NYC NOW - April 15, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Mayoral control of New York City's school system is back on the negotiating table in Albany. Plus, Mayor Eric Adams is touting a plan to turn two dozen city-owned parcels of land into new apartment buildings this year. And finally, WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen and Arun Venugopal discuss a new report that looks into the social inequities that contribute to environmental issues across New York City.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. Mayoral control of New York City's school system is back on the negotiating table in Albany. Senator John Liu is a Democrat from Queens, who chairs the Senate's New York City Education Committee. He says lawmakers are discussing a short-term extension of mayoral control as part of the state budget, which is now more than two weeks late. The mayor wants accountability, and so looking for ways to make him accountable. Mayor Eric Adams has been pushing a longer extension of his authority over the city schools. The current system is due to expire in June.

Senator Liu says any extension would come with the mechanism to ensure the city complies with looming class size mandates. The legislature passed a bill two years ago, requiring the city to reduce the size of its classes. Mayor Adams is touting a plan to turn two dozen city-owned parcels of land into new apartment buildings this year. WMYC's David Brand reports on what comes next for what is now a pair of Brooklyn parking lots. The city's kicking cars out of two lots along Wyckoff Street in Boreham Hill. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development says the city needs housing there instead. They're asking developers to submit proposals for new affordable and senior housing projects. Both sites will have about 60 units.

Council members Lincoln Wrestler and Johanna Hanif represent the area and say they support the plan. The city's also planning to build housing above the Grand Concourse Public Library in the Bronx and along the publicly owned Inwood Waterfront in northern Manhattan. A new report from the mayor's office of climate and environmental justice looks into the social inequities that contribute to environmental issues across New York City. We'll dive into the details of the analysis after the break. Stick around. Earlier this month, New York City unveiled its first ever environmental justice analysis.

The report and its interactive map comes out of the mayor's office of climate and environmental justice. It assesses the state of the environment across the five boroughs with a special emphasis on communities that have historically been ignored. For more on the report, my colleague Tiffany Hansen talked with WMYC's Arun Van de Kappaal. Just start off by telling us about this report. Well, for one, it is required by law. A few years ago, the city council adopted legislation. It requires a city to study environmental inequity and how to incorporate environmental justice into its decision-making. And I heard from an expert on this, her name is Sheila Foster. She's a law professor. She's a law at Columbia University. She's the visiting professor of climate this year. And she told me she

thinks it is really a great step. It needs to be celebrated as genuine progress. In terms of the substance of this report, it addresses a whole slew of issues across the five boroughs in specific neighborhoods, whether that's extreme heat, air quality issues, flood vulnerability, things that have a tangible impact on New Yorkers, especially in underserved communities, which is where you often see communities who are overburdened when it comes to heavy polluters. The report, as you've alluded, it's long. There is a section on the history of environmental racism. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, this report goes all the way back to the 1600s. It starts with the relationship between the Europeans who are arriving here and the Lenape natives. In more recent years, you know, forwarding to say that 19 to 20, century. We saw how environmental racism still persists in the form of higher asthma rates for certain communities for communities of color. It means closer proximity to highways. It means less access to green space. All of these different issues, Tiffany. Well, you're talking about these different communities. There is an interactive map in the report. You took it for a test drive

with one of our city officials. So I'm wondering how that went. Yeah. There is this interactive map. New Yorkers, you can look at this map of the city and you can know which areas are designated as disadvantaged communities. If you want, you can zoom in. You can see how any one specific area fares when it comes to, say, parks and green space, air quality, solid waste management, water quality. Some pretty obscure, I guess, to my mind, you know, things that might be really important information like levels of ozone or nitric oxide or, you know, which areas are subjected to are closer to truck routes. You can also toggle between different years, say flood vulnerability in the year 2050 or in the year 2080. Paul Lizito is a deputy executive director at the mayor's office of climate and environmental justice, which put out this report and this map.

And he walked me through the map. And we zeroed in on one particular section of the South Bronx, Port Morris. You can see how Port Morris or Mott Haven ranks relative to other neighborhoods based on visuals that are over. overlays in the mapping tool. And then you can also try to explore issues that contribute to why the air quality may be poor, right? You can click to identify that there are industrial locations, bus depots, DSMI garages, piker plants, and other facilities located in that neighborhood. So that was Paul Lazito from the mayor's office. You spoke with him. You also spoke with an environmental activist who thinks the report and maps are fine, but they don't necessarily go far.

enough, so talk to us about that conversation. Right. Her name is Eunice Coe. She's a deputy director at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. Her take on this is that the interactive map, it's not especially intuitive. It's pretty tough to use, even for someone like her who's an expert in this area. And I'd say she's right. It really was not that easy to figure out. So what's the process going to look like for the average New Yorker who's trying to use this and understand what their own area looks. like. And beyond that, Coe says, you know, a lot of New Yorkers do know if their neighborhood is played with environmental issues. She thinks the city needs to do more on another front. What are the specific city policies and programs that are contributing to the key findings they're seeing, right? Because then what I couldn't expect from the plan, hopefully would be,

okay, this is the way that we can change some of these policies and programs to make sure we are not continue to perpetuate these environmental climate change. justice burdens and disparities. Arun, we have this report. We have this interactive map. What can New Yorkers expect going forward, however, in terms of action from the city around environmental justice? Right.

The map and the report are pretty much just the first steps. Now, Paul Lizito from the mayor's office says what needs to happen over the next year is a series of conversations at the community level. So hopefully, neighborhood residents will read the report. They'll use a mapping tool, and they'll come to these conversations armed with plenty of information based on which the city needs to make solutions to these issues of environmental racism. And by law, city officials, based on the law that was past a few years ago, they need to conduct a new study every five years and then make that information available to the public. If listeners want to go poke around this report and this map, is there a need? I wouldn't say it's easy. It's kind of buried. If you go to

climate.c.city of New York.U.S., you have to find this environmental justice link. It's kind of buried. And then you will eventually get to the report and the mapping tool. But they could do a better job of presenting this and making it easier for the public. That's WMYC's Arun Van Goghawal talking with my colleague, Tiffany Hanson. From cobblestone streets to indie bookstores, New York City boasts a variety of neighborhood gems. And we're highlighting some of these treasures across the five boroughs. Here, we pop in on a bridge club in the westerly neighborhood of Staten Island that deals more than just a game of cards.

My name is Pat Mankin. I am the president of the Bridge Cup of Staten Island and the resident teacher of the Bridge Cup. Bridge is a card game where you have to compete to take many tricks and you have to know what a trick is. If you play Pinochle or something with spades, you would have more of an idea of what a trick is. But it's a very complicated game. I loved the game. I started playing when I was a freshman in college. Failed out of college playing Bridge.

So I would like to tell my parents that it's coming back now that I got something out of that year that I didn't do. anything but play bridge, because now I teach bridge. People come are mostly seniors, but we're open to all. Once in a while, they bring their grandchildren to learn to play the bridge. It's a place for them to come socialize and to use a skill of playing bridge that uses their brain and their social skills to get together and be with people during the day. When they come, they spend three and a half hours, four hours playing bridge. Once a month we have a party And everybody cooks

And we bring the food here And then we play bridge And we have some very good cooks Besides being good bridge players The bridge community is a tight-knit community And a lot of members have been members For many years like myself Some have been members for 50 years

Some have been members for 25 years And it's like a family They come and they're comfortable We take care of each other Now people are getting old. They can't drive. Somebody will pick them up and bring them here. We take care of one another,

but then when we get at the bridge table, we compete against each other. It's a competition. There was a problem at the deli next door, and the police officers came in to ask us questions. And when they came in, they looked around, and they said, this is what's going on here? And we explained, I said,

send your grandparents or your parents. And they said, this is a gem that they didn't know was here because we don't advertise outside the... building or any place else, except online. The people want to play bridge. They only have to Google and it will pop up since we're the only bridge club around. Pat Macon is president of the Bridge Club of Staten Island. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC.

Catch us every weekday three times a day. I'm Junae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.