Garrison Davis (alternate or continuation) (111:29)
In March, Mayor Mamdani announced a quote unquote landmark victory against famously bad landlord Seth Miller of Aegis Realty. You can say the landlord was egregious at realty. The city brought a case against Miller for dangerously derelict conditions at 919 Prospect Ave. In the South Bronx. And for the first time ever, courts imposed the maximum penalties under the city's nuisance abatement law. A $1,000 fine per day until housing violations are addressed and $2.174 million in retroactive penalties. During the first 100 days, the city held five rental ripoff hearings, one in each borough, providing New Yorkers a platform to discuss various problems with their landlord from poor conditions to repair delays or junk fees. This was a dedicated public forum for tenants to speak directly to city officials and collectively shape housing policy going forward. A month into office, the Mayor announced a $38 million investment to install modern heating and cooling in 712 of New York City's public housing units at the beach 41st street houses in Queens and technically this is after the first 100 days, but I think it's worth mentioning that just a few days ago Zoron announced a $2.5 billion investment in public housing to deliver new energy efficient lighting and faucets to 45,000 homes, heat pumps and 20,000 and 10,000 new induction stoves, all affecting the NYCHA public housing in New York City. On Zoron's very first day in office, he also signed two executive orders to accelerate housing construction by building on city owned properties to increase the supply of affordable housing and cutting red tape to make it faster and more affordable to build. The development approval process for building affordable housing has been reduced by more than two years by the Administration's implementation of the new voter approved expediated land use review procedure combined with a new program called the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track which will pre select qualified developers to shorten the pre development timeline by eight months for certain projects on city owned land. Another of Zoron's core campaign promises was universal childcare. On his eighth day in office, Mehramdani announced a partnership with Governor Kathy Hochul to provide free child care for thousands of two year olds in New York City with a $1.2 billion increase in state funding. Since then, the Mayor has expanded the free 3K program for 3 year olds to more than half of all school districts in the city and announced 2K fall enrollment for school districts 18, 23, 10, 6 and 27 which serve lower income neighborhoods. 2K applications open for the first time on June 2 with the program operating on a full day schedule from 8am to 6pm all year round. As a part of the 3K expansion, seven new early child care education centers are opening in Western Queens, Staten Island, South Brooklyn and the South Bronx. And on March 30, the mayor announced the city's first pilot program for free on site childcare for city workers based at the David Dinkins Municipal Building with applications opening on April 30. The city also created a new accessible child care provider map with interactive features to filter by location, age group and cost. The Mayor says that all these steps will lead to free childcare for every 3 year old and 2 year old in the city by the end of his first term. Another key promise was fast and free buses. The administration is making headway on the fast part by building more bus lanes, redesigning streets as well as adding protected bike lanes on McGinnis Boulevard, 31st street in Astoria, Ashland Place across Flatbush, East Flatbush, Midwood and Brooklyn and Kingston avenues in central Brooklyn. Hamdani restarted the stalled Madison Ave bus lane redesign to make buses faster and more reliable for 92,000 daily riders. The city announced a new bus lane for the Bronx Crosstown bus service to Yankee Stadium and restarted the Fordham Road bus lane project to improve the busiest bus corridor in the Bronx, servicing an average of 130,000 daily riders across four routes. Just this week, construction began in Brooklyn for the redesign of Flatbush Avenue with the goal of improving bus speeds by over 40% for 132,000 daily riders. And before the World cup this summer, Zoran has promised to complete new bike lanes and pedestrian upgrades in lower Manhattan. As for the free part, that will be a bit harder. Mamdani maintains that his administration is working with the state government in Albany and the MTA to eventually make New York City buses free and proposed a five week free bus pilot program during the World cup, though it's unclear if that will happen. It's not all sunshine and rainbows in New York City. Upon taking office, Mehrmaid discovered the city was facing an unexpected financial crisis in the form of a hidden $12 billion deficit left by former Mayor Eric Adams, stemming from years of fiscal mismanagement and the under budgeting of essential services like rental and cash assistance shelters, health insurance and special ed. As mayor, Eric Adams covered up this massive budget deficit by leaving the gaps grossly understated, gaps that were made worse by divestment in New York City by the state under former governor Andrew Cuomo, the mayor is actually required by law to have a balanced budget. So rather than sweeping this under the rug by continuing to cook the city's books like his predecessor, Zoran chose transparency about the financial crisis he's inherited and signed an executive order to designate chief savings officers in every city agency to streamline processes and eliminate waste. Some of these savings so far include canceling $20,000 of Slack subscriptions to saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by foregoing vacant office space. Through his relationship with Governor Kathy Hochul the mayor secured $1.5 billion in state aid in February. That, combined with higher than expected Wall street revenues and savings measures, shrunk the deficit to 5.4 billion. Zoron's preliminary budget, released last February, sparked criticism for failing short of promises to increase funding to parks and libraries. While campaigning, Zoron advocated for city libraries to receive 0.5% of the city budget. But the preliminary budget only allocated 0.39%, which is actually a $29 million cut from the last Adams budget, down to $456 million. Meanwhile, the park budget remained effectively flat at about 0.5% rather than boosting it to 1% of the total budget as Mamdani previously hoped, though in March, Mayor Mamdani announced new capital investment of $50 million to reconstruct 10 parks in underserved neighborhoods. This February budget is preliminary and subject to change as Zoran's negotiations with the City Council and the state continue. In February, Bomdani reversed a previous policy against the forced removal of homeless encampments after 20 people died in the street during a horrific blizzard and sudden cold snap in late January. Despite the efforts of outreach workers visiting known homeless people every two hours to offer warm shelter and check if they needed help, 1400 people were placed into shelters and warming centers during that first freeze, with 85 people involuntarily moved or hospitalized. The new encampment suite policy will be led by the Department of Homeless Services rather than the nypd, as they under Eric Adams, which Mamdani said put homeless New Yorkers in danger and was ineffective in moving people into shelter or housing under the new plan. After posting a removal notice, outreach workers will visit encampments every day for a week with the goal of connecting people to shelter and establishing a pipeline to stable housing while opening new shelters across the city, including New York City's first ever pet inclusive transitional housing facility for families. Much of the criticism levied at Zoran revolves around his choice to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, something he announced before the election. Zoran did cancel an Eric Adams plan to add 5,000 more NYPD officers, but as promised, their budget remained effectively the same despite the financial deficit. But Tish specifically has been seen as a rare moderating force in the administration, an outlier that may be preventing police reforms that Zoron campaigned on, like disbanding the srg, the strategic response group tasked with responding to both protests and terrorism, as well as getting rid of the NYPD gang database. Critics have noted that Zoron seems to be moving towards, quote, unquote, reforms of the gang database, rather than his previous call to get rid of it, saying in early April, quote, I've made my critiques of the database clear. And the NYPD has also implemented a number of reforms as per the recommendation that came through. And the implementation of those reforms and the results of that are part of the active discussion that we are having. Unquote. The gang database in New York has shrunk by 40% in the last two years. As for the SRG, Mayor Mamdani still maintains that he remains, quote, steadfast in my commitment to disband the SRG and to do so in a manner that upholds both First Amendment rights of New Yorkers and keeps New Yorkers safe. And that is the subject of an active conversation that we are having, unquote. Commissioner Tisch has been particularly resistant to the idea of disbanding the srg, though earlier this month, Mayor Mamdani's chief of staff, Elbisgard Church, said on the news that the administration remains committed to fulfilling the campaign promise of disbanding the SRG and that a delegation of City hall and NYPD officials traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to learn about their protest policing model focused on, quote, communication and, quote, de escalation over mass arrests and aggressive force.