It would be very easy for Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a candidate for the Democratic mayoral nomination this year, to support a bill that would impose onerous mandates on employers to allow paid sick leave for employees. Her Democratic rivals support the bill, and now Ms. Quinn is being pressured by some of her prominent Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
New York City public advocate and Democratic mayoral candidate Bill De Blasio added his voice to a growing chorus of commentators (including The Observer) who have noted similarities between Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s affordable housing platform, announced in her State of the City address earlier this week, and a plan proposed by the real estate industry in 2011. The proposal would cap property taxes for whole buildings if they agreed to set aside a certain percentage of their units to let at below-market rate rents. Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
In her 2013 State of the City speech, City Council Speaker and Democratic mayoral frontrunner Christine Quinn focused on housing affordability—namely middle-class housing.
Ms. Quinn’s headline proposal is to “build 40,000 new middle-income affordable apartments over ten years.” It’s unclear what definition of “middle-income” she would use, but the Middle Class Squeeze report that she released earlier today defines middle class as “households with incomes between 100 percent and 300 percent of area median income.” Read More
No, it is not “Mayor Dracula.” Come on, Post, this is our City Council speaker and mayoral candidate we’re talking about, try to be more creative. The answer is right in front of you… Read More
The New York City Council passed a bill today that prohibits employers from considering an applicant’s current employment status when making hiring decisions.
The bill would also put an end to job ads that say applicants must be currently employed. Under this measure, New York would be the first city in the country providing people Read More
As a resident of the West Village, Lee Ielpi trudged by a fence of ceramic tiles daily in the raw weeks after 9/11, one that developed a comforting presence over the next decade, transformed from an impromptu memorial to an enduring memorial. Now that they have been to a library nearby, on display for all to come see and remember that horrific day, Ielpi was fighting off tears at an unveiling this morning.
“Time does not heal the wound—it has a scab on it, and every now and then I peel it off and talk about my son,” said Mr. Ielpi, president of the September 11th Families’ Association. He lost his son, a firefighter, in the attacks. “We have an obligation to our children, to our grandchildren, to never forget. It is through education, it is through enlightenment. This is part of that process.” Read More
Twitter has changed the way we communicate, and now it may change the way we drive, at least around Midtown.
This morning, the Department of Transportation unveiled new parking signs that greatly simplify and clarify on-street parking regulations. As Tranportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan joked, “We used to have signs with 250 character on four different signs in three different colors. Now we can say it in about 140 characters on a much clearer sign.” Read More
“Millions of New Yorkers have stories” from the hurricane, Council Speaker Christine Quinn declared this morning during a soaring, post-Sandy speech at the Association for a Better New York. Among those stories was Ms. Quinn’s own.
It was an emotional moment that came during what was otherwise a wonky, if powerful, policy-laden address to the city’s business leaders during which the council speaker (and presumptive mayoral candidate) called for at least $20 billion in new infrastructure across the five boroughs to protect against future disasters. The story, from the summers of Ms. Quinn’s youth, underscored her belief that the city must seize upon this disaster to create a stronger (or at least drier) future.
“My grandfather came over on a boat from Ireland with a third grade education and worked his way up through the ranks of the Fire Department,” Ms. Quinn explained. “Rockaway Beach offered him a chance to rent a bungalow in the summer, to afford a little place on the ocean just like the rich people he saw in the magazines. It was his own piece of the American Dream.” Read More
For many neighbors of the Chelsea Market, the biggest concern over a massive addition to the market was the shape it would take and thus its impact on the High Line, which the market abuts. Love it or hate it, the High Line had become a major neighborhood amenity, one people did not want to see get any worse with a massive eight-story addition overhanging it.
Developer Jamestown Properties acceded to demands from the City Planning Commission—which oversaw the rezoning that helped preserve the High Line—to rejigger the building, so what kind of concessions could Council Speaker Christine Quinn possibly extract? Especially since she had reportedly waffled on whether or not to beat back the building entirely as she eyes crossing over to the other side of City Hall.
Well, what better way to appease NIMBYs and preservationists than with architectural protections and schools? Read More
Remember shovel ready projects? Thought they were so 2009? Well, you’d be wrong, at least here in New York, where Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the ever financially creative City Comptroller John Liu have done some juggling with the city’s capital construction program to fast track $1 billion worth of infrastructure work. These projects will begin in the coming months, rather than in the coming years. Let’s hear it for putting people to work. Read More
