NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: National Grid Rate Hikes, NYC’s Privately Owned Public Spaces and a Blown Deadline for Rikers Island’s Closure

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

National Grid customers in New York City will see their monthly bills go up about $10. Plus, two New Yorkers help residents discover the city’s privately owned spaces that are free for public use. And finally, the Independent Rikers Commission says the COVID-19 pandemic delayed work on four borough based jails that are supposed to replace the Rikers Island Jail Complex.

Yet another rate hike for national grid customers. New York City's privately owned public spaces and a blown deadline for the closure of the Rikers Island jail complex. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jinné Pierre. Ever heard that saying yesterday's price is not today's price? I mean, let's be real. That's true for a lot of things in today's economy.

But on April 1st, National Grid customers in New York City will see their monthly bills go up about $8 to $10. That comes just a month after an even bigger rate hike this past September. Bronx Congressman Richie Torres says the state government should do more to protect consumers from climbing utility rates. And the compounding effect of rate increase upon rate increase with no end in sight is making New York City unaffordable to working people. Torres has been pushing for a bill to create a consumer advocate to represent rate payers.

Governor Kathy Hokel has vetoed the measure several times, saying it would be redundant due to existing consumer protections. But advocates argue the existing measures lack enforcement power. And another heads up for you and your wallet. National grid bills will go up once again next April. The utility and Hockel's office have not returned calls for comment. Now here's something that doesn't require your hard-earned money. New York City has nearly 600 privately owned spaces that the public can use for free. but lots of residents might not know about them.

WMYC's Elizabeth Kim recently met up with two New Yorkers who want to change that. Hi there, so good to meet you. I'm walking on Water Street in the Financial District to meet Matt Wing. Okay, hello, I'm Matt Wing. Hi, Matt. How are you? He's a political consultant, but he also considers himself a civic hacker. Shall we go up?

Someone who tries to teach New Yorkers about free programs and places they've probably never heard of. and he recently stumbled across an interesting app. So I would never think of walking up those steps and coming to see this. Yeah, it's like a little secret garden right in the heart of the financial district with a beautiful view of the East River and Brooklyn. And that's Chris. Chris is Chris Wong, a software developer who used to work for the city's department of planning. He's also the creator of the app that Matt discovered.

It's called NYC Public Space, and it maps thousands of public spaces in the city. Something I've always wanted is a consolidated map of public space because there's a Parks website that's got a great map on it. There is a POP's website that has lots of great information on it, but they're all kind of spread out. Pops stands for privately owned public spaces. There are a planning trend that came about in the 1960s. The city required private developers to build open spaces like plazas, atriums, rooftops, gardens in exchange for loosening zoning restrictions like building height. They're sprinkled all over the city.

In 2017, protesters gathered on a public rooftop inside Trump Tower. Over the years, private public spaces have gotten a bad rap. Many of them aren't as accessible as they're supposed to be, and they can be hard to find. In 2017, former city controller and now mayoral candidate Scott Stringer issued a report that found that many of the private building owners were violating the rules of the agreement when it came to managing their public space. Wings heard all of this before. He used to work in government, and he's currently working for city council speaker Adrian Adams' mayoral campaign. This is public space. And so we could sit and we could complain and say, well, the government should do more to make it available or to get people here.

or you could just say, let's take it back for the public in every way we can. And that's what Chris did. He built an app where everyone can find every bit of public space in New York City with just a click of a button. Wing loved the app so much he promoted it in a mini movie he made with friends on their Instagram page called Hack New York. New York. A city of gumption and grit. In it, we see a man in a green coat enjoying the pleasures of the city alone. He nestles his nose against a statue.

He reads a book while perched on the fountain at Washington Square Park. He feeds the pigeons. And then he brings up the NYC Public Space app. The narrator then says, Because the best parts of life are free. And so are the best parts of New York. It's important to note that these private public spaces aren't really free. Private builders wouldn't make them available to the public

if they didn't get something in return. But like Wings suggests, New Yorkers can hold these agreements accountable by using these spaces to their fullest potential. That's WMYC's Elizabeth Kim. A new official report finds the jails on Rikers Island will not close by the legally mandated deadline of 2027.

What's the hold up? After the break, we'll hear from the director of the Independent Rikers Commission. Stay close. Rikers Island won't close. by its legally mandated 2027 deadline. That's the central finding of a new report

from the Independent Rikers Commission, the panel responsible for charting the jail's future. For more on the blown deadline, I talked with the commission's executive director, Zachary Katznelson. He started the conversation with a reminder of just how bad conditions are at the Rikers Island Jail Complex.

Really, we have to start with a fundamental truth, which is that the jails on Rikers absolutely have to close as soon as possible. They are decrepit, they are dangerous, they are violent, they are neither fixable nor redeemable, and they cost an inordinate sum of money. We're talking $400,000 per person per year. It's really hard to think of a worse return on investment than what we get at Rikers. And so we have this opportunity right now where our commission has put forth a blueprint

to close Rikers to safely reduce a number of people in jail to address the mental health crisis as artificially inflating number of people there. We've got 57% of the people at Rikers have a mental illness. We have to do better by them, and we have to do better by public safety. How helpful has the Adams administration been in the effort to close Rikers? I think the issue is we have to look at all the stakeholders that have been involved here. You know, Adams administration, there are some areas where, you know, they've invested a lot of money in the borough-based jails, and that's really a critical piece of this. And now is the opportunity for everyone to step up and say, okay, there's been, honestly, a lack of will, a lack of will, a lack of

urgency across the board right now. It has not been enough of a priority to get Rikers closed as soon as possible. And we have to recognize the danger that is inherent in keeping Rikers open. The danger to public safety, the danger to incarcerated people and staff who are behind those walls every single day. This has to be an absolute priority for current city office holders or people that are buying to replace them. Everyone has to agree that this has to get done as soon as possible.

And our plan points the clear path for how this can be done and done well. Your report recommends expediting the construction of the borough jails. How should the city go about doing that? Well, right now, we've got this path that's being taken right now. For instance, architects and construction firms, they're working together. And lots of projects that work in this kind of mode. We've got a team working on this. Once you finish the outside of a building and the design,

you can start working on the exterior, on the foundation, get those construction guys to work, get them working in the ground, while the interior is still under design. That's not happening for these jails. Instead, the city is waiting. for 100% of designs get going, just have the construction workers sitting idly by. That is absolutely not the path we should be taking.

If we could just get started on the things we've got designed already, you can speed up construction of the jails by a year or more. That really is critical to help Rikers close faster, help relieve the burden on the neighborhoods around the jail that have to deal with construction. There's a better path here. It's one that's proven. It's done all the time, for instance, by the Port Authority in New York City.

New York has to emulate that and move forward. What's the real likelihood that Rikers is closed before the end of the current decade? Well, I think we can speed up the borough jails by at least a year. There really has to be investments in what we know works to bring down the jail population. There are more people at Rikers that need to be there for public safety reasons. And that starts with a couple things. One is mental illness. We've got 1,400 people there right now with a serious mental illness.

Last year, there were 700 people who were so severely mentally ill. Leo, they couldn't even understand what was happening in court. We have to address these populations who need something better and different than Rikers. They need to be in treatment. The jails can't properly provide it. That's where our focus really needs to be. And as we bring the jail population down, we can shrink the size of the jail operations on Rikers and start moving people into these borough facilities, which will be a lot safer, more effective, and a heck of a lot more cost-efficient for New York City. That's Zachary Katznelson, executive director of the independent Rikers Commission. Before we go, something I look forward to in your podcast feed this weekend.

On Saturday, we'll kick off a series called NYC Now Explains how the Adams administration fell into chaos. We'll spend the next few weekends diving into the chaos that has consumed Mayor Eric Adams. Our first episode looks at how Mayor Adams forged an unexpected political alliance with President Trump and how that alliance has reshuffled a race for the next mayor of New York City. trust me, you don't want to miss it. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.