Brian Harkin for The New York Times
Speaker Christine C. Quinn of the City Council gave her State of the
City speech on Thursday.
By KATE TAYLOR and DAVID W. CHEN
Christine C. Quinn, simultaneously offering an agenda for the City
Council and a preview of her mayoral campaign, proposed on Thursday to
crack down on landlords whose buildings are deteriorating, to make
kindergarten mandatory and to provide more job training for unemployed
New Yorkers.
Ms. Quinn, the Council speaker, touched in her annual State of the
City speech on many of the basic issues important to middle-class and
poor New Yorkers: education, employment opportunity, housing and
health care. She did not offer a sweeping analysis of the city's
needs, but instead focused on a few specific steps that might improve
conditions for those struggling to make ends meet.
At the beginning and end of her speech, Ms. Quinn invoked an image of
a city rooted in a halcyon, democratic past, exemplified by the Upper
East Side immigrant neighborhood where her father, Lawrence Quinn —
who introduced her on Thursday, as he often does — grew up during the
Depression, with laundry hanging out the windows and the "smell of
cabbage cooking down the hall."
"People who have never visited New York often see it as an
intimidating metropolis, cold and impersonal," she said. "But New
Yorkers know the truth. We are not a big city. We're a patchwork of
small towns."
Ms. Quinn, a Democrat who began as a housing activist but has moved to
the political center over the course of her career, described New
York's communities as facing "challenges," including chronic
unemployment and high-cost housing and health care.
To combat unemployment, she said the Council would start a pilot
jobs-training program and would use $10 million in federal tax credits
to finance loans to small businesses. And, she said, she will ask the
Council to pass legislation making it illegal to discriminate in
hiring because an applicant is unemployed.
Seeking to assist the large number of independent contractors and
self-employed people in the city, she said the Council would help the
Freelancers Union establish a clinic to provide low-cost health care
to its members. She also praised the New York Hotel and Motel Trades
Council and its powerful president, Peter Ward, for the free health
care clinics that it has for its members.
Ms. Quinn pledged to work toward a goal of "permanent affordability"
in development deals, noting that most affordable housing guarantees
by developers expire after 30 years.
Recalling the frustration that she said she felt as a housing
advocate, "watching landlords let a building deteriorate so that they
could push out tenants and sell," Ms. Quinn pledged that the Council
would pass a measure allowing the Department of Housing Preservation
and Development to require landlords to fix underlying conditions,
rather than simply make cosmetic fixes.
"Slumlords will have to spend real money and fix the real problem, or
we'll haul them into housing court," she said.
And, acknowledging that the city had not been a model landlord itself,
she pledged to increase the budget of the New York City Housing
Authority — by $10 million, according to a news release — to allow it
to hire residents to do repairs.
She vowed to work with the state to pass a bill allowing New York City
to make kindergarten mandatory because, she said, each year several
thousand 5-year-olds do not enroll in school. And she urged the State
Legislature to pass the Dream Act, which would allow tuition
assistance to illegal immigrants. That measure has also been endorsed
by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
In a reflection of the degree to which crime has ebbed as an issue in
much of the city, Ms. Quinn spoke only briefly about public safety,
pledging to create a program to work with residents to clean up
high-crime areas. She praised the police commissioner, Raymond W.
Kelly, and made no reference to the department's controversial
stop-and-frisk practice, which other mayoral candidates have
criticized as discriminatory against blacks and Hispanics. (Ms. Quinn
sent Mr. Kelly a letter this week expressing concerns about the
practice.)
The speech seemed to please the more liberal members of the Council,
some of whom have occasionally clashed with Ms. Quinn.
Letitia James, a Brooklyn council member from the Working Families
Party, said she was "pleasantly surprised" by the address.
"It was a touchdown," she said. "It hit all the progressive notes."
Ms. Quinn twice praised Mr. Bloomberg, who was not present, for his
advocacy on immigration and gun control issues. She is a close ally of
the mayor and a leading contender in the 2013 race to succeed him.
Three of Ms. Quinn's prospective rivals for the Democratic nomination
for mayor — Bill de Blasio, the public advocate; Scott M. Stringer,
the Manhattan borough president; and John C. Liu, the comptroller —
attended the speech, and all were polite in praising it, focusing on
her education proposals. Another candidate, William C. Thompson Jr.,
the former comptroller and 2009 Democratic mayoral candidate, did not
attend.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/nyregion/speaker-quinn-gives-state-of-the-city-address.html
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Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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