There has been speculation that Samelys López or another candidate from the left would enter the race. While there is already one DSA member in the race in Crespo, López received a great deal of support from progressive groups and elected officials in the congressional primary won by Torres, where she received a little over 13% of the vote in a crowded field (coming in 4th, after Torres, Michael Blake, and Ruben Diaz Sr.), leading several people Gotham Gazette spoke with to wonder if she’ll run for the Council. López, who was endorsed by NYC-DSA, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others in the congressional primary, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

There's also always the possibility of other candidates entering the race.

“I’m a true-blue Democrat, but I’m willing to work with any group that has the best intentions for the Bronx. If that means working with DSA or incumbents, then so be it,” Bravo told Gotham Gazette.

“Our campaign is trying to build the broadest coalition possible that is representative of our community and our borough,” said Crespo, who says she will pursue the endorsements of the DSA and Working Families Party, as well as the Bronx Democratic Party.

“The DSA has done some amazing work in the city, particularly with the election of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” said Julian Sepúlveda, “and I’m going to try to get support from as many advocacy groups as I can. What’s going to matter in this election is candidates’ ability to speak to voters and build grassroots support.”

Fundraising & Ranked-Choice Voting
As one of roughly 35 upcoming City Council races without an incumbent, the race for District 15 is likely to be very competitive. Two candidates, Bravo and Crespo, are neck-in-neck in terms of initial fundraising, with $17,546 and $16,707 raised, respectively, as of the July disclosure reports.Crespo has narrowly more total donors, with 296 to Bravo’s 283.

“Most of my money mostly came from hard-working people in the Bronx who are dedicated to seeing someone who is unbought and unbossed,” Bravo told Gotham Gazette.

Feliz has raised $4,747 so far, but he said he is confident that he can make up ground in campaign cash, noting that most of his fundraising was done within the last few weeks of the filing deadline. Three-quarters of his donations came in the month preceding the July 11 filing deadline, according to disclosures to the city’s Campaign Finance Board, while 76% of Bravo’s and 61% of Crespo’s donations came in that same timespan.

“I intend to fundraise as strongly as I can and I’m pretty confident in my ability to fundraise,” Sepúlveda told Gotham Gazette, noting that fundraising is not his focus at the moment as he had just officially announced his candidacy.

Candidates and organizers have expressed concern over the uncertainty regarding the implementation of ranked-choice voting, which is mandated to go in effect at the beginning of 2021 per the 2019 City Charter revision. The New York City Board of Elections has not returned Gotham Gazette’s request for comment about implementing ranked-choice voting early next year, and has already missed a deadline set by the City Council for a plan. Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate wins a majority on the initial count of first-choice votes, there are ensuing rounds of eliminating the lowest-vote getter and reapportioning their voters based on those voters' next choices until a candidate hits 50%.

“You never saw elected officials come or show their faces,” Bravo recalled of her childhood living in public housing, “too often we don’t see ourselves reflected in our elected officials. We need to make sure that we have someone like myself who knows the district and doesn’t need to take a full term to get to know the local issues.”

“The lens of mothers on the City Council is something that’s been missing,” Bravo, who is the mother of two school-aged children, told Gotham Gazette. For example, she said, “I rely heavily on my in-laws and my grandmother to watch my kids” and that will be difficult during the school year with a return to in-person learning and concerns about spreading the virus from kids to more vulnerable older relatives. 

“Those who have struggled, and been marginalized, and been oppressed should be the ones who should be making the decisions,” said Crespo, who is 29 years old and would likely be one of the youngest, if not the youngest, Council members. “My generation, for the first time, is not going to be better off than the generation before us. We’ve lived through multiple economic disasters and I strongly believe that it’s going to take a new generation of bold progressive leaders to bring systemic change.

“I’ve spent my entire adult career working in municipal government,” Sepúlveda said in an interview. “I want to be able to make a difference with the knowledge I’ve acquired. I want to amplify the voices of those who I think have been underrepresented in New York City policy and government.”

Budget Equity
The Bronx has historically been underfunded as a borough when it comes to the city and state budgets, particularly when it comes to education funding. Feliz said that the district needs “a strong negotiator,” not “an elected official who’s simply going to vote yes or no,” to bring much needed funding to the Bronx, pointing to his record advocating for tenants against landlords as evidence of his negotiating skills.

“The Bronx has been short-changed for far too long and covid exposed the ugly truth of what was happening in our borough,” Bravo said. She hopes that the Bronx’s relatively high rate of 2020 Census returns will help remedy this.

“There’s lots of development happening in the district but not enough schools that are being built to accommodate the new families coming in,” Crespo said. “We need to make sure each public school gets the same amount of funding, but schools in underserved areas probably need a little more.”

Covid-19 & Recovery
The coronavirus pandemic and its socioeconomic consequences are at the forefront of candidates’ and voters’ minds in Council District 15. Bronx residents have been twice as likely to die from coronavirus as other New York City residents, despite the borough having a number of infections proportional to its share of the city’s population. Public health experts say this elevated fatality rate is caused by the high rates of diabetes, asthma, and other chronic health conditions.

Bravo was critical of Mayor de Blasio’s school reopening plan, saying that “a staggered schedule is not something that’s feasible for working parents like myself. I don’t care how affordable the mayor thinks he can make child-care for us. My rent is too high.”

“The Bronx is going to be dealing with a different set of problems related to covid than the wealthy parts of Manhattan,” Sepúlveda said. “Health care is a right, not a privilege, and we’re going to have a mental health crisis so we need to be able to support our community emotionally.”

Feliz is proposing that the city should construct a deck and greenspace over the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the most congested roadway in the nation. That would absorb the air pollution that disperses into Bronx neighborhoods. A similar proposal has also been put forward for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway renovation.

Housing
Affordable housing was another issue raised by all the declared candidates, although there were some differences in how each would approach the issue. As Bravo pointed out, the 10453 zip code (Bedford Park) had an eviction rate of nearly 21% in 2019, the third-highest in the city. Several other zip codes that overlap with District 15 were also in the top twenty.

“This has been a burden for quite some time,” Bravo said, pointing to rising rents in the Bronx.

She said “we need affordable housing that’s also sustainable housing, not with the bare minimum materials, and that it’s part of a new green infrastructure.” She added that impact studies should be expanded earlier in the process “so we know what services will be needed to go along with housing growth.”

Crespo said that Community Land Trusts could potentially “remove some of the speculation from the housing market. That would do well to serve Bronxites to make sure that housing is affordable and reflect the actual median income of Bronxites.” She added that “we need to modernize our land use process and be thinking five to ten years in advance.”

Sepúlveda supports an increase to housing subsidies in the city’s budget to make affordable housing available to more New Yorkers. “I think Speaker Johnson had a solid plan on rental subsidies,” he said. “The City Council has a deep role in investing in affordable housing. The housing crisis entrenches poverty and worsens police problems. All of these problems are related.”

Feliz believes that the eviction moratorium should be extended “for the duration of the pandemic” and that “if the state doesn’t do that, the city should.” He said that “no one should be evicted due to the fact that we’re in the middle of a pandemic and our society is economically unstable.”

Public Safety
With the protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis, activists and protesters in New York City have called for funding to be reallocated away from the police budget towards other youth and social services, under the slogan “Defund the NYPD.” The candidates currently running in Council District 15 said they are largely supportive of those proposals.

“The NYPD has an inherent culture of feeling above the law and some of them have lost track of what they were assigned to do, which is to protect and serve,” Crespo said. “Many times in low-income communities, we feel unsafe around the police. I think police are too quick to resort to excessive force and they’re not well trained in how to de-escalate situations.”

“I think if we thoughtfully and purposefully looked at NYPD line-items, such as the public relations unit and the militarized equipment, we could reinvest that into critical social services programs,” said Crespo. She supports defunding the NYPD by at least $1 billion from its nearly $6 billion annual operating budget, and said the recent city budget did not accomplish that.

“We absolutely have to defund the NYPD, which means taking away some of that budget and putting it toward social programs, and we also have to promote police accountability,” said Feliz, who is supportive of a $1 billion cut to the NYPD budget, which he has said should specifically include reducing military-style trucks and other equipment. He later said he is against reducing police patrols in the district. He proposes mandating that police officers have an “affirmative duty” to stop misconduct they witness their coworkers committing.

“The word ‘defund’ means different things to different people,” Sepúlveda told Gotham Gazette. “I support efforts to divest from the NYPD and put that money back into measures that invest in this city. The police department isn’t the only thing we should think about when it comes to public safety,” he said, noting he’s had personal and familial experiences with police handling of mental health emergencies. “I think we should divest a true billion dollars, at least as a start.”

***
by Andrew Millman, Gotham Gazette
   

Read more by this writer.

Note: Feliz's comments about NYPD funding and policing have been updated.

De Blasio Critical of Controversial NYPD Arrest of Protestor; Shea's Stance Unclear


De Blasio Shea NYPD crime safest

Mayor de Blasio & Commissioner Shea (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the tactics and the timing of the police officers who dragged a protester alleged to have damaged several police cameras into an unmarked van on Tuesday. But the mayor did not say Thursday whether his police commissioner, Dermot Shea, felt the same way despite reporting having had two separate conversations on the subject.

In an incident that was caught on camera and quickly went viral Tuesday evening, plainclothes officers leapt out of a grey van before a crowd of peaceful demonstrators in the Kips Bay section of Manhattan, and arrested and drove off with Nikki Stone, a protester who police said they had been looking for in connection with multiple alleged incidents of vandalism. The arrest has drawn scrutiny for its apparent similarities to Portland, Oregon, where for several nights federal agents have detained protesters in unmarked vehicles as demonstrations continue in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May.

De Blasio has said publicly that making the arrest at a peaceful demonstration was wrong and suggested similar strategies could have a chilling effect on free speech. The morning after the arrest, the mayor told reporters the place to make the arrest "was clearly not in the middle of an ongoing protest," and said the department would review the tactic.

"I'll talk to the Commissioner about this more today, but I think there is a better way to get that done," he said Wednesday morning, without indicating what Shea had said about the arrest other than why Stone was a suspect.

De Blasio said he didn't think it was "a matter of discipline" for the officers involved but that he wanted NYPD personnel to be more sensitive to the context of the arrest and make "better choices about how to deal with things in this moment of history."

At his Thursday morning press briefing, de Blasio was evasive when asked whether or not Shea agreed the arrest should have been handled differently.

"I spoke with Commissioner Shea about an hour after I think the video came out originally the other night, and then I spoke to him again yesterday," de Blasio said. "Look, I think it's clear, again, it was not the right time and place, and we have got to work to make sure people always know that the right to protest is protected in New York City."

"When they vandalize public property," the mayor continued, referring to the charges against Stone, "there will be a consequence, but it was not done the right way. I certainly expressed that to [Shea] and we're going to work on trying to find a better way going forward."

But the mayor didn't elaborate on what the "better way" could or should have been, what Shea actually said during their conversations, or whether there is an internal NYPD review of the incident underway.

Since June, de Blasio and Shea have repeatedly disagreed publicly over a host of recent policing and criminal justice reforms, including changes to controversial arrest tactics.

Stone received a desk appearance ticket for criminal mischief and graffiti charges stemming from five separate incidents in June and July, according to an NYPD spokesperson. In at least three of them, officials say a person identified as Stone obscured NYPD security cameras with paint in the area around the encampment of demonstrators at City Hall, which coalesced in late June after weeks of marches against police brutality.

In an interview Wednesday on WABC radio, Chief of Department Terence Monahan, the NYPD's highest-ranking uniformed officer, said the Warrant Squad officers assigned to make the arrest had acted above board and in line with departmental protocols. Monahan said the Warrant Squad arrived after being informed (it is unclear by whom) of Stone’s presence at the march, and the arrest was made after Stone identified the unmarked van as a police vehicle.

"At that point there was nothing else to be done, she approached them," he said.

Available footage of the incident is limited to what was captured by bystanders and posted to social media, making it difficult to confirm Monahan's account.

Asked if the officers should have acted differently, Monahan only said that he would like to see them maintain their cover for longer. "We would have liked her not to be able to identify them, she was able to pick them up as a cop car. It would have been better if they could have been a little less transparent while they were doing the observations on her."

During a Wednesday press conference call, Governor Andrew Cuomo weighed in on the incident unprompted by reporters, and called the Warrant Squad arrest "obnoxious." Like the mayor, Cuomo said its timing at a demonstration so close to the unrest in Portland sent the wrong message. “It was wholly insensitive to everything that’s going on. It was threatening,” he said.

That morning, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson also criticized the NYPD's handling of the arrest. "It is totally unacceptable that an arrest for minor property crimes was carried out in such an aggressive and disturbing manner," he wrote in a Twitter post.

Monahan wouldn't opine on critiques from New York's political class in the interview Wednesday. "I'm not going to get into the politics, I'm giving you the facts of what happened, you can judge by the facts," he said.

When asked Thursday if the NYPD could clarify Commissioner Shea's position on the incident, a department spokesperson referred Gotham Gazette to Monahan’s WABC interview.

***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Two Plans Map Path Forward for Devastated New York City Economy


New York City economy construction jobs plans

Getting New York City back to work (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


With COVID-19 infection rates low and New York moving through phased ‘reopening,’ the attention of elected officials, business leaders, and others has turned toward the city’s economic recovery. This month, two groups, the Partnership for New York City, which represents many of the city’s largest businesses, and a new coalition, the New York Workforce Recovery Strategy Group, have released recovery plans with somewhat different focuses and conclusions about how the city should move forward.

New York City and State have suffered some of the worst economic consequences of the pandemic in the country thus far. New York City’s unemployment rate currently stands at 20.4%, up from up from just over 4% when the coronavirus outbreak hit here, according to the State Department of Labor.

Between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, New York State shed 8.2% of its GDP, tied with Nevada, another state economy with a large tourism sector, for the largest decrease in the nation.

“This will be infinitely harder than the recovery after 9/11,” said Dan Doctoroff, who was New York City Deputy Mayor of Economic Development from 2002 to 2007, and is currently Sidewalk Labs CEO, during a recent digital forum held by the Center for an Urban Future. “If we don't change the trajectory, New York City is heading into a period of negative growth.” Doctoroff said that “reversing this trend will require a new model for inclusive growth that addresses long-standing inequities,” particularly citing housing affordability and insufficient public transportation as injustices that need to be addressed.

New York State anticipates losing 7% of its GDP in 2020 and up to 14% by the end of 2023, according to the state’s Division of the Budget. In comparison, the state suffered declines of 2% after 9/11 and 10% after the 2008 financial crisis and those dips were for a relatively shorter period of time than the multi-year downturn currently projected. Reduced household income will also mean that the city’s affordable housing shortage will grow from 650,000 to 760,000 units within the next year, according to consulting firm Oliver Wyman’s research for the Partnership for New York City.

Several economic indicators point to the city and state economies rebounding slightly in recent weeks as the city has moved through the state-designed reopening phases, but they are still far from their pre-pandemic levels. The New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey, conducted in early July, indicates improving business conditions.

For example, revenue for Manhattan’s small businesses, which are heavily reliant on commuters, declined 70% from February to March, but has improved to 40% off pre-pandemic levels. Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island small business revenues declined 40-60% at the nadir of the pandemic, but have since rebounded to 10-25% less than pre-pandemic levels. The Bronx is the only borough where small business revenues are not below January 2020 levels.

Still, the city’s collections from taxable sales were down 47% in June from the same month in 2019. Residential real estate sales were down 55% and commercial real estate sales down 57% for April-June of this year compared to the same period last year.

The Partnership for New York City estimates in its report that as many as a third of the city’s 230,000 small businesses in neighborhood commercial corridors may go out of business due to the economic downturn and as many as 520,000 jobs were lost from the small business sector alone as consumer spending dipped by 44%.

Jonathan Bowles, the executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, noted that “much of the city's recent job growth has been high-wage industries.” This has had “huge benefits for New York City,” but “the challenge moving forward is to expand access in every way possible —apprenticeships, in-depth training, CUNY, innovative HS models, and more.”

Partnership for New York City Calls for Public-Private Collaboration
The Partnership asserts that with such massive job and revenue losses, the state and local governments will need to partner more with the private sector to rehabilitate the economy. Its report, entitled “A Call for Action and Collaboration,” compiled research from 14 consulting firms and interviews with industry experts.

They found that 70% of the New York City metro region’s office employees have safety concerns about returning to work in the near future. Industries able to operate remotely have experienced increased productivity and lowered costs, meaning that it is likely that many work-from-home policies will continue even after the pandemic. This could possibly permanently reduce the number of workers who commute into Manhattan each day and thus have a deleterious effect on businesses that cater to these commuters.

One of the report’s more relatively-positive findings is that there are currently some 200,000 job vacancies in the city. The Partnership says closing the skills gap through more workforce development programs would help fill these opportunities with the recently unemployed.

The Partnership for New York City supports five main actions to leverage the city’s major corporations and mobilize its members. One is to start a “Health Innovation Partnership,” which would set a universal standard for a “health passport,” build up a robust contact-tracing program, and finance investment in the life sciences sector. Another is to launch a restart clearinghouse to improve access to financial and technical resources for small- and minority-owned businesses.

A third is the “Education Innovation Partnership,” which would use the private sector to help the city’s public education system establish high-quality online learning and hybrid programs for both in-school and remote education.

Believing that state and municipal revenue shortfalls will mean less government funding for key programs, the Partnership is calling for an employer-led effort to expand job training, credentialing and hiring of city residents to fill the 200,000 job vacancies in the city.

The Partnership is currently active advocating for federal relief for city, state, and transit agency needs, liability protection for employers and institutions, and a less restrictive visa policy for students and workers. A new federal relief package is expected soon, though it’s unclear what it may include for helping to plug huge city, state, and MTA budget gaps.

As of July, according to the New York City Comptroller’s Office, subway ridership is still less than a fifth of and bus ridership is at just under half of pre-pandemic levels. MTA ridership appears to have plateaued in the most recent week, even with the city moving into “phase four” of its reopening. The fall-off in revenue for the MTA has left the transit agency in a dire fiscal position.

The Partnership also says it will hold “cross-sectoral problem-solving sessions” around the issues of transit, taxation, security, housing, and racial justice.

[LISTEN: Partnership for New York City CEO Kathryn Wylde discusses the Partnership's new report and more on the Max & Murphy podcast]

New Coalition wants a “Recovery for All”
Meanwhile, the New York Workforce Recovery Strategy Group, which is led by the NYC Employment & Training Coalition and includes over 80 business and human services leaders throughout the city, has its own plan, “Recovery for All: A Vision for New York City’s Equitable Economic Recovery,” which takes a slightly different approach. Where Partnership for New York City envisions the private sector stepping up in a major way, this coalition believes that an equitable recovery will be achieved through significant government action.

The report calls for an increase in public works projects and direct public employment, as well as relief programs for the most-affected individuals and communities. The coalition is also calling for an “education and training ecosystem” for the displaced workforce and marginalized communities, as well as recovery efforts for local small business and nonprofits, and support for new business development.

The “Recovery for All” report asserts that recent Black Lives Matter protests “have made it abundantly clear that New Yorkers want a stronger safety net and economy that proactively benefits the many, not the few.” Recent data indicates that New York’s residents of color have been harder hit by the pandemic’s economic consequences than their white neighbors, which has also been the case for the public health emergency. Black (27%), Hispanic (33%), and Asian (28%) New Yorkers have all seen higher levels of worker dislocation than white New Yorkers (23%).

The coalition wants to see the city build new revenue streams, primarily through taxes on high earners, and increased cuts to certain programs to redirect funding towards community investment so that the city’s post-recovery economy is a “sustainable” one. They caution against “austerity” budget measures that could even further harm marginalized communities.

According to the New York Workforce Recovery Strategy Group, the city has the opportunity to address two crises at once, the economic one wrought by the pandemic through mass unemployment and the ongoing climate crisis, by investing in upgraded infrastructure.

The coalition suggests ramping up short- and long-term infrastructure projects, and several potential projects the city should focus on. These include broadband installation, greening and repairs of NYCHA facilities, the “Cleaner and Greener New York” plan that would build up green infrastructure such as solar and wind power generation and coastal resiliency, and upgrades to public-health and child-care infrastructure.

The coalition is also calling for a “true universal basic income for all New Yorkers,” as well as expansion of current means-tested cash assistance. It wants direct cash assistance for individuals, families, and communities most affected by the pandemic, as well as increases to both the state’s earned income tax credit and child and dependent care tax credit.

The “Recovery for All” and Partnership for New York City reports both stress that an economic recovery for New York City relies on workforce development. However, the New York Workforce Recovery Strategy Group believes that the government, not private businesses, should take the lead on this through programs to help jumpstart businesses such as transitional employment, wage subsidy, work-based learning programs and apprenticeships. The coalition is also calling on the city to develop a citywide workforce development system, which non-profit service providers have long called for.

Also like the Partnership’s, the “Recovery for All” report highlights the need for assistance for small businesses in particular. It advocates for reducing red tape and increasing free or low-cost technology and technical training for local businesses, among other steps.

***
by Andrew Millman, Gotham Gazette
   

Read more by this writer.



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