Democratic candidates operating for Manhattan Borough President had been skeptical Wednesday evening concerning the federal authorities’s plans to renovate Penn Station, stressing the necessity for metropolis and state involvement in all facets of the venture to reconstruct the long-lasting Midtown transportation hub.
Talking at a candidates’ discussion board hosted by PoliticsNY, AARP New York, and the New York Metropolis Bar Affiliation on Could 7, outgoing Metropolis Council Member Keith Powers stated the matter can be a “day one action” for him if he had been elected, seeing the position of Manhattan BP as very important in bringing all needed stakeholders collectively.
President Trump’s Division of Transportation (USDOT) crushed the MTA’s plans for a revitalized Penn Station final month, selecting as an alternative to tackle the venture itself with the federally backed Amtrak rail system. MTA CEO Janno Lieber has beforehand welcomed the takeover, however he expects to take part within the federal company’s efforts to revamp the station sooner or later.
“It’s a really complicated equation,” stated Powers. “I am not looking to co-operate with Donald Trump on really anything. I just want to be clear about that, but I am looking to cooperate with my federal counterparts and my city, state counterparts to make sure that we get a really good plan that delivers everything that we need in terms of housing, to the public realm outside of it, and to deliver a good public transportation. It is a really critical hub to our city.”
“I have scrutiny of the federal administration today to really think through complicated issues in a thoughtful way. So there’s obviously a little bit of distrust about that,” he added.
Candidate Dr. Calvin Solar, an emergency physician, stated he would wish to see the USDOT’s plan earlier than backing any modifications to Penn Station.
“I fear for the standards that are not going to be met, that we transition the upkeep of a station like that to a federal government that seems to want to wage a vendetta against our city, more so depriving us of the resources and funding that we need in order to keep our city going,” stated Dr Solar.
“Right now, the blustering that the Trump administration is claiming they’re doing can only be held out to snuff if they propose something that is up to code and up to par with the standards of what New Yorkers deserve in a hub like Penn Station,” Dr. Solar continued.
The third candidate operating for Manhattan BP, State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, was not in attendance on the NYC Bar Affiliation’s HQ in Midtown. The night, moderated by Josh Schneps, CEO of Schneps Media, additionally featured 5 of the six candidates vying for Powers’ open Metropolis Council seat in District 4.
Older New Yorkers
Beth Finkel, State Director, New York State Workplace, AARP, laid out the highest priorities for voters over the age of fifty. Photograph by Ramy Mahmoud
Earlier than the discussion board obtained underway, AARP’s New York State Workplace Director Beth Finkel outlined the findings of the most recent AARP polling of its members, folks aged 50 and older—a part of the highly effective voting bloc that seems each election cycle.
In a survey of New York members, Finkel stated essentially the most urgent problem was the excessive price of dwelling, with 84% citing it as severe. Inexpensive housing was a significant concern for 88%, whereas 71% need native officers to prioritize packages for ageing in place.
“We have surveyed our members forever, and 80% or more always say they want to age in their own homes or in their own communities, their own neighborhoods, that they helped build up,” stated Finkel. AARP’s ballot additionally revealed that 47% consider unpaid household caregivers must be prioritized, and 25% recognized ageism as an issue, notably within the office.
In the course of the discussion board, Powers and Dr. Solar laid out totally different visions for Manhattan’s older populations.
Powers emphasised the necessity to shut loopholes in discrimination legal guidelines, together with these associated to age, and be sure that age is a class in all such legal guidelines. He touted his expertise passing legal guidelines within the metropolis council and his skill to work by means of the legislative course of.
On the Division of Getting old, he stated he would advocate for guaranteeing the company “gets its fair share of funding.”
“We can use the Borough President’s pulpit to make sure that we’re rounding up all the council members here in Manhattan to fight for and advocate for stronger budgets, to represent our aging population in New York,” he stated. “Everything we do, whether it’s around housing or employment or public safety, it intersects with every single other community, age group, and population. As we tackle the hardest problems in this city, we are tackling them on behalf of everyone.”
Dr. Solar stated the difficulty was private to him, having cared for his grandmother and ageing mom. He stated the town wants to handle the foundation causes of well being points in older adults, which he sees on a day-to-day foundation, resembling despair and lack of goal, “and feeling like society has left them behind.”
He proposed creating neighborhood-based “community health hubs” to ship preventative care on to residents’ houses, particularly seniors.
“By being more preventative and listening to your needs from the comforts of your home, we can save billions of dollars of healthcare waste and expenditures that’s been earmarked to our public health system, that then can be reinvested into programs like Haven Green or Meals on Wheels or adult community centers, so that our seniors have a place to go to be connected, to feel reinvigorated again, to feel a sense of purpose that addresses the root cause of most of their health complaints,” Dr. Solar stated.
Framing his marketing campaign as a response to systemic coverage failures, Solar says he goals to “move New York from surviving to thriving,” utilizing his expertise in emergency drugs to steer in disaster prevention and restoration. To extend housing provide and decrease prices, evaluating it to a mass casualty scenario in hospitals, he backed changing empty business actual property into transitional supportive housing and expediting land use selections.
In the meantime, Powers mentioned the necessity for accountability in land use offers and the significance of guaranteeing that group agreements are met. He advocated for giving the borough president’s workplace larger energy in initiating land use functions — a course of at the moment dominated by personal builders and Metropolis Corridor — and pointed to community-led housing research as fashions for a proactive method.
He stated the instance of the profitable housing deal in Waterside Plaza, the place rents had been frozen and housing items had been locked in for long-term affordability, must be replicated throughout the town.
On transit, he supported congestion pricing, noting residents ought to have had extra enter, calling for extra enforcement to fight fare evasion. “We need to get back to basics and enforce the law,” he stated. “When you swipe your MetroCard and the person behind you doesn’t, it feels unfair.”
Dr Solar stated he helps the idea of dynamic congestion pricing, which is “based on real-time traffic data, just like surge pricing, so drivers have a window to change their driving habits to avoid congestion pricing entirely.”
“But if it goes above a certain trip wire within that window, then people have to pay congestion pricing while also making sure that our lower-income New Yorkers are exempt from congestion pricing altogether,” he stated, including that the general public bus map must be re-developed to make it extra engageable so New Yorkers are incentivized in addition to pedestrianizing extra areas of Manhattan.
On fare evasion, Solar said: “We need consequences, but not violence. I want to create buy-in by improving the quality and accessibility of our subways — so people see the value of their investment.”
The race for District 4
(L to R) Vanessa Aronson, Religion Bondy, Virginia Maloney, Rachel Storch, Benjamin Wetzler.Photograph by Ramy Mahmoud
The second portion of the night noticed 5 of the six candidates operating to succeed Council Member Keith Powers in Manhattan’s District 4 make their pitches to voters, laying out their visions for find out how to deal with the town’s housing affordability disaster, public security issues, and ageing infrastructure – largely in settlement.
Virginia Maloney, Meta product supervisor and daughter of former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, stated the town’s affordability disaster is driving working- and middle-class residents out. “We need to keep people in their homes,” she stated, calling for expanded tenant protections and changing underused Midtown workplace area into residential items.
“City of Yes is a start, but we need to be doing a lot more,” stated Maloney. “Housing alone is not enough. We need accessible housing that allows seniors to age in place, have all the right tools, and invest in naturally occurring retirement communities that we have an abundance of here in New York.”
Rachel Storch, a former Missouri state consultant, cited her 25 years in public service and decried what she known as a “decline in quality of life” pushed by psychological sickness, crime, and housing instability.
“The only way to tackle the housing crisis is to build more affordable housing. Vacancy rates cover around one and a half percent. We need more supply, and we need to ensure that any housing includes affordable units, not just for singles, but two and three-unit homes for families,” she stated. “We’ve got to protect rent stabilization and protect against predatory landlords.”Vanessa Aronson, a former public college trainer and Lexington Democratic Membership president, described housing affordability as her prime precedence. “We’re losing affordable housing at an alarming rate,” she stated, urging enforcement of present housing mandates to make sure “affordable units that are promised by developers are actually followed through.”
Religion Bondy, a longtime PTA chief and legal professional, burdened the necessity to incentivize builders to construct inexpensive housing, whereas emphasizing the necessity to develop wraparound companies for seniors and making the knowledge extra available to them as a result of “so many New Yorkers are eligible don’t know they’re eligible, and don’t take advantages of programs that will freeze their rents, give them tax abatement, and therefore make their lives more affordable.”
On the difficulty of the psychological well being and homelessness disaster, Benjamin Wetzler, a state housing coverage staffer, stated it was essential to differentiate between the New Yorkers who’re “living the worst possible manifestation of the broader housing affordability crisis.” And that any measures taken by policymakers to scale back the price of dwelling will cut back the homelessness disaster within the metropolis for lots of people. For individuals who intersect between homelessness and psychological well being/drug points, he stated the town is “not doing a good job of connecting people with the appropriate kind of service,” calling for extra funding in” everlasting, supportive setting that basically suits their wants.”
Legislative priorities
Candidates had been requested what their first legislative priorities can be ought to they be elected.
Public security is Storch’s prime concern. She says she would advocate for a larger funding within the NYPD to make sure the hiring of a minimum of 5,000 officers, and push for laws to have e-bikes licensed on the level of sale.
“The force is really depleted right now,” she stated. “We’d like to ensure we now have sufficient detectives in place, and we’re recruiting and coaching the detectives. We’d like to ensure we now have sufficient college security officers who’re all conscious of elevated violence in colleges, and the variety of college security officers has been lower by nearly 50%.
Wetlzer pointed to the current legislative bundle to manage the town’s scourge of scaffolding, which he says didn’t go far sufficient by permitting technological inspections of buildings and buildings.
“Allowing safety inspections of buildings to be done using technology that will no longer require anyone to actually go up there and do it, you could use a camera or use a drone, that’s a very basic quality of life thing that would have enormous impact on our neighborhood and on our city that would essentially result in no loss to anyone in the neighborhood except the company’s who put up these structures,” he stated. “And I would want to do that on day one.”
Elevating issues concerning the metropolis’s challenges within the face of federal cuts, Aronson known as for a daring legislative method that will mirror a invoice at the moment being thought of on the state degree. She stated she would again a invoice permitting New York to redirect federal tax withholdings to native companies if nationwide funding is lower.
“I think that that’s one way that we can fight back against what we know is happening to our city services,” she stated. Already, there are cuts in issues like Meals on Wheels, companies for seniors, in public schooling. We all know it’s coming.”
Bondy stated she is just not typically a proponent of “just having to enact more legislation, just to have legislation,” however she would again payments already on the council degree, like banning e-bikes in public parks and requiring their registration and insurance coverage, in addition to bringing again the masks ban.
“Generally, our biggest impact is really through funding, and so, I would make sure that every student has a high-quality school close to home, that our seniors have the services they require, and that our police forces have the resources they need to keep us safe on a daily basis,” stated Bondy.
Maloney stated the legal guidelines are in place, and “that means supporting our police force.” She additionally backed a emptiness tax to deal with the variety of empty storefronts, which “contribute to this feeling of a lack of safety here in our city.”
“Something we could do is a more modern city council,” she stated. “The City Council has a $110 billion budget that we oversee, and it’s not managed as effectively as it could be right now. A simple example is investing $100 million in the MyCity portal. I have a background in tech, and would apply that with a day one goal of making all of our websites accessible.”
