Photo from James Oddo 09

Councilmember James Oddo with fellow Republican Councilmember Vincent Ignizio

Five for fighting?

Not so much.

Go along to get along?

Don’t expect that either.

 

With the growth of the Republican delegation to five members and a potential shift further to the left in the rest of the City Council, increasingly folks are realizing that the Republican delegation I proudly lead is positioned at the crossroads of city government and as such will play a larger role in the goings on at City Hall.

If you are a fan of democracy, you should welcome this turn of events, as it will result in greater and more substantive debate and a louder, stronger voice shared by hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers (dare I say even more than that?).

Historically, and still true today, the City Council has not had the level of partisan vitriol that has played out in Albany and our nation’s capital. Perhaps that's because it's a unicameral legislature. Or, more bluntly, maybe it's because in the modern council there have been so few Republicans there was a need for us to simply coexist to exist. Whether it was Tom Ognibene and Peter Vallone Sr., or Gifford Miller, current Speaker Christine Quinn and I, the leaders of the two major parties in the council more often than not have found a way to transcend ideological differences in order to strive for common ground, coalitions and consensus.

There is great value in bipartisanship but make no mistake, those of us on the other side of the aisle have never been shrinking violets. In Joseph Heller’s stirring 1979 political novel, "Good as Gold," Ralph, a presidential aide, tells a job applicant, “This president doesn’t want ‘yes’ men. What we want are independent men of integrity who will agree with all our decisions after we make them.”

That will not be the 2010 incarnation of the Council’s GOP delegation. (Not that anyone who has been following the council, even in a cursory way, needs to be convinced of our approach.)

A Middle Class Agenda

For years, we have talked about the need for genuine structural fiscal integrity, focusing tax dollars on essential services and not having a city government that attempts to be all things to all people from cradle to grave. We have voted against tax increases at every turn, rejected misguided legislation that hurt small business and tried to ensure our actions reflected a sensitivity to a precious, yet threatened resource in New York City -- the hard-working middle class, who find it tougher and tougher to pay their bills, provide for their families and have a decent quality of life.

Sometimes we did it with humor, and at times with anger, and there was even one occasion where we did not get past the first course at a dinner at Gracie Mansion because we thought a statement needed to be made. But perhaps now, as a five-man delegation that will speak in a respectful, informed voice, we can team with an emboldened cadre of like-minded Democratic allies, who also have grown weary of seeing their constituents pay too dear a price for a city government that seems to take them for granted and taxes them into the ground.

While I believe that our words and deeds in the past have impacted the direction of this council in a positive way, we genuinely hope that in the coming term the positions of this delegation will be viewed as more than just a token protest vote.

Rather, it is our goal to make the most of the burgeoning influence of a coalition of centrist council members who are willing to stand up on behalf of taxpayers and small business owners who are under siege. We will be needed to enact legislation. We will be needed to stop counterproductive legislation from being passed. We will be needed to override bills or to stop bills rightly vetoed from being overridden. In short, true progress won’t happen without us and we will not squander the opportunity we have to effect change.

A quick example to illustrate my point.

In March 2004, I took to the floor of the Council Chambers amazed that all of my colleagues were seemingly nonplussed that we were about to enact a budget modification that in part was being implemented to allocate an additional $250 million dollars to the city’s Medicaid responsibilities. There was nary a peep! This from the same group of learned colleagues who literally spend weeks and months in hearings questioning agency heads, in budget negotiating team meetings debating the efficacy of just about every individual program the city institutes, and dare I say arguing in borough delegations as to what should be reflected as their priorities in the budget process. All this time and energy dedicated to a process, at the end of which, the council shifts only slightly more money than the aforementioned Medicaid budget modification that, but for my rant, would have gone without comment.

For too many of my colleagues, feeding the Medicaid monster a quarter of a billion dollars midyear was so acceptable as to not even warrant a query. Perhaps, this is why Medicaid and its three ugly “uncontrollable” sisters (pension and health care costs for city employees and debt service) have grown some 77 percent in the last eight years and are in large measure what is driving the daunting budget gaps we face for the next several years. It seems too often, the council forgets that it is a zero sum game and that every dollar spent on “A” is one less dollar available for police officers, firefighters, sanitation workers, etc. More frustrating at times, is the simple truth that many members have very different priorities and their definition of “essential” services differs greatly from many New Yorkers.

Healthy Debate

It is the hope of this delegation that a healthier debate on this question will now ensue and decisions that are currently foregone conclusions and the result of what appears to us as reflexive, typical knee jerk reactions, will now have to be enacted after a fuller discussion in which Democrats and Republicans challenge the all-too-accustomed orthodoxy of the council.

We genuinely respect all of our colleagues regardless of political affiliation. Many of us in the council want to get to the same destination, but differ passionately on the route we take to get there. We appreciate that unlike the minority parties in other legislatures, we have been treated fairly and have been welcomed as vital members of this institution. We look at the happenings in Albany and thank the Lord we serve in an institution where getting the people’s business done is what matters, not the letter on our voter registration cards.

Speaker Quinn has continued and enhanced the standard set by Peter Vallone Sr. and Speaker Miller and has encouraged us to speak as forthrightly as we want. We have complex and difficult challenges ahead. We look forward to working with all 46 of our colleagues in fulfilling our duties and responsibilities.

James Oddo represents City Council district 50 on Staten Island and is the council's minority leader.

Photos from the Polling Place Photo Project

The results from the primary elections on Sept. 15 were remarkable in two respects for those who worry about the health of democracy in New York.

The electorate showed some spunk, or at least a measure of restiveness, rejecting five City Council incumbents in their bid for re-election. When you take a look at each race where the incumbent lost, it is easy enough to identify weaknesses. Each district has its own story, a blend of foible and miscalculation on the part of the incumbent, against the backdrop of the poor economy. It is also important to note that four of the ousted incumbents followed the lead of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Speaker Christine Quinn and voted to extend term limits last year (the fifth loser, Kenneth Mitchell from Staten Island, was not in office at the time of the vote). Many voters are still sour about the decision of the city's political establishment to change by local law what many voters viewed as an issue they had settled on in two referenda many years before.

Local politics is usually about getting a nice big slice of the pie for your neighborhood -- saving a fire house, some parking spots, or building a park or school -- but last month's election suggested that something quite different was in the air. The game is not just all about winning, but being fair. The decision to throw out term limits sticks in the collective throat of New Yorkers. That's the good news -- voters upset about process.

The second remarkable aspect of the election was the turnout. The final number is not in yet, but between 10 percent and 12 percent of registered Democrats came out on Sept. 15 to cast a vote. In last week's runoff primary for city comptroller and public advocate, the turnout was even lower, a little less than 8 percent. This is a startlingly low number. In the November 2008 general election (Barack Obama v. John McCain) 50 percent of all registered voters came out to vote; in the February Democratic primary for the presidential nomination (Obama v. Hillary Clinton) 33 percent of Democrats showed up.

The vitality of last year's political season has drained away. Recall that when the state legislature moved control of the city schools to the mayor in 2002, one of the most compelling arguments for changing the system was that local community school boards no longer worked, in part because no one was voting for members of the board. Voting percentages in school board contests in many neighborhoods often dipped into the same range as the turnout reported in the recent primary. Will the current system of closed primary elections in New York one day suffer from a crisis in legitimacy that we saw with school board elections? It certainly is tracking that way.

It is not just the fact that roughly 2.5 million Democrats stayed home. Another 711,000 independents (17 percent of all voters) are ineligible to vote to any closed party primary. About 482,000 Republicans and 130,000 third party registrants cannot participate in the all-important Democratic primary too. So, we are left with about 8 percent of the total registered electorate picking the local legislature in the closed Democratic primary election on September 15, since the winners are virtually a lock to win the general election races in all but three of the 51 districts in the November general election

The Case for Nonpartisan Elections

Francis Barry makes the case in The Scandal of the Reform that nonpartisan elections can bring the franchise back to voters who are not registered Democrats. "Why," he asks, "exclude independent voters from the first round of voting [the closed primary] if that is the decisive election?" Messy empirical and practical arguments aside, this is a compelling argument on its face. As new generations of voters entering the polity valuing their independence and refusing to commit to one political party or the other, the numbers of the effectively disenfranchised will only climb.

Most cities have nonpartisan elections; Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami are among the larger ones on the list. Municipal elected officials in nonpartisan cities still participate in partisan politics; Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is a stalwart Democrat who is plotting a run for governor in his party's primary. In another nonpartisan city, Jersey City, Mayor Jerramiah Healy ran with the backing of the Hudson County Democratic machine. A point that is often lost is that nonpartisan election schemes can vary greatly; some cities allow candidates to identify themselves as partisans, others do not.

Bloomberg likes nonpartisan elections too, but he focuses more on the managerial quality of local government, along the lines of Fiorello LaGuardia's old chestnut that there is no partisan way to pick up the garbage. In 2003, Bloomberg established a charter commission under the chairmanship of Frank Macchiarola, the president of St. Francis College, to investigate and make recommendations for a nonpartisan election plan for the city. The commissioners worked hard, but faced overwhelming opposition from "reform" groups in New York. (I use the quotations here because Barry is not buying into the conventional nomenclature.)

Bloomberg's charter commission recommended giving candidates the option of indentifying their party affiliation if they chose, but opening the election to all registered voters, thus eliminating the closed party primary. If you are concerned about a crowded election contest that will produce a winner with 10 percent to 15 percent of the vote, no worries -- we can employ instant runoff techniques where voters can select their second and third choices. The top finishers can be paired off with the additional preferences supplied by voters and a winner with a legitimate majority can be crowned. (For more on instant runoff voting, see The Wonkster.)

Voters overwhelmingly rejected Macchiarola's plan for nonpartisan elections, 70 percent to 30 percent. But only 13 percent of registered voters bothered to show up for the off-year election of 2003, and many had ties to the unions, interest groups and political clubs that benefit from the status quo and know how to pull the levers of the current system to their advantage. They were loathe to expand the electorate and risk the surrender of power.

The Limits of 'Reform'

In a style reminiscent of the restaurant scene in Goodfellas in which we are introduced to Henry Hill's partners in crime in an extended panning shot, Barry describes a fundraiser in South Street Seaport for NYPIRG where he indentifies the good government players who came to pay their respects. The crowd at the fundraiser included the leadership of NYU's Brennan Center, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and the Citizens Union -- almost all of them liberal Democrats. (Citizens Union's sister organization, Citizens Union Foundation, publishes Gotham Gazette.) Barry argues that the city's reform community is more interested in advancing a liberal Democratic policy agenda than in process questions -- putting the living wage before ballot access, so to speak -- and the reform groups are more than willing to accommodate the city's incumbents and political insiders to get the job done.

"Good government leaders preach the virtues of process purity until that process works against them," writes Barry. "Then they break their own rules and hope no one notices." The city's public interest groups may cloak themselves in the language of the common good, but by Barry's lights they are just pigs at the city's trough, slopping up power and influence.

It was not always this way. In the age of Tammany, good government groups advocated the nonpartisan ballot as a method of combating the corruption of the political machines, even as they often surrendered to their nativist impulses and sought to restrict citizenship and ballot access. But Barry is no fan of the old-fashioned progressives, and he appreciates the way the county organizations brought immigrants into the political system.

Barry argues that things took a really bad turn when the mass politics base of the county organizations and political clubs began hollowing out after World War II -- the rank and file stopped going to meetings and making decisions. Political consultants become the new party bosses, and today elected officials try to build small machines devoted to their reelection and advancement. These new, candidate-centered machines are devoted to keeping people off the ballot with arcane petitioning procedures, rather than expanding the choices for voters and the electorate itself. And the good government groups are largely quiet about it.

Barry works for Bloomberg and served on the staff of the several charter commissions that considered the proposals for nonpartisan elections. Much of this hard work is evidenced in the book, as he demolishes conventional arguments in political science that claim that partisan elections mobilize voters and encourage minority voting. This political science folklore is based on a few dusty studies that are decades-old. Political scientists have been trained to love the theory of strong party government -- it is a tough habit to break.

Barry's work is full of wisdom about local politics. His well-written history of the machine/reform dynamic over the last 150 years is balanced and fair. He casts a critical eye on the city's campaign finance system, arguing that it has not increased political competition. One campaign operative told me, cracking wise, that the program should be renamed the printers and consultants relief act. The generous public matching system has lined the pockets of the political professionals, but has not increased political competition in any structural way. Anyone who got a stack full of useless campaign junk mail this fall sees their tax dollars at work.

Barry says that nonpartisan elections very well might create a more cooperative spirit in City Hall, and embolden rank and file legislators to break with orthodoxy. I am not so sure -- many cities, after all, have nonpartisan municipal elections and are just slogging it out like we do in the Big Apple. The best case for the adoption of nonpartisan elections is the principled one, removed from any impact it may have: Nonpartisan elections give more people the opportunity to exercise, in a meaningful way, the most fundamental right and obligation in a democracy, the vote.

Richard Flanagan is associate professor of political science at the College of Staten Island and co-directs the Center for the Study of Staten Island there. He is co-author of Staten Island Politics: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City (forthcoming).

In the last few days, we have seen Climate Week come and go, Mayor Michael Bloomberg tout painting city roofs white and California propose to cut the electricity consumption of your plasma TV by a third.

Energy efficiency is on everyone's mind, including ours.

That's why we have turned a spotlight on New York City's electricity future with Switch -- the final game in our series funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. A matching game similar to Concentration or Memory, Switch lets you solve New York City's energy crisis.

Between 2005 and 2030, the city will have to come up with about 22 million additional megawatt hours annually to meet our growing electricity demand, according to the Bloomberg administration's sustainability plan, PlaNYC 2030.

In Switch, we ask you how the city should do it. Turn out the lights? Build an offshore wind farm? What about nuclear power?

Switch gives you scores of options. Play again and again and see what conservation policies or generation proposals can close our electricity gap.

Flip the Switch!

And for a sneak peek of the proposals included in Switch see our glossary below.

GENERATION OPTIONS

Solar Panels for City Buildings

Picture City Hall decked out in solar panels. It could happen. According to a 2006 study by the City University of New York, the city gets hit with twice the amount of solar energy we need to run it. But solar can cost more than four times as much as other renewable options. Despite that, the city has started to harness the sun, with 65 percent of solar energy in the city coming from panels on public buildings, according to CUNY.

Solar Powered Apartments
New York may not seem sunny, but solar panels on every inch of residential rooftop that could host them would create more than twice the amount of electricity we need to meet the demand of 2030. But property owners might balk at installation costs -- $4 a watt by some estimates. In response, the state offers financial incentives that could cover 40 to 70 percent of the installation costs. More recently, a City Council member has proposed solar zones to encourage neighbors to join together to share the expense.

Wind on Fresh Kills
From garbage dump to wind farm? Borough President James Molinaro wants to put seven 400-foot wind turbines on Staten Island's Fresh Kills, the landfill turned park. The turbines could produce enough electricity to power 5,000 homes. That kind of small-scale wind farm, according to Columbia University, could cost around $40 million, but the borough president's office says it would get private financing. Despite that, so far, the proposal hasn't picked up any gusts.

Tidal in the Hudson
Tidal power scoffs in the face of cloudy afternoons and breezeless mornings. But it has lagged behind wind and solar power in popularity, making it more expensive. And there are fewer government incentives to boost its use. A 10-megawatt project, one company estimates, could cost $2,000 per kilowatt to install. Some worry that the underwater energy, which has the most potential in the mighty Hudson, will hurt wildlife or interfere with marine navigation.

Tidal in the East River
Some of our electricity already comes from the depths of the East River. A local company has launched a pilot tidal turbine program there, which could bring as many as 30 turbines to the estuary's floor. Its results could determine the potential for tidal turbines elsewhere in the city. For now, it's an expensive technology (about $4,000 per kilowatt for installation alone), and some fear it could disrupt marine navigation and wildlife.

Nuclear Power Plant
No one wants to contemplate a Three Mile Island in a city of 8 million, so New York City probably will never see a nuclear plant within its borders. But it isn't as though we don't use nuclear energy. About 20 percent of our electricity comes from the Indian Point plant -- about 35 miles away. If we built a nuclear power plant in the city, it could cover almost all of our energy gap. Nuclear power does not emit carbon. What to do with the waste, though, is a whole different story.

Geothermal in Institutional Buildings
Geothermal energy uses the earth's constant natural temperature to heat and cool buildings. Heat pumps buried deep in the ground use the earth's temperature -- which averages 50 degrees underneath New York State -- to supplement a building's heating and cooling systems. During the cold months, the pumps pull warmth from the ground and circulate it through the building. It does the reverse -- drawing heat from the building underground -- in warm months. Geothermal systems typically pay for themselves within 10 years, experts say.

Offshore Wind Farm
They have spawned bitter opposition in other areas of the country, but offshore wind farms can produce lots of energy. A wind farm 13 miles off Rockaway Peninsula with more than 100 turbines, each 400 feet high, could eventually create 700 megawatts of electricity, according to Con Ed, which is considering such a proposal. A project of that size, which would surely attract opposition for marring the beauty of the shoreline, could cost about $2.5 billion.

Turbines on Residential Buildings
The rooftops of small apartment buildings and brownstone backyards can play host to wind turbines. According to Columbia University, 13,000 apartment buildings in southern Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island could each hold a 1-kilowatt system. But per kilowatt hour, these smaller projects can cost double to triple the amount of larger ones, and getting all the permits can discourage the most avid renewable energy advocate. To try to help, the state offers some financial incentives and tax breaks. An owner can expect the payback period to be seven to eight years.

Tower Turbines
Picture the New York Times building with a wind turbine spinning on top. The Bloomberg administration briefly floated the idea of turbines on skyscrapers, but the proposal has since been gone with the wind. It could resurface -- once supporters find a way to address fears that blades could spiral down from the sky, creating catastrophe. Even then, skeptics are likely to balk at altering New York City's classic skyline, considering wind's so-called skyrocketing cost.

Clean Coal
The holy grail of the energy industry, clean coal got a lot of buzz during the 2008 presidential race, but many experts contend that it doesn't exist. Nonetheless, a 40-megawatt, approximately $2 billion proposal for New York State does. The proposal, which we based our estimate on, aims to make coal clean by capturing carbon from a coal plant and trapping it underground.

Build Power Plants
If you need more energy, just make more. The city can always turn to Con Edison to create more power plants -- typically around 500 megawatts a pop. Each would cost about $1 billion to build. But assuming it burned natural gas, a new plant would have lower operating costs than greener technologies. To fill our energy gap, we need about six more. Good luck finding a community that wants one. Queens residents say they have enough.

Methane from Fresh Kills
Fresh Kills may have been Staten Islanders' nemesis for decades, but residents can now use the former landfill's noxious fumes to power their homes. The Department of Sanitation sells off millions of cubic feet of methane it extracts from the landfill to the local natural gas utility, which converts it to energy. The cost is on par with other power generated by natural gas.

Fuel Cells
Eight fuel cells are already run by the New York Power Authority in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Those cells use waste gas extracted from wastewater treatment plants and covert it into electricity. A fuel cell that generates 1.6 million kilowatt hours annually creates less than one percent of the emissions of a coal power plant. They are typically implemented on a small scale, however, so fuel cells alone can't solve our energy crisis.

CHP Systems
CHP systems combine the generation of heat and power into one system. Otherwise known as cogeneration systems, they increase efficiency by capturing the heat that would usually be rejected by our normal electric systems. For instance, heat that was created but not used by your steamy shower could go into the building's electric system instead of being wasted. In the mayor's PlaNYC 2030, the administration envisioned creating at least 800 megawatts with this technology by 2030. Per kilowatt, it costs about $1,200 to install. Per kilowatt-hour, it costs about 6 cents to operate.

Energy Generating Floor in Subway Stations
Tested in Tokyo train stations, an energy-generating floor harvests kinetic energy from the soles of weary commuters' shoes to create electricity. Sure, it's expensive (and you can bet that the cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority won't buy into it anytime soon), but the technology exists. Our estimate anticipates a five-foot pathway in all of the city's 468 stations.

Energy-Generating Doors in Restaurants
Swish through a revolving door and create energy. That's what they do in some places in the Netherlands. Still in its pilot stages so capital costs are hazy, energy revolving doors are said to cut down on overall energy operating costs. Given the technology is in its infant stage, we aren't sure by how much.

Repower Plants
Instead of building new power plants, we can spruce up the ones we have to increase capacity and reduce emissions by as much as 80 percent. NRG Energy wants to "repower" a plant in Astoria but it requires a significant financial investment. Repowering can cost more than $1 billion.

CONSERVATION

Ban Air Conditioning in Commercial Buildings
Sure, it will be hot, but imagine the savings! About 17 percent of electricity in office buildings goes to air conditioning. If we banned it, we would be 10 percent of the way to closing our energy gap. Watch out for protests from sweaty office workers.

Greener Building Code
Requiring new construction and existing buildings to consider energy efficiency in their designs could get us almost a third of the way to closing our energy gap. The new code would include rebates for green buildings, require white roofs and stronger ventilation. According to some estimates, greener construction could increase the cost of projects by 3.5 percent.

Air Conditioning with the Door Shut
The City Council has already done it, much to the chagrin of some retailers. Commercial establishments can no longer open their doors and crank up the AC to lure customers inside on sweltering days. By some estimates, stores that leave their doors open with the air blasting can use 25 percent more electricity than those that let the cooling go on only behind closed doors.

Eradicate Phantom Loads
It looks benign, but that cell phone charger or cable box plugged into the wall uses the same amount of energy when it's off as when it's hard at work charging your phone or illuminating NY1. Simply turning these things off can cut our electricity use by 5 percent.

Tinted Energy Efficient Windows
If you thought tinted windows went out with the 1980s, you thought wrong. Putting some tint on sealed windows can keep out sunlight and reduce air conditioning costs by up to 75 percent. Such a renovation has upfront costs, but experts say it ends up paying for itself.

Dark Skyline
New York's skyline, lit up even after most of us are sound asleep, is an urban icon -- and an electricity guzzler. Lighting accounts for approximately 22.5 percent of the city's energy use. If New Yorkers everywhere, from your own apartment to City Hall, had to turn the lights out from, say, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., it would cut the amount of electricity and money that goes for lighting by about a third. Watch out, though, for what might be lurking in the dark.

Lights Out at Institutional and City Buildings
Most likely, your regular city workers aren't pulling all nighters. Requiring all city and institutional buildings to turn out the lights at night could help close the electricity gap. The Bloomberg administration has endorsed the proposal, but has been known to keep the bulbs burning long after the witching hour.

LED Street Lamps
No one wants to leave city streets pitch black. So some support LED, or light emitting diode, street lamps, which shine on sidewalks, but let the city reduce its own electric bill by 20 to 30 percent. Though the new lights initially would cost $47 million, officials estimate the energy savings would cover that expense in less than four years.

Upgrades for Commercial Buildings
Owners of commercial buildings could help close the energy gap, city officials say, if they examined their own energy use and worked to reduce it. Improvements could be mandatory in vacant space or buildings slated for renovation. These retrofits and lighting improvements could come with upfront costs, but in the long run, supporters argue, this PlaNYC 2030 goal ends up paying them back. Of course, this may be a tough argument to make with commercial real estate mired in a deep slump.

Energy Smart Fridges
A new energy smart refrigerator can keep lettuce crisp and beer frosty with half the electricity used by older models. But if the city required it, it could cost landlords more than $1.5 billion. There are tax incentives and rebates available for the purchase of energy efficient refrigerators.

Green Roofs on City Buildings
Planting vegetables, trees or shrubs on a city roof can reduce electricity use in the building by up to 15 percent. Plus it looks nice, catches stormwater runoff and might even produce some fresh heirloom tomatoes. But it may cost $8 to $10 more per square foot than a conventional roof.

Incentives for Energy Efficient Appliances
The city says it would work with distributors and local retailers to create incentives for residents to buy high efficiency products, like washers and dryers, electronics and air conditioners. Officials could give about $100 financial incentive for residents and landlords to buy the more expensive, but energy efficient products.

CFL Voluntary Replacement Program
Unscrew that old-fashioned light bulb. The mayor's PlaNYC 2030 wants to see 180,000 apartments a year trade in their old, incandescent light bulbs for new, more energy efficient bulbs at no cost to the resident. In the long run, the administration argues the program is cost neutral, because the bulbs save so many megawatt hours.

Ban Standard Light Bulbs in Homes
A compact fluorescent bulb, while more expensive to buy, can use 75 percent less energy than a regular incandescent bulb. Because compact fluorescents last longer, the Department of Energy says you can save up to $107 and 12 light bulb changes for every one you use.

Smart Cable Boxes
Cable boxes can consume large amounts of energy -- even for those of us who are not couch potatoes and rarely turn them on. Requiring cable boxes with smart technology, which would automatically go on sleep when not in use, could cut our cable box consumption by half. By some estimates, that's like taking 2.5 million vehicles off the road.

Daylighting in City Buildings
Call it mood lighting. Better known as daylighting, this technology responds to the amount of sunlight shining through the window. So if it's extra bright, the lights will barely be on. If it's dark, they will be full blast. This technology can cut lighting megawatt hours by 26 percent.

Motion Censored Lighting in City Buildings
Lighting can be just like your shadow; it follows you wherever you go. Using motion-censored lighting can decrease lighting use more than 12 percent. Think about all those megawatt hours you can put toward something else.

Reducing Electricity in City Buildings
Turning out the lights, better maintenance, energy audits -- all of these can turn up a building's energy efficiency and turn down its megawatt hours. The city hopes to reduce its consumption by 30 percent by 2017. These upgrades could cost about $400,000 per public school, but the payback only takes seven to eights years.

By now, you have seen flocks of petitioners on street corners across the five boroughs, hovering amicably with clipboards in tow.

They are scavenging for thousands of signatures to get their candidate on the ballot -- a prerequisite to the city's campaign season.

But getting on the ballot isn't exactly smooth flying. For many, it's like fighting off a flock of vultures. Opponents will challenge every signature a candidate has in hopes of shooting down the competition and swooping into office.

Now it's your turn.

Attempt to alight on the ballot as Hektor Heron, a comptroller candidate endorsed by the local party. You can try pecking your way through as Pidge the Populist, an insurgent City Council candidate. Or you can try to strut on the general election ballot as the third party candidate, Starla the Citizen Upstart.

Don't let your chance to get on the ballot fly away from you.

Play Bump now.

To learn more about the city's ballot process, see Understanding the Labyrinth: New York's Ballot Access Laws.

By now, you have seen flocks of petitioners on street corners across the five boroughs, hovering amicably with clipboards in tow.

They are scavenging for thousands of signatures to get their candidate on the ballot -- a prerequisite to the city's campaign season.

But getting on the ballot isn't exactly smooth flying. For many, it's like fighting off a flock of vultures. Opponents will challenge every signature a candidate has in hopes of shooting down the competition and swooping into office.

Now it's your turn.

Attempt to alight on the ballot as Hektor Heron, a comptroller candidate endorsed by the local party. You can try pecking your way through as Pidge the Populist, an insurgent City Council candidate. Or you can try to strut on the general election ballot as the third party candidate, Starla the Citizen Upstart.

Don't let your chance to get on the ballot fly away from you.

Play Bump now.

To learn more about the city's ballot process, see Understanding the Labyrinth: New York's Ballot Access Laws.

Photo (cc) mikebot

Luxury condos like Schaefer Landing block easy public access to the waterfront and once unfettered views of the skyline.

Amanda Burden, chairperson of the New York City Planning Commission, boasts that since 2002, the city has completed a record 94 rezonings, creating the most sweeping revision of land use regulations throughout the city's five boroughs since the Zoning Resolution was rewritten in 1961. This massive rezoning effort supports the development priorities of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who in 2007 introduced PlaNYC2030, a long-term plan to incorporate almost 1 million more residents by the year 2030.

The city's rezoning frenzy, though, highlights two fundamental problems with its approach to our neighborhoods. One is that the zoning is not based on any comprehensive review of community needs and priorities or any long-range planning. In other words, it's zoning without a plan.

The second and related problem is that, while the rezonings mainly create short-term opportunities for real estate development in neighborhoods where there is intense speculation, the city's planners falsely promote them as being aimed at preservation. In the endless succession of community meetings that go into the rezonings, the city's experts offer colorful slide presentations and discourses on technical details in an effort -- often successful -- to obscure matters. In fact, though, these rezonings are scams.

The principle culprit in this professional land use swindle is the Department of City Planning, the agency that Burden directs and that provides the staff for the 13-person City Planning Commission that she chairs. The Planning Commission officially sets the policy but it relies heavily on recommendations by the planning department staff and is dominated by mayoral appointees (7 out of 13).

Department of Real Estate

The Department of City Planning is the custodian of the city's zoning but for most of its recent history has rarely done any comprehensive planning for and with the city's neighborhoods. It might more appropriately be called the Department of Zoning or, better yet, the Department of Real Estate.

Zoning is a regulatory scheme for controlling the built environment, the physical shell that contains our vibrant human communities. Zoning is not the same as planning but should be based on planning. The city planning department, though, treats the Zoning Resolution itself as the plan for the city.

That view focuses only on the physical dimensions of buildings and plots of land. It doesn't start with the needs of the people who live, work and pass through our neighborhoods. It doesn't address public places, how people relate to the land and one another, and the needs and problems that arise from these relations. There is no place in zoning for the flora and fauna, the natural environment within which we live. While these may be mentioned in the cumbersome environmental impact statements that accompany rezonings, those documents also have little to do with real long-term environmental and health issues.

Community planning, as distinct from zoning, looks at all of these things and lays out visions for the long-term future. There are well over 70 community plans in New York City, many more plans than city planning has done, and while 10 of them have been officially approved, the city has done little to promote and implement them. (I discuss this further in my book, New York For Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate.) In several instances, such as Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, the department has undermined the community's plans with its rezoning scams.

These scams come in four major varieties: affordable housing, building height, mixed use and waterfront access. In many instances, all are used at once.

The Affordable Housing Scam

In lower-income neighborhoods facing gentrification, city planning has upzoned -- increased opportunities for development -- to encourage the influx of new residents with higher incomes. This creates a ripple effect that jacks up land values and rents, forcing out people living in public and private affordable housing. Activists working to stabilize the neighborhood so that the people can afford to stay would probably oppose that scenario. So to sell the rezoning, the city latched on to and co-opted an idea that first came from the neighborhoods - inclusionary zoning -- and twisted it to serve the interests of the developers.

Under inclusionary zoning, the city would require that a certain percentage of new homes in an area be affordable. Here, though, is how New York's inclusionary zoning scam works. In designated areas ripe for development, the city changes the zoning to allow more development but offers potential developers the option of getting a bonus of 20 percent more floor area if they agree to make 20 percent of the homes affordable to people with low- and moderate-incomes.

The Department of City Planning's public relations campaigns give the impression that if their rezoning passes, affordable housing will get developed. The problem, though is in the details:

-- The inclusionary zoning is strictly voluntary, at the discretion of the developer. Housing advocates have pointed out that, when inclusionary zoning has been successful, it has applied to all developers everywhere in the municipality. That way it can't favor one neighborhood over another. It also has been mandatory for the simple reason that if it's voluntary, the affordable housing may not get built, particularly in today's real estate market. Many developers won't even be bothered with affordable housing even when the market is up.

-- Affordable housing is normally built with public subsidies -- that's right, it doesn't cost the developers and, in fact, they can make money on it. These subsidies are limited, especially in hard times when the demand for affordable housing goes up and available subsidies go down.

-- The affordable housing often is not affordable. The zoning requires that 20 percent of the units be affordable to households making up to 80 percent of the Area Median Income, a federal index for the region. Invariably, the median income for the entire metropolitan area is much higher than the median income for city neighborhoods facing gentrification pressures. For example, the median income in Harlem is half the Area Median Income. As a result, the recently approved 125th Street rezoning would produce units affordable to only 5 percent of Harlem households -- if they ever get built.

The Building Height Scam

In neighborhoods dominated by low- to mid-rise buildings, city planning's upzonings encounter legitimate concerns from residents who fear that the new construction will be out of scale and tower over existing buildings. The planning department thus invented the myth that a rezoning, even when it increases the amount of building space, puts a cap on building heights and replaces zoning that has no height cap.

In such cases the new zoning -- called contextual zoning -- does indeed have an explicit height cap and other provisions that consider existing buildings in the surrounding area. But the older non-contextual zoning also had an implicit height cap that in practice kept tall buildings from being built. Whether it's the old or new zoning, developers can only build so high because the amount of floor area they can build is limited.

If the new zoning permits more floor area it may encourage property owners to demolish smaller buildings and build taller ones -- even with the new height limit.

This is exactly what happened with the 125th Street. Portions of this major thoroughfare had one to three-story commercial buildings before the rezoning even though, in theory, only the sky was the limit. Now they can be replaced with 20-story buildings.

The Mixed-Use Scam

In neighborhoods like Greenpoint and Williamsburg that have had rich mixtures of industry, commerce and housing, rezoning schemes face opposition from people who believe that mixed use should be preserved and industry should not be forced out to build bedroom communities. Greenpoint and Williamsburg spent over 12 years preparing their neighborhood plans that proposed to preserve mixed use.

Not long after the City Planning Commission and City Council approved these plans, the Department of City Planning came out with a proposal to rezone large swaths of industrially zoned land for residential and mixed use. The problem is the new mixed-use zones allow for both residential and industrial uses to compete with one another. But in a hot market, like the one in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, no developers in their right mind would build for industrial tenants when they can sell or rent residential property for 10 times the price. In effect, the mixed-use zoning was a back-door residential rezoning.

The Waterfront Access Scam

In waterfront areas, residents worry that new development will block public access to the waterfront. According to waterfront zoning, all residential and commercial developers on the waterfront must provide a public promenade and preserve access corridors to the waterfront. The Department of City Planning uses these provisions to promote upzoning for new development on the waterfront, claiming that new residential or commercial development will provide public access

In reality, the city does not seriously consider creating public parks or placing waterfront land in some sort of trust. Even worse, city planning claims that the new development must be high-rise and sufficiently upscale so that developers can afford to build the public access. But the more high-rise and luxury the new development is, the more likely it is that the public promenade will become an exclusive backyard for the residents in the luxury towers.

The Department of City Planning used the waterfront access scam in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, where new buildings going up are indeed becoming exclusive enclaves. A new public waterfront park proposed by residents and reluctantly promised when the neighborhood was rezoned has not been built.

The residents of Greenpoint and Wiliamsburg had a vision of a mixed-use low to mid-rise waterfront with public access -- not rows of luxury housing. Instead, it has seen its neighborhood, hit by the inclusionary zoning, building height, mixed use and waterfront access scams and its hard-fought community plans undermined.

A Future for Planning

History will determine whether the optimistic growth scenario behind the department's rezonings and the mayor's 2030 plan survive the current burst in the real estate bubble. But neighborhoods throughout the city will nonetheless have to live for some time with the zoning in place.

This is a good time for the city to rethink its approach to both community planning and citywide planning, starting with the real needs and priorities of its residents and workers instead of the amount of floor area that can be built. It is also a good time to shift the main focus of development from lower-income neighborhoods that have experienced intense displacement pressures to the many low-density outlying neighborhoods that were down-zoned by the department.

This would require a complete turnaround in the way the Department of City Planning deals with community boards and community organizations. Instead of wearing out people with endless informational meetings and public hearings -- sessions that result in few, if any, actual changes to the city's plans -- how about a real dialogue between residents and government about the needs and priorities of communities? How about planning for long-term sustainability, from the top-down and from the bottom-up?

Tom Angotti teaches urban affairs and planning, is director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development and co-editor of Progressive Planning Magazine.

Photo (cc) Bryan Bruchman

Would Superfund status radically slow down the commercial development of the waterfront?

TOXIC NEW YORK

Decades after the federal government adopted the Superfund law to clean up the country's hazardous sites, potentially dangerous areas persist throughout the city. Gotham Gazette looks at three of them.

** THE GOWANUS CANAL: Everyone agrees the Brooklyn waterway and the area surrounding it need a cleanup, but residents and others differ on how to do it.
-- Joshua Verleun, an attorney with Riverkeeper, writes that the area should be designated a Superfund site.

-- David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president of Toll Brothers, which hopes to build along the canal, argues the city has a better plan.

** NEWTOWN CREEK: The estuary separating Brooklyn and Queens has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the country's most polluted waterways. Residents, advocates and others have long pleaded for a cleanup -- to no avail. Is that finally about to change?

** STATEN ISLAND'S NORTH SHORE: This area of approximately 5.2 square miles includes more than 20 sites the government or residents consider contaminated -- many of them close to apartment buildings and houses. In March, the community learned of further dangers.

The one thing that everyone with an interest in the Gowanus Canal can agree on is that it needs to be cleaned up.

But the three important questions are: (1) what needs to be done, (2) why, and (3) when? It is the city and not the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that has the correct answers to these critical questions: (1) address the sewage overflow issue, (2) because it is the contaminant most affecting quality of life, and (3) do it now.

The city's plan would address the current leading contaminant of the Gowanus Canal that most affects the quality of life of those who live and work in the area -- the raw sewage that runs into the canal when the combined (storm and sanitary) sewer system overflows. Upgrading and modernizing the flushing tunnel and pumping station, as well as selective dredging and capping of exposed sediments, can begin under the city's plan this fall; the city has allocated at least $175 million to accomplish this urgent goal.

(For an opposing viewpoint on cleanup of the Gowanus Canal, see Brooklyn's Lavender Lake Needs Superfund.)

This work, combined with the city's requirement that private developers build new storm water systems when they develop properties along the canal, will dramatically reduce the sewage overflows that are today the primary source of pollution of the canal. In addition -- just as a Superfund designation would do -- the city will compel the parties responsible for the decades-long pollution of the canal to contribute money to finance additional dredging of the sediments at no expense to taxpayers. The city, officials have said, will work collaboratively with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to complete this cleanup. Rejecting a counterproductive Superfund designation will not mean excluding the federal government from a central role in the cleanup.

Taking Care of Sewage

The chief concerns of area residents are the odors and unsightly floatables in the canal caused by combined sewer overflows. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency has no intention (affirmed publicly by its Region 2 Director Walter Mugdan) to address the issue of sewage in the canal. The agency plans to dredge only the sediments at the bottom of the canal. While this is an important objective, the cost to remove all of these sediments is staggering and, notably, these sediments are not affecting area residents.

A Superfund designation could put on hold the city's efforts to address the important sewage issue. And given the Superfund's track record at other polluted waterways, even the sediments may not be removed for 25 years or more -- witness last week's news that, after a quarter-century, the dredging of the Superfund-designated Hudson River is just now set to begin!

Let's be clear: Sediments at the bottom of the canal pose no threat to human health unless humans come in contact with those sediments on a regular basis. That would happen only if an individual purposely and repeatedly dove to the bottom of the waterway. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency plans to ignore the sewage that runs into the canal during heavy rainfall and instead spend $400 million on dredging sediments at the bottom of the canal that are not impacting people.

Plans Put on Hold

More broadly -- based upon empirical evidence from other similar Superfund designations of waterways that have multiple parties responsible for their pollution -- what path would this cleanup be likely to follow if the Gowanus was designated a Superfund site?

The first step is for the federal government to conduct analyses of the condition of the canal. The Environmental Protection Agency has some seed money to accomplish this. During this period all plans for city remediation of the canal as well as private investment would be put on hold because no one would be willing to spend money until the agency's expectations for the cleanup are clear.

Further, during this time it will be unlikely that government authorities would be willing to issue permits for anyone to do work along the canal. So, there would be no private investment to create new infrastructure that would separate storm water from the combined sewer system. The city's plans for the pumping station, flushing tunnel and selective dredging and capping of exposed sediments to be performed by the Army Corps of Engineers also would likely be stalled. As such, there would be no improvement in the quality of life for nearby residents and workers because the sewage and exposed sediments would not be addressed. In fact, the $15 million budgeted by the Army Corps of Engineers would be rescinded if a Superfund designation were to occur, city officials have said.

Years of Lawsuits

Also at this time, the federal government will be looking for "potentially responsible parties" to determine who may be liable for past pollution. This is necessary because the agency does not have money to fund a cleanup of the canal. The federal government would sue these "parties" to raise this money. Decades, yes decades, of litigation would ensue, because those that are sued would just turn around and sue others to defray their costs.

The Environmental Protection Agency will not come up with $400 million by going after private parties. There are no Exxon/Mobils or General Electrics involved here -- no deep pockets. Take a look at most of the property owners and businesses currently on the canal and who have been there historically. It is impossible to imagine how the agency could suggest that it could raise $400 million them.

However, the potential does exist to raise the money by going after the city and the utility, National Grid. Should the federal government sue the city and National Grid to raise the money that it is unable to obtain otherwise (arguing they are potentially liable parties) we would all be able to thank the agency for higher taxes and utility charges when the city and National Grid seek to recoup these monies. (National Grid took over Brooklyn Union Gas, whose coal gasification plant has been blamed for some of the canal's pollution.) And while this litigation is going on, the city would not be able to pursue its current cleanup plans and National Grid would cease the voluntary cleanup it has initiated as a part of the state's brownfields program.

While the analyses grind on and the lawsuits and countersuits rage, the condition of the canal would deteriorate. Twenty years from now, the area would likely look like it does today -- or worse. One only has to look into other Superfund projects like the Hudson and Passaic rivers. Both of these were designated as Superfund sites in the 1980s; neither has seen any cleanup activity commence in more than 25 years.

So let's have the city, state, and private sector -- working with the Environmental Protection Agency -- get going on the cleanup without all of the wasted time and endless litigation that inevitably accompany a Superfund designation.

David Von Spreckelsen is a senior vice president of Toll Brothers and a member of the Clean Gowanus Now! Coalition - a group of two-dozen developers and property owners along the canal. †Toll Brothers received ULURP approval for a zoning change for a mixed-use project along the canal from the City Council earlier this year. The project will include 450 market rate and inclusionary housing units.

Photo (cc) Pro-Zak

TOXIC NEW YORK

Decades after the federal government adopted the Superfund law to clean up the country's hazardous sites, potentially dangerous areas persist throughout the city. Gotham Gazette looks at three of them.

** THE GOWANUS CANAL: Everyone agrees the Brooklyn waterway and the area surrounding it need a cleanup, but residents and others differ on how to do it.
-- Joshua Verleun, an attorney with Riverkeeper, writes that the area should be designated a Superfund site.

-- David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president of Toll Brothers, which hopes to build along the canal, argues the city has a better plan.

** NEWTOWN CREEK: The estuary separating Brooklyn and Queens has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the country's most polluted waterways. Residents, advocates and others have long pleaded for a cleanup -- to no avail. Is that finally about to change?

** STATEN ISLAND'S NORTH SHORE: This area of approximately 5.2 square miles includes more than 20 sites the government or residents consider contaminated -- many of them close to apartment buildings and houses. In March, the community learned of further dangers.

After almost 150 years of industrial use and decades of raw sewage discharges from New York City's combined sewer system, the Gowanus Canal has become one of the nation's most contaminated bodies of water. The putrid sediments at the bottom of the canal contain PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, sewage solids and coal tar wastes. Adding to this toxic legacy, the manufactured gas plants, cement factories, oil refineries, tanneries, chemical plants and other industries that have called the canal home also have left behind underground plumes of pollution and contaminated the land and the groundwater, which continues to leach toxins into the canal.

On April 8, 2009, the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to include the Gowanus Canal in the federal Superfund Program, which cleans up hazardous sites. This followed a request from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which acknowledged that cleaning up the Gowanus would be too complicated for the state to handle. Soon after the Environmental Protection Agency's announcement, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his opposition to the agency's proposal, saying the city could handle the job.

(For an opposing viewpoint on cleanup of the Gowanus Canal, see On the Gowanus, Say 'No' to Superfund.)

How Superfund Works

The federal Superfund program was created in 1980 in response to public outrage over the threat that toxic waste sites such as Love Canal and Valley of the Drums posed to human health and the environment. Superfund provides the EPA with authority to respond to releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment and to clean up many of the country's most contaminated sites.

About 70 percent of site cleanups are paid for by parties thought to be responsible for the pollution. EPA has power under Superfund to force the responsible parties to clean up a site or risk penalties, including having to pay EPA three times the cost of any remediation financed by the trust. However, if the responsible party cannot be found or has gone bankrupt, the Superfund trust can pay for the remediation of highly contaminated sites. Once a site is listed on a National Priorities List, the EPA can use money from the fund to fully investigate the extent of contamination, perform a remediation feasibility study and work on the site. Unfortunately, the Superfund trust is no longer funded by taxes on polluting industries and now relies on $1.2 billion in yearly congressional funding.

A Comprehensive Cleanup

After decades of environmental abuse, the Gowanus Canal is poised to leave behind its history as the "lavender lake," so called because of the color industrial waste tinged its waters, and be redeveloped into a community offering, housing, retail and recreational opportunities. With input from many active community organizations, the current redevelopment proposals envision neighborhoods focused on a clean canal with parks, a public promenade, and increased access to and use of the water.

With this future as a backdrop, the Gowanus Canal must be cleaned up in a comprehensive and thorough manner. Various individual plans address some of the environmental problems in the canal and surrounding area, but none of these proposals deals with the contamination in the canal itself or seeks a comprehensive solution to the continued leaching of pollutants from contaminated sites into the canal.

Several sites in the area are in the process of being cleaned up under state Department of Environmental Conservation supervision, including the future Whole Foods site at Third Street and Third Avenue, the Toll Brothers site on Bond Street, and the Public Place site at Fifth and Smith streets. The city also has plans to reduce the volume of combined sewer overflows that enter the canal and to rehabilitate the flushing tunnel that pushes cleaner water into the canal from New York Harbor.

If the Gowanus Canal is listed on Superfund's National Priority List, these projects will continue under state supervision as planned. However, the EPA has stated that the most important task of any cleanup would be to stop the upland leaching of pollution into the canal. In addition, according to the agency, existing clean-up projects must be coordinated with the remediation plan for the canal. This coordination may delay some development projects.

The ultimate goal must be a comprehensive and thorough cleanup of the canal, rather than a piecemeal approach by state and city agencies with different priorities. While not a perfect solution, a Superfund designation will provide the best chance for a thorough cleanup of the canal, so that this unique waterway can serve as the centerpiece of a revitalized neighborhood where residents can enjoy the canal itself and the surrounding land, free of concerns over the public health threat of any toxic pollutants lurking beneath the surface.

The Lowe's Home Improvement store on Second Avenue serves as an example of the dangers associated with cleaning up contaminated land without comprehensive planning. The Lowe's was built on the site of a former manufactured gas plant and was remediated under the State Brownfields Program. Although Lowe's conducted a cleanup prior to starting construction, published reports state that Lowe's did not address the entire site and that coal tar contamination has now migrated toward the supermarket next door. Without a comprehensive cleanup plan for the canal there is a danger that other sites will not be adequately remediated, leading to the continued pollution of land, groundwater and the canal.

The City's Plan

When Bloomberg announced his opposition to listing the canal as a Superfund site, he indicated that the city would come up with an alternative plan that would achieve virtually the same goal, but without the perceived stigma that "Superfund" carries. The administration has not released final details but promises that its alternative will be supervised by the EPA, will study the canal's contamination to the same extent that Superfund would and will achieve a cleanup to the same standards. The city has also proposed having the parties responsible for the contamination pay for a portion of the cleanup and is seeking funding for dredging of the canal from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

With a price tag for the cleanup that could reach $300 million to $400 million, it remains uncertain whether responsible parties would pick up part of the costs and whether money from the Army Corps would provide sufficient funding. Any cleanup that does not list the canal on the National Priority List would not allow the EPA or anyone else to use money from the Superfund trust to study the extent of contamination, pay for cleanup if necessary or compel the original polluters to do the cleanup themselves.

Although the city has provided few specifics about its proposal, any alternative to Superfund would lose the tools and funding of the Superfund program, while gaining few if any advantages. This is why Superfund presents the best mechanism for retiring the Gowanus Canal's "lavender lake" stigma once and for all.

Joshua S. Verleun is a staff attorney at Riverkeeper, Inc.

Gotham Gazette image by YH Huang

Has mayoral control of schools saved our classrooms? Or should Bloomberg stay out?

GOVERNING THE SCHOOL SYSTEM

The looming expiration of the law giving the mayor control of the New York City school system has prompted an unprecedented discussion on how that system, the largest in the nation, should be run. To add to the debate, Gotham Gazette offers a number of perspectives:

Making Joel Klein Behave
by Assemblymember Alan Maisel
The Department of Education promises it will improve, but it continues to shut out parents and others, according to this former assistant principal and current member of the state Assembly. He offers suggestions for how the department could change its ways.

In Charge and Unaccountable
by Councilmember Robert Jackson
The current system has shut out debate and dialogue, leaving the mayor and chancellor answerable to no one as they run a $18 billion department, contends the chairman of the City Council Education Committee.

The Limits of Democracy
by Marcus Winters
While arguing they want to promote more democracy, opponents of mayoral control seek changes that would return us to the bad old days when no one was responsible for the schools, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute argues.

The Department of Education's Power Grip
by Udi Ofer
Under the current system, the schools resemble a bunker where students' rights can be violated, the advocacy director for the New York Civil Liberties Union writes. The group proposes measures to promote more transparency and involvement.

Beyond Governance -- Creating a Constitution for City Schools
by Josh Karan
Governance issues are important but only go so far, according to this member of the Parents Commission on School Governance. To achieve excellence, he says, we need a constitution for out city's schools.

* * * * * * * *

Also, for reporting on the issues in the debate over mayoral control, see these articles from Gotham Gazette:

The Mayor's High Stake test, including a rundown on the various key reports on school governance

Choosing Side in the Fight Over Schools

A Battle Brews Over Who Controls the Schools

With the law establishing mayoral control of the New York City school system set to expire at the end of June, parents, educators and other concerned New Yorkers have widely varying opinions over the successes and failures of the current system and whether it should remain as is, be tweaked or totally rehauled. On May 11, Citizens Union Foundation, Gotham Gazette's publisher, along with the Baruch College School of Public Affairs, held a forum on the issue.

Moderated by Doug Muzzio, professor of public affairs at Baruch, it featured:

Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director, Make the Road NY

Rev. David Brawley, co-chair, East Brooklyn Congregations

Joel Klein, chancellor, New York City Department of Education

Monica Major, president, Community Education Council, District 11

Michael Mulgrew, chief operating officer, United Federation of Teachers

Joseph Viteritti, former executive director, Commission on School Governance

The following are edited comments excerpted from their discussion.

Who's In Charge?

"To me, the most essential feature of mayoral control is that the mayor chooses a majority of members of the school board. ... In a few places where they call it mayoral control, I wouldn't call it mayoral control. For example in Oakland, the mayor picks three members of a 10-person board. I don't think that's control. In Baltimore, mayors share that with the governor. I don't think that's control." -- Joseph Viteritti

"The question of governance is fundamentally whether the mayor will have the same authority over the school system that he or she has over safety, over health, over finances. The present structure is sound and I worry that, as we try to improve the system, we undermine it and create divided authority. The mayor has to be able to support a majority of the members [of the Panel for Education Policy] and they serve at his pleasure. No terms." -- Joel Klein

"The form of mayoral control we have in New York is the most extreme. You don't have a space for parents and students and stakeholders to participate in the debate." --Ana Marie Archila

"It's not a burden for a chancellor to have to make a persuasive case [to a board with a majority of mayoral appointees]. That's an opportunity to make your case." -- Viteritti

"We're New Yorkers. We like to debate. That's' what we do. In our proposal, we have 14 members on the [Panel on Educational Policy]. Every policy should have some debate. The mayor would only have to swing two votes. If there is an issue, isn't it better as a city if we have some debate?" -- Michael Mulgrew

"I am old enough to remember Mayor Giuliani and young enough to know I'll have kids in school when there will be mayors I don't like." --Archila

"We have got to be bold. A mayor may or may not be bold, but if he or she doesn't have the authority, thee is going to be special interest capture." -- Klein

The Bottom Line

"It's a not a question of how we hold the mayor accountable. The discussion should be how do we insure students who historically have fallen through the cracks do not continue to fall through the cracks." -- Archila

"If we had this debate under the old system there would be no room because everyone who made a paychecks on the backs of our children would want to be here." -- David Brawley

"Not a single person on the panel has said we want to go back to the old system. We want to move forward. Everyone here has the best interests of the children at heart. We are all trying to do the best thing for out children and the city as a whole." -- Mulgrew

A Place for Parents

"We need to make sure our public institutions can hear the public." -- Archila

"One of the things that the old board did well -- and there weren't many of them --- was force a public conversation." --Viteritti

"Parents come out to complain, and they're frustrated, Some don't have the resources to properly advocate for their children." -- Monica Major

"When you have parents, teachers and students working together, then you have a successful school. [At the hearings the UFT held,] parents in every neighborhoods no matter what the demographics said 'we feel shut out of the system'." -- Mulgrew

"People think trying to participate in the current system is not a good use of their time." -- Viteritti

"In the old days, you had the debate but no results." -- Brawley

"We're the only system that does a parent poll. A few people claim they speak to parents. I like to listen to all of them." -- Klein

We should make sure that when parents organize, they're not treated as a special interest." -- Archila

"I don't think parents are a special interest, but people kid themselves when they say they speak for parents." -- Klein

Looking at the Numbers

"This is the Mark Twain, lies, damns lies and statistics part of the program." -- Mulgrew

"To use [test scores] to evaluate a governance system is not a good idea." -- Viteritti

"In East New York, the percentage of student passing the state reading tests is up by 16 points. One reason that is happening is the chancellor is willing to make hard decisions." --Brawley

"Our students are closing in on the rest of the state. After a decade of stagnation in this city, we are making real change." -- Klein

"These grades [on the school report cards] do not match what is going on in the city. They are based on a metric you can't explain to parents." -- Major

An Outside Eye

"[Oversight by the Independent Budget Office is needed] to make sure we all have information about performance and to make sure the money goes where it really needs to go." -- Archila

"I'm confident about the data...and I'm happy to have an outside body investigate." -- Klein

To Tweak or to Tinker?

"Mayoral control creates a capacity for change that didn't exist before. I support a strong system of mayoral control, but it can also have checks and balances." -- Viteritti

"I hope the system remains as it is. Tweaking is one thing. Tinkering is another." -- Brawley

"What we hope happens is that New York City has a better system because it can always be better, We are talking about Albany here, so it would leave it up to anyone to tell me what is going to happen." -- Mulgrew

"The state legislature is trying to figure it out. I hope their debate is as robust as our conversation." -- Archila

"This is as robust a debate as can possibly happen." -- Klein

GOVERNING THE SCHOOL SYSTEM

The looming expiration of the law giving the mayor control of the New York City school system has prompted an unprecedented discussion on how that system, the largest in the nation, should be run. To add to the debate, Gotham Gazette offers a number of perspectives:

Debating Mayoral Control
What has worked and what hasn't? How could it be improved? A panel of experts weighs in.

Making Joel Klein Behave
by Assemblymember Alan Maisel
The Department of Education promises it will improve, but it continues to shut out parents and others, according to this former assistant principal and current member of the state Assembly. He offers suggestions for how the department could change its ways.

The Limits of Democracy
by Marcus Winters
While arguing they want to promote more democracy, opponents of mayoral control seek changes that would return us to the bad old days when no one was responsible for the schools, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute argues.

The Department of Education's Power Grip
by Udi Ofer
Under the current system, the schools resemble a bunker where students' rights can be violated, the advocacy director for the New York Civil Liberties Union writes. The group proposes measures to promote more transparency and involvement.

Beyond Governance -- Creating a Constitution for City Schools
by Josh Karan
Governance issues are important but only go so far, according to this member of the Parents Commission on School Governance. To achieve excellence, he says, we need a constitution for out city's schools.

* * * * * * * *

Also, for reporting on the issues in the debate over mayoral control, see these articles from Gotham Gazette:

The Mayor's High Stake test, including a rundown on the various key reports on school governance

Choosing Side in the Fight Over Schools

A Battle Brews Over Who Controls the Schools

I am a grassroots kind of guy. I believe that the best systems of governance welcome the participation of stakeholders. Good governance is open, and has debate and dialogue, clear lines of accountability and reasonable grievance procedures for resolving differences. Mayoral control of the city's public schools has not achieved these basic goals.

Additionally, because the chancellor is answerable only to the mayor, the children of New York City have, in some ways, lost their strongest advocate. No longer independent of the mayor's budgetary priorities, the chancellor's willingness to fight for school funding has been compromised by the ability of the mayor to hire and fire the chancellor and by the mayor's relationship with the governor and state Legislature.

Arguably, the best features of mayoral control should be on the business side (the Department of Education has the largest budget of any city department at more than $18 billion). In fact in several cities that have adopted mayoral control, the impetus was financial accountability. We should see efficiencies in procurement and operations. What I am seeing from my dual perspective as chairman of the New York City Council's Education Committee and as the lead plaintiff in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, which stimulated the recent influx of education funding, is a distressing mix of privatization of basic functions and no-bid contracts.

For example, two and a half years ago I chaired a council hearing that explored a number of no bid contracts entered into by the Department of Education. We looked hard at the $15.8 million contract that went to Alvarez & Marsal, a global consulting firm based in New York City, to find cost savings through restructuring. That firm's recommendations on school transportation were implemented in the dead of winter in the coldest weather we'd had in a long while, leaving kids standing outdoors in below freezing temperatures while the kinks in the new plan were worked out. Some of my constituents complained, and rightly so, about glaring errors like student pick-up times scheduled after the start of the school day. It was an outrage.

And what were the long-term savings brought by this no bid contract? It's very hard to say because of the lack of transparency in the department's budget. I can only tell you that the department's transportation budget went up $52.5 million between fiscal year 2008 and the current fiscal year.

The City Council looked hard at that contract, but there was little we could do. Since education law is STATE law, the Department of Education always says that it is accountable only to the state. Quite frankly, I don't think the Assembly members and senators from upstate counties should really be that involved -- at the detail level -- in the oversight of the New York City schools. City residents are the stakeholders here, and city government is where oversight, compliance and enforcement should rest.

Accountable to No One

In 2005 the City Council passed legislation that required the education department to submit an annual report on the number of substandard or temporary classrooms and the number of students in them. After initial compliance, we received a letter saying that the department would not provide the data.

The Department of Education does not comply with state mandates either. Classes are not supposed to be held in rooms without windows. Yet 18 percent of principals responding to a recent survey (you can view the responses here) indicated that one or more classrooms in their schools were windowless. And this was no small sample – these principals represent 41 percent of the city's student body. Physical education instruction is provided for less than one hour per week in 47 percent of the responding schools. Our schools are not up to state mandated instructional standards in art, science or health either. When I asked the Department of Education how many classes received health instruction from uncertified teachers, it could not answer even though there were only 200 certified instructors for this subject in the entire system. But no sanctions or reprimands are issued when the department fails to meet the state standards.

Sometimes this failure is colossal. As the council readies to vote on the Department of Education's new $11.3 billion capital plan, it is worth pondering how our current governance structure deals with the department's refusal to meet state standards.

Contracting Excellence

Back in 1991, when Michael Rebell and I started the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, overcrowded schools and large classes were characteristic of New York City, particularly in Community School District 6 where I was the school board president. I now represent parts of the same area in the City Council.

Fifteen years later, the lawsuit at last produced something tangible: the Contract for Excellence. In this historic agreement the state requires that the city's five-year capital plans be aligned with the standards specified in the Contract for Excellence.

But currently, the five-year capital plan is not aligned with the Contract for Excellence Standards. For example, the Contract for Excellence agreement calls for classes of 23 students in middle schools and high schools; the capital plan provides for classes of 28 as its benchmark for upper elementary and middle schools and sets 30 as the high school cap, falling far short of the contract standard and way below the recommendations put forth by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. The department consistently puts two teachers in one classroom and calls it "class size reduction."

Now, I have what I consider to be a sound, basic education. I didn't go to Harvard, and I don't have a graduate degree, but I am educated enough to know that "reducing teacher-student ratio through team teaching strategies" is NOT the same thing as reducing class size.

When the Council is asked to approve a plan that violates state law, we are between a rock and a hard place: a NO vote stops all capital work; a YES vote approves a plan that violates state law. Clearly this is not only an inadequate capital plan, but an inadequate governance structure that encourages the Council to be a rubber stamp for mayoral failure to adhere to state law. But how many council members have the political will to completely stop all school repairs and construction in order to force the mayor to comply with state law?

Governance should not be dependent on the popularity or personality of an individual office holder. The quality of governance should not be judged solely by the test results or graduation rates it produces (and there is some evidence that these numbers are suspect). It needs to be a system that also produces excellent, motivated teachers and supervisors; a system that produces engaged students; it must endure changes in demographics and weather dips in the economy -- what's going to happen to all the basics that are being funded by private contributions now? And most importantly, it must answer to the constituents it serves and not the single vision or political fortunes of the mayor of the city of New York.

I urge the state to move toward a governance system that rests on the broadest possible base with the greatest degree of accountability, transparency and community involvement.

Councilmember Robert Jackson has represented the neighborhoods of West Harlem; parts of Washington Heights, Inwood, Central Harlem and Morningside Heights since 2002. He is the chair of the council's Education Committee and co-founder of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. He is also the parent of three daughters, all of who attended PS/IS 187 in Community School District 6, where he served on the Community School Board for fifteen years.