NYC NOW - October 16, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

NYC, Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, October 17th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Governor Kathy Hokel today plans to travel to Israel for what she calls a solidarity mission as the Israel-Hamas war intensifies. The governor says she will meet with diplomatic leaders

and communities in Israel devastated by the surprise attacks. New York State will now let you buy a bottle of liquor on Sundays. WNYC's John Campbell reports. For nearly a century, New York's blue laws prevented liquor stores from opening up before noon on Sundays. But over the weekend, Governor Hokel signed a bill into law that will let wine and liquor shops open up from 10 in the morning to 10 at night on Sundays. Another new law will let grocery stores and bodegas sell bar. beer and cider before 8 in the morning on Sundays, which used to be banned. Hockel says the legislation will help modernize New York's liquor laws, many of which date back to

prohibition. Authorities say a train hit and killed a teenager this morning in Queens. Police say witnesses told them the girl was standing on the platform at the Jackson Heights Roosevelt Avenue Station just before seven when she appeared to faint and fall into the tracks into the path of the oncoming train. Authorities have not yet reported her. identity and have not said if she was with an adult. Police in Summit, New Jersey, warning residents to stay vigilant after a rabid fox may have attacked three dogs. Today they say

they found and killed the fox likely responsible for those attacks. They're having it tested for rabies. 61 with clouds out there. Now, sub and sun as well. Slim chance of afternoon showers today, partly sunny and 62. Then tomorrow, mostly sunny and 63 as we warm up to the upper 60s by later in the week. Sixty one now. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. How many times have you been kept up at night in New York City due to that thumping base of a bar down the block or maybe been woken up by a jackhammer at a nearby construction site? The city council might be turning the volume down a bit if a package of legislation becomes law. Council member Keith Powers represents some of the loudest neighborhoods in Manhattan, including midtown and surrounding areas. He recently

released a report looking at noise pollution and joined us now to tell us more about how the proposed laws would turn down the decibels. Hey, Council Member Powers, can we start with one of the things that's getting a lot of attention here? These noise cameras, what are they? And what would they do? They are used in some other cities and believe it or not, New York City is piloting this right now. They are cameras just what they could sound like. They are cameras that are in different areas of the city. They will register if there is a vehicle that is. exceeding the decibel limit, the allowable decimal limit, and there may be an

enforcement action on that vehicle. So we're talking about some vehicles that have been modified, car to be far noisier than they should be. Those vehicles, which we hear from council members and communities are really hurting them late at night, that we have a better enforcement. If cities already

doing it, our bill would expand it and would codify it into law. You said before that those cameras work better in residential areas because there's not as much competing sound, so it's easier to pinpoint who's making a ruckus. So would those cameras not work as well in busier parts of the city? They can work in busy parts of the city. In fact, I believe there's one near the Midtown Tunnel in my district right as we speak, but it's a little harder when you get to like the Long Island Expressway or areas where there's so many vehicles,

so much noise, high speeds, and there may not even be a need for them as much in the other areas. But there are definitely stretches of the city where people are racing cars or speeding through are modifying their cars, terrorizing their neighbors, and we want to put it into that. Now, there are some concerns that the cameras may not be equally distributed through the city. Instead, be concentrated neighborhoods that, let's just be real, are not white. So if noise cameras are implemented citywide, are there any steps in place to make sure black and brown New Yorkers aren't disproportionately affected by them? Well, one of the things we've been discussing is to have some criteria or some requirement

that they're distributed equally throughout the city. The other complaint people have given is that Manhattan is going to be the only one to get them. And we don't want that to happen either. We want folks who feel like noise and noisy vehicles in this particular instance with their cameras is if that's a solution to their problem, we want that to be available to them. And we want to balance the needs of New Yorkers and the ways against having too much enforcement out there. But we think we can do that. And we'll look forward to it. Now, we mentioned the noise pollution report that your office conducted.

One of the things that that really blew our minds here is that you found that one third of calls to 311 in the first quarter of this year were for noise complaints. What else did you find in the report? Well, we saw a lot of different things that were interesting. One is we saw how many complaints are going up and how enforcement is going down or at least not increasing relative to how many complaints are coming in. We're seeing lots of all of those three-one complaints to be about noise. We're also seeing, you know, the NYPD do a lot of enforcement and also Department of Environmental Protection. So we're seeing, you know, looking at response times to see how fast they're able to close them out. We had a hearing today on these bills, the DEP reported that it might take a week to respond to some of these noise complaints.

And we have a lot of respect for them as an agency, but we want to see that be much quicker. For a lot of folks, if you're calling 3-1-1 on a Friday night, you're hoping that evening, that enforcing chills up, not a week later. Yeah. Now, New York City, of course, has a reputation, right, for being the city that never sleeps. And Mayor Adams himself has routinely touted the city's nightlife scene as one of the ways that we're going to be able to recover from the pandemic. So if the council is considering legislation that might, say, put a crimp to some of that nightlife activity or make it more difficult for those businesses, do you think that the mayor would support it or do you think that he wouldn't support it out of concern for those nightlife businesses? Sure. The bills that we introduced and administration was supportive of them. They might have some tweaks, but our overall support of the concept. And we think the city, that doesn't sleep means it's a vibrant city. It's open and suede. Subways keep running. Bars and restaurants are open. Not that you deserve to live in a neighborhood where it's noisy and you get disrupted. And that's where the difference lies. And when we talk about noisy vehicles in the outer parts of the city that are keeping their neighbors away, that's not what we're going. mean. And we talk about late night construction where things are rattling when they shouldn't be. That doesn't not what we mean. What we mean is we have a vibrant city. It's open late. It moves fast. But if you want to get a good night's leave, you should deserve that. And we should make sure our city policies have the right transparency, enforcement, and regulations in place that you can get that. That's city council member. Keith Powers. Councilmember, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from W. be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.