NYC NOW - December 12, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Residents of the Billingsly Terrace building are reeling after a partial collapse of the property Monday night. Plus, a group tasked with figuring out how to make New York City public school classes smaller is offering recommendations. Also, some migrant families won’t have anywhere to go after the New Year, when they’ll be forced to leave city shelter’s under Mayor Eric Adams' new policy. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson and Elizabeth Kim discuss a hearing this week where city council members laid out the effects of mid-year budget cuts approved by the mayor.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. Everybody in that building is displaced. Everybody in that building has years since the 80s, since the 70s. It's so sad. Nobody has where to go. We begin in the Bronx, where residents of the Billingsley Terrace building are reeling after a partial collapse of the property Monday night. FDNY officials say no one was hurt.

Melina Ricard grew up in the building, and her family still lives there. She says her dad wasn't home at the time, but her aunt and uncle were. I think my uncle was saying that he heard some rumbling, and he got up, and he started calling for my aunt to see where she was, and they got out of there. The Bronx DA's office says it's looking into what happened, while the fire department and department of buildings continue their investigations. The building's owner, David Kleiner, says he doesn't know what caused the collapse, and that he's trying to find new housing for the residents.

Kleiner has appeared on the public advocate's annual worst landlord watch list. A working group tasked with figuring out how to make New York City public school classes smaller is offering recommendations. WMIC's Jessica Gould has the details. A new state law requires the city to dramatically reduce class sizes in the next five years. Finding enough space and teachers is challenging, but the majority of a working group formed by the city's education department says it's doable with investments and some tough choices. It's calling for enrollment caps at overcrowded schools, moving preschool programs out of some elementary

schools, and incentives to attract more teachers. But dissenters within the group say the law is impractical and will reduce access to desirable schools. The recommendations are advisory. The Adams administration says it doesn't have the money to meet the law's requirements. Dozens of migrant families with children are facing a looming deadline to leave their shelters under a new policy established by New York City Mayor Eric Adams. WMYC's Caring-Yid reports many have nowhere to go except right back to another shelter. Mohamed Akmal Yusip Saai was a police officer in Afghanistan, but fled shortly after the Taliban took over the country and began threatening his life. He's been living in New York since January. with his family in shelter.

He says it's like starting all over again. We are like a small case here. We have nothing. After the new year, Yusuf Sae, his wife and his children, including his newborn baby girl, will have to pack up and leave their shelter. Right now I don't have any place that I can go. I told them already that I don't know any family here.

Like, I don't have nothing here. The Adams administration told about 3,300 families. They have 60 days to leave or reapply for a bed. A city hall spokesperson says they'll continue making adjustments as needed to avoid having families sleep on the street. The first wave of stays were set to expire right after Christmas, but the city is pushing them back to January. Families will have to go to a midtown hotel to seek another shelter placement if they can't find their own housing. Arrezzo Mohamedi says she's worried her children will have to change schools. She also left Afghanistan so her daughters could get an

education. The Taliban and extremist group won't allow girls to study past the sixth grade. She says her daughters are learning English and making friends. But the city says she has until January to leave or wait for another available shelter bed. Stay close. There's more after the break. Mayor Adams is facing sharp criticism from the city council over his mid-year budget cuts. My colleague Sean Carlson talked with WNYC's Elizabeth Kim about a public hearing this week where council members laid out the effects of those cuts. Talk us through what the council is looking to accomplish. Can they even stop the cuts by voting against them?

The mayor does have the right to make mid-year cuts. These are what is called the November modification. By law, the city needs to have a balanced budget. And the mayor was facing a large deficit that he needs. needed to cover as a result of expiring pandemic aid, federal pandemic aid, and also migrant costs. Now, the council can vote to reject the cuts, but that's considered very unlikely because it would imperil funding for city agencies. The modification isn't just about cuts. It's also about the city adjusting for new revenues. Now, with that said, one long time city council member,

Gail Brewer, told me that these November, cuts were the most draconian that she has seen in years and decades. I think the intention of the hearing is to try to see if they can get the mayor to back down on some of those cuts and reassess cuts he's planning to make for the following fiscal year. Now, we've talked before about how the cuts will affect a lot of things, a lot of key services, like library, schools, sanitation. That is a lot to absorb in and of itself.

But was there anything else that caught your attention during the hearing? One cut did stand out to me, and it's something that I think is overwhelmingly popular among New Yorkers, and that's Parks. So all agencies were subject to a 5% cut. But through this intersection of agency functions, Parks got hit with a double whammy. What happened was the city's Human Resources Administration, that's an agency in charge of social services. they decided that to meet their 5% cut, they needed to eliminate a workforce program that had provided roughly 1,000 park staffers. Now, that's coming on top of 300 to 400 workers that parks themselves decided to cut. One parks advocate I spoke to told me that this is roughly half of the parks department employees.

So what does that mean? It means fewer staffers to clean parks. Some parks could be cleaned as few as far as. one time a week. You know, they had been cleaned roughly five times a week. And it's more grass that goes unmoat, dirtier bathrooms, and also potentially delays in opening up the city pools in the summer. Liz, do you know if the cuts are hurting the mayor's popularity? And how is he justifying them?

It certainly does seem to be hurting him if you look at recent polls. Now, one recent Quineapak poll saw the mayor with the lowest approval ratings in the 27-year history of the poll. And some of that dissatisfaction was driven by the budget cuts. Now, the mayor has repeatedly said he has no choice but to make these tough decisions. The city is facing historically large budget deficits. People are debating, though, how much of this can be blamed on the mayor's management and spending priorities. But he's also trying to send a signal to both Washington, D.C. and Albany that the city needs help on the migrant crisis.

And by announcing severe cuts, you can argue that he's getting the message across by stoking anger from New Yorkers. Do you think that the pressure campaign will ultimately work to scale these back? So it's still unclear. Most experts say that the prospect of Congress passing more funding for migrants is slim to none. The mayor has said, though, that the Biden administration could come up with new policies at the border, that, for example, help direct people to other parts of the country and not just New York. He's also urged the president to speed up the process by which migrants get work permits. But the place where the mayor's cuts could have a real impact is on Governor Kathy Hockel and other Albany lawmakers.

The city relies on the state for a great deal of funding. And several months ago, it appeared as if the governor was signaling that she was going to reduce funding. for migrants. She since appeared to walk that back somewhat, but she's certainly facing pressure. I think the question for the mayor is whether the cuts have come at too high a political cost. So he needs Albany and Washington to pay attention to what he argues is a national crisis. But at the end of the day, you know, critics and the council are all too eager to steer every day New Yorkers into blaming him for taking away key services. That's WNYC's Elizabeth Kim talking with my colleague, Sean Carlson.

Before we go, a quick apology to our listeners who couldn't find us earlier. We had a technical issue with our feed, but we're back, as you can hear. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.