Category: News and Opinion

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released 2005 Local Area Personal Income data, and while I will discuss it in detail when I have time, I can say that one thing continued to be true: excluding the Health and Social Service industries, which are primarily government-financed, Manhattan accounted for half (in this case 49.8%) of all the private-sector earnings in New York State. Not the city or metro region — the entire state. Given that just about everyone from Montauk to Buffalo is living off the economic engine of the Manhattan Central Business District directly or indirectly, it is no surprise that PLANYC2030 is focused on the transportation system that supports it. And with the cost of maintaining the existing rail and road transportation systems, let alone new transportation facilities, so great that one wonders if even Manhattan can afford it, it is no surprise that the plan merely restates many major projects and initiatives already agreed to, such as the Second Avenue Subway, East Side Access, and a new tunnel to New Jersey. The plan has, in reality, two new major proposals. First, it suggests using zoning to move new development to places with existing rail transit, rather than extending rail lines to new areas, since new rail transit lines are for the most part not affordable. Second, it includes a financing proposal to relieve CBD traffic congestion while also preventing the transportation system from going bankrupt and taking the Manhattan CBD, and thus the city and state, down with it.

I had been planning to write about Jason West, the Green Party’s New York poster boy who in running for re-election as Mayor of New Paltz succeeded in knocking and independent opponent off the ballot. I was going to point out how hypocritical it was for a Ralph Nader supporter like West to do so considering how Nader’s followers always yap about ballot access and allowing more candidates to participate in elections.

But I didn’t get around to it and look what happened!

West was defeated for re-election and ironically it seems that he lost because he had only one opponent. Serves him right!

I was glad to see parks and recreation get some additional attention in PLANYC2030, and in a subsequent additional announcement by the Parks Department. We are at the end of a third era for this public amenity, or trying to recover from that third era. In the first era there were few public parks, but the public streets, lacking motorized traffic and parked cars, were available for children to play and adults to socialize. In many parts of the city there were private and informal recreation facilities, like private pools, sandlots on vacant lots in the still-developing city, and beach and rowing clubs, the latter taking advantage of the city’s extensive waterfront. In the second era pollution forced people out of the water and traffic and parking pushed them off the street, but Robert Moses built hundreds of small parks. These, however, were too small for the city to afford on-site staff, and thus expensive to maintain. So when money ran short we reached the third era, with the streets and waterways still mostly off limits, small parks often and vandalized or in disrepair, school playgrounds off limits after school and sometimes used for parking during it, and larger parks maintained much better in places where private contributions are available. Will a fourth era now arrive?

Let’s say we have a public benefit, service, facility or square footage of space that theoretically belongs equally to everyone, cannot be increased at a reasonable cost, and for which the demand far exceeds the supply. How do you decide who gets it? Do you have everyone grab what they can as fast as they can, hoarding and wasting, while those with greater needs are left out in the cold — and disaster is risked if the public benefit, service, facility or space is overwhelmed? Do you use a political process where insiders with power get permits that are then passed on to other insiders, while everyone else, rich and poor, is left to do without? Or should those who have use of the scarce resource have to pay, with the funds used to compensate those who do without it, so that demand equals the supply? New York City has, in fact, has a scarcity of traffic capacity in the Manhattan CBD — and many other areas — on weekdays, and a shortage of electrical generating capacity at peak times on hot days. Today it uses a combination of a grab by those who feel entitled or are willing to sit in traffic (by driving over free bridges or cranking the air conditioning during power shortages) and political power (on-street parking permits) to decide who gets to drive to Manhattan and use electricity on 90 degree afternoons. PLANYC2030 has a different suggestion, and I agree with it.

Ryan Sager in the NY Sun reported that Rudy Giuliani has announced his opposition to the New Hampshire’s new law creating civil unions for Lesbians & Gay men.

Sager and many bloggers have pointed out that this is the latest change of position and pander to the right by Rudy. But nobody that I have seen has pointed out that this position by Rudy is a sharp contradiction to what he explained was his philosophy only 6 weeks ago on April 10th.

Rudy said then – “One of the great beauties of the kind of government we have, which is a national/federal government, is that we can make — on a broad range of issues — we can make different decisions in different parts of the country,” Mr. Giuliani said. “We have different sensitivities, and at different times we are going to come to different decisions, and I think that is best left up to the states.”

Kendall Stewart, Kevin Parker and Nick Perry are all elected officials in Brooklyn. They are all black democrats. NYC council member Kendall Stewart (45th district) was born on a tiny Caribbean island called Union. I am told that he grew up in both St. Vincent and Trinidad; he is a podiatrist by profession. As far as I know, state senator Kevin Parker was born in the district he represents (21st Senatorial) in East Flatbush/Midwood; he is a college lecturer by profession. State assembly member Nick Perry was born in Jamaica, West Indies; prior to getting elected he worked for the state in some type of civil service capacity (if memory serves me right). I believe that he is a graduate of Brooklyn College (B.A.); he is the eldest of these three electeds. They are all political animals. At different times they have been allied politically; next year they will be fighting like cats and dogs.

Given that I’m not only a certified city planner but also was paid at one point to write parts of similar documents (no, you didn’t read them, no one did), I thought I ought to do Room 8 readers the favor of actually reading through PlanNYC2030, a document whose public discussion has thus far been limited to congestion pricing. This plan follows the similar 1969 Plan for New York City and the 1987 New York Ascendant, each of which was issued at the peak of an economic boom, each of which promised extensive public and publicly-subsidized improvements for city residents, and each of which was immediately followed by a fiscal crisis. I therefore have strong doubts about the value of grand plans, especially those identified for “further study,” and PlanNYC has many of those – often those with a particular group of planning ideologues in favor (I recognize their footprints from the past) who received a tip of the hat here. And then there is the unsaid – which I will try to fill in. The plan, however, also has many real proposals, many good proposals, which I will discuss in other posts. In the end, however, New York in 2030 will come down to something I have come to think about more and more over the years. Money.

The contract just reached between the city and the principal’s union contains some new ideas that are relatively fair to the rest of us. First, it includes higher pay for those with tougher jobs — running failing schools. Second, it ends the guarantee of an assistant principal job for assistant principals in schools that are closed down due to failure. Such
employees, if no other principal wanted to take them on, would be given the option of a buyout or teaching half a day. It also added merit pay, something I am less keen on given my lack of confidence in the ability of public sector managers to fairly identify merit, although the success of an entire school may be easier to judge than that of an individual employee. These, however, are half-measures, adopted after years of standoff with the City using the minimal leverage it has — deferring a contract and allowing wages to lag behind inflation, falling in real dollars. It was a limited gain from a very protracted fight.

Some of you may recall my post on the high bids in the MTA Capital Plan here. I recommended waiting until the housing bubble deflates, and lower prices were available, before accepting any bids. The price of wood and copper has already fallen. Today Bloomberg (the company, not the Mayor) reported “Cemex SA, the world's third-largest cement producer, may report profit fell for the first time in three quarters as a slump in U.S. housing hurt sales.” Cement must be produced locally, but the inputs to cement will be falling in price. If construction continues to boom in New York, and falls elsewhere, new producers may also be tempted to enter the New York market. Notes Bloomberg “The slump in the U.S. housing market, which accounted for 23 percent of Cemex's revenue last year, hasn't kept the company from seeking to expand there.” Lots of cement will be used in the Croton Water Filtering Plant. So why, from what I read in the newspaper, is the federal government pressuring the city to hurry up and award a contract to the only remaining bidder at a price way above the estimates before the price goes down?

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky is beginning to get on my nerves. Not only has he demanded that NYC's share of state education funding be cut more than I suspect it already has been (still waiting for ALL the data, and where did you think his extra share would come from)? But he is also objecting to an attempt to use a congestion charge as a means of limiting overuse of our public streets. In fact, people from elsewhere in the state would be welcome to use our public streets — on foot — just as they are now welcome to use our public parks. Is that true for NYC residents in all the parks out in the suburbs?