NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Career Training Expansion, Paris Stowaway, Hochul’s Unanswered Questions, and Voices from Bay Parkway

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Mayor Eric Adams is expanding career training programs for public school students. Meanwhile, a New York City stowaway who boarded a flight to Paris remains in French custody. Plus, Governor Kathy Hochul’s “Ask the Governor” series fields public questions, but some topics don’t make it on air. WNYC’s Jon Campbell reports on what’s left unanswered. Finally, WNYC teamed up with nonprofit Street Lab at a Brooklyn pop-up event to hear stories from the Bath Beach neighborhood.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news and and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jared Marcel. New York City is expanding career training and internships for public school students. Mayor Eric Adams says 36 more schools will offer career preparation programs through the Future Ready NYC Initiative. We're building a pipeline to employment, a pipeline to jobs, a pipeline to possibilities. In total, 135 schools were offered training in health, education, business, and sustainability. Students can also participate in paid internships and earn college credits. City is partnering with CUNY, SUNY, Northwell Health, Google, and others on the initiative.

Adam says the expansion as part of his administration's renewed focus on affordability. A New York City Stowaway aboard a flight to Paris remains in French custody. WNYC's Rosemary Mizdairy has more. A Russian national with a green card snuck onto a Paris-bound flight without a ticket on Tuesday. French police tried to send her back to New York City, but she disrupted her return flight before takeoff. Authorities have yet to reveal the woman's identity. Upon returning to the U.S., she could face several state and federal criminal charges. Her green card could also be revoked if convicted.

The Queen's District Attorney's Office declined to comment on whether it plans to bring charges. The Transportation Security Administration says the woman clear two security checkpoints. The TSA and Delta Airlines are investigating the security breach. Each month, Governor Kathy Hockel answers questions from the public on her Ask the Gov YouTube series. But which questions don't make it on the show? We find out after the break. Stay close. About once a month, New York Governor Kathy Hoagel answers questions directly from her constituents. WNYC's John Campbell reports on the ones she isn't answering.

Back in May, the governor's office launched a new series on its YouTube page. It's called Ask the Gov. Well, we asked you to submit your question to me, and we got literally 600 submissions. So in order to answer them all, let's get started. I'm really excited. In the video, she's sitting at a table in her office on 3rd Avenue. She's talking straight to the camera and answering things like, Big question from boy-year-old Everett from Delmar.

Is it your job to paint the lines on the road? Great question, Everett. That got me thinking, what other questions did the governor get? You know, the one she didn't answer. So I filed an open records request and asked my colleagues to read some of them. How are you going to pay for your grandiose plans? Why are you oblivious to crime? He said he wanted to close five prisons.

Which one would they be? Medicaid funding? Why don't you get rid of Alpin Brad? Why can you fix the potholes? What if Trump wins the election? They weren't all that director angry, but a lot of them were. And it was basically a window into voters' minds right in the middle of a presidential election. They touched on things like affordability. Why do our taxes keep increasing?

We've lived in this house for 50 years. Immigration. What is the plan to stop the busloads of migrants coming into the city? And crime. Have you lost your mind? Put bail back on the table. That question from the four-year-old about painting lines on the road, it wasn't on the list a question submitted through the governor's website, the list I got through the open records

request. The governor's office said staff members asked around after they didn't get questions from young people early on. The very first question the governor answered was on the list. Sort of. We heard from Palmer H. and Syracuse, who's wondering something's on the minds of so many New Yorkers, How are we going to deal with the affordable crisis and build more housing and have more protections for tenants of state? That was the gist of the question Palmer H submitted, but the governor's office made a key change.

Palmer actually asked about a specific type of tenant protection called Good Cause Eviction, which aims to stop landlords from evicting tenants without a specific reason. Landlords tend to hate it. And the governor never mentioned good cause eviction by name. Not when she read the question, not when she answered it. And we have tenant protections that every community can adopt. It's up to them that they're in place as well as incentives for developers to build more upstate, not just in New York City, which is... It's a thorny political topic for the governor, whose campaign gets a lot of money from real estate interests. I wondered what the person who wrote the question thought of the governor's edit.

Hi, Palmer. How are you? I'm good. That's Palmer Harvey. She's an Onondaga County legislator and a tenant activist from Syracuse. Did you submit that question? It sounds like me. It was six months ago, yeah. Palmer didn't know the governor answered her question, so I had her watch the video.

I noticed in the video they took out the words good cause eviction. Yeah, that's not surprising. At the time, the governor and state lawmakers had just passed a housing package that included some good cause eviction protections, but they weren't as strong as tenant activists wanted. And they only applied in New York City. Upstate cities like Syracuse have to opt in. To me, it's more of like a giveaway to the landlords, even though the landlords don't think it's a giveaway to them at all, you know?

Palmer says she gets why Governor Hokel's office changed up her question. The governor was never a fan of the original good cause eviction bill, and activists like Palmer spent years pressing her on it. Let's be honest, you know. So this is not our first. roadios. We've been trying to get that since 2019 in the state, right? As for who paints the lines on the road, well, the governor told four-year-old Everett, she's got people for that. Maybe someday you're going to want to become part of our state workforce and you can be the one who helps paint the lines.

You can submit your questions to Governor Hokel at n.gov slash ask the gov. That's WNYC's John Campbell. Every now and then, WNYC's community partner. partnerships desk teams up with the nonprofit street lab to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. We recently set up shop at a pop-up event on Brooklyn's Bay Parkway, described as a space for community, connection, and exploration. Here's some of what we heard. Hi, my name is Demira Pashelich. I'm in Bath Beach, Brooklyn. I have been here since 2014. My husband grew up here. I'm from Bosnia and Herzegovina. That's in southeastern Europe. We have gathered here to allow our kids for some games and playing today.

I think our neighborhood is in big need of events like this because in the past few years we have pretty much nothing happening for our little kids really or any kids of any age here. My son is here, his friends are here and it's just beautiful to see that we're actually moving in that direction. What I think is really missing is, you know, the third place. You go to work, then you go home, but then there's this place in between where I come from, we would always stop at the bar and have a drink with friends or family or whoever.

Now I feel like this community specifically lacks those kind of little shops, little bars you can gather at, and back to the kids, but they don't go to a bar at this age. But something like this, like this event today, kind of helps them to have that place that's not school and home. And I guess adults like me also need that. That's really missing here. I definitely hope for, in a future, more of a creative outlet for adults and children. My name is Fahad Khan. My interest is just allowing people to reclaim streets for themselves

as opposed to storage for their vehicles. It's important to me just from a safety standpoint. And from a climate change perspective, anytime we have less cars on the street and more people using their space around them, I think that's on the whole a good thing. And I just hope more streets turn into... to pedestrianized zones. I think that'll increase our quality of life

and hopefully cut down on some pollution. My name is Arden Burlav and I am a co-founder of the Pineapple Ride. Pineapple Ride is a community of bicyclists who are trying to foster a safer biking community in New York City. Right now there's four of us that are building this out. We're all originally from this neighborhood.

We're trying to turn this into a plaza so it will be closed off to cars and people can have community building events here like we're doing today. We're trying to make this a better place for everybody. My name is Mirza, Medunianen. I am originally from Bosnia. I came here as a refugee back in the 90s,

lived in the neighborhood, more or less my whole life, and now I am here organizing pineapple ride events. When I first came here, the demographic was a lot different. There's definitely a lot more people. When there's a lot more people, there tends to be a lot more use of the park of streets and a lot more cars, a lot more everything. So we have a whole bunch of rubbish, a lot of trash that we hope to start cleaning up.

It's important for me because I've grown up here and it can be different. There's really beautiful parts of the city and there's grimy parts of the city. And this particular area where we're standing is a gem that just needs to be polished a little. I have a child now. He's growing up and so I'd like to leave something behind for him that's not just for him, for his friends as well, for everyone. Something that I didn't have. Those voices are from the Bath Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jared Marcel. We'll be back tomorrow.