NYC NOW - May 24, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

As negotiations over the city budget heat up, New York City council members are slamming Mayor Eric Adams' proposed cuts to early childhood education. Plus, Nassau County's Police Department is being held in contempt of court for refusing to release an internal document after spending $100,000 in taxpayer money to keep it secret. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson and David Brand discuss Mayor Eric Adams’ rezoning plan, “City of Yes.” wnyc, new york, bronx, queens, brooklyn, manhattan, staten island, new york city, local news,

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Junae Pierre. New York City's parking garages could get more safety checks under a package of bills the City Council passed this week. Council speaker Adrian Adams says the measures would help prevent garages from collapsing and harming people, like what happened last year in the financial district. These bills are critical, especially after the garage collapse at 57 and street. steps away from here in lower Manhattan last year that resulted in the death of garage manager Willis Moore and injured five others. If made law, the legislation will require the city to study

parking garage's low bearing capacity and increase how often they must be inspected. It would also double the penalties for certain violations related to the garages. The Adams administration says it's already taken steps to improve garage safety since last year. In New Jersey, a quarter of its Black residents aren't allowed to serve on juries, but lawmakers and activists are trying to change that. Here's WMYC's Mattcats. In New Jersey, people are banned for life from serving on a jury if they have passed criminal convictions. Activists say that has a disproportionate effect on black people who are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice found that between 23 and 29 percent of black New Jerseyans are barred from jury duty.

A bill recently endorsed by Governor Phil Murphy would lift that ban. A similar bill is proposed in the New York legislature, where the New York Civil Liberties Union estimates that 40% of black men in Manhattan cannot be on juries because of that state's law banning people with past convictions from serving. Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer, and that means it's time to hit the beach. Coming up, a look at what to expect at city pools and area beaches. That conversation after the break.

It's Memorial Day weekend, and for many folks in the region, that means it's beach season. Lifeguards are posted at area beaches and city pools starting this weekend, marking the unofficial start of summer. For more, my colleague, Sean Carlson, talked with New York City Parks Commissioner, Sudanahue. So, Commissioner, walk us through the start of summer at City beaches and pools. They do fall under the Parks Department, so your team is running the show there. What does it take to get them ready for Memorial Day? Such a good question. We're preparing for Memorial Day, as you might imagine, weeks in advance. We are building lifeguard chairs. We're making sure all our signage is in place. We're making sure that we have all of the equipment that we need at the beaches, that we're ready to go and that we can make sure that we have a really fun, safe summer for New Yorkers, for the millions of New Yorkers that use our beaches every year. The city estimates a quarter of kids in the five boroughs can't swim, and it's children of color who are more likely to be unable to swim compared to white kids.

Is there anything your department can do to help to address those disparities? We have for years, Sean, been working hard to address those disparities to be teaching through our Learn to Swim program, through our Swim for Life program, great partnership with the Department of Education, where we actually offer swim. classes to kids in school to second graders in school. So we have for over many years offered free swim programming for thousands of kids because we know how important a skill it is. And we really want to expose as many children as possible to swimming. For another summer, Commissioner of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is continuing construction work along Rockaway Beach. Once again, that is going to cause rolling beach closures throughout the backaways over the course of the season. Even if people say understand the merits of the resiliency project, do you understand why some are concerned that it is happening right in the heart of summer?

Yes, absolutely, Sean. We understand that concern. You know, luckily the Army Corps work has proceeded very successfully and that their construction work has really limited this year. The busiest parts of our beaches, will be able to be able to. be very much open and available and not impacted by the Army Corps work. And you can see we were out in the Rockaways this week having a celebration for the opening of our beach. And you can see the incredible benefits of the work that they've done. Fortifying the Gorin's being able to add and keep more sand on the beach is of benefit to everyone. We're able to, through this resiliency project, add more a beach, more area for active recreation. So I think the good thing is that people can absolutely see the benefit of that construction, the benefit of that, what has been some disruption in other years, and, you know, are welcoming the opportunity to, you know, have a stronger,

more resilient, more well-fortified beach to take advantage of and to enjoy this summer. Of course, there are a lot of small businesses in that area that rely on foot traffic for a lot of income and of course that being the summer, it's a huge part of their yearly income. Is Parks doing any sort of outreach to those small businesses? You know, what we do in providing great facilities for people, it's bringing so many people, especially to the Rockaways. And we saw last year that both our own concessions that are along the beach as well as the small businesses all benefited from the enormous amount of people.

that know about that are coming to the Rockaways. I don't know if you saw on the news this year just recently Travel and Leisure Magazine named the Rockaways in Coney Island, two of the top 25 beaches in the country. That brings people to the Rockways. That brings people to all those small businesses, to the restaurants. People are excited about the Rockaways. People know that it's a great destination. And, you know, I think our work can't. for maintaining those beaches, making them so beautiful and accessible to the public is really helping businesses to thrive. Before we let you go, Commissioner, any big summer events you want to let listeners know about?

We are so excited, as I said. So this Saturday, the 25th, our beaches open. They're open from 10 in the morning until 6 o'clock at night. Later on in the summer at the end of June, when school closed, we'll be opening up our pools. We just want New Yorkers to be out there and enjoying all of our parks. and open spaces. We want people to do it safely. It's really important to us that people will make sure they're following the rules signs, make sure they're staying safe, not swimming where there are red flags. But with 30,000 acres of parkland across the city, we know that there's

so much fun to be had in our parks this summer. That's New York City Parks Commissioner, Sudanahue, talking with WNYC's Sean Colson. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. Got a shout out our production team. It includes Sean Boutage, Amber Bruce, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Owen Kaplan,

Leora Noam Kravitz, Jared Marcel, and Wayne Schulmeister, with help from all of my wonderful colleagues in the WMYC Newsroom. Our show art was designed by the people at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrado.

I'm Jean-A-Pierre. Have a great holiday weekend. See you on Monday.