May 10, 2001
Dr. John Walker
Interviewed by Jeffrey Kroessler
KROESSLER Welcome to the first of our "Conversations
on Politics" here at the Archives and Special Collections
of the Library at the College of Staten Island. I'm Jeffrey
Kroessler, historian here at the Archives, and I'm with
Dr. John Walker, the Liberal Party candidate for Borough
President of Staten Island. Welcome.
WALKER Thank you. It's an honor to be here. I'm grateful
for the opportunity to be the first candidate to be interviewed,
and hopefully I can enlighten you a little bit about myself
and what the race is all about.
KROESSLER Well the first question is, why are you a liberal?
And is that a capital L liberal, as in the Liberal Party,
or a small L liberal?
WALKER If you look at my resume, I'm a CPA and an accountant,
and I've had a lot of business experience. And most people
would say, why aren't you conservative? I think it's a
big liberal as in the Liberal Party and a little liberal
because in my heart of hearts I'm a liberal. The Liberal
Party stands for progressive issues. Loosely translated
I look at the development of our society and our economy
and I believe the reason that we have a vibrant middle
class in the United States is because of the unions. If
it was not for the unions we would have a small number
of very, very wealthy people and a whole lot of very,
very poor people. This last summer I had the privilege
of going to India, and the stark contrast between the
wealthy in india and those people in poverty was unbelievable.
And I come back to this country with a renewed appreciation
for organized labor and the impact that unions have had
on our society. I think that in and of itself was the
first reason I became a liberal. The second reason I became
a liberal is because with my background, I always believed
that your neighbors were extremely important to you, and
that you have not only a responsibility but you should
have a deep commitment to making sure you take care of
your neighbors, because to the extent your neighbors thrive,
you thrive. And it builds on your commuity, and makes
it a wonderful community to be in. And for me, that's
what the Liberal Party stands for, and that kind of captures
the party rhetoric in many ways. But deep down inside
these are my personal feelings. So here I am as a Liberal
Party candidate, and not only do I speak the rhetoric,
but I believe it in my heart, and this is my chance to
express those feelings and express what I've observed
over my life, and things that have worked, made life interesting,
rewarding, and makes me happy to get up in the morning,
and makes me happy to go down to the ferry terminal and
get on the boat, and I watch my neighbors and I love them;
it's an interesting thing because most of those people,
they might be a little gruff, and they might be in a hurry,
but most of those people love each other and I see that
every day that I go down there, and I think it's wonderful.
So for me it's making those ideas come alive.
KROESSLER As a New Yorker, we grow up believing New York
has a reputation as a liberal city, as the center of liberalism
in America, but it seems to have shifted somehow. Even
in New York City not so many people want to admit to having
liberal tendencies.
WALKER Well I think that perhaps the other parties, including
the Conservative Party, wanted to make liberal a dirty
word, because by making it a dirty word they can use it
as a slogan, to get people to try to embrace the selfishness
of conservatives. And certainly if you want to be selfish
and you want to have a bunch of people who are cutthroat,
going after each other, trying to take things away from
each other, then you don't want to have people that go
around saying we should love each other, we should take
care of our neighbors, we should have good jobs, we should
have a middle class. Instead they would say, oh, that's
a dirty thing to do, you don't want to be a liberal, you
don't want to be identified with the liberals because
of that. So I think in many ways they popularize that
notion, sort of like a high school clique society, if
you want to be part of the clique than liberal is a dirty
word and you don't want to be a liberal. That's the way
I see it. And I would have to say that a lot of the liberals
in New York have become closet liberals, they're reluctant
to come out and say I'm a liberal, but in their heart
of hearts they are liberals because they do care about
their neighbors. It's one of the beautiful things about
New York City, and it's one of the things I love about
New York City.
KROESSLER It's interesting to talk to students because
if you ask them, are you a liberal, they'll say no. But
if you ask them what they believe, what opinions they
hold, they're certainly more small-L liberal than conservative.
But it's a conservative age. Now if we look at city government,
what difference does it make liberal political philosophy
at the helm rather than a conservative hand?
WALKER A lot of the success of daily life, for most of
us, is a function of how well the economy's doing. If
the economy's doing really well, it probably doesn't matter
who's in charge. If the economy's doing very, very poorly,
then what happens? No one's happy, and it doesn't matter
much who's in charge except for this fact. The more liberal
legislators and the more liberal administrators have a
tendency to care about what happens to everyone, not just
what happens to the major contractors, to the major businesses,
and to the major investors, and I think that's a big,
big difference, because to some extent if you look at
something like unemployment insurance, that's a product
of the New Deal, which was a liberal perspective, and
without that liberal perspective when you became unemployed
you basically starved to death or you were at the mercy
of the "compassionate conservatives" who, as long as business
was fine would share the crumbs from their table, but
when business turned down, then where were those crumbs
off the table? They weren't there. So having learned those
lessons, I think it's critical to preserve that liberal
set of government, no matter how small it is, because
if it is eliminated, which is what the conservatives would
like to do, then where's the safety net? Do we want to
submerge our country to the possibility of becoming like
India, where there are millions of people that literally
live on the street. That is their home, a little patch
of the gutter. On the other hand, when I talk to liberals
I never see that desire to eliminate conservatives, because
we recognize that those conservatives are our neighbors,
and we care about them they might not care about us but
we care about them. From a societal perspective, if you
get beyond just the rhetoric, the liberalism in New York
City is what makes New York City special, because for
us everyone is important. That new immigrant who just
gets off the plane or the boat, is just as important to
us as that 5th or 6th generation rich person who lives
out on Todt Hill someplace. Because that immigrant is
going to invent something, that immigrant is going to
take a risk on a business that is going to make this country
great, and it's that synergism and energy that keeps this
city number one in the world.
KROESSLER If the Liberal Party looked at history, you
could be waiting at the gate at Kennedy Airport when that
immigrant got off the plane, in signing him right up,
which is what made the Democratic Party so successful.
You mentioned union members, and one of the facts that
startled me is that by the 1970s, when you've had a long
period of unionization and successful unions, and it had
mostly settled down, three-quarters of the members of
the AFL-CIO owned their own homes, which is remarkable.
I can't think of another society where working people
owned property in that proportion.
WALKER Exactly. Two things have happened since the '70s
that are troublesome to me. In part the unions became
became powerful because of the large manufacturing base
we had in this country. And that large manufacturing base
has gone to other shores so that the profiteers could
take advantage of non-union labor in atrocious conditions.
And we can talk about the gym shoe manufacturer that has
basically established slave labor conditions for thie
workers in those countries. The second thing that happened
is that after these union members bought their homes they
started investing in stock with their retirement plans,
and you know it's unheard of to have a retirement plan
in the rest of the world, but the unoions managed to put
their members in a position where they were able do that.
And it's troublesome to me to see them so concerned with
their stocks and their retirement plan and increasing
the value of their homes, that they've forgotten that
the union helped them reach those goals and get a piece
of the American pie, and for that we need to keep our
attention on it. I'm a member of the AFL-CIO.
KROESSLER Which brings me to my next point. Union membership
probably enabled an awful lot of Staten Islanders to buy
their own homes, and I'm sure you still have a very large
number of union members on Staten Island, municipal and
private. And yet Staten Island is percieved, and I think
it would define itself as a very conservative place, that
even the liberal on Staten Island are conservative. Don't
you feel a little bit lonely on Staten Island being a
liberal?
WALKER You know it's interesting, because I hear all
of this rhetoric about Staten Island being the conservative
borough, and in reality I don't know that I agree with
that. I rarely fell lonely long, because those staunch
conservatives, when you really start talking to them,
that's a veneer, they want to belong to the clique, they
don't want to be labeled liberal, that ugly word. My guesstimate
is that a majority of the residents of Staten Island are
in their heart of hearts more liberal than they are conservative.
But if you asked the man on the street, they wouldn't
think of saying I'm liberal because it would be labeled
as one of those terrible people and maybe be excluded
by their neighbors, they will succumb to the peer pressure
of the neighborhood, and say, oh yeah, I'm conservative,
but in reality it's a very small percentage of the island
that is what you would call truly conservative in the
sense that they don't care about their fellow human beings
and neighbors on the island.
KROESSLER When you say that more people embrace liberal
ideas or principles than they would admit publicly, what
ideas or principles of beliefs fall into that category?
WALKER Let's start with caring about your neighbors.
I think that we all recognize that if we had a small town
that we could get together and identify who needs help
with housing or clothing, finding a job, and we could
marshall the resources needed to take care of that neighbor.
But we're looking at Staten Island, which is 440,00-residents,
we have a densely populated area that is the size of many
cities in the United States. As a consequence it is not
possible to know what is happening to the other 439,999
residents. So we have to rely on governemt to some extent
to help bring those resources together and take care of
those people who are truly in need. And I think liberal
is genuinely concerned with providing for those people
truly in need and recognizing that it is almost impossible
to rely on generosity or the whims of neighborhood talk
to make sure we take care of everyone. Most organized
religions recognize that and rally behind the liberals
to provide some social programs that make some sense.
And try to reach out a helping hand to neighbors who are
truly in need. Now, are there abuses, yes. Anytime the
system becomes large you get abuses, and that's usually
the first thing that most conservatives point to is the
handful of abuses that take place when they criticize
the liberals. Well, the liberals brought this on us. No,
we didn't bring the abuses on it, we brought the system
and put it into place and said let's think about our neighbors.
Prior to that it was whatever handouts you can get from
the Red Cross or whatever other agency might spring up
out of the generosity of the few people who would give.
KROESSLER If you rely on private sector charity, you
also have the possibliity of a situation like Hale House,
where you have a misuse of that trust.
WALKER You know I don't really know enough of the facts
of Hale House in particular to judge one way or another,
but when you look at all of the number of similar programs
across the city, and we have a huge city that we're part
of, when you extend that 440,000 to 8 million, are you
going to have an occasion where something might be mismanaged?
Yes. The woman who ran Hale House made tremendous personal
sacrifices to even begin to try to do something with Hale
House, and so what happened, I'm not familiar enough wth
the details to judge one way or another. Do I think she
purposely went out when she started Hale House so she
could profit by it? There's not enough money in most of
these agencies, there's barely enough money to pay rent
and buy some food and put clothes on your back. I don't
see it as a profiteering kind of thing. Was it a problem,
was it mismanaged? That may be the case. It may have been
that the resources just weren't available for what needed
to be done in that situation. We need to step back and
instead of saying that was a terrible libeal cause, we
need to step back and say what are the real issues here.
What are the needs. If we are not accomplishing or satisfying
those needs with this particular program, what other things
can we do. Most of us would admit there are some in our
society who just simply can't do for themselves to the
same extent that we are. They were blessed with different
talents, and maybe they weren't as lucky or fortunate
as we were to realize the talents that they do have. So
why can't we lend a helping hand?
KROESSLER One of the ways I would define the difference
between a liberal and a conservative approach to government
is that a liberal would be more willing to use government
to address social issues, while a conservative might rely
on individuals or the private sector.
WALKER Absolutely. There are lots of different philosophies
one way or another, about whether it's appropriate to
use government or not for certain functions and services.
But if you look at something like national defense, I
think that's an appropriate role for the government. Because
if you hire soldiers of fortune, what's to prevent the
soldiers of fortune from shooting you? They have no aliegance
to you. So there's a big risk if you privatize the police
force or privatize the military.
KROESSLER As the Romans found out.
WALKER I think that for certain kinds of services it
makes a lot of sense to let the government do it. I think
oftentimes the government gets shortchanged. Certainly
when it comes to social services and trying to help people,
I'm not so sure I trust a profiteer to actually provide
that help to those people in need, because that profiteer
is going to be trying to make money, is going to try to
get the stock price up, and certainly if you can shortchange
the person in need to get your stock price up, it's a
no brainer, because I've been out in the corporate world
as well as being involved in government, and I see how
the executives work, and let me tell you, they are driven
by that stock price and they are driven by making money.
When it comes down to providing for the need or making
money that private organization is going to go for making
the money irrespective of what the need is. Whereas government
often times there is that heavy hand of the polling booth,
and voters put a lot of pressure on officials to actually
make sure that the needs are being met for the people.
That power is extremely important, and I've watched the
politicians and they pay attention to that, they pay attention
not only to the polls and the voting place, but they pay
attention to the polls that are produced by the media
and published on a regular basis, and I believe that the
media is one of the reasons that I am a firm believer
in letting the government provide these services. Because
they keep the politicians honest.
KROESSLER The whole push to privatize government services,
privatize prisons and everything else, seems very much
in vogue, and one of the things I noticed in Rudolph Guiliani's
budget was an attempt to privatize remediation in the
City University. I wonder if you could discuss how, assuming
you are going to win the race for Staten Island Borough
President, is there a way you would address issues of
higher education and education in general that would set
you apart.
WALKER Absolutely. Let me just say at the outset, I was
the chief financial officer of the New York City Economic
Development Corporation for two years, and I had an opportunity
to observe the inner workings of a number of different
city agencies, and they are huge bureaucracies. And it's
easy to come in and say, well, let's privatize this, because
certainly by privatizing it we can be more efficient,
because a private investor that needs to make money will
try to cut excess. And you know, I don't see the excess
that's being claimed in many, many cases, and I think
that the cost savings that you might achieve by privatizing
something like remediation is a savings in being closed
about how you're doing things. And I think the openness
of remediation education in the CUNY system is extremely
important, and by the government providing that service
you have full disclosure. If you privatize it, when the
media comes around and says we want to look at your records,
what does that vendor say to you. You have no right to
look at my records, this is my business. I'll tell you
what I want you to know, but forget loooking at the details.
And there's no knowing about what's going on and where
they are cutting corners, a big chunk of the cost of government,
it seems to me having looked at these agencies, is providing
full disclosure to the taxpayers and the voters for what
they are providing. And I don't see that as being bad.
Because by having full disclosure it keeps the process
open in a direction that makes sense. So if I were Borough
President one of the first things I would do is open up
Borough Hall. Why should you have secret meetings? The
meetings should be out in the open. Why should you close
off Borough Hall, you should open it to all the residents
of the borough, and if you look at the increase in the
population over the last ten years, a significant percentage
of that population involves a diverse, ethnic, cultural,
social background of those new residents of the city.
We can't ignore them, they are our neighbors. And we need
to open up Borough Hall and begin to develop some programs
that will anticipate situations so that we're not reacting
to problems, like estranged set of relations with the
police force. There are not enough police officers, and
it's going to be hard to get new police officers because
we don't pay our police officers what they deserve and
so if you look, the Academy right now is begging for people
that are qualified, and they can't get them. So you have
to ask why is that? Well it's because under the whole
privatization, anti-union, keep the workers down kind
of thing because the workers are raising the cost, we're
boxing ourselves into a position that threatens our public
safety, it threatens our health, it threatens all different
areas of our daily life. I don't want that on Staten Island,
and I'm going to raise these issues.
KROESSLER As Borough President you certainly can't do
anything about the police salaries or the teacher salaries,
but how do you become an advocate for Staten Island within
the limitations of the office?
WALKER Within the limitations of the office there's tremendous
power in the borough president's function. The borough
president is the only elected official that represents
the entire borough, and has access to all of the city,
state and federal agancies and legislatures by virtue
of being the borough president. In addition to that, there's
tremendous power in the borough of Staten Island that
heretofore the borough presidents haven't recognized.
There's 440,000 people in this borough. One of the easiest
ways to increase the teacher salaries in the City of New
York is for the Borough President to access the campaign
contribution records of those state legislators up in
Albany who are opposed to funding New York City schools
and come up with a boycott list of the corporations that
have employed those individuals that have contributed
heavily to the upstate politicians. Let me tell you, if
10% of the people on Staten Island started boycotting
those companies, you would get immediate reaction. So
it's the bully pulpit capacity of the Borough President
that makes that office extremely powerful. The individual
that the residents of the island need to elect is someone
that recognizes that power and and ability and then realizes
it, instead of sitting back, waiting for the West Nile
Virus to come up and then spraying mosquitoes. And spraying
mosquitoes is the least effective, most damaging thing
you can do to the environment and the residents. These
are our homes. Do we like poison being sprayed on us all
the time? There are other ways. You can attack the mosquito
larvae in the ponds and still water virtually harmlessly
to the air and to the people, 15% of those 440,000 people,
that's 60,000 people have severe respiratory problems.
Because New York City ranks 15th in terms of poor air
quailty of all the cities of the United States. So when
you spray all you do is confound their problems. And who
knows what long term effects we might hav when you increase
cancer rates two or three years down the road. . Rather
than wait for them to happen, the Borough President should
be anticipating these kinds of things and establishing
a set of procedures, saying what are the reasonable things
we can do, what is the impact on our citizens if we engage
in these activities, and is there a more effective, better
way that's less damaging for the citizens. That makes
some sense, and that is one of the things a Borough President
can do in their limited action, to look ahead, be proactive
rather than reactive, and develop some intelligent ways
of doing things. The third thing the Borough President's
office can do is develop a performance measurement tracking
system that can track the residents of Staten Island.
KROESSLER Is that accounting speak?
WALKER No. Accounting speak is accountability. As a CPA
and an accountant, one of the things I'm always challenged
with is accounting speak. Let's talk about preformance
measurement, because in all of corporate America, and
most government agencies today, performance measurement
or outcomes assessment as the academic world likes to
refer to it, is becoming commonplace. Let's measure how
effective we have been, if we started looking for services
from an agency downtown. How long did it take that agency
to respond to this resident of Staten Island? So when
you open Borough Hall you open it as a place to take issues
and the problems. You use it as a way of consolidating
the community board input, and then you say how well is
the city doing on providing services. If it's a state
service issue, how well is the state doing on providing
those services. And we keep a record not only of the state,
the city and the agencies, but you also keep a record
of how effective the Borough President has been at being
an advocate of the needs of the residents of Staten Island.
KROESSLER You spoke of the Borough Presidency as a position
that requires someone with the vision to look ahead.
WALKER Absolutely, if you don't have a visionary then
you're going to be stuck where you are, you're going to
float around like a ship without a rudder.
KROESSLER If we can be vague for a moment, if you're
looking ahead 20, 25 years, what do you see as the most
important, most crucial, most difficult problem your children
and grandchildren will face?
WALKER As I look at Staten Island today and as I see
the direction it is heading into the future, with the
closure of Port Ivory the manufacturing base is gone,
our primary economy here on the island is, we're a bedroom
community. We're homes for people who work in Manhattan
and Brooklyn and New Jersey, and the population is large
enough and we have so many commuters that sooner or later
the transportation problems will be addressed in some
kind of a meaningful way. So I'm hopeful about that. My
big concern for my grandchildren 25 years from now is
education. As a bedroom community education is extremely
important for a couple of reasons. One, because education
is the best resource that we can provide to people that
are in need, our neighbors, and to our self, to realize
the opportunities that our society presents. And our society,
the United States of America provides tremendous opportunities,
but if you don't about them, and if you don't know how
to realize them, and if you don't know how to recognize
your talents, or how to employ those talents, you are
basically handicapped. It's like somebody going into a
boxing ring and tying both of their hands behind them
and saying you can't use your head.
KROESSLER What can the Borough President do to address
issues of education on Staten Island?
WALKER The Borough President has to exercise the bully
pulpit to put pressure on the state legislature. The Borough
President has to appoint a person to the Board of Education
who actually gets out and works with the community school
board, 31, and doesn't just sit in Livingston Street and
call up and check in with the Borough President once in
a while. It has to be someone that works with the school
superintendent, that's at the forefront of it, then that
Borough Presidenthas to get out in the community and make
sure the PTAs and the neighborhood societies are providing
input to the Board of Education. And then more importantly
the Borough President has to be standing there and saying
we can't have classes in trailers. Let's get some decent
classrooms. We don't want to set up a school system that
doesn't have a gymnasium. Let's provide our students,
who are our children, and our neighbor's children, with
reasonable experiences that everybody else in the country
is getting. And do we want our children to be handicapped
in that process. Then beyond K-12, you look at the CUNY
system. The CUNY system started out as a wonderful, wonderful
process, and what's happened? If you look at the last
10 or 15 years all of the investment in CUNY has gone
into the Manhattan schools. And certainly we were blessed
on Staten Island to get this facility and the grounds,
but what has the CUNY system done and Board of Regents
for making sure we had a full complement of full time
faculty? Like the rest of the schools in the outer boroughs
in the CUNY system, you're told you can't have full time
faculty, you have part time people to work as adjuncts.
CUNY has refused to negotiate a contract with the union
over the last five years because they don't want to pay
the faculty. They don't want to invest in the educational
process. I think that's a real tragedy because as we look
ahead the next 25 years almost everyone will tell you
that my parents generation had one career. My generation,
I'm looking at three or four careers in my lifetime. My
children I'm told will have nine careers in their lifetime.
Now how are you going to jump from one career to another
without a reasonable education system to provide some
opportunities to help you retread for that next career?
We need to be investing now in the CUNY system on Staten
Island to keep our role as a bedroom community reasonable
and provide opportunities for the people who live here.
KROESSLER I'd like to open the floor to questions.
QUESTION 1 What's the relationship of your campaign to
the broader Liberal Party and your chieftan Ray Harding,
and how would you characterize his support of Rudolph
Giulianiover the last two campaigns?
WALKER Let's take them one at a time. My campaign here
on Staten Island started, and I'm engaged in it because
it's something I believe in. If you haven't picked that
up from the conversation tonight, these are my core values
and I believe in them whole-heartedly, and I push them
all the way. How that dovetails with the broader party,
I can't speak for the broader party, but I can say that
from my viewpoint about what's happening in the broader
party it's probably critical that we come out in real
ways and reidentify ourselves with those liberal values.
Because certainly the conservatives would have you believe
that the Liberal Party has basically given up those core
values to support a Republican mayor. Then I will tell
you my perspective on the party chair's approach to the
Giuliani administration as one in which the state party,
and the executive board interviews a variety of candidates
who seek out our line in the election. And that process
is not a joke, and it is not something that is just okey-doke,
what are you going to do for me or what are you not going
to do for me. It is hard and it is grueling. The Executive
Committee really tests those candidates to see what are
their core values. Because the Liberal Party statewide
views itself as a being party with principles and Rudy
Giuliani sought out our endorsement on the Liberal line,
and when he was in those closed door sessions it was the
decision of the Executive Committee that his core values
came as close to the Liberal Party's core values as any
of the other candidates we were looking at at the time,
and that was for the last two elections. I think that
was probably true. Having had the pleasure of observing
Rudy in a non-public forum, he's an interesting contrast,
because I see those core values of liberalism behind the
Republican verneer come out. And he doesn't do it to seek
publicity or those sorts of things. Did you know, every
night he stops by a hospital to visit a policeman or fireman
who is in the hospital, and he does it, and he has to
lose the press so they don't follow him in because he
doesn't want it to be a media event. He has true compassion
in that sense. And he cares about helping his neighbors.
Do we agree everything he does. I don't personally. I
would be deceiving you to say that. Do I think the mayor
has done some wonderful things? Absolutely. Has he done
some things that have put the city possibly in jeapordy
from my perspective? I'd have to say absolutely. Certainly,
being a Republican he's not going to look at the world
totally the way the Liberal party would and he's not primarily
a liberal, and he had more of those liberal views than
the other candidates that sought our endorsement. Knowing
what I know of our leader, Ray Harding, I'd have to say
he's a liberal, he's a liberal in his heart, and he believes
in the Party and he believes in those principles. And
in the end if a Conservative Party candidate came up and
expressed the core values he would probably try to persuade
us all to go along with that. I don't know haw far he
could get in endorsing a Conservative candidate. Even
a lot of people in the Liberal party have criticized Ray
for endorsing Rudy Giuliani as a candidate.
QUESTION 2 Considering the possibility that you might
not get elected Borough President, what are you wanting
to accomplish in your campaign?
WALKER Let me share this. My son ran for office a few
years ago. He was a younger man, and he wasn't putting
as much effort into it as maybe I would, he said, Dad,
This is Staten Island, I'm on the Liberal Party ticket,
am I going to win? Why am I running? I said what about
your issues? He came up with 10 issues that were important
to him that were in line with the Liberal Party, and interestingly
enough, neither one of the candidates of the main candidates,
the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, were talking
about any of these issues. By the last two or three weeks
of the election, during the race, both of those candidates
were talking about six of the issues my son brought up.
He had a major impact on raising those issues. And subsequently,
two of the issues were introduced in the state legislature,
it was a statewide office he was looking for. If nothing
else, I hope to accomplish by running in this election
getting some issues on the table that none of the other
three parties want to even talk about. Hopefully they
will address some of those issues and we'll see some action
taken one way or another. Get those issues on the table,
next borough president, and I'm hoping it will be me,
not hoping plan that it's me, will take some action and
set up that safety net because it's our neighbors that
are beign injured, and find themselves in situationsthey
can no longer control.
KROESSLER What are the issues that you think the Conservative,
Reupblican and Democratic candidates will not want to
address?
WALKER One of the things not want to address is the question
of the environment. SI is blessed with the greenbelt that
other boroughs simply do not have. One of the things that
happens is the next great growh spurt we have over the
next ten years, those wetlands and that greenspace is
looking very attractive for building homes on and since
homes are our major industry, that's' going to be a real
hard fought battle to try to preserve that greenspace.
If we rank 15th from the bottom of the list in air quailty
I can tell you right now one of the things for us is it's
the most effective offset for industrial pollution. We
haven't invented the pollution control devices that are
as effective as the trees. And if we destroy that or take
it down, or the wetlands, maybe we're going to move New
York closer to the top in terms of poor air quality. We're
not driving up to the Poconos. Where we can escape the
poor air quality we have to do everything we can to make
our homes, as opposed to growth. Now I'm not opposed to
growth, because growth is our industry, our only economy
is building new homes, and that's how the economy is going
to thrive in the future. I think I see some glimmer of
economic developeent around the teleport, and that makes
sense. But you've got to have the infrastructure to support
the teleport, unless you invest in CUNY, to provide some
programs to take advantage of the teleport. And so it
has to be an integrated plan and vision and that's why
more than ever by advocating to get the resources and
then monitors to see where you're failing and and where
you're succeeding.
KROESSLER Here's a tough one. We're all in favor of development,
we're all in favor of housing. But you've got neighborhoods
on Staten Island, and I've seen this happen, but you have
a wonderful single family home on a single family lot,
it's bulldozed and six townhouses go up, and that has
an impact on traffic, and schools, and aesthetics, how
can you deal with such a question?
WALKER Well, the way it's supposed to be dealt with is
through the zoning ordinance, and processing the permit
applications through the community boards. Unfortunately,
my observation of the community boards is that the community
boards are operated I a way that's disjointed, and the
borough president has the capacity and ablitity to coordinate
and bring all that information together the borough president
is forward looking, the borough president could say, they're
applying for these permits, but if they do that we're
going to have all these town houses, and we didn't have
before, that's going to create more traffic, more potholes,
seats in the schools, and the Borough President should
be the first one assembling all that data and saying look,
if we're going to grant these permits then I'm going to
need a commitment from the Board of Eduaction that we're
going to get these schools, a commitment from the DOT
that we're going to get some reinforced of the existing
roads instead of some paving over so they come back, there's
a major renovation hat needs to be done if we're going
to move on to the next period of grownth. And the Borough
President is on the hot seat coordinating it throughout
the island. So what happens permit CB1, CB3, they don't
have their act together, meanwhile you can't get across
the Verrazao Bridge because both commut into Brooklyn
and Manhattan, and I think that's where it falls down.
So you need a Borough President avoid some of the pitfalls
we have now. We don't have a bad borough, I love this
borough, I love Staten Island, but what I'm saying is
we're not full potential, because visionary that looks
ahead, plans for works and does everything that gets those
resources more than we have.
KROESSLER Well, we have time for one more question, since
we are in a library here at the College of Staten Island,
what are you reading?
WALKER For me, curently, I'm director of the masters
of acounting program at Queens College, which is part
of the CUNY system, I read everyday,and I use the library
every other day, so for me libraries are extremely important.
I go to various libraries, public libraries here on the
island, this is my home, and I live in Stapleton and go
to the Stapleton library, and there's no bathroom. And
for an avid reader if I'm at the reference desk I have
to leave to find a bathroom down the street and ask if
I can use their restroom.
KROESSLER There's no bathroom in the Stapleton Public
Library?
WALKER No, in fact several of the neighborhood organizations,
the Mud Lane Society, have begged and pleaded with the
current administration to actually all of my competition
in the Borough President's race to ask, could we please
have a bathroom. Travesty because we should open up the
wonderful world of books, and the technology today to
enhance the library resources, so uncomfortable if you
don't want to spend more than a half hour or hour in the
facility, what's wrong with us. It's a tragedy that we
ignore our children in our schools, it's a travesty that
we call public libraries. So what do I read? I read novels,
from the James Michner epics to the Star Wars and I've
been through , the Hobbit series, JRR Tolkein, I read
mysteries, my wife is an avid mystery reader. I read biographies,
so for me reading, life without reading would be kind
of boiring. What am I reading right now, I'm in the process
of working through Stephen King's Memoirs of a Writer,
is that the title? His most recent, and I've read all
of Stephen King's novels.
KROESSLER Well, thank you for coming.