NYC NOW - May 9, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Instructors at the New School say they've set up New York City's first faculty-run pro-Palestinian encampment. Plus, elected officials are demanding answers after new city documents revealed construction of the jails that will replace Rikers Island is years behind schedule. And, WNYC’s Sean Carlson speaks with City Councilmember Joe Borelli about some Staten Islanders’ hope to secede from New York City despite costs revealed in a new report.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jinnay P.A. Instructors at the new schools say they've set up New York City's first faculty-run pro-Palestinian encampment. On Wednesday night, they set up about seven-tenths with phrases like Jews for Palestine and faculty against genocide in the lobby of the school's hub on Fifth Avenue. This comes after the NYPD cleared out a student-run encampment at the school about a week ago. Hallamalak is an assistant strategic design and management professor. Students are really happy that we are here, and, you know, the student movement obviously has inspired a lot of action.

New School faculties say their demands include the university's divestment from companies with Israeli ties. They also want disciplinary actions and charges against participants to be dropped and for police to be kept off the school's canvas. The new school has not yet responded to a request for comment. New City documents revealed construction of the jails that will replace Rikers Island is years behind schedule. Now elected officials are demanding answers. WMYSC's Matt Katz has the details. By law, the notorious Rikers jails must close in 2027. But documents posted this week in the city record show that contracts to build replacement jails in the Bronx for $3 billion, and in Queens for $4 billion won't be completed until about four years.

after that. The replacement jail in Brooklyn is also not scheduled to be finished on time. And that's not the only challenge to closing Rikers. There are now about 6,000 Rikers detainees, but the four new jails together can only hold just more than 4,000 detainees. City Council members want answers from Mayor Eric Adams. A spokesperson for Adams said the mayor will follow the law and remains committed to moving detainees to the new jails. Some residents and politicians on Staten Island have long beaten the drum for seceding from New York City. But would that make financial sense? We'll discuss that and more after the break. We know New York City is made up of five boroughs, but some Staten Islanders might say all boroughs

are not created equal. Sometimes referred to as the forgotten borough, some residents and politicians of the island are hoping to secede from New York City entirely. But a new report from the independent budget office crunched the numbers on what municipal independence would mean for Staten Island, and the findings may give pause to secessionists. City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli calls Staten Island home and has been a long-time booster of its independence. My colleague Sean Carlson talked with Borelli about the IBO's findings. Before we get into the actual report, make the case for Staten Island leaving the five boroughs and manifesting what we'll call municipal self-determination. Why do so many public officials from

Staten Island advocate leaving New York City? Well, because we're outvoted on the City Council. We're a city of a half million people who have no effective say in governing it. We are a strong mayor city with a mayor and an administration who historically has always been more focused on, I wouldn't even say just Manhattan, but more of the urban core of New York, which includes sort of the East River Corridor of Brooklyn and Queens as well. So the IBO puts out this report. It was commissioned by the City Council Finance Chair. And it says that secession would entail higher property taxes for residents, reduce city services, or both, meaning Staten Islanders would basically pay more for less. What do you make of those findings?

It doesn't tell us anything we didn't know. I mean, this was the sum and substance of what happened in 1993 when Staten Island considered this last. And this was sort of the same scary tagline of, okay, are you going to raise your property taxes and cut services? Staten Islanders voted 65% to make that self-determination plunge and do it on their own. Because unfortunately, I mean, even the IBO's report is fraught with some really questionable ways of measuring the city of Staten Island. I'll call it that their finances and their potential revenue expenses. You say the report doesn't really tell you anything new and that the city continually raises taxes and fees on Staten Islanders anyway. The report does say that losing city revenue would have an independent Staten Island scrambling to close budget deficits.

It needs to establish a company. Because every city not named New York City somehow manages to extract revenue from property taxes. Some also do income taxes like the city of New York. And every single one of them manages to get the grass cut in the parks. And why I said it was really not answering anything new, the questions that were left unanswered at the crux of the secession to be. which was how much debt the city of Staten Island would have to carry from the city of New York. That's the most important question. And that's the question that the IBO didn't answer.

Of course, if the city of Staten Island seceded, we'd have to either raise property taxes or cut services. But, you know, I got news for New York City residents. Some of our biggest lost leaders as city government don't have any footprint already on Staten Island. Number one, we wouldn't have a $4 billion migrant bill. We don't really have any migrant shelters. Nica housing. far smaller footprints than every other part of the city, every other borough. We would likely do what most other large cities in the country have done and use the RAD program

to divest ourselves of publicly held public housing and instead go to the model that HUD prefers. Then there's Health and Hospitals Corporation. We don't have a public hospital. We're the only borough without a public hospital. So there's a billion-dollar enterprise the city does where we would just have no bills for that. Then there's CUNY. We have the College of Staten Island. It's a senior college, meaning that primarily all its funding comes from the state.

So there are four examples right there where we just wouldn't have any percentage of city spending to have to even worry about on Staten Island. The IBO didn't consider that. Well, let me ask you this, council member. Do you see any benefit to remaining in New York City? To be honest, I mean, absent restoring power to borrow presidents or in community boards and giving sort of devalves control to communities to make their own decisions, then no, I don't really see much.

spending has has increased pretty significantly in Staten Island, in rather than New York City. And our control vis-a-vis the loss of the Board of Estimate, you know, a generation ago practically, has really taken away any voice we have. That's a good segue then to asking. Is there anything that City Hall could do to make residents feel heard and seen and tamped down calls for secession? This is not a political question in the sense that it involves the personalities that, currently occupy the mayor's office, the Comptroller's office, et cetera, for I think a lot of Staten Islanders, it's more about self-determination and the ability to elect people who actually have a say in the things that govern them.

That's council member Joe Borelli, talking with WNYC's Sean Carlson. For the past month, a woman has been roaming New York City wearing a sandwich board that reads Free Help. The person behind the sign is artist and filmmaker Bianca Gave her, and she's actually offering what's advertised. Free help, if you need it. It's a piece of performance art with a useful aspect. WMYC's Ryan Kylath has more.

A couple weeks ago, Mick Kieran Fox was walking in the village when he spotted someone in a fire truck red jumpsuit. You walked by with the free help sign, and I stopped and said, how can you help me? And you laughed and said, well, what do you need help with? And I was like, wait, this person's serious. And then we started talking, and you gave me your card. He's talking to the artist Bianca Gave her, whose card reads,

Free Help. This is an art project. I will actually help you for free. It has her contact info and some examples of things she can help with. Child care, emotional support, physical labor. One caveat? No sex. Our friend is a youthful 92, and he loves young people.

He just doesn't have enough of them in his life. So not anymore, buddy, not anymore. Kieran Fox is a personal care assistant for an elderly man named David Livingston, which is what he wanted help with. So Gave or took some time to hang out with him for a while. How does your body feel? Lack of mobility is something that probably hurts the most, and the lack of friends, lack of people.

New York is a good city to grow old in, but once you've seen most of it becomes difficult to explore. More. Gave her is an artist, and free help is a performance piece. She's not sure where the idea first came from. She's been thinking about it for years. I mean, I think I can be pretty selfish. I'm naturally not that helpful.

I think I need an excuse or reason. So I had been thinking about an art project for a long time where I could designate a period of time to just helping. Now she says she's walking around New York with her help goggles on. I walk down the street, like, who needs help, who needs help? And I feel like I am seeing the world differently now, and I am like cosplaying my most generous self. Giverr wears the same red jumpsuit and free help sandwich board every day. New York people are professional avoiders, and so it's hard to get their attention, but the sign is designed to get people's attention. The requests range from dire to frivolous. So far, she's helped a writer with writer's block, helped an undocumented

man from Ivory Coast, connect to resources, helped some teenagers learn a TikTok dance. Lots of home improvement projects. Relationship advice, emotional support, watching a mom's kids for a few minutes while she just takes a break and meditates nearby. I help someone open a bottle of wine. I've gotten that request multiple times, actually, so that's become part of my toolkit. One person who isn't terribly impressed with the project is Gaiver's dad, who thinks she should focus on helping around the house more when she visits. Yeah, my dad's still critical. He's like,

don't, it's not helping strangers. Help your own family, you know, and it's true. Like, since doing this project, I've been a messier roommate, a worse friend. Like, I've been even less helpful and generous than I normally am in my personal life, but I am helping a lot of strangers, so. She says offering help has been an amazing window into different worlds and people's lives. The hardest thing is when people, you know, need help with housing or if it's something that I would really like to help with, but I would maybe need a social work degree to know how to do that, you know, help me get out of a shelter.

And that's really hard because I can't always help with that, but I say, like, I can help you on a personal level. How can I make your day better? Like, let's start small. Free help lasts through mid-May. Gavers filming the project and plans to turn it into a feature documentary. You can often find her in Union Square, Just look for the bright red jumpsuit.

That's WNYC's Ryan Kylath. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.