Chirlane McCray, the author, thanking health care workers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
This Thanksgiving will be unlike any other. The empty chairs at our tables are a stark reminder of lives lost, personal caution we must take, and the advisories to limit travel to control the spread of the coronavirus. Amid the rising virus toll and deep divisions symbolized by an electoral map of red states and blue states we still crave connection.
New Yorkers have something in common with those in every single state: the pain all humans suffer through sickness, isolation, death, economic distress, and socio-political upheaval. This year has been a powerful reminder of the need for emotional healing, as well as policies and a national mandate to prioritize behavioral health care. The past few months have also brought an equally powerful realization of how much we need each other.
Let us make this Thanksgiving a day to exercise gratitude for the many ways we have survived the long days and nights of 2020. From health-care workers saving lives to the teachers returning to classrooms amid uncertainty, our fellow Americans have had our backs.
Here in New York, anyone needing support can find it 24/7, in over 200 languages through our NYC Well helpline at 1-888-NYC-Well. You can talk, text “well” to 65173, or visit nyc.gov/nycwell. The city has also gathered resources and holiday advice at one accessible website.
On the precipice of a dark winter, we will have to lean on one another for sustenance, for survival, for joy. We must connect to each other and what keeps us whole. Think about it. Do we care about the political affiliations of our teachers, our doctors, those working in food pantries or delivering the mail?
No matter how they voted, everyone is under pressure. Seventy-six percent of Democrats and 67 percent of Republicans found the election significantly stressful, according to a recent American Psychological Association poll. New research suggests that almost one out of five COVID-19 patients are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within 90 days of a virus diagnosis. More than 12 million of us have tested positive for the coronavirus.
With the virus raging and the country in the midst of a political transition, our streets and our airwaves are far from quiet. Protestors continue to march against racial injustice. Some of our fellow citizens, including our current president, have raised their voices to question the election results, despite no evidence supporting that claim.
As an African American woman in her sixties, who has lived through many iterations of social justice movements, I am not naïve about the country’s continued need for change or the political struggles ahead. As a mental health care advocate and the First Lady of New York City, I sit at the juncture of the political and the personal. Those two worlds both overlap and collide.
But this Thanksgiving, I hope others can bow their heads, as I will, to express gratitude for the high turnout for this presidential election, which one expert has suggested could well be the highest in over a century. People risked their health to stand in long lines to vote and exercise rights that cannot be taken for granted.
This Thanksgiving, these many months of social distancing should only sharpen our awareness of the importance of our families, our neighbors, and our loved ones. Maybe instead of talking about politics and voting at our gatherings we can find ways to talk about our feelings, our hopes and dreams, and our fondest memories of times we have been together.
Voting for president is just one expression of civic engagement. What do we know about politics closer to home? Who is our local councilperson? What about the school board? In a time of enormous need, there is so much we can do to help and show true citizenship. Volunteers are needed for seniors and for children, in animal shelters and in food lines. We can honor those we have lost by expanding our social circles and reaching out to friends and relatives in distant places.
It is amazing what can be achieved when people go through tremendous pain and make it to the other side. Let us pledge to be civil in our disagreements, to push for continued progress, and to be grateful for what we have.
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Chirlane McCray is First Lady of New York City. On Twitter @NYCFirstLady.
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City Council Member Francisco Moya, the author (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
How many more elections until incumbents and newcomers in races across the country realize that we are not all the same?
“Speaking” the language or being designated Latino/Hispanic does not translate to our larger population sharing the same story or weighing issues with the same values.
According to Pew Research, a record 32 million Hispanics were projected to be eligible to vote in the United States in 2020, making up 13% of all eligible voters in the country. This is a growing population from all walks of life, of different races and ethnicities, with different religious beliefs, multigenerational, monolingual, bilingual, trilingual—and the list goes on.
And while Latinos voted for Biden by a +43-point margin according to the American Election Eve 2020 Survey, campaigns need to stop taking our votes for granted or assume that we are a bloc.
I urge candidates in electoral races across the country to not generalize the Latino population and not assume they will automatically have our vote.
First, to truly discern the communities that exist within our larger population, meet us where we are by diversifying your campaign teams, partnering with groups that are on the ground, and understanding the issues that are a priority. Do this across each pocket of our country.
One clear lesson from this year’s election is the Herculean effort by Latino-led organizations and community activists around the country—from Make the Road NY to LUCHA in Arizona and Mi Familia Vota across battleground states like Nevada—to educate and mobilize voters in the Latino electorate. This was evident in the results we saw in swing states from the top to the bottom of the ballot.
Take for instance here in New York. Many of us that grew up or live in New York City, specifically in Queens, are afforded the opportunity to interact with the different communities that represent us, appreciate the intricacies of our cultures, and experience the inequities. Much of what you’re reading about who makes up “the Latino vote” around the country—the Ecuadorian, Puerto Rican, or Dominican voter in New York; the Cuban, Puerto Rican, or Colombian voter in Miami; the Mexican or Salvadorian voter in Los Angeles or Texas—is to some extent reflected here, in New York City, from neighborhood to neighborhood.
There is so much to learn and know about our diverse communities, but you have to try.
Second, double down on the issues. According to Pew Research, the economy, health care, and COVID-19 response are top issues for Latino voters. Not surprising. My City Council district was the epicenter of the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, and we saw firsthand the disproportionate health and economic impact on Latinos. This has been of great concern among those who lost loved ones, lost income, who have small businesses, and who have to put food on the table for their families.
Jobs and the economy have been focus issues on both sides of the political aisle. In Florida and Texas, like elsewhere, voters had legitimate economic concerns related to keeping small businesses afloat, saving jobs, food insecurity, and loss of personal wealth. For Puerto Ricans, the second largest population within the Hispanic eligible voter population in Florida, the economic crisis and the devastation in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria were prevalent concerns. Trump’s campaign doubled down on the American Dream vs. a socialist nightmare, and clearer economic messaging alongside disinformation helped make headway with capturing part of the Latino vote including Cuban Americans.
Which brings me to the next point: invest time and resources to appropriately engage voters in the Latino electorate that span generations, experiences, and consumption habits. The young Latino that just turned 18, the naturalized citizen, the first-generation citizen, the voter whose family has been in the U.S. for generations. Each of their stories, where they live, and how they consume information will unequivocally vary, and will determine who they support.
Address early and at every turn, and at a community level, the issues that are concerning voters in the Latino electorate. If a voter is concerned about keeping their small business afloat, show how you’re addressing that. For example, I introduced legislation to cap delivery app fees to protect mom and pop shops during the pandemic. If worker protections are a priority, address that (after all, Florida resoundingly supported a $15 minimum wage despite its presidential vote going for Trump). I’m proud to have championed worker protections, from construction sites to nail salons, and will continue to do so because these are issues important to my constituents and New Yorkers across the city. They are also important to working people across the country.
Engage different communities often and consistently, and factor in groups that are relatively new to voting in the United States.
The issues that we in the larger Latino community are prioritizing are not simply “Latino issues,” but they impact our population the most, which we’ve seen exacerbated by this pandemic. Races across the country not only need to have the communities within our larger voting bloc represented, there also has to be a real commitment to reducing racial and ethnic inequalities.
As we go into the races being waged next year, voters in the Latino electorate will be key deciding factors in choosing the next Mayor of New York City, and the election of Governors in New Jersey and Virginia—all three of which include the multiplicity of our population.
The Latino electorate is heterogeneous in composition and united in power so don’t ghost us until the eve of the next election—whether mayoral, gubernatorial, presidential, or otherwise. Court us early and don’t make promises you can’t keep.
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City Council Member Francisco Moya represents the New York City Council’s 21st District, which encompasses East Elmhurst, LeFrak City, parts of Jackson Heights, and his native Corona. He chairs the Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises and is vice co-chair of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus (BLAC). On Twitter @FranciscoMoyaNY.
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The current site of the proposed Special Flushing Waterfront District
To The Editor:
In “Separating Fact and Fiction About the Special Flushing Waterfront District,” published earlier this week and in part an apparent response to my criticism of the Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD) in these pages, the property owners and applicants of the SFWD make one fact crystal clear, and that is that the developers do not represent community interests.
The developers continue to exaggerate the magnanimity of the proposed open space and waterfront access, which are the primary public benefits of the SFWD given the paltry number of proposed affordable housing units.
In a recent study based on information provided by the developers’ environmental assessment statement, the Municipal Art Society (MAS) produced illustrations depicting minimal public space and a diminished pedestrian experience due to the massive building base walls of SFWD’s proposed towers. Rather than the 6.6 acres of public open space as the developers claim, the MAS found the SFWD will create “just over three acres of new open space”. Moreover, MAS concluded, “only 0.3 percent of the open space under the proposal is being provided voluntarily.”
The SFWD applicants’ disdain for advocates, who argue that private developers seeking relief from land use regulations should provide public benefit to the surrounding community, extends to elected officials. It is hard to ignore the developers’ sarcastic instruction to those who “want to advance more affordable housing” to contact City Council Member Francisco Moya. Moya, chair of the Zoning Subcommittee, was featured prominently in several articles admonishing the developers for not doing enough to address the city’s acute affordable housing crisis.
Moya and 11 of his colleagues clearly heard and agree with community concerns, as shown in an official statement issued the evening before a scheduled Zoning Subcommittee vote on the SFWD was postponed. The statement noted that the SFWD “ignores the real, urgent needs of the Flushing community” and approval of an “application without deep community benefits” would be “irresponsible” and “a grave mistake."
Rather than heed the advice of these elected officials, the developers wrote an opinion piece that sought to malign “the opposition,” including the MinKwon Center for Community Action, a nationally recognized, Flushing-based immigrant rights and social justice organization. The developers’ warning that the MinKwon Center is not “the town crier of Flushing,” however, fails to diminish the city-wide mobilizations its organizers helped to catalyze to counter the fiction that the proposed SFWD will benefit Flushing’s working class community.
Sincerely,
Tarry Hum
Professor and Chair of the Urban Studies Department, Queens College, City University of New York. On Twitter @TarryHum.
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Mayor de Blasio on a CitiBike (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
New York City is a Bike City in disguise. Bicycles are part of city culture, whether we recognize it or not. Let’s give bike culture its rightful place by building safe, protected streets. Now.
Becoming a Bike City is not taboo. It is not radical. It is about necessity and safety -- for essential delivery workers, for commuters, and, increasingly, for students traveling to and from school, sometimes on their own bikes and sometimes on their parents’. Bike culture supports our economy and our working class. It helps our environment. It supports equity, inclusiveness, and accessibility. This is New York City, and we need options.
There is no denying that bike culture surged in 2020 and the city’s transportation safety infrastructure was woefully inadequate to keep up. When stay-at-home orders were announced in March, essential delivery workers reported to work with their bicycles, e-bikes, and scooters. In order to work, delivery workers rode among cars, trucks, busses, and vans amidst a disjointed, incomplete, and unprotected bike lane network.
Sadly, the inadequacy is a matter of life and death.
On November 12, 35-year-old essential delivery worker Alfredo Cabrera Liconia was tragically struck and killed when a truck driver turned widely into the bike lane at Astoria Boulevard and Crescent Street in Astoria, Queens. Weeks before, federal, state, and local elected officials signed onto a letter urging the city Department of Transportation to install metal bollards along the Crescent Street bike lane, and along similar intersections, to prevent this exact type of tragedy. Permanent fixtures prevent drivers from entering bike lanes.
Earlier this year, on September 2, 50-year-old cyclist Salvador Chairez-Rodriguez tragically collided with an MTA bus in Woodside, Queens near 51st Street and 31st Avenue. There are limited bike lanes near that intersection but none are protected. In the immediate area are Bryant High School, PS 151, Woodside Houses, a senior center, and the Boulevard Gardens community. Creating a Safe Bike City is not solely for adult rider convenience. It means safety for all of us.
New York City’s evolution into a Bike City is happening in real time and we deserve a thoughtful, coordinated cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in real time. This is how we commute, how we exercise with our families, and how we connect with others in open spaces while maintaining social distance. It’s also how we express our right to protest. Alternatives to cars, busses, and subways have been healthy equalizers as we collectively avoid exposure to the novel coronavirus in confined spaces. However, more bikes and pedestrians without proper infrastructure means higher risk of injury. Our infrastructure needs are immediate.
I know the dangers of our roads first-hand. I have biked in all five boroughs for years and I’ve biked nearly every street in the Queens City Council district I hope to represent. I've been hit by cars, nudged, and "doored." I've been spat at, cursed at, and I've been stuck behind idling trucks. Many cyclists contend with this, yet cycling is not going away. Walking is not going away. We deserve safe options and the city must adapt.
New York does not have to be behind the ball here. We could be a standard bearer that inspires other cities and states that have yet to get up to speed to embrace varied, multimodal transportation. In this moment, the de Blasio administration should use what little time it has left to lay the foundation for a Safe Bike City in 2021.
The Department of Transportation should install safety fixtures that fully protect cyclists by preventing cars, busses, and trucks from entering bike lanes. Install metal bollards, Qwick Kurbs, physical barriers, and traffic signals to protect existing bike lanes. Build safe unloading ports for trucks to make deliveries and keep them away from bike lanes and CitiBike ports. Coordinate CitiBike expansion proposals, like the one currently debated in Astoria, Sunnyside, and Woodside, with installing new bike lanes to protect the expanded ridership.
The city should fully protect its bridges for cyclists and pedestrians. The Queensborough Bridge, for example, should be on the fast-track to re-open the south outer roadway for pedestrian-only passage, and to dedicate the north outer roadway to cyclists. Instead, it feels like the city is waiting for the next tragedy.
In 2021, we will have an opportunity to elect a new Mayor and City Council that will truly build a safe, affordable, equitable, and inclusive city. We will embrace a diverse transportation network that builds a more accessible and Safe Bike City -- for workers, for students, for all of us. But we shouldn’t have to wait for new elected officials. Give bike culture its rightful safe place in New York City culture now.
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Alex Rias is a City Council candidate in District 26 in Queens and a long-time commuter cyclist in all five boroughs. On Twitter @alexrias.
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Governor Cuomo on the subway (photo: governor's office)
Hope that Congress can enact a post-election stimulus package to aid the economy amid another explosion of coronavirus cases has narrowed. One major institution in New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), is now out of time to get help. It is therefore necessary for New York State to step up and rescue the MTA before it begins a series of wrenching cutbacks that could permanently harm the New York region. The agency is being overwhelmed by financial losses due to the pandemic and its impact on the economy.
MTA Chair Patrick Foye, describing the MTA’s desperation, said in a NY1 interview on October 28, that “Our urgent request…to the United States Senate, is for $12 billion, which will take us through 2020…and 2021. That money is desperately needed. If we don’t receive it, our hand may be forced in terms of draconian service reductions, up to 40% on subways and buses, up to 50% on commuter rails, on top of laying off…thousands of our colleagues, plus fare and toll increases above those that are budgeted. This is an apocalyptic scenario.”
He went on to say that the MTA Board would make a decision at its December Board meeting to proceed with the cutbacks in the first quarter of 2021 if Congress didn’t give the MTA the money. He expressed optimism nonetheless.
An October 2020 New York State Comptroller report on the MTA presented the below graph showing the staggering ridership losses for the subways and other parts of the massive transit agency.
The graph shows subway ridership plunging 90% at the start of the pandemic, recovering to an 80% loss as the economy partially reopened by mid-June, and trending up to a still devastating 70% ridership loss from the beginning to mid-September. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has been tracking MTA ridership reports and other city economic matters and the most recent ridership numbers show losses are still 63-70% below weekday daily numbers from the year prior. The suburban commuter rail systems are faring badly too.
New York State adopted its 2020-2021 budget in April 2020, just weeks after the declaration of the national and New York COVID-19 emergencies. The state budget anticipated the economic plunge and authorized New York to cut its budget. It also authorized New York to borrow up to $11 billion short-term to adjust to potential massive cash flow problems, some of which stemmed from Congress postponing the April 15 income tax filing deadline to July 15. New York’s large borrowing authorization also permitted conversion of short-term loans into longer repayment periods, including 30-year bonds.
To date, New York State has borrowed $4.5 billion. Current plans are to repay $1 billion by December 31, and the remaining $3.5 billion by March 31, 2021 the end of the current fiscal year, according to the mid-year forecast issued by the State Division of the Budget. New York State is in possession of this cash now.
Governor Cuomo can ask the State Legislature to quickly appropriate this $3.5 billion in cash to the MTA. The state can convert the earlier short-term borrowing into 30-year bonds in the next several months. The state may be proceeding now to repay the other $1 billion and it would not be wise to interfere with any processes underway in relation to that repayment.
The State Comptroller’s Annual MTA Financial Report said the agency faces the greatest financial crisis in its history. The table below from that report shows that in 2020 the MTA has lost nearly $5 billion in fare and toll revenue, and nearly $2 billion in revenue from dedicated taxes and subsidies. Those $7 billion in losses were partially offset by the major federal stimulus package enacted in March, the CARES Act, which gave the MTA $4 billion. The MTA had a modest (a mere $412 million) deficit for 2020 before covid, but its final deficit for 2020 was projected in July to be $3.4 billion.
New York State appropriating $3.5 billion to the MTA now will stem this hemorrhaging for the moment and push the MTA’s crisis into later in 2021, though the MTA will need federal help sooner or later. State action now could help get the MTA to the Biden administration without catastrophe.
Even if the MTA gets the financial relief it needs for 2020, from New York State or the federal government, the table shows it faces a $6.2 billion deficit in 2021. If the economy fails to improve as much as anticipated, or if the huge part of New York City’s employment base now working home continues to do so, the MTA’s revenue losses would be higher and its deficits larger as a result. The MTA may be facing a major long-term restructuring.
The state budget allowed the MTA itself to borrow money, but it has said it simply cannot afford to do so. In fact, to survive into 2021 it must hoard cash. Among the options are deferring pension contributions, deferring Social Security payroll taxes, and halting cash contributions to the capital program. These options will save $3 billion in 2020-2021. The MTA can continue a hiring freeze and work with the labor unions on possible savings.
The 2020-2024 MTA capital program has been temporarily suspended. The centerpiece of revenue for that program, congestion pricing, was not approved by the Trump administration and awaits action from the Biden administration. It will be at least several years before most of this capital program can be started. The MTA will need to focus on finishing the 2015-19 capital plan with the remaining available sources of funds.
Severe health and economic problems other than the MTA confront New Yorkers. If the state is going to rescue the MTA, it could also borrow either short-term or long-term to avoid implementing its planned cutbacks to public services and aid to localities.
The State Division of the Budget’s plan to implement the adopted 2020-2021 budget provided for $8 billion in spending reductions in local assistance, in schools, health care, transportation, and emergency services. In its recently-released mid-year budget update, the Division of Budget reported that by the end of September it had withheld $2.4 billion in local aid, as it awaited the elusive new stimulus package that Congress and the President have failed to enact.
The Department of Budget’s April 25 Financial Plan indicated it would backload 40% of the state’s local assistance cutbacks to the final quarter of the state fiscal year, meaning from January through March 2021. That would represent a $3.2 billion cut to schools, hospitals, and other vital public services. If the state used $3.5 billion in borrowing authority to help the MTA, it could use part of the remaining borrowing authority to halt the cutbacks planned for the final quarter of the 2020-2021 fiscal year. This would mean the state would not be compounding the financial problems of local governments, including New York City, for now.
Sooner or later, Congress will pass another stimulus package that will include more aid for the unemployed, for state and local governments, and for transit agencies. It may be the President Biden stimulus package. But the MTA and New York’s local governments will be reeling by then if New York State does not act now. The state can use some of the funds from Congress to repay loans and cover deficits.
While such action is necessary, it will also remain true that the state, the city, the MTA, and the rest of New York’s local governments will likely confront the reality of continued budget deficits in 2021-2022, and beyond, and the necessity of a full-on restructuring of spending, borrowing, and taxing for years to come. But that likelihood does not negate the importance of state action now.
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Jim Brennan was a member of the New York State Assembly for 32 years, where he chaired four committees. On Twitter @JimBrennanNY.
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Gov. Cuomo talks contact tracing (photo: Darren McGee/Governor's Office)
With the presidential election behind us, I had started to gain hope that the robotexts of recent weeks would soon end. But on Friday night came a curious new entry to this genre of smartphone spam. It began, “Hi! This is the NYS Department of Health. Download the COVID Alert NY App!” With that message, I knew we had entered a new phase in the fight over contact tracing apps.
Contact tracing is nothing new. For decades, public health officials have tried to stymie the spread of contagious diseases by methodically mapping out anyone that patients might have infected. For human disease detectives, this means detailed and empathetic conversations with those who just were diagnosed with the potentially fatal COVID-19 virus, reconstructing any person they might have inadvertently infected, but also providing information on support services that range from food deliveries to city-funded dog walking.
Contact tracing is one of the most powerful tools we have, but contact tracing apps, the smartphone-enabled, Silicon Valley substitute, is a dangerous imitation. This is why it’s so upsetting to see New York spending so much time and money promoting a lackluster smartphone app rather than reinforcing the tools we know will work: social distancing, handwashing, masks, manual contact tracing, and (of course) high-speed, high-quality testing.
In recent days, COVID Alert NY has become inescapable on the web and social media, as a barrage of new ads try to get New Yorkers to download the app. And the result of this statewide push has been an abysmal failure.
New York officials are quick to brag that hundreds of thousands of users have downloaded the invasive new app. That’s just a tiny fraction of what is needed to make this app effective.
Researchers from Oxford University found we need 60%-80% of all New Yorkers to install this software for it to stop the pandemic. That’s 10-20 times the number of New Yorkers who have installed the application already. And the numbers may be worse. While New York reports the number of users who have tried out the app, they have been tighter-lipped about how many users actually use the software. A contact tracing app you don’t turn on does about as much good as wearing a mask but putting it on your forehead. A Google-funded study later found that 15% usage might reduce the spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, the study has not yet been peer reviewed, and no state has enough public buy-in to test if these projections are accurate.
And it’s unclear if we could reach that magic 60%-80% cutoff even if we wanted. The majority of the world’s smartphones aren’t new or fast enough to run the contact tracing app. But, of course, Americans don’t trust the tech giants to take over public health tracking. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans don’t want to install this kind of app.
We’re at a crucial moment, when the second wave is spiking and we see our state on the verge of shutting down once again. This isn’t a time for magical thinking. This is the moment when we have to face the hard facts and make even harder decisions.
That means scrapping the dream that these apps will do the impossible, focusing instead on support for the basics, including manual contact tracing. It also means building trust with all New Yorkers, making sure that each and every COVID-19 patient feels safe providing their most intimate details to contact tracers.
These details aren’t just potentially embarrassing, for some New Yorkers this means putting their friends and family at risk of arrest or deportation. That’s in part because, months after it was passed by the state Legislature, Governor Cuomo has still yet to sign a bill (S. 8450-C/A. 10500-B) that would ban police and federal immigration enforcement (ICE) from accessing contact tracing data.
We don’t need a high-tech app to protect our city or state. We need to invest in evidence-based tools and fight for every single New Yorker to know that their contact tracing data is safe. This approach may not be as slick as a new app, but it has one thing going for it: it actually works.
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Albert Fox Cahn (@FoxCahn) is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) at the Urban Justice Center and a fellow at the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at N.Y.U. School of Law. He writes the monthly “Surveillance and the City” column at Gotham Gazette. Caroline Magee is a rising third-year student at Emory University School of Law and a civil rights intern at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
Note: this column has been updated to alter the presentation of the Oxford University study and add mention of the Google-funded study.
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Rendering of the Special Flushing Waterfront District
There are several myths and mischaracterizations about the Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD) that we as owners want to set the record straight about. Here are several key facts about the project.
SFWD does not provide an advantage to obtain building height.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have already provided Letters of No Objection to allow height increases for the Special Flushing Waterfront District. SFWD only provides a consolidation of approval processes. Rather than submitting to the Board of Standards and Appeals for this, special permit approval would be provided by the City Planning Commission as part of the SFWD Waterfront Certification process. FAA and Port Authority Letters of No Objection have to be provided for this administrative approval.
In the past 20 years, the dozen special permits for height granted in Downtown Flushing were all routinely provided upon submission of FAA and Port Authority Letters of No Objection.
There will be zero sanitary sewer discharge into Flushing Creek.
All sanitary sewer effluent will be piped directly to Tallman Island Treatment Plant in College Point. Some say other developments pollute Flushing, making it seem like SFWD will do the same, but that is provably false.
SFWD provides comprehensive stormwater runoff mitigations to prevent shoreline erosion and provide prudent shoreline restoration techniques, such as: permeable pavers, green roofs, soft shoreline edges, and onsite stormwater retention before discharge into Flushing Creek.
As-of-Right vs SFWD: The exact same buildable bulk.
The as-of-right development scenario can currently be built. SFWD is not needed to achieve maximum bulk. At least two of the sites have plans that demonstrate this, one already with New York City Department of Buildings-approved building plans, ready to proceed. Opposition makes it appear this is not the case and that residential units, commercial and retail space are all being incrementally added.
Macedonia AME Church is not a victim.
The Macedonia AME Church was beneficially rezoned as part of the Municipal Lot #1 ULURP in 2010. That was an economic boost for them and they are an important stalwart in our community. Macedonia built 142 affordable housing units at their Macedonia Plaza site. We know Reverend Richard McEacheron and he voted for the Special Flushing Waterfront District as a member of Queens Community Board 7 and he testified in support of SFWD at the City Planning Commission and City Council hearings. There are no complaints from him or his congregation.
Community Support
At the recent City Council hearing, over 75% of the 100+ speakers were in favor of our project and its many merits. The Council also received more than 330 letters of support for the Special District from Flushing residents and business owners. The community clearly supports this project.
Queens Community Board 7 represents Flushing, among other neighborhoods. Minkwon Center may be vocal, but that does not make it the town crier for Flushing. Minkwon representatives have never appeared at any Queens CB7 hearings prior to the Special Flushing Waterfront District or since. It has its own agenda and refuses to meet with representatives of SFWD.
SFWD is not designed to provide a solution for homelessness nor ensure union jobs. It is designed to provide a better urban experience and numerous community benefits, including:
-A new road network, vital to our community, to alleviate College Point Boulevard traffic and connect the Special Flushing Waterfront District to Downtown Flushing.
-A fully public waterfront promenade doubled in width to 40 feet and extended by more than 400 feet in length.
-Space for seniors, youth groups and community organizations.
-6.6 acres of public open space, whereas as-of-right development would bring only 3 acres.
-Design that will allow for small local storefronts and better pedestrian experiences on the street and waterfront.
-An ideal public-private partnership between the Department of City Planning and three developers, designed to prevent the construction of three "Skyview" developments.
The current proposal seeks enhanced zoning for only 10% of the overall project on a small lot to the north, also entirely on private land. The vast majority of the project has no change in zoning at all, including the area encompassing the new public road network that will alleviate traffic and grant direct access to the waterfront. There is no increase in bulk, except a small portion in the north to allow a 400-foot extension of the waterfront promenade and to provide some affordable housing units.
If you want to advance more affordable housing, then you should contact the Mayor, the President of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), and City Council Member Francisco Moya. Insist on more affordable housing at Willets Point, which is public land.
A defeat of the SFWD does not advance the affordable housing issue. Defeat will remove affordable housing from the sites completely, and all the benefits described above.
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by Richard Siu of F&T Group; William Xu of United Construction & Development Group; and John Liang, Young Nian Group.
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(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
As the city’s seven-day rolling average positive test rate for COVID-19 approaches 3% and with the Mayor and Department of Education seemingly on the brink of closing schools again, public school parents, like me, are anxious and angry. Students, teachers, administrators, and parents have done everything we promised to keep our schools open, safe, and healthy. Shutting down schools that have experienced few or no covid cases makes no sense. Shutting down all in-person schooling is an assault on parents and students.
When the 3% threshold was agreed to by Mayor de Blasio and the teachers union there was great uncertainty about the safety of opening schools. Setting a conservative threshold to respond to reasonable concerns of teachers made sense. However, through small classes, social distancing, mask compliance, and a robust testing and tracing protocol, we proved that schools can open safely under the right circumstances. Even as the citywide positivity rate has increased, the positive test rate in schools has remained far less than 1%.
In my family, I was, and still am, the parent responsible for remote learning. I am the one who essentially left the workforce to give our kids stability at home. I know first-hand that, despite Herculean efforts by our teachers and administrators, remote learning is hurting our children’s academic progress and harming their mental health. It is widening the achievement gap between wealthier, predominantly white, students and poorer students, who are predominantly students of color.
Yet, despite all the challenges of remote learning, many parents decided to start the year fully remote. After so many months of chaos, parents just want to provide continuity for our children. Many parents felt that the best way to do this was to start the year all-remote because the possibility that kids could return to school, only to have them shut down as in the spring, would be devastating and harmful for their children. For many, the plan was to opt back in to some in-person learning after winter break if the opening went smoothly, which it did.
Despite this success, the city is going to throw it all away by adhering to an artificial threshold that flies in the face of science and data. Parents are now again stuck with the fear that they could opt their children into blended learning with some in-person school days, only to have school buildings close shortly thereafter, creating even more disruption and chaos in their lives.
Likewise, students already in the hybrid model are doing well. They are happy to be back in school, with their friends and teachers, returning to some semblance of normalcy. Taking that away from them is unconscionable.
It is time for the city to make decisions by weighing the very substantial harm that remote learning is doing to our children with the risk of keeping schools open. The harm has proven high and the risk has proven low. Schools can and should remain open unless and until there is significant linked transmission within schools. The entire school system should not shudder all buildings to in-person learning unless community spread of covid is so significant that it has overwhelmed the ability to provide the robust testing and tracing required to keep our schools safe.
Our children are suffering and hurting from the lack of in-person instruction and parents are hurting from the mayor and Department of Education’s ad hoc decision making. If we are going to meet our obligation to provide a quality public education for every New York City child, it is far past time to prioritize the health, well-being, and education of our children over all other considerations.
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Doug Schneider is a parent who lives in Brooklyn and a candidate for New York City Council in District 39. On Twitter @DougSchneiderBK.
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The mayor and chancellor at a school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
Over 300,000 New York City students with disabilities still do not have the means to learn and receive services effectively online. And families can no longer emotionally endure being full-time caregivers, teachers, and therapists. The city needs a plan right now.
The pandemic has further widened the achievement gap between students with disabilities and their peers. Remote learning and teletherapy -- speech, occupational, and physical therapy, as well as counseling over a screen -- does not work for most students. Students need to be able to engage independently or need to have an adult available to support them.
Students with disabilities need consistent access to devices, broadband, and space for their learning environment. They need live and in-person instruction with licensed special education teachers. For effective teletherapy services, providers need more training on how to deliver quality services online. In their annual special education report (via Local Law 27) issued earlier this month, the New York City Department of Education conceded that it does not know how many students received any or all of their mandated services from March through June of this year when all school buildings were closed.
The city also needs to communicate clearly and directly with families on covid exposures, as well as school-based and system closures. Communications must be expedient, accessible, and multilingual. School closure has already been especially traumatic for students with disabilities and that continues to be further compounded by lack of timely information from the city and individual schools.
The constant disruption to students’ routines, schedules, and access to their school communities often triggers behaviors that prevent learning from occurring. The city must provide immediate guidance to schools and educators on how they can address the social-emotional needs of students with disabilities, including students with significant developmental and intellectual disabilities.
All students need high-quality learning and social opportunities, but in the current environment, students with disabilities are especially isolated. A persistent lack of in-person interactions and community will have an irreversible, long-term impact on their academic progress, behavior, and future independence, education, and employment.
This year, remote and blended learning have created many educational gaps and provoked much analysis. The city needs to have a plan to provide in-person instruction and services for students with disabilities right now before it closes all school doors again.
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Barbara A. Glassman is the Executive Director of INCLUDEnyc, a non-profit helping young people with disabilities, their families, and the professionals who support them; including a Help Line for assistance in English, Spanish, and over 200 languages. On Twitter @GlassmanBA and @IncludeNYC.
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DNJ Mechanical Corp. moving into Maspeth (photo: BOC Network/Maspeth Industrial Business Association)
As we get deeper into the current crisis, it’s becoming clearer that New York won’t simply bounce back to “normal.” We need effective strategies to transform our city’s infrastructure and economy. Policies aimed at protecting and growing industrial jobs can improve not only our citywide economy, but the nearby low-income residential communities and the lives of the predominantly of-color manufacturing workforce.
As industrial business service providers, we ask our current and future decision-makers to look more closely at the role industrial land, businesses, and jobs can play in ensuring an equitable recovery in New York City.
New York City has 21 officially designated Industrial Business Zones (IBZs) whose land is zoned for industrial uses, including traditional manufacturing of goods like furniture, clothing, and machines, as well as food production, wholesale, and sanitation facilities, warehousing, and research labs. Not all of the city’s manufacturing land exists within these areas, but the protection offered by the IBZ designation helps to mitigate the impact of speculation and prevent industrial businesses from being pushed out of the city in favor of other, more lucrative uses.
So why does it matter if we keep industrial businesses in New York City?
We are at the intersection of three crises: the COVID-19 pandemic; an economic collapse triggered by the pandemic and worsened by decades of disinvestment and inequality; and systematic racial injustice highlighted by this year’s massive protests and the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communities of color. The manufacturing and industrial sector provides a key to addressing all three crises. New York’s industrial businesses make and distribute PPE and other medical equipment, boost our local economy, and provide good jobs for workers of color and minority-owned businesses.
In 2019 in New York City, manufacturing jobs paid an average annual wage of $69,161. Meanwhile, food service jobs paid $30,685 per year, and retail jobs paid $38,450. Mayor de Blasio and the City Council has devoted lots of creative energy to ensuring that restaurants can continue operating; we want to see that same energy aimed at ensuring the success of industrial businesses that pay twice as much to a workforce that is 80% people of color and 50% foreign-born. These are the jobs for the people who have been most impacted by COVID-19, situated in the neighborhoods most impacted by COVID-19.
Many aspects of city policy affect the industrial sector’s ability to thrive: land use and planning, transportation, economic development, workforce development, small business services, environment and sustainability, and others. We need to see our city’s leaders taking a smart and integrated approach to these areas that recognizes the critical role of manufacturing.
The Department of City Planning’s recently released draft framework for a Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, which puts forward the goals of resiliency, equity, and health, is one example of a process where this approach is important. We want to see a strong emphasis on the waterfront’s role in providing equitable economic activity, not only for port use but also as a home and supportive ecosystem for the industrial employers and workers that sustain the health of our communities.
Here are three ways the city can support manufacturing jobs:
Adopt a new approach to land use that preserves the industrial business zones and additional manufacturing land. This approach, which the Department of City Planning explored in the North Brooklyn Industry & Innovation Plan, would prioritize more intensive, job-generating industrial uses that support the city’s resiliency, and restrict non-compatible uses like stand-alone office space and recreational facilities.
Increase alignment and collaboration between and among city agencies whose work impacts the manufacturing sector. This includes agencies that may not be assumed to focus on economic development, but whose purview affects business growth, such as the Department of Transportation, Department of Sanitation, and Department of Buildings.
Make better use of the resources that the IBZs already have, including the support networks built and sustained by the Industrial Business Service Providers. Many of these organizations have historical roots in New York City’s industrial neighborhoods, and they have the ability to leverage their deep knowledge of the communities’ needs to inform city policy and to disseminate information about programming to businesses in their respective communities.
As New York City continues to confront these deep-seated crises, we hope that decision-makers will recognize and embrace the manufacturing sector’s role as part of the way forward to a more equitable future.
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By Leah Archibald, Executive Director, Evergreen Exchange; Nancy Carin, Executive Director, Business Outreach Center Network; Quincy Ely-Cate, Director of Industrial Business Development, Maspeth Industrial Business Association; Niles French, Vice President of Projects, Staten Island Economic Development Corporation; Ben Margolis, Executive Director, Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation. The authors are all members of the Industrial Jobs Coalition, a citywide alliance of community groups, policy advocates, and service providers fighting to protect and preserve manufacturing as a sector in New York.
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