Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.
“I believe that these five changes will make the proceedings and business of the council more transparent, more democratic and more open and accessible to the public.” – City Council Speaker Christine Quinn
“It is history in the making.” — Joel Rivera, on Bronx Terminal Market
The New York City Council passed two packets of legislation. One, which aims to make local government more transparent, changed several of the operating rules of the city council. Another, reached after difficult negotiations between private developers and community groups, gave city council approval for the Bronx Terminal Market development to proceed.
With little fuss and no dissent, the city council members unanimously approved changes to the way they do some of their work. The set of resolutions is supposed to reform the council.
“I believe that these five changes will make the proceedings and business of the council more transparent, more democratic and more open and accessible to the public,” said Speaker Christine Quinn. She added that the council will establish a working group on rules reform to study and propose more rules changes throughout the year.
One major change, for instance, affects the way bills are drafted in the council. In the past, there were times when a member would submit a bill that never actually got drafted. Now, the speaker has to make sure that the “central staff provides legislative drafting services to all members on an equitable and confidential basis.” Instead of languishing, bills introduced by any member, popular or not, will be drafted on a first-come, first-served basis and within 60 days.
During the meeting, several members said they welcomed the changes as a way to make what they do more transparent to the public. Councilmember David Yassky said the new rules were “a meaningful set of changes” that would allow taxpayers ultimately to get a “better product” for their money.
Councilmember Albert Vann called the changes “progressive and member-friendly.” Even Charles Barron, perhaps the council member most likely to disagree with the rest of the legislative body, said the changes were “a step in the right direction.”
Another new rule requires council committees to be quicker about spreading the word when they hold meetings. Now, a committee must give at least 72 hours advanced notice, “where practical,” of a meeting by sending press releases to news media and by posting notices inside public areas of City Hall and on the internet.
Also, amendments to bills will be read off and voted on separately after debate on the floor of the city council chambers. And the entire process for amending legislation was clarified.
One new rule changes how laws are changed. The new regulation requires alterations to drafts of legislation that seeks to amend or repeal an existing law: now, the legislation must be stamped with time and date, any repealed text should be printed between brackets and any insertions of new material should be underlined.
Finally, the number of council members needed to bring a piece of stalled legislation out of committee to the full council was reduced from nine to seven.
For more explanation, go to Gotham Gazette's Voting topic page article, Five First Steps At The City Council, by Doug Israel.
More contentious than reforms to the council’s operating procedures were changes that will allow the Bronx Terminal Market development to keep pushing ahead. It was a big city thumbs up for the Related Companies’ $400 million mall – and a slap in the face for Walmart.
Technically, the council approved six uniform land use review procedure applications for 965,000 square feet of land in the Bronx. But because months of negotiating between developers, the city and community groups resulted in a “community benefits agreement” and the explicit banning of Walmart, the city council also set a precedent.
“It is history in the making,” said Joel Rivera, the council’s majority leader and strong Bronx councilmember, during the meeting.
The negotiations resulted in “a community benefits agreement that’s going to serve as a model, not just for the city but for our nation,” said Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who represents District 17, where the market, which will be renamed Gateway Center when it becomes a mall, will be built. “Developers in the city, I hope you’re paying attention. Because it’s only going to get better.”
The retail project will raze and replace about two-dozen wholesale merchants, who together comprise what is reportedly the largest seller of ethnic and tropical food on the East Coast.
Some officials and community members have raised concerns about how the project originated – and indeed, about how often development projects in the city are spawned not by government or the public but by private developers.
But many praised the community benefits agreement. Some of its stipulations, as Arroyo noted during the stated meeting, are:
-$3 million from Related Companies for a referral system to coordinate job training and placement, with special emphasis
on local residents. The goal, Arroyo said, is to fill 75 percent of the jobs with Bronx residents. It is similar to a hiring plan devised to appease locals in the construction of the Time Warner Center.
-A preference toward local contractors. The
goal here, she said, is to get half of all contractor and development work going to local, Bronx-based firms (though published reports have said Related Companies only agreed to 30 percent).
-A promised “green roof” and affordable child care program
and facility.
-“No Walmart, of any kind,” said Arroyo. Any big box store that moves in must accept food stamps and WIC and must reduce or eliminate membership fees for those who cannot afford them. Related Companies agreed to pay 50 percent of
membership fees for 2,000 families from the community for five years.
While many members praised the community benefits agreement, as well as the Bronx delegation, community groups and Related Companies for persisting through difficult negotiations, some members raised concerns about the path the project has taken. “We can’t forget about process,” said Councilmember Charles Barron. “We can’t forget about displacement.” He was the only member to vote against the Bronx Terminal Market measures. Councilmember Hiram Monserrate abstained from voting for the same reasons.
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Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City speech focused on many of the issues that I seek to address and make a priority during my term in office. Chief among them are housing and health.
The neighborhoods in my district include El Barrio/East Harlem, part of the Upper West Side and part of the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. In East Harlem alone we have 10 housing projects, including the large Wagner Houses complex. One section of the district reportedly contains the lowest-income census tract in the city.
Bloomberg talked about reducing poverty in his State of the City address. “This year, we’ll launch a public-private task force – modeled on our task force to end chronic homelessness – that will attack chronic unemployment and poverty in the homes and neighborhoods where the need is greatest,” he said. “We’ll launch our first pilot programs in three communities where the problems have long been entrenched – Bushwick, Melrose, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.” I welcome creative approaches to tackling our pressing issues. As legislators it is our responsibility to ensure that the public policies that guide this city address the systemic problems that contribute to such inequities. The Mayor has committed himself to seriously tackling these concerns in a non-partisan manner and I welcome that approach. I look forward to the work of this public-private task force as it seeks to determine the underlying causes of chronic unemployment and poverty and will join the dialogue as it progresses.
Despite the income disparity of many of my constituents with other parts of the city, we’re seeing property values rise as the area begins to gentrify. That creates an urgent need to maintain the affordable housing stock that already exists, as well as develop new units. I seek to address our affordable housing crisis by looking at innovative ways that we can safeguard Mitchell Lama housing units as well as looking at public policy and legislation that will facilitate the creation of new affordable units.
The mayor noted in his address that he would build or preserve 165,000 new units in the next seven years as part of his $7.5 billion housing plan. I welcome the challenge, but we must first address how we define affordability if we seek to tackle the issue effectively.
We’ve also got to address problems residents are facing in our public housing. After serving as council member for only several weeks, I am finding that the vast majority of constituent requests are related to public housing concerns. My district is home to ten percent of New York City’s public housing stock -- one of the highest concentrations in the city. The challenges that confront New York City’s public housing system will be a priority during my tenure and I will work alongside tenant leaders and New York City Housing Authority to ensure that we improve existing conditions.
On the health front, a recent New York Times article highlighted East Harlem as an epicenter of the diabetes epidemic in the city. The article pointed out that residents of this part of my district “die of diabetes at twice the rate of people in the city as a whole.” Bloomberg also recognized this crisis in his address, saying the city’s goal is now to “reduce the number of New Yorkers at the highest risk for diabetes complications by 20 percent by the end of 2008.” The first step will be reporting blood sugar test results to the Department of Health. I will seek to work with my district’s health facilities to raise greater awareness among all constituents and will work alongside the Department of Health to ensure that we are aggressive about reducing the number of individuals at high risk.
What’s more, district 8 also has one of the highest rates of asthma in the city, and the second highest HIV infection rate. We have to address these issues by allocating greater funds to prevention and engaging our communities in visible public educational campaigns as a means of raising awareness.
Between health and housing, my district desperately needs big-picture problem solving as well as help with every-day troubles.
Currently, we are still assessing how we will structure the constituent services division of our office. I see myself, and the work that I will engage in, as one that will facilitate change within the district. My office will work in partnership with the local stakeholders to fulfill our greater vision of community empowerment. There are many agencies providing great services to this district. It is my aim to build a strong, cohesive partnership with them that I believe can work in tandem with this office.
I will hold a series of service provider summits in order to develop a better sense of the work they are engaged in and to outline the ways we best can work together. It’s a critical role: working in partnership with the service organizations and also being able to hold them accountable for the work they’re directed to do. I will be looking at how to serve as that nexus for my constituents.
I have had instances where people have walked into our office seeking help filling out paperwork for a myriad of benefits. Ideally, my office would link that constituent up with a local service provider better suited to assist them. For example, we have constituents walking in with concerns about enrolling in Medicare’s Part D drug benefit. A senior center here already does exactly that kind of work. So from this office, we can call and make an appointment for the constituent and follow up afterwards, making sure he or she went to the senior center and that the visit ran smoothly. This kind of relationship will enable us as an office, and me as a city council member, to help my constituents while maximizing our time to tackle large-scale issues like public housing or the affordable housing crisis. It is my hope to serve as a strong voice for a community that has been greatly disenfranchised.
Melissa Mark Viverito represents district 8 in the New York City CouncilÂ
Recently a brother and sister got into a scuffle at the office of the Child Welfare Organizing Project, where I am the executive director. It was nothing serious, just play fighting. But the mother broke it up by saying, "God forbid that one of you get a mark on you and someone sees it!"
I work with parents who at one time or another have lost their children to foster care, and they are once again living with a fear that such families last felt a decade ago.
As soon as they, and I, saw the sensationalized press coverage about the death of seven-year-old Nixzmary Brown, we were afraid the progress made in the last few years would unravel, due to subsequent political pressure.
It was in January, 1996, in the aftermath of the death the previous month of six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, that the city reorganized and renamed the relevant city agency, calling it the Administration for Children’s Services, and making as part of its mission statement the policy that any ambiguity regarding a child’s safety would be resolved by removing the child from his or her home.
In the two years following the new agency’s inception, there was an increase of about 50 percent in the removal of children from their families. At the same time, since then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani believed that overzealous efforts to preserve families contributed to Elisa’s death, he slashed preventive services by 18 percent. Preventive services are anything provided to a family to help make it unnecessary to remove a child, such as housing, food stamps or day care.
Child neglect became criminalized during that time. Low-income mothers were arrested and prosecuted for offenses that were basically the result of being poor -- such as leaving their child alone while they worked in a sweat shop or living in “substandard housing” that was actually city housing.
Having worked in preventive services and seeing firsthand how much it can accomplish, I believe that many of the parents who had children removed in the 1990’s could have had it handled in a way that would better serve the long-term interest of their children.
Of course, none of us at the Child Welfare Organizing Project felt that parents who mistreat their children should be molly-coddled, and I’m not saying that parents whose kids were removed back then were totally blameless. Many needed help and many made mistakes. Some who had substance abuse issues truly were not in a place where they could take care of their children.
But we also felt that the Administration for Children’s Services was oversimplifying the issue. We knew that families caught up in the system were much more complex than the way they were being handled. And reflexively removing children tends to weaken and destroy the bonds in families that are fragile to begin with. It permanently undermines the parents' authority and the children's faith in their parents' ability to protect them. And many of the children who have been in care for any length of time have experienced abuse in their foster homes, often far in excess of what their parents were accused of.
We invited those parents to share their experiences. Theirs was a perspective to which nobody had paid attention. Eventually they were speaking to professionals in the child welfare system and in other venues where their voices had previously not been heard. The child welfare system became aware that birth parents were not criminals, but complicated people leading challenging lives, often struggling with issues related to being poor.
Things began to change in the direction for which we at the Child Welfare Organizing Project had hoped. The Administration for Children’s Services became less ideologically driven -- subscribing neither to the ideology of “when in doubt, remove the child,” or the equally extreme “preserve families at all costs.” It moved closer to taking into account the actual, individual needs of specific children and their families.
The number of kids going into foster care decreased and the city reinvested in preventive services. The number of kids known to the Administration for Children’s Services who died annually did not increase, as some feared it would.
But now the fear is that all the publicity and public outcry around Nixmary is bringing us back to the time where a birth parent was an object of suspicion, and all the progress made is in danger of being lost.
The birth parents who work at CWOP are also afraid on a much more visceral level. They know that once a parent has had a kid in foster care, that parent is much more likely to lose that kid again, because of that history.
Since Nixmary’s death, whenever a school teacher or guidance counselor calls a parent at CWOP, and I hand the phone to them, I see their hearts leaping to their throats. They’re wondering what has happened that could have resulted in a call to ACS.
There are definite signs that a panic like the one a decade ago is underway. There is reportedly a 30 percent increase in protective removals already this month so far, compared to January 2005. Meanwhile, our phone at CWOP hasn’t stopped ringing. We are trying to ride out this media frenzy and use it to make the points we want made. We hope to introduce parents’ testimony at the forthcoming city council and state assembly hearings. We want people to be aware of how parents are experiencing this, and why the Administration for Children’s Services should be very careful in how they respond.
The changes that the mayor recently announced were largely to add staff and money. The workers are supposed to respond more energetically to abuse complaints. These changes do not in themselves mean the agency will be any more likely to remove children from their families.
We believe that the best way to honor Nixzmary’s memory is not by going back to a time when the Administration for Children’s Services was just one more threat to family life in poor communities, but by continuing to change the system for the better.
Mike Arsham is executive director of the Child Welfare Organizing Project Â