Blaz slams the rich and landlords, touts
prison reform, ‘3-K’ in his State of City
BY SYDNEY PEREIRA
Mayor Bill de Blasio laid out a
cornucopia of new plans for
the Big Apple in his annual
State of the City address on Thursday
— including for a mayoral offi ce of tenant
protection and free eye exams and
glasses for kindergartners and fi rstgraders.
Some of his talking points seemed to
speak to the national mood among progressives
— like pushing Washington,
D.C., to fi ght for Medicare for All and
redistributing wealth — which seemed
to refl ect what some see as de Blasio’s
recently edging toward a 2020 presidential
campaign.
The speech came days after he
pledged he would pass a law to provide
10 days of paid time off for all workers
— expected to impact a half-a-million
people — and an expanded healthcare
program for uninsured people, as reported
in the national media by MSNBC
and the Washington Post.
“Brothers and sisters, there’s plenty
of money in the world,” de Blasio said.
“There’s plenty of money in this city.
It’s just in the wrong hands.
“It’s no accident,” he said. “It’s an
agenda — an agenda that’s dominated
our politics from Reaganomics to the
Trump tax giveaway to the wealthy corporations.”
However, speaking of Long Island
City’s new Amazon headquarters offices
— for which the company got
$3 billion in tax breaks from the city
and state — and Google’s expansion
on Manhattan’s Lower West Side,
Mayor Bill de Blasio delivers his sixth State of the City address at the
Symphony Space in Manhattan on Thursday, January 10, 2017.
de Blasio said it shows “the world’s
most innovative companies want to
be here, and they want to hire New
Yorkers.”
De Blasio had new promises, too.
On the stage at Symphony Space on
the Upper West Side, he signed an executive
order to establish the Mayor’s
Offi ce of Tenants’ Protection.
“We’ll use every tool we have to fi ne
the landlords,” he said. “But when the
fi nes and penalties don’t cut it, we will
seize their buildings and we will put
them in the hands of a community nonprofi
t that will treat tenants with the
MICHAEL APPLETON/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE
respect they deserve.”
In his State of the City address, Mayor
de Blasio laid out his plans on everything
from healthcare to bus speed
Another city department, the Department
of Consumer Affairs, will
be expanded and renamed the Department
of Consumer and Worker Protection,
the mayor announced.
De Blasio said the city’s jail population
has dipped below 8,000 for the
fi rst time in 40 years — a part of the
broader effort to close Rikers Island’s
jails and instead have four smaller,
neighborhood-based jails.
“Mass incarceration did not begin in
New York City, but it will end in New
York City,” he vowed, echoing his December
comments in Chinatown on the
matter. He called on Albany to pass
bail reform and improved speedy-trial
laws, which some experts say is critical
to City Hall’s hope to reduce the jail
population to 5,000.
For the coming school year, de Blasio
said roughly 20,000 children over age
3 will be in free, full-day “3-K,” with
expansions this year in Northern Manhattan,
the Bronx and East New York,
to name a few.
Also for children, a partnership with
Warby Parker will be expanded to provide
free eye exams and glasses to all
kindergartners and fi rst-graders, he
said.
The mayor announced new plans to
expand ferry service from Staten Island
to Manhattan’s West Side, from Coney
Island to Lower Manhattan, and in the
Bronx from Soundview to Ferry Point.
He also said the city would increase
bus speeds by 25 percent by the end
of 2020, by means such as nearly doubling
the pace of bus-lane installation
and creating seven tow-truck teams for
bus-lane enforcement.
He tasked Albany with saving the
subway system.
“Whatever the package of solutions,
working people cannot wait,” de Blasio
said of funding the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority. “We cannot
let 2019 go by without a solution.”
Advocacy group pedals ‘bike mayor’ for New York
BY GABE HERMAN
Now that the city has a ‘nightlife
mayor,’ could a ‘bike mayor’ be
next?
The nonprofi t group Transportation
Alternatives, which advocates for
street safety in the city and nonvehicular
forms of travel, is calling on Mayor
de Blasio to appoint the city’s fi rst socalled
bike mayor.
The group says this person would be
an “an interagency representative who
would serve as a liaison between city
government and people who ride bikes
in the fi ve boroughs.” The group also
started an online petition for the cause
(campaigns.transalt.org/petition/nyccyclists
demand-bike-mayor).
Transportation Alternatives stressed
several reasons why a bike mayor is
needed: Protected bike lanes are not
growing fast enough; two-wheeled
transportation will be expanding with
expansions to the CitiBike program
and pending City Council legislation
to legalize electric scooters and all ebikes;
and there were four recent cycling
deaths in the city, including two
in just the fi rst week of 2019.
“It’s no secret that streets where
people have physical protection from
moving vehicles are safer and more
attractive for biking,” said Ellen Mc-
Dermott, Transportation Alternatives
interim director. She credited the
city’s Department of Transportation
for expanding bike lanes. However,
she added, “There are still too many
streets that repel would-be riders because
they lack safe space for people
on bikes.”
Several international cities already
have a bike mayor, including Amsterdam,
Mexico City, Sydney and Sao
Paolo. An Amsterdam-based organization
called BYCS has led the international
Bicycle Mayor Program, “to
bring together the public and private
realms to uncover the massive economic,
health and environmental benefi
ts of increased cycling.”
In fact, New York wouldn’t even be
the fi rst American city to have a bike
mayor. That distinction belongs to the
bustling metropolis of…Keene, New
Hampshire, population 23,000. Its
fi rst bike mayor, Tiffany Mannion, was
inaugurated in 2017 and has launched
programs such as bike share, community
rides, business partnerships that
give discounts to cyclists, and a “bike
kitchen” that provides tools and training
for people to fi x their own bikes.
Anna Luten, who was Amsterdam’s
bike mayor from June 2016 to November
2017, said in a statement, “Since
I moved to New York, it’s clear that
people who ride bikes in the fi ve boroughs
are not well-represented in city
government.
“The bike mayor can take the lead
in building meaningful campaigns to
spread the right message toward all
road users,” she added. “In Amsterdam,
we were able to build safe infrastructure
for all citizens. This would
not have been possible if not for the
city making a commitment to people
on bikes and making sure their interests
had a voice in the administration.”
McDermott of Transportation Alternatives
said, “A bike mayor would
be instrumental in bringing safe bike
accommodations to more neighborhoods,
and could help advance the
Vision Zero Street Design Standard,
which would speed up the growth of
the protected bike-lane network by
syncing street redesigns with repaving
projects.”
8 January 17, 2019 TVG Schneps Media