The Myth Of Bloomberg’s Management Expertise Reexamined: What Happens When Government Doesn’t Manage Its Programs

Perhaps Mayor Michael Bloomberg will actually be flying through the air tonight, “taking,” as the Times puts it, “a few free swings” at the notoriously mismanaged “Spiderman” musical, but such leaping stunts from Hilton balcony heights will be sharing headllines this week with stories about Bloomberg’s own mismanagement on the job.

Word is that the Bloomberg administration is busy making acknowledgments that it screwed up (and consequently needs to make some serious readjustments) when it delegated to the private sector complex technical projects for which the administration should have retained responsible for itself. In its ill-fated relinquishment of these responsibilities to others, the administration much vaunted for its management expertise lost control of the management, cost, and scope of essential work and tens of millions of dollars of fraud ensued. All of this is surfacing with announcements Thursday night that the administration is now shifting (contritely?) to a policy of “insourcing” from what it had been a policy of “outsourcing.”

Mythical Management Stories

Before we get started on this story it would be good to review the operative myths of Bloomberg management expertise that hang in the air, courtesy mostly of Mr. Bloomberg, together with a perpetually tractable city press corps. (As he is concurrently a media mogul himself, Bloomberg even literally owns a piece of it, forget about figurative ownership.)

Let’s start first with this reminder: When Bloomberg was campaigning to change the city charter so that hizzoner could be specially bestowed a unique third term, Noticing New York furnished articles debunking Bloomberg’s claim that he, in fact, had the self-purported unique financial expertise making it essential he remain in office through the financial crisis. (See: Friday, October 24, 2008, Bloomberg Qualified Financial Crisis Leader? He Can Learn Says Schumer!, Saturday, October 25, 2008, More Discredit of Bloomberg as Qualified Financial Crisis Leader.

The Source of Government Expertise: The Private Sector vs. Government Itself

Beyond that third-term-garnering canard, the promoted myth has always been that Bloomberg is administratively an exceptionally good mayor of the city because he comes from the business world and is therefore equipped with superior proven talents. But is that really that case? To ask the question is not to say that Bloomberg is a poor manager or that he, with his team, isn’t a reasonably good one. The fair question to ask is whether he is as good as he promotes himself to be.

And maybe something else needs to be questioned in this respect as well: It is very possible, perhaps even probable, that the talent requisite for running government is special enough in itself that one shouldn’t necessarily presume that talent imported from the private sector is superior. On this point, last spring when Bloomberg had a high-profile deputy mayor slot to fill, he filled it with someone who had government experience, not private sector experience when he appointed Stephen Goldsmith, a former mayor of Indianapolis, “to the powerful post of deputy mayor for operations.” Mr. Goldsmith’s career in government dates back to 1978 when he became a county prosecutor. And what of the qualifications of Ed Skyler, the man Bloomberg had in place in the powerful deputy mayor for operations post preceding Goldsmith? 37-year old Skyler “worked his way up to run much of city government as the youngest deputy mayor.”

Skeptics may wonder however, whether, Bloomberg’s pick of Goldsmith was principally because Goldsmith was “a management guru” according to the New York Times or, as the Times also noted, “an adviser to George W. Bush during his 2000 campaign for president.”

Bloomberg’s Hires From the Government Sector

Even when Bloomberg hires people in his `private-sector' incarnation he has shown a predilection for hiring people from government, the first most notable example being when Bloomberg hired (at Bloomberg, L.P.) his apparently top and apparently most trusted aide, Patti Harris, now the city’s First Deputy Mayor while continuing to fulfill private sector duties for Bloomberg. That predilection continues to show up as Bloomberg hires at Bloomberg L.P. people exiting his City Hal administration, an example being Former Deputy Mayor for Development Daniel Doctoroff (although even at Bloomberg, L.P. Doctoroff has been somehow permitted and utilized to play a continuing role in city development projects.)

Ms. Harris’ paramount role in Bloomberg’s life, whether she has been pay-checked on the private-sector or City Hall government side, is as his top political adviser and strategist. Hired before Bloomberg announced his interest in politics Harris, with her previous City Hall experience under Koch, was key to Bloomberg’s first run for mayor wherein he successfully captured that office. Ergo, we might note that in Harris, like new Deputy Mayor of Operations Goldsmith, Bloomberg has hired someone capable of advising him on the pursuit of the next political office he might have his eye on.

Based on Bloomberg’s pre-government curriculum vitae the expertise we could expect Bloomberg might have brought to government, besides general private sector management expertise, would be salesmanship expertise. Perhaps, more specifically, like Cathie Black, the woman Bloomberg recently hired as Schools Chancellor for her private sector expertise, media-company salesmanship expertise. The other kind of expertise we might expect from Bloomberg’s CV (and we will get back to this in a moment) is computer systems development expertise.

Salesmanship Expertise

Black came up through the advertising sales side of the magazine business. Like Bloomberg, Cathie Black puts some premium focus on self promotion. In a New York Magazine cover story profile of Black (The Very Public Schooling of Cathie Black -“Just Smile” Mayor Bloomberg hired magazine executive Cathie Black as schools chancellor to sell his educational philosophy to the public. But she’s having a hard enough time selling herself, Feb 6, 2011) Chris Smith (who also wrote the excellent Mr. Ratner’s Neighborhood, Aug 7, 2006) provided some assessments of Black’s management skills and how she got to whatever pinnacles she achieved:

Some corporate executives and former colleagues praise Black’s ability to run a tight ship, while others say her managerial talents are at best ordinary. “I never thought of her as a brilliant manager,” says a magazine editor who worked with Black for years. “I thought of her as a competent person. She was always kind of a mystery to me, because she kept getting big jobs and seemed to do all right with them, but it was never quite clear how that happened.”

Colleagues, however, sometimes wondered whether Black’s energies were devoted to promoting her magazines or herself. “She would be in her office all day, and much of her time was spent writing notes: ‘Dear Dr. Kissinger, what a pleasure it was to sit next to you at dinner last night,’?” remembers an advertising associate.

* * * *

One guest, a longtime colleague of Black’s, was reminded of a different setting. “I remember going into her home library, and it’s all these books: Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School. All these self-help business books, hundreds of them: ‘How to do the direct eye contact,’ ‘How to learn how to shake a hand,’ ‘How to learn to tell people you’re listening.’ All these tricks!” She was less of a superstar manager, in this view, than a gifted saleswoman of magazine ads—and herself.

Computer Systems Development Expertise

The core of the Bloomberg, L.P. business, the success from which it was all built, is the computer system that was put together to deliver financial data that became the Bloomberg terminal business (presenting huge conflict of interest with Bloomberg’s role as mayor) and then ultimately the larger (perhaps itself money-losing) Bloomberg media empire.

One might therefore presuppose that Bloomberg knows how to manage the development of sophisticated and complex computer systems. Does he?

The 411 on 311

Almost everyone, whether they are a Bloomberg detractor or not, considers that one of the greatest successes of the Bloomberg administration was its introduction of the 311 complaint system. In fact, Bloomberg himself promotes it as an important success and Bloomberg was around for a photo-op to personally answer the system’s 100 Millionth Call. (See: Bloomberg Answers 311 For 100 Millionth Call, by Jaya Saxena, May 10, 2010.)

One place where Bloomberg promotes his 311 system accomplishment is on his self-adulatory MikeBloomberg.com, a site almost too ludicrous to be believed and which we will have to spend a moment considering. The site devotes a page with links to how the 311 system won a Digital Government Achievement Award in 2010.

That particular page is bylined “NYC.gov,” whatever that means. Which brings us to the our next point for consideration.

Digression on the Self Adulation of Mike.com, Mike.gov, Mike.org

Though it is in fact only one url site, MikeBloomberg.com is set up to look as if Bloomberg has multiple operative sites: “Mike.com” representing Mike as a businessman, “Mike.org” representing Mike as a philanthropist, and “Mike.gov” representing Mike as public servant (i.e. mayor). Up top there are buttons that bring up a separately masthead design for each of Mike’s purported incarnations. In so doing, Bloomberg actively glories in what makes many of us very uncomfortable, that Bloomberg is wearing too many hats and that there are insufficient protections to keep these roles safely separate.

As per prior Noticing New York coverage the concept of Bloomberg as philanthropist needs to be carefully examined.

The mastheads just mentioned are so precious I am producing them below ad seriatim, preserved for posterity. On a roll, Bloomberg actually has six buttons producing various mastheads. The other three are: “Independence” (essentially a stand-in for the "No-Labels" party Bloomberg likely wants to run on and may have bankrolled to start), “One of 2010's top philanthropists” (that makes two philanthropy mastheads, and an OpEd praising labor with a steel union hard hat.

Mike.gov (Mike as Public Servant, i.e. "Mayor")

Mike.com (Mike as a Businessman)

Mike.org (Mike as a Philanthropist)

“Independence” (Watch for the New No Labels Party)

“One of 2010's top philanthropists”

OpEd praising labor, with a ironworkers union hard hat.

This is not to mention the Run Mike Run site already actively promoting a Bloomberg run for president.

Back to the 411 on 311

The 311 system is a commendable achievement but if you think about it, given the rapid advances in computers that had occurred by the time Bloomberg took office (January 1, 2002) it was a computer system whose time had inevitably come.

Neither Bloomberg nor New York invented the 311 system. The actual history on this?:

In 1999, Chicago created a “311” call center, which takes citizen complaints and refers them to the appropriate department for resolution.

* * * *

New York, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Dallas and other cities quickly copied Chicago. (For a map of the cities currently using 311 click here.)

(See: Customer Service & the 311 Transformation- and BTW if you click on the link you will see how widely spread the system is to other lower-echelon cities.)

As the above article indicates the cutting edge matter to consider in this area is not now whether these 311 systems are widely spread throughout the country, but that the cities using them, (including New York) have not been advancing their development for the full range of capabilities that are possible.

Is Mike Good With Computer System Development?

This brings us to the stories that concerned us when we started off at the beginning of this post: How good is Bloomberg at managing the development of sophisticated computer systems? Of all conceivable places, this is where the Bloomberg administration seriously fell down on the job with a spectacularly embarrassing management failure. This is why the administration is now announcing that it will be switching to a policy of “insourcing” from “outsourcing.”

At the end of last year it came out that the city was the victim of a “$80 million information technology fraud scheme involving development of the CityTime project, “an automated system devised to streamline employee timekeeping.” The New York Times wrote that the ongoing federal investigation was:

casting a pall over an initiative that the mayor had championed as a hallmark of efficient, computerized management, the case does little to help the opinion of the administration’s outsourcing practices.

(See: Director of City Agency at Center of Fraud Case Is Suspended, by David W. Chen and John Eligon, December 16, 2010.)

Here is more from that story:

Mark Mazer, a consultant, orchestrated the scheme, which got under way in 2005. He awarded contracts to people he had ties to, and took nearly $25 million in kickbacks, prosecutors said. Mr. Mazer, his colleague Scott Berger and the men whose companies he directed business toward, Dmitry Aronshtein and Victor Natanzon, were charged with filing fraudulent time sheets for consulting work. Mr. Mazer’s wife, Svetlana, and his mother, Larisa Medzon, were also arrested, accused of money laundering by funneling the kickbacks through a series of shell companies.

It is ironic that a fraud involving a system to reliably monitor city employee attendance was perpetrated in part with the submission of false time sheets.

Here, from the Times site, is an assessment of the performance of the Mayor’s Office that comes with help from a FOILed letter from within the administration itself:

The indictment raises questions of the city’s oversight of the CityTime project, and how the Office of Payroll Administration lost control of the project under the office’s executive director, Joel Bondy. Mr. Bondy has been suspended without pay by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Comptroller John C. Liu.

* * * *

Although he was a subcontractor, Mr. Mazer held an informal position of authority in the city’s payroll administration office, with . . . the power to shape and approve contracts and work orders, the authorities said.

Some city officials had huge concerns as far back as 2003 about the integrity of the project, whose costs have ballooned by hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a scathing letter made available in December 2010 through a state Freedom of Information Law request, the city official in charge of overseeing the project, known as CityTime, accused the company that designed CityTime, SAIC, of repeatedly delaying the project in order to get paid more, failing to hew to basic industry standards and rewriting contracts on its own. The official even predicted, sarcastically, that SAIC would try, in a year’s time, to charge the city “8,000 hours” for shoddy work.

The letter, dated Feb. 19, 2003, offers a devastating critique of the company, and raises questions about the city monitors of the project — the mayor’s and comptroller’s offices. And the consultants hired to ensure quality control, it appears, were doing very little of it.

The Times story goes on. Can one simply just expect “a certain level of professionalism and compliance with acceptable industry standard practices” when outsourcing huge sophisticated projects to private sector vendors? Hmm. We read this:

In the letter, Richard R. Valcich, executive director of the city’s Office of Payroll Administration, assailed SAIC, a giant engineering company based in McLean, Va., for conducting numerous reviews without approval from the city, other than to “further delay the project and, of course, increase SAIC’s costs.” Mr. Valcich also said “a certain level of professionalism and compliance with acceptable industry standard practices is expected of a contractor for the execution of a $100 million-plus project.”

(See: CityTime, Dec. 21, 2010.)

This Weeks’ Headlines About Bloomberg Administration Policy Change

It may seem unfair (and not conducive to governmental transparency) to jump on the Bloomberg administration just as it is admitting its own mistakes this week, but these things are important to understand and this is a window into serious questions about how governments should manage their important projects. Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith (the fellow discussed above) was the administration representative tagged with getting the word out with both a press conference and a Daily News OpEd piece. (Daily News OpEd: To tighten belts, let's insource: Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith says city workers can do more, by Stephen Goldsmith, Thursday, March 24th 2011.)

The basic ideas Goldsmith was getting out were in his Daily New OpEd:

I have concluded that much of the solution lies not in more outsourcing to the private sector, but rather in employing city workers to perform more of our IT work. So in the weeks and months ahead, we will decisively shift more work from consultants outside government to our talented public employees. This will save taxpayers millions of dollars a year.

* * *

And we are going to start challenging all components of technology contracts, and ensure that the city does not pay a markup to a consultant for work we could just as well do internally.

* * *

Insourcing the management of projects and important decisions about scope and cost will allow us to save taxpayer dollars, enhance service delivery and ensure that IT vendor resources throughout the city are delivering on time and on-budget for New Yorkers.

According to Crain’s coverage of the press conference (noting it was “something of an about-face” for the administration) Goldsmith’s expression of promised savings at the press conference was 100-fold of what he promised in the OpEd:

“I think the eventual savings will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr. Goldsmith told reporters at City Hall. No formal estimate of the savings has been calculated, but “there are some folks we're paying contractors' [higher] rates to that we could easily get done on our side.”

And Goldsmith said:

the change promises not just to save money but to reduce fraud. “Whenever you have a vendor, you have to have a high-quality city employee supervising the vendor,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “This level has caused us not only to pay more, but has caused us to lose too much control.”

City Comptroller John Liu also weighed in:

“Comptroller Liu has consistently expressed his concern that too many projects were spiraling out of control and that privatization and outsourcing are not a panacea,” said Mike Loughran, a spokesman for the comptroller. “We think this newfound understanding by City Hall will be in the best interest of New Yorkers.”

At 7:04 that night WNYC had on the air a franker Goldsmith quote with an interesting ring to it (not available on the web):

I think the bigger problem is they become the City. Right? We lose control of the scope and we lose control of the price and we need to bring more of the management on our side of the table.

Crains went back a year pre-scandal for this prescient quote from the union side:

Last year, Henry Garrido, an assistant associate director at District Council 37, said, “They continue to hire contractors left and right to do a lot of the work that could be done in-house.”

WNYC had this in the above quoted report:

Union leaders are praising the decision. District Council 37 president Lillian Roberts calls it a "beginning."

[Roberts says the City currently has 17 thousand contracts worth $10 billion dollars.]

The same night, WNYC’s Bob Hennelly reported on his interview with Goldsmith on the subject in its Financial 411 noting that the CityTime payroll program was supposed to cost $63 million but ballooned to more than $700 million: Financial 411: Insourcing Vs. Outsourcing, Thursday, March 24, 2011.



Questioning an Excuse IFF-Muss-ly

If you listen to the Hennelly report you will hear him disparaging the idea of the city attempting to maintain quality assurance by “having a contractor on top of a contractor to make sure the contractor was doing the job.”

Apparently Goldsmith when talking with Hennelly slipped him an excuse for the problems. In Hennelly’s words:

What happened here is that, you know, the department of information telecommunications and technology was only founded in 1994. That’s not a long time in terms of these huge contracts so just in the last few years it really has gotten to the place where it has technological capabilities inside the city workforce that can, indeed, ride herd on these outside contractors.

I am not sure that is exactly true. Back in the 70's a close friend of mine was involved in setting up the city’s computerized “Integrated Financial Management System” (IFMS- pronounced “IFF-Muss”) which was a fairly sophisticated computerized system designed to restore management controls after the state and city fiscal crisis. In theory this “mastermind of the City of New York” . . “that makes Hal, the computer in the film ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' look like a pocket calculator” should have supplied Bloomberg and cohorts with resources to avoid the rampant out-of-control fraud of the CityTime scandal.

Applied to Development in New York City

Do you want to know what was most on my Noticing New York mind the entire time I was considering all this information about the ill-advised course taken with the Bloomberg administration’s outsourcing of these sophisticated and technically complex projects? It’s the penchant of the Bloomberg administration to do essentially the same thing when, by policy, it hands over large swaths of the city like Atlantic Yards, Willets Point, Columbia's West Harlem takeover, and Hudson Yards, to private developers (or paves the way for the leveling of Coney Island), essentially subcontracting the public’s warfare to those developers and just hoping for the best. It is the same thing: Government walking away from the job that only government can really do well.

Surely, with these subcontracted handouts to the private sector, the public similarly loses money, but this time billions instead of hundreds of millions. Similarly, just as Deputy Mayor Goldsmith says: “the bigger problem is they become the City. Right? We lose control of the scope and we lose control of the price and we need to bring more of the management on our side of the table.” And if this loss of control doesn’t lead to what is technically “fraud” it leads to essentially the same kind of losses for the public as the unleashed developers ultimately deliver mega-messes that differ significantly in quality, scope, and nature from what they promised on day one.

(This is one of two sister Noticing New York articles being posted simultaneously on the subject of what happens when government neglects its duty to manage the work of government. To read the sister article, click here.)

Noticing New York’s Testimony at Tonight’s Charter Revision Commission Hearing on the Subject of Term Limits

This post has been updated as of May 26, 2010. See the concluding section.

Below is the Noticing New York testimony we delivered tonight at the New York City Charter Revision Commission’s hearing on the subject of the term limits issue (i.e. reinstating at least the mayoral term limits that were repealed to give Bloomberg his third term). We were the second member of the public to speak after the panel of three experts spoke. We were, we think, the only speaker who was cut off by the Commission’s chair, Matthew Goldstein. Chair Goldstein cut us off saying that testimony we were in the process of giving was not pertinent to term limits. Nevertheless, we steadfastly persevered through to completion even if we were thrown off our stride with that interruption plus consciousness of the three-minute time clock ticking down.

We will let our Noticing New York readers be the judge of whether our testimony is directly pertinent to the subject of term limits. We thought we were very careful to make it so. To be fair, after the hearing, we asked Chair Goldstein what we were saying that he thought didn’t pertain to topic of term limits. He said that it was when we had talked about how consideration of the issue of term limits should not be conjoined with the issues of so-called “nonpartisan elections” and the proposed abolition of the Public Advocates office, but when we pointed out that Public Advocate Bill de Blasio (whom he had not cut off) made the same points in his testimony directly following ours, Chair Goldstein acknowledged the relationship and that he had been learning by listening to all the presentations.

Here then is our Noticing New York testimony. (Does it sound pertinent?):

* * * *

May 25, 2010

New York City Charter Revision Commission
2 Lafayette Street, Rm 1414
New York, NY 10007

Re: May 25, 2010- Hearing on “TERM LIMITS ISSUE FORUM”

Dear New York City Charter Revision Commission:

This comment is being offered in the name of Noticing New York, an independent entity that pays close attention to the politics and governance issues associated with New York City development.

1. Don’t make the work of this commission the height of irony. The hallmark of the Bloomberg administration has been the accretion of unchecked power in Mayor Bloomberg as a single all-too-powerful individual. (One important unprecedented example: Unchecked by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, Mayor Bloomberg did personal Bloomberg L.P. business with almost all of the same companies the city does business with to become the city’s richest individual while in office, his wealth increasing more than ten times from the time he began pursuing politics openly in 1997.)

2. What do we mean by “irony”? We mean don’t take something the public definitely favors, reimplementation of the two term limit for mayoral office to reverse the mayor’s most infamous power grab, and attempt to couple it with the reverse, something the public definitely doesn’t want; new Bloomberg grabs at power.

3. The following are additional grabs at power by Bloomberg that should not be conjoined with the reimplementation of term limits:

a. So-called “nonpartisan elections.” This was previously proposed by Bloomberg and roundly rejected by the voters in 2003. So-called “nonpartisan elections” favor the wealthy and the personally powerful and could assist Bloomberg in his pursuit of presidential office in 2012.

b. Abolition of the Public Advocates office. The Public Advocates office is a sorely needed check upon the mayor.

4. Rather than using the public’s antagonism to Bloomberg’s overturn of term limits in a ruse to confer even greater power upon Bloomberg, we urge the commission to focus only on limiting the power of individuals who become mayor by restoring term limits for that office.

5. We suggest though that like the current federal system which limits the terms for president but not the members of the federal Congress, only the mayor should be term limited. Among other things this would help address the imbalance of power between the mayor and the City Council.

6. The only thing we think that would be fair to consider in conjunction with term limits is the further general check and balance on the power of incumbents, both the mayor and the members of the City Council included, that can be achieved through implementing what is known sometimes as “instant runoff elections” and sometimes as “alternative voting.” Such a change will generate challengers and assist them by making all their voices more important and will make it easier to depose incumbents. That system can be implemented while retaining party primaries and would be cheaper than Bloomberg’s idea for “nonpartisan elections” which involve multiple elections just for the purpose of runoffs which under alternative voting would become entirely unnecessary.

7. We note another reason not to term limit the City Council: Restoring two term limits to the City Council in the next (or a future) election could result in a further weakening of the City Council by forcing a one-time huge turnover in the City Council when the terms of nearly all members of the City Council thereby expire simultaneously.

Sincerely,

Michael D. D. White

* * * *

May 26, 2010 Update:

The first public speaker, the one before us, read aloud the following Clyde Haberman column from yesterday’s New York Times, savaging the original “Bloomberg-Quinn maneuvering” that pushed term limits through and questioning the commission’s independence from Bloomberg: Like It or Not, the Issue of Term Limits Is Back, May 24, 2010. Some sample paragraphs are below:

Yes, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, the issue of term limits for city officials is on the agenda again. It means that so, too, is the stain created when the mayor and the City Council subverted voters’ will to keep themselves in office for years more.

* * *
Like the man who came to dinner, the term limits issue doesn’t go away. It is now in the hands of the Charter Revision Commission, which has several tasks, one of which is to convince skeptical New Yorkers that it is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Mr. Bloomberg.

* * *

Whatever the commissioners decide, they will act in the shadow of the 2008 Bloomberg-Quinn maneuvering. “How they’re going to look at it is influenced by what happened,” said Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., who in 1989 led a charter commission that brought about the most far-reaching revisions of modern times.

As already noted, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio took the same position that we did: That this Commission should focus only on the restoration of the term limits Bloomberg overrode and that consideration of any other possible changes should wait and be dealt with separately by another commission after 2012. John Keefe, a representative speaking on behalf of Assemblyman James Brennan’s office, went further: He said that because the commission had been convened to implement a pre-agreed-upon a “ cynical and opportunistic deal” between billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Ron Lauder (to repeal and then restore term limits after Bloomberg's election to a third term), that the commission should take no action at all as none could be considered legitimate. Assemblyman Brennan has introduced several pieces of legislation on the state level to regulate City Charter revision which would make it much less of a billionaire's plaything. (See: October 8, 2008, Lauder and Bloomberg Strike a Deal, By Michael Barbaro and Sewell Chan. )

A representative speaking for Citizens Union took a position in line with Noticing New York's, that the two-term limit should be restored only for the office of mayor not for the members of the City Council. That was in line with some of the testimony offered by the testifying experts at the beginning of the hearing, one of whom noted that the council (and legislators in general) are in balance-of-power terms faced with the problem of "collective action" which should probably be the distinction that governs who should be term limited and should not. We should note that in contradistinction to Citizens Union we would be happy if the City Council were not term limited at all, rather than the current three-term cap.

City Councilman G. Oliver Koppell was in line with us, expressing concern that the executive (the mayor) has been strengthened relative to the City Council and observed that term limits applying to both the mayor and the City Council served to accentuate relative strengthening. Speaking solicitously to the commission he ventured that he thought the "die had not been cast" in terms of what the commission would do and that the actions they would take were not "foreordained."

City Councilman Jumaane D. Williams sounded more skeptical, echoing one of the concerns we were expressing when we were cut off by Chair Goldstein, when he said that specter of "nonpartisan elections" was the "doppelganger in the room that nobody is talking about."

New York Civic's Henry Stern spoke in favor of term limits, equating them with practices in ancient Greece and Rome and also said that he didn't agree with previous speakers (presumable just Noticing New York's testimony) because he thought Bloomberg had done a good job. (Even we didn't actually say Bloomberg gad done a bad job- though that is certainly to be argued- we only spoke about Bloomberg's excessive power and the way that he has used it, among other things acquiring huge wealth while in office that has in turn been used to help keep him in office.)

We note that no speaker other than our Noticing New York-selves spoke about the possibility of “instant runoff elections” aka “alternative voting.” Nevertheless, the experts of the evening as well as others spoke extensively about the desirability of circumscribing the disproportionate power that incumbents have in elections and their associated lack of accountability. It was also discussed how term limits does not solve the accountability problem and may actually accentuate it some regard. Alternative voting addresses both these problems. It helps circumscribe the power of incumbents in elections and simultaneously works to make them more accountable.

Toward the end of the evening Chair Goldstien offered the observation for the record that he thought there had been the "most ubiquitous outreach of any charter commission" and that the outreach had even been "statewide." This was contrary to other characterizations that the commission has been operating under the radar and anecdotes during the evening, much of it from the commissioners themselves, that people were confusing the commission's work with bus rentals and the issue of charter schools in the New York City school system.

We found ourselves unsettled by the technology associated with the evening in two ways. The evening was supposedly occurring simultaneously over the internet and through Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter? Really? At one point Chair Goldstein read three comments submitted via the commission's website. It seemed that this was a perfect opportunity for cherrypicking and the comments read did not disabuse us of this suspicion. The second thing was this. One of the commissioners suggested that material provided by the evening's experts should be posted on the commission's website. Chairman Goldstein said this could be done, commenting that the commission's website was "organic," that "it sheds as well as gains." That sounds like a warning to the wise: If you find anything interesting on the website you better download it today because it might not be there tomorrow!

For other takes on the evening see:

The City Pragmatist: Charter Revision Focuses on Term Limits, May 26, 2010

The Daily News: May 26, 2010, Term Limits Will Be On November Ballot; Maybe Nonpartisan Elections? By Adam Lisberg. Here is the Daily News on the subject of whether the commission will conjoin “nonpartisan elections” with a restoration term limits by putting “nonpartisan elections” on the November’s ballot together with term limits:

As the commission met last night, the DN City Hall Bureau's Erin Einhorn followed Bloomberg to a reception for the city Independence Party, where he said again he's not going to tell the commission what to do -- but he hopes they'll put it on the ballot.

Video of Friday’s Term Limits Hearing Commemoration Event

Video is now available of last Friday’s term limits hearing commemoration event at which we spoke. We and the New York Times both wrote about the event and our remarks. (See: Sunday, October 18, 2009, Challenging Bloomberg Unlimited.)

For the video click here.

Really Wylde? New NY Federal Reserve Bank Director Supported Major NYC Net Loss ($220 Million) Megadevelopment

Yes: Really Wylde: New NY Federal Reserve Bank Director Supported Major NYC Net Loss ($220 Million) Megadevelopment Featuring Mega-Developer Giveaways
(Picture of Kathy Wylde from Crain’s article)

Before even safely reaching the one-year anniversary of Wall Street’s biggest meltdown since the Depression, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has appointed to its board of directors a new Director, Kathy Wylde, whose most high-profile recent actions have been to go out of her way to promote Atlantic Yards, the megadevelopment on track to be one of New York’s most conspicuous money-losing failures. (See the July 27, 2009 story in Crain’s.)

Wylde Support of Bloomberg Term Limits Overturn

Ms. Wilde has been president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City for some time and was prominently in the news in the (pre-fiscal crisis) summer of 2008 as a supporter amongst the inner business circle strategizing for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s overturn of term limits to get a surprise third term. Wylde effused that the business world was “primed” to help him. (See: Bigs Back Law Change to Keep Mike, By Angela Montefinise, July 27, 2008.) The Bloomberg strategy using the City Council to overturn term limits involved consciously lying in wait to rush through the override at the last minute so as to thereby ensure that a voter referendum would be side-stepped. (New York City voters had already voted in favor of term limits twice.)

Wylde Support of Economic Mega-Losses for NYC

A spectacularly flawed project in almost all respects, New York City’s Independent Budget Office has concluded that the Atlantic Yards arena, the only part of the Atlantic Yards project currently designed or for which any kind of enforceable, documented deal exists will be a net money loser for the city to the tune of $220 million($39.5 million in direct losses and $180.5 million in opportunity losses). The megadevelopment’s guaranteed inadequacies flow principally from the fact that it was set up and concocted by the developer, Forest City Ratner, as a subsidy-infusion system intended to deliver maximum benefit to the developer at the expense of the public. The IBO has conservatively calculated that on the arena alone the city will be giving the developer$726 million in no-bid giveaways.

The as yet undesigned rest of the megadevelopment has been formulated as a multi-decade no-obligation developer monopoly on a swath of valuable Brooklyn real estate that will allow the developer to blackmail the public into deeper subsidies, redoubling its net losses. In fact, just this week the developer caused New York Governor Paterson’s Empire State Development Corporation to casually shake the advance of another $25 million out of its sleeve. (See: Thursday, September 17, 2009, Noticing New York Comment on and at Today’s ESDC Board Meeting.) Since the project is unlikely ever to return the accelerated advance of that money, this extra $25 million could well bring the calculated net loss on the project up from $220 million to $245 million.

Wylde Support of Degeneration and Degradation

The mega-project, containing the seeds for its own demise from the get-go, has been foundering embarrassingly for the five years since it was proposed. The developer could quite likely go under financially. There have thus been ample and repeated opportunities for responsible organizations to call for pulling the plug on the degenerating deal. We have written before about how Ms. Wylde has, instead, errantly recommitted her support to it no matter how far it degrades. (See: Monday, July 6, 2009, Wylde Ideas, Making For a Wrong Partnership.) Most recently, despite a change in the economic environment which should have made it possible to get a much better deal for the public, Ms. Wylde endorsed a far worse one on behalf of the Partnership (see the article just linked to) where hundreds of millions of extra giveaways are being lavished on the project without quid pro quo.

Wylde Support of Uneconomic Eminent Domain Abuse

As we wrote, Ms. Wylde’s misguided support of this uneconomic megadevelopment, (and a prime reason it is uneconomic) is tied in with her misinformed support of eminent domain abuse in principle as well as specifically for Atlantic Yards. Eminent domain is used abusively to counter the natural beneficially creative forces of the economy. It, instead, favors politically connected would-be mega-developers. In New York State, eminent domain has become an industry, propelled and driven by the development entities benefiting from the abuse. (See: Columbia Pulls a Kelo, By Michael White, December 20, 2007.) It is used as a tool to create an economic shut-out of economic competitors.* The wealthy and connected are favored at the expense of the small businessman or property owner. For instance, eminent domain is used against small owners and businesses that are too economically vital to be bought out but it is never used, even when it might make sense against anyone who is in the big developers club. Many of those developers (like the failing Ratner) are purely subsidy collectors incapable of surviving in a competitive unsubsidized environment or one where they must compete for subsidy.

(* We should digress to note that there is a dangerous and escalating predilection of our national economy to engage in disingenuous practices that are unfairly shutting out the small guy in favor of big politically-manipulating corporations. That is what such authors as David Cay Johnston are writing about in books like his Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill).)

Ms. Wylde supports the uneconomic abuse of eminent domain while denying its actual economic costs. Ironically, eminent domain proponent Wylde is taking her place on the Federal Reserve board alongside an infamous eminent domain abuser Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University. One of the three highest paid presidents at a private university ($1.4 million annual compensation package), Mr. Bollinger has spearheaded Columbia’s usurpation of West Harlem using eminent domain to gain a multi-decade monopoly shut-out on the real estate there, very much like Atlantic Yards.

(Picture of Mr. Bollinger from Columbia’s website.)

Federal Reserve’s Wyldely Incompatible Role of Protecting the Soundness of the Economy and the Public as Consumer

Why is all this important to Ms. Wylde’s appointment to the Federal Reserve Board? What is the Federal Reserve supposed to do? It is supposed to “foster the safety, soundness and vitality of our economic and financial systems.” The Federal Reserve also has consumer protection responsibilities which Congress is now debating taking away. It is hardly an analogy to say that in the case of Atlantic Yards the public is the consumer and it is getting a pretty raw deal because of people like Kathy Wylde who are willing to defend the indefensible. (Pursuing of favors from political patrons like Bloomberg?) The Federal Reserve has also been the focus of attention recently as analysts ask whether its formulation and administration of the hundreds of billions in economic bailout money was overly focused on Wall Street, again shutting out the possibility of real benefit to the larger economy of smaller business on Main Street. For just one recent starter summary article on this subject, see Tenacious G, Inside Goldman Sachs, America’s most successful, cynical, envied, despised, and (in its view, anyway) misunderstood engine of capitalism. By Joe Hagan, Published Jul 26, 2009.

The New York Federal Reserve is the largest and most powerful of the 12 regional reserve banks.

So, if you are wondering about what kind of biases might govern the Federal Reserve in conducting federal policy to protect the public and ensure soundness of the economy, just remember that two of its board members who are there to set policy and direction are Atlantic Yards, Bloomberg and eminent domain supporter Kathy Wylde and eminent domain abuser Lee Bollinger from Columbia.

And there is this. According to Crain’s:

The New York Fed also has the ear of Washington, D.C.—U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was president of the New York Fed until his White House appointment.

Worried?

The Jane Jacobs Way for Coney Island

We have been writing a lot about Coney Island recently. Because of a proposed city rezoning plan, Coney’s fate hangs in the balance. (Your City Council members need to be contacted.) And we have also been keeping up with our Jane Jacobs Report Card Atlantic Yards posts. Monday morning Coney Island and Jane Jacobs came together in an event in which we participated.

“Jane Jacobs Way”

The city picked Monday to dedicate and rename a portion of Hudson Street where she lived “Jane Jacobs Way.” This produced the odd spectacle of politicians, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn praising community activists and protestors who fight what used to be thought of as Robert Moses-style development, development that is oblivious to communities, their input and their wisdom about their own neighborhoods. These days that style of development is more apt to be thought of as Bloombergian. The event also produced protesters, mainly “an army Janes,” protesters who were dressed up as Jane Jacobs and asking that the city plan for Coney Island be fixed. We were one of that group; we wore Jane Jacobs glasses but not a wig.

Jane Jacobs and Coney
Two YouTube videos of the event are available. Save Coney Island masterminded the army of Janes and their video is available at their site: Save Coney Island Activists Rally Support at Jane Jacobs Ceremony. In addition, earlier in the day Save Coney Island released a statement from Jane Jacobs’s son, Ned Jacobs, critical of the city plan, saying in part.

While I cannot speak on behalf of my mother, the late Jane Jacobs, or predict what she would think about particular proposals today, in my view, this rezoning plan for Coney Island does not appear to reflect the urban values and planning principles she espoused. These include sensitivity and integration with the scale, character and performance of existing neighborhoods and their established uses; the need to retain aged but serviceable buildings for the sake of economic diversity and continuity, as well as for their history and charm; the benefits of planning and redevelopment based on organic, iterative change, and the inherent dangers of top-down urban renewal-type schemes, propelled by “cataclysmic money.”

(See: As N.Y. Honors Jane Jacobs, Her Son Is ‘Appalled’ at Coney Island Rezoning Plan.)

Jacobs Speaks About Bloombergian Development Directly to Bloomberg

Jane Jacobs is not around to speak on her own behalf anymore, but she has spoken often about New York. The last occasion we are aware of before her death in April of 2006 was when she wrote an April 15, 2005 letter to Mayor Bloomberg recommending the community plan alternative to the city’s proposed Williamsburg rezoning. Introducing herself as “a student of cities, interested in learning why some cities persist in prospering while others persistently decline” Ms. Jacobs wrote:

Let's think first about revitalization successes; they are great and good teachers. They don't result from gigantic plans and show-off projects, in New York or in other cities either. They build up gradually and authentically from diverse human communities; successful city revitalization builds itself on these community foundations, as the community-devised plan 197a does.

(See: Letter to Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council, by Jane Jacobs.)

That is obviously consistent with what her son Ned wrote and could easily apply directly to Coney or to many other large Bloombergian meg-endeavors like Atlantic Yards, Willets Point or the Columbia University’s expansion taking over West Harlem.

The same is true in what Ms. Jacobs writes at the letter’s end:

I will make two predictions with utter confidence. 1. If you follow the community's plan you will harvest a success. 2. If you follow the proposal before you today, you will maybe enrich a few heedless and ignorant developers, but at the cost of an ugly and intractable mistake. Even the presumed beneficiaries of this misuse of governmental powers, the developers and financiers of luxury towers, may not benefit; misused environments are not good long-term economic bets.

Come on, do the right thing. The community really does know best.

(Background: When we were at the City Council candidates debate in Williamsburg a number of weeks ago we noted that there was a great deal of apology in the air for the unfortunate ways that the plan was `unexpectedly’ turning out. New York magazine (July20-27 now on the stands) is also just now trying to sort out its own thoughts on some of this. See: The Billyburg Bust, by David Amsden, Jul 12, 2009: “A working-class neighborhood became a bohemian theme park, which in turn became a fantasyland for luxury-condo developers. Now, littered with half-built shells of a vanished boom, Williamsburg is looking like something else entirely: Miami.”)

The Odd Thing About Quinn and Jacobs
Here is the odd way that things stood on Monday morning. Christine Quinn was a central part of the ceremony dedicating “Jane Jacobs Way” in honor of Ms. Jacobs. There are probably few people paying attention to development in the city who believe that either Quinn or Bloomberg have a Jane Jacobian bone in their bodies. We ourselves were quoted in the NY Metro story about the event as follows:

“Jane Jacobs was about looking out and seeing what really works. The city’s plan is going to create a hole in the ground. Quinn and Bloomberg are the Robert Moses of today.”

(See: Celebrating Jacobs’ place in city, July the 13th, 2009, by Amy Zimmer.)

Besides the army of Jane look-alikes present in their attempt to rescue Coney Island, Suzannah B. Troy was also there to protest and quickly produced yet another video in an energetically heartfelt series of videos she has produced opposing “King Bloomberg” and Ms. Quinn, who assists him by passing administration-backed development proposals. Ms. Troy’s sentiments are clear from the title of her video: Protesting Christine Quinn at Jane Jacobs' street naming, Jane must be turning over in her grave!

Quinn Has the Power

Nevertheless, Quinn has the power right now of life or death for the Coney Island amusement area. Therefore Save Coney Island and the protesting Janes truly hope that it is possible to persuade Ms. Quinn to fix the city plan for Coney. Indeed, is Ms. Quinn is persuadable? She acknowledged as may be seen in the videos and as reported in the Metro that “phone calls are flooding City Hall urging the city to expand the area designated for amusements.” (To be viable the area for amusements needs to be expanded to a minimum of 27 acres as opposed to the 12 acres under the city plan.)

Ad Hominemism, Jacobs and Quinn

Jane Jacobs was not in favor of ad hominem attacks, but when it comes to city development issues we can't think of anyt where Quinn (or Bloomberg, from whom she is inseparable) has been on the right side. We also haven't seen that the inseparable pair are actually open to compromise as opposed to feigning that they are. Anyway, in terms of getting necessary messages across ad hominemism seems increasingly efficient when it comes to Quinn and Bloomberg. In this though we can’t speak for the Save Coney Island group, only for ourselves. We know the Save Coney Island people have their hopes about Ms. Quinn.

We have visited Quinn’s record on development before. (See: Monday, February 23, 2009, Un-funny Valentines Arriving Late: Your Community Interests at Heart.) A short list of the votes she has arm-twisted through that stand to affect the shape of urban fabric begins with the way she rushed Bloomberg’s term extension through the City Council. At his bill signing ceremony to overturn term limits Bloomberg indicated that he needed a third term in order to surmount the litigation stopping his projects. (Like the West Side Stadium? No, probably more like Atlantic Yards.)
At the Jane Jacobs dedication Doris Diether, a Jane Jacobs friend, told a story about how Ms. Jacobs had thwarted a maneuver by administration officials to rush through a vote so fast that no one would have any time to find out about it or react to the hastily unveiled public hearing. Ms. Jacobs reportedly delivered 200 citizens to testify at the hearing with only a weekend to do so. Times have changed but administration tactics haven’t: This kind of insider-manipulated rush was exactly the way that Quinn put through the major term limits law change for Bloomberg. (Ms. Diether was the one who was chosen to pull the cord to unveil the new street sign.)

Other Development Votes. .

The list of strong-armed votes continues with Quinn’s work on the previously mentioned Willets Point and Columbia University’s expansion into West Harlem. The City Council should also be withdrawing funds from the Atlantic Yards boongoggle but that is not likely to happen under Christine Quinn. (We once talked to her about it when she visited Brooklyn Heights.) Most recently, Quinn forced through the Dock Street project with a lopsided vote that totally disrespected David Yassky, the local City Council member for the DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights neighborhoods. She ignored not only the merits but also smoking gun e-mails that showed the Bloomberg administration and the School Construction Authority to be dishonestly collaborating in manipulations to put a school in the project for the sole purpose of promoting the project’s approval. We contacted Quinn’s office for her comment on those e-mails. They have still not been forthcoming. (See: Tuesday, June 9, 2009, Still No Comment from Speaker Quinn or Any Other of 18 City Council Members Who Put Dock Street Through Committee Last Week.)

. . . in Chelsea and Greenwich Village

Closer to her political home on Manhattan’s West Side, Ms. Quinn had been helpful in pushing through a sell-off of a portion of the Greenwich Village Historic District in order to subsidize a large new St. Vincent’s Hospital that also involves an exceptionally large new residential building being developed by the Rudin organization. Also, Chelsea Now says the community is complaining about the mounding up of extra density at “Himalayan” Hudson Yards. (See: Hudson Yards 'Himalayas' earn public ire at forum, Thursday, June 18, 2009, by Diane Vacca.) Not only is a great deal of extra density being put on that site but consider this for an example of how the Bloomberg administration wants to have its cake and eat it too: Notwithstanding the already extreme density of Hudson Yards, the Bloombergian Department of Housing, Preservation and Development is proposing to have the developer go off-site, outside the project footprint, to provide the assocaited affordable housing the community wants (at two off-site locations) but only if an additional zoning change is put through also up the density of the other sites as well.

Will Quinn Detect That People Are Getting Fed up and Change Course?

We have recently seen a great deal of the grass roots anger being directed toward Quinn. For instance, there is another YouTube labor-of-love video we came across recently done by Donny Moss that catalogues Quinn’s misdeeds and deceptions with particular focus on her betrayals with respect to the lesbian and gay community: Christine Quinn: Behind the Smile. We think that a lot of the anger being directed at Quinn now is earned by reason of her constant support for Bloomberg, particularly his Bloombergian style of development. Robert Moses, move over.

Will Quinn modify her behavior now that she is faced with a primary? She has two opponents for her 3rd district City Council seat: Maria Passannante-Derr and Yetta Kurland. We don’t know much about them yet, though if one of them is going to win it would be advisable for them not to engage in vote splitting.

Does Ms. Quinn feel vulnerable enough to start changing course? There is this primary and then, of course, she also wants to be mayor. Were it not for the term limits extension she would be running for mayor now, but the extension worked out well for her given the timing of her slush fund scandal.

The deadline for the City Council to fix the city plan is about to expire unless procedural maneuvers can briefly extend it. If the City Council under Quinn doesn’t act to fix that plan then Quinn’s Council ought to scrap the plan entirely.

Coney Island will provide an interesting test of whether Ms. Quinn will be changing course. Ms. Quinn clearly acknowledges that she heard the community’s request to fix the plan and knows the phone calls are flooding in. The question is whether she cares what the community wants if that’s not what the mayor wants.

(Above photo by Kevin Downs)

The City to the Public: “We’ve Got Your Coney Island: If You Want It Back, Better Do Exactly As We Say. . ”

We were at “Which Way Coney Island? A Symposium on Its Future,” at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 where we heard some things about the way the city is telling its Coney Island story as it tries to eliminate a substantial amount of Coney’s amusement area through a rezoning. We also have suggested response to the city. Your letters need to be sent to the City Planning Commission.

A. Burden Opening: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity, This Administration, This Summer Only

Amanda M. Burden, the Chair of the New York City Planning Commission and Director of the Department of City Planning, made the first guest presentation. (BTW: While most of us might think of Ms. Burden as a linchpin in the Bloombergian development establishment, the city’s nyc.gov website says that Ms. Burden is an apparently self proclaimed “civic activist.” That has to leave people wondering what all the rest of us opposing Bloomberg style development are supposed to call ourselves?)

The city’s Coney Island rezoning proposal converts Coney Island amusement areas to commercial space and apartment buildings. Before Bloomberg maneuvered the City Council into overriding two voter referendums so as to grant him an extension of term limits, the city administration’s official spiel was that its Coney Island rezoning had to be passed this summer because a subsequent administration (Anthony Weiner’s?) would likely do something far more destructive. Now that conventional wisdom is predicting that Bloomberg will get his third term (if for no other reason than the lack of candidates running against him), the city has had to change its sales pitch. Ms. Burden offered the current version of the city’s new spiel.

Ms. Burden described the city plan for Coney Island as “a comprehensive plan” that “is really finely calibrated.” She then said (emphasis supplied):

And it can’t be done piecemeal. Next week City Planning will have its hearing on Coney Island. I hope people come and testify and recognize that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Because another administration would never undertake this very, very complex plan. If it doesn’t succeed this summer this administration will never undertake it again. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the only way for future generations to enjoy Coney Island forever and in perpetuity as the magic that it always was and can be and that will serve the neighborhood of Coney Island as an economic generator with housing for all people and jobs and a beachfront destination for the entire world.

Of course, the idea that “it can’t be done piecemeal”is eminently debatable. We think a gradual, steady building up of Coney based on current amusements is exactly what is called for. The notion that there can only be an all-or-nothing proposition simply serves to get the city off the hook in dealing with the urgency of taking the action that it can and should take now. For instance, the city owns Coney Island acres, mapped a s “parkland,” that for a long time it has allowed to be parking lot areas that detract rather than contribute to the Coney experience.

Ms. Burden seemed to be very nervous during her presentation and we noticed that she left immediately after finishing her remarks so that she was not available to engage with either the evening’s panelists or the audience afterward. Leaving, she turned things over to her deputy, Purnima Kapur, the Director of City Planning's Brooklyn Office.

Ms. Kapur: Identifying the Recent Accelerated Loss of Coney Amusements in the Last Four or Five Years and A Cause

Ms. Kapur spoke about the recent accelerating loss of Coney Island amusements in the last four or five years. Interestingly she did so without identifying what we think has been its obvious cause, something about which she also spoke without making a connection between the two.

Here is Ms. Kapur on the accelerating decline of Coney Island amusements in the last four or five years (emphasis supplied):

But as we started to look at the history of this amusement area, what we realized is how much it has declined from its heyday which was about a century ago when there were three active vibrant amusement parks in the vicinity of each other. Over the years through the course of the 20th century* and then going into the 1970s** gradually these amusement parks have been disappearing. That pace of disinvestment and loss of amusements has accelerated really deeply in the last four or five years with speculative land transactions that have gone on. Last fall the last remaining large amusement park called Astroland was shut down and today when you go to Coney Island there is less than three acres of active amusements, Deno’s Wonder Park which has the Wonder Wheel is the last remaining park to remain there with some uses along Surf Avenue and Mermaid Avenue.

(* This was when Robert Moses replaced many acres of active amusements and associated jobs with housing occupied by people in need of jobs. ** This was when the city took title to active amusement area land that had formerly been Steeplechase Park, turned it into “parkland” theoretically to ensure future amusement area use and then never followed through in using that land for amusements even though they kicked out the amusements that were there.)

Here is Ms. Kapur on that which exactly coincided with that accelerating decline during the last four or five years: The launching of the city plan to supposedly “save” Coney Island amusements (emphasis supplied):

This is a plan that is an interagency effort. Many city agencies under the leadership of the Department of City Planning and the Economic Development Corporation have been working a long time to develop this plan. It started about five years ago with the formation of the Coney Island Development Corporation and the mayor’s strategic plan that was issued for Coney Island. Since that time the city and its partners have been engaged in a very intensive outreach at the community level to local stakeholders, with property owners, with amusement operators and the plan that I am going to present today is the result of that intensive outreach.

We don’t think it could be more obvious that the real estate speculation blamed for the recent accelerating destruction of Coney Amusements began with the launching of the mayor’s strategic plan and the “outreach” to property owners about the planed rezoning and reduction of amusement acreage.

Kapur on Leadership of Her Agency City Planning and EDC

The last above quote from Ms. Kapur is valuable for what we intend to discuss in a minute: She talks specifically about how the mayor’s strategic plan is an “interagency effort” of "many city agencies under the leadership of" her agency “the Department of City Planning and the Economic Development Corporation.”

In a moment we will see how Ms. Kapur seems to disavow that “leadership” when pressed by fellow panelist, Dick D. Zigun of the Coney Island Side Show (with a little help from a question we asked).

Dick Zigun: Why Won’t the City Take Obvious Actions To Help Coney?

Our ears perked up when, during his presentation, Dick Zigun asked about the way the city was NOT doing things it could be doing to send critical signals about the city’s commitment to a long-term preservation of an iconic Coney Island:

To the City: While you are dealing with Thor [Thor Equities a developer/land speculator], Yes, you are making little changes and we appreciate that. But. . . Where is Amanda [Amanda Burden, Ms. Kapur’s boss, who we noted earlier left, leaving Ms. Kapur in charge.]? There are some substantial things that infuriate us that you are not doing.

OK: So, on your slides you show us the Shore Theater and you talk about how important an icon that is. Now, you know my organization spent the money, hired the consultant, did the application to Landmarks Commission where it is sitting and sitting and sitting. And all it needs is a phone call from Amanda or from [City Councilman] Dominic Recchia to get it calendared at the Landmarks Commission and that has not happened.

You show slides and talk about how important Nathan’s is and yet your own plan upgrades the Nathan’s property to fifteen stories and in your environmental impact statement you concede that, although you are not calling for the demolition of Nathan’s, there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the value and taxation of real estate and your own study says that in ten years Nathan’s Restaurant is likely to be demolished and replaced by a theme Nathan’s in a fifteen-story building when all you have to do is call for fifteen stories on that property with a setback of two stories on Surf Avenue, and yet you have not done that! Why aren’t you doing these things? It would mean a great deal to us.

It would not only mean a great deal to Dick Zigun and company, it would tell everyone else in the city that preserving historic Coney is a priority. Envisioning the destruction of Nathan’s as the city plan currently does (even if it does not call for it) sends the opposite message. (See: January 22, 2009, Dog gone? Nathan’s could be victim of Coney success, by Mike McLaughlin, The Brooklyn Paper.)

Our Question Follows Up About Whether the City Really Sees Saving Coney As Urgent When the time came for the audience to ask questions we thought back to what Mr. Zigun had said about what the city was not doing to save Coney Island and we questioned the city’s real sense of urgency. All of the factions . . . the city, land speculator Thor Equities, Taconic Development, the Municipal Art Society. . . have adopted the amusement community’s theme and language about saving a vibrant, iconic, edgy, open, accessible amusement district. Therefore with the same language being used, it becomes a question of looking beyond words to see what people are actually doing and spotting the real differences in the several proposals. Here is what we (MDDW) asked, which generated a long, and we think telling, exchange between Mr. Zigun (DZ) and Ms. Kapur (PK):

MDDW: I am looking for the real differences because I notice that there is a tendency for everyone to adopt very similar sounding rhetoric about the amusement areas. So the real differences are that the Municipal Art Society is proposing the largest amusement area. Why, in terms of real differences. . . I understand that the city is proposing temporary things this summer, but with all this urgency when we say that it has to be “this administration and this summer,” why can’t we have urgency about some of the permanent things: So the questions that were asked about the Shore theater and having Landmarks act now: respecting the preservation of Nathan’s, why can’t there be an urgency about acting to do those things? Otherwise it sounds like a threat, this business of: “this administration,” “this summer,” right now!

PK: I cannot speak for the Landmarks Commission about the urgency for landmarking the Shore Theater as it currently is built, is built to a higher FAR than we currently are rezoning the area for, so there is no incentive for it to be torn down.

DZ: But why don’t you make the phone call that I’m asking for?

PK: I wish I could simply just make these phone calls.

DZ: You can. You can. You are the city!

PK: I think you give me credit for more power than I have.*

DZ: Amanda can’t? If Amanda can’t, the mayor can.

PK: I think that our plan lays out the importance of all of these things and retaining them in this area. We will let the Landmarks Commission make the decision about its landmark’s eligibility.

(*Ms. Kapur seemed rather upset at this point.)

(Image of Shore Theater above from Coney Island USA at ConeyIsland.com)

We Interrupt This Exchange To Bring In Landmarks Commission Chairman Tierney

The above exchange continues further, particularly about Nathan’s, and we will return to it momentarily. First, we want to switch to a follow-up by interjecting a relevant exchange we had with Landmarks Preservation Commission Chairman Robert B. Tierney last week when we attended the recording of the WNYC special “The Places That Bind” with Rosie Perez, in which Mr. Tierney participated as a panel guest.

The Places That Bind, which is about the stresses our communities are under from development, will be broadcast:

Saturday, May 16: 7am on 93.9FM
Sunday, May 17: 9pm on Am 820

We recommend you tune in. We will discuss the show further after it is broadcast. After the show was recorded, we had a chance to ask Commissioner Tierney (RT) a question we (MDDW) were unable to ask during the show. Here is our exchange (emphasis supplied):

MDDW: When a neighborhood has goals for preserving its heritage, to what extent does the Landmarks Preservation Commission coordinate with other agencies like City Planning and the Mayor’s Office?

RT: A lot. Always. Definitely, work all the time with Amanda Burden. I work with CAU, I work with who handles the community assistance unit, with the community boards. We get very. . . We have our own community meetings where we have not only elected officials but other parts of city government. We are working with them all the time.

MDDW: In this regard, if the Coney Island heritage is important to the city, and City Planning acted on it. . . had a hearing on it yesterday . .

RT: Right.

MDDW: Why hasn’t Landmarks moved to preserve the Shore Hotel? [correction Shore Theater.*]

RT: The Shore Hotel is on our list. We are looking at it.

(* A possible very desirable adaptive reuse that people hope will be considered for the Shore Theater is as a boutique hotel.)

Ergo it seems odd that although Ms. Kapur says that her agency is leading a many-city-agency “interagency effort” and although Chairman Tierney says that he “Definitely” works “all the time with Amanda Burden,” Ms. Kapur says that somehow Ms. Burden or the mayor can’t make a phone call to stress to the Landmarks Preservation Commission the importance the landmarking of the iconic Shore Theater has to the future of Coney Island as an amusement area.

Back to the Zigun/Kapur Exchange

Here, picking up from where we left off, is the rest of the Zigun/Kapur Exchange. We think that Mr. Zigan scores more points, but we let you evaluate for yourself the ways in which Ms. Kapur justifies the city’s inaction with respect to preserving Coney Island icons:

PK: I think that our plan lays out the importance of all of these things and retaining them in this area. We will let the Landmarks Commission make the decision about its landmark’s eligibility. As far as Nathan’s is concerned, Nathan’s is owned by Nathan’s. This is not a property that, you know, if we rezoned, they have reason to uproot themselves and go somewhere. They have been in the neighborhood for a very, very long time. There’s a business, you know, incentive to keep them there. And we do have setbacks actually, on Surf Avenue, which, you know, with your sort of encouragement and assistance we have brought down to forty feet on Surf Avenue.

DZ: Point of clarification, . . .

PK May I finish first?

DZ: Let’s just stick with Nathan’s: It’s owned by the Handwerker family and leased to Nathan’s, and your own impact statement says you are creating an environment, an economic condition that ultimately will lead to the demolition of a two-story building.

PK: That is not what our EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] says. What our EIS says is that there is a development potential to actually add to the Nathan’s building. There is nothing saying that Nathan’s should be demolished. The property that Nathan’s owns actually extends deep into the block and there is nothing stopping them from building additional buildings that set back from Surf Avenue. It doesn’t say that you have to demolish Nathan’s to actually make it.

DZ: No, but there is an economic encouragement that will ultimately lead to that.

PK: I don’t believe so.

DZ: Why don’t you offer a setback on that one particular piece of property?

PK: Calling for . . ., unless that is a landmarked building, calling for that setback there doesn’t make any planning sense.

DZ: But it makes sense as to what Coney Island is about and saving another icon. Like the Cyclone, like the Wonderwheel, Nathan’s is important.

PK: We totally agree with that and think that Nathan’s is financially viable and the owner of their own business and we hope, you know, our anticipation is that it will continue to be there.

DZ: It is NOT owner-occupied. The Handwerker family owns it and leases it to the corporation which is no longer their business.

PK: But this is their flagship store. This is where Nathan’s started. They have a business incentive to keep it as business owners.

Entrusting Coney’s Future to the City: In the End Doesn’t it Lead to The End of Coney?

(Image of Nathan's from Brooklyn Paper story. NNY's Image of Astroland rocket below.)


The city is asking us to entrust Coney Island and its future to their plan, a plan that involves hacking away at Coney’s amusement area acreage for more Bloombergian real estate development. We find ourselves feeling rather like we have received a ransom note after a kidnaping. We are being told we have to approve the turning over of more acreage for Bloombergian-style real estate development if we ever want to see our beloved Coney Island in good health again. We even find ourselves wondering if Coney’s severed body parts, like the Astroland rocket, will wind up being returned to us piecemeal. We don’t trust the kidnappers who created the jeopardy in the first place. Jeopardy began with the introduction of the mayor’s “strategic plan” and his administration’s “outreach” to property owners. That, we believe, led quite clearly to the sudden wave of real estate speculation. After that, there is little disagreement: Everyone attributes the recent accelerated decline of the Coney Island amusements to that speculation.

With kidnappers you frantically try to discern evidence fo good faith, desperately hoping that you will find it, but we don’t see any real evidence of good faith on the city’s part. The city already holds “parkland” that was supposed to be used for amusement area, but the city uses it as parking lots. The city doesn’t act to preserve iconic sites at Coney; it only holds them hostage, perhaps never to be released. All we seem to know for sure is that the city wants commercial real estate development. The bargain the city proposes that amusement areas be shrunk as acres are peeled off for other uses is one that has never before worked for Coney’s good health or the preservation of the amusement areas. And though it hasn’t worked before, the city says: “Trust us.” Many kidnapings wind up unhappily. The ransom is paid and the kidnapped does not survive. That is our fear here.

Still Possible to Send Written Testimony to City Planning Commission

The City Planning Commission is still taking written testimony on its proposed Coney Island plan; testimony should be submitted soon. (May 18, 2009 is the deadline if it relates to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement though other testimony can be submitted later.) See their hearing procedure notice for instructions.

The City Planning Commission needs to be told that there are certain minimum alterations that need to be made to their plan for the Coney Island we know and love to survive. For a list of the minimum revisions that should be made to the city’s proposed plan, reflecting what is recommended by the amusement community and its ally, the Municipal Art Society, see: Monday, April 20, 2009, All Eyes Are On. . . . Coney Island.

We suggest you send your own note in response to the ransom note we have received from the Bloomberg administration and that you demand that those specific listed changes, at a minimum, must be made, because we demand that our Coney Island be returned to us alive and healthy.