Building a constituency for long term planning is the work of institutions and the people that lead them and serve them. It will be useful to test the language and products of the Mayors office. For example, a stated goal is to make a park available to every New Yorker within a ten-minute walk. If objectives are set there would be a open well publicized plan, schedule, and remedy for the areas of NYC where a 10-minute walk does not lead to a park or accessible waterway.

The affordability of housing question is even more daunting. Defining NYC’s maximum build out is a capacity issue assigned to the location of every square foot of real estate. It also means restricting the pace of NYC “max” build-out whatever that may be, but given the goals it is based on principles not tested in law. (zoning, and land use regulations defining roads/railways/bikeways) Between the lines, this website says overdevelopment is less of an issue than the hectic pace of it is this “frenzy” that is staring NYC squarely in its aging face. If it is the pace and not the mass, then the City Council’s representation of the housing needs in NYC is right on the 421a issue and the risk is worth taking to find out. We shall see.

Regarding the union issues, the dichotomy in the Central Labor Council has been amplified by the demise of the manufacturing unions, the ILGWU(now UNITE) as a function of NAFTA. Many others were driven down by public policies that moved the port to Jersey with containerization and erased the elctrical district in lower Manhattan. This preceded Bloomberg but his vision of the city as a playground for the rich and the residentialization of industrial areas of the city will only further erode manufacturing in the city.
The Central Labor Council has been instrumental in fighting the Big Box phenomena though not always with success. There are many posiblities for alliances but a lot of people have to be convinced about Congestion Pricing and the groundwork has yet to begin.

I imagine that was the case in ripping down the Els and the street cars in the first place as well.

Has anyone looked closely at that actual number of Manhattan CBD commuters from Queens represented by the “Keep NYC Congestion Pricing Free” group? Weprin probably represents the most, and it’s just over 5,000 daily drivers as far as I can tell from the Manhattan Institute study (out of closed to 1M daily drivers to the CBD, or 3.6 M daily CBD commuters/visitors).

From a 2002 report by KEA on bridge tolls:
http://www.bridgetolls.org/whowillpay/whowillpay_revised.pdf
See table 6 on page 13 in particular.

Very few New Yorkers will be hit hard by the tolls. The 98% of New York City
residents of driving age (ages 18-80) who do not drive daily to work on an East River
bridge will spend, on average, less than $50 a year in East River bridge tolls.

Regular users of the East River bridges tend to be relatively well-off. Compared to
their neighbors who don’t drive to work via an East River bridge, bridge commuters
earn, on average, $14,300 a year more.

Toll revenue from non-residents of New York City will replace a third or more of the
revenue lost when the commuter tax was repealed in 1999.

While more than half of the tolls will be paid by residents of Brooklyn and Queens,
the prospective toll burden on either borough is lighter than the cost to Manhattanites
of the residential property tax surcharge enacted as a budget-balancing measure last
fall. Seen in this context, bridge tolls look more like equity than highway robbery.

And no, Niccolo, I havent forgotten the building trades or the myriad of other interests that must be consulted and informed about the costs and benefits of congestion pricing. This educational effort is in its infancy, and it will take intense effort by the mayor and governor to create a public consensus, including support from major unions, that will win pricing. Until such an outreach effort is launched, pricing will not have a serious chance.

ex: backing up the water network? uh, mike, that’s is an infrastructure improvement, not a move toward more responsible use. even if he’s pro-developer, how about *cutting* water use, reusing 50% of construction waste, increasing the average energy efficiency of all nyc buildings by 25%? or, wow, we could maybe not give developers a blank check. oh, but that’s crazy!

1. After reading the verbatim transcription by mfs (thanks!), which provides context for the “alfalfa” comment, I see that Ott’s comment was a bit ironic, in service to a sophisticated point regarding the often zero-sum politics of environmental protection, and not really objectionable. That teaches me to rely on summaries such as in this post.

2. I agree with Nicolo that the labor laws are stacked against workers that want to organize, and against worker’s organization. But unfortunately all these pressures lead even the most militant union leaders to become conservative and avoid new organizing and other risky ventures in order to protect past gains. And less militant, less rank-and-file-oriented union leaders all too often are afraid of the influxes of new, politicized members that new organizing brings, and all too often prefer to ride out a stable but slowly decaying membership base into oblivion.

3. Public employee unions don’t really organize the way private sector unions do and operate in a legal environment that tends to make them even more bureaucratic and non-democratic in substance than private sector unions (this is obviously a generalization; democracy appears to be alive and well at Local 100 TWU and certain other unions. And the fact that District 65 UAW in NYC strives to practice democracy in substance and takes the risks inherent in organizing “new economy” workers does not necessarily mean that the international UAW in Detroit is the same kind of organization). At the same time, public union leadership is often under less external pressure and so often has the flexibility to be a bit more creative when it comes to “non-core” issues, such as whether organized labor in NYC favors “sustainability.”

4. As the leader of the NYC CLC, which has a very large proportion of public employees, Ott represents a diverse constituency that includes the entire range from highly paid professionals to poorly paid laborers. Regardless of socioeconomic status these are all NEW YORKERS and in most cases are savvy enough to “get” sustainability if it is explained to them. They won’t find that explanation in the NY times, which devoted all of 104 words to the Mayor’s address, too many of which described his bathrobe: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/nyregion/13mbrfs-future.html. They could get that explanation from Ott, if he is inclined to do so. In fact, Ott is the only one that a large segment of NYC Union members will listen to. So he could play a crucial role in moving public opinion, particularly given the Mayor’s characteristically wimpy advocacy in this area. Alternatively, Ott can try to pander to the misconceptions of his perceived “base” and get lots of media attention as the source of controversy in the sustainability group. I’ll sit through the tape and decide for myself which way he is tending.

NY Post:

Moving on, no presidential attention-getting address is complete without a genuflection toward “global warming” – and, sure enough, Mike wants to cut emissions in the city some 30 percent by 2030. (He has a head start on that, of course: His administration has been blocking the construction of new electrical power plants in the city for years.) Bloomberg is, of course, correct to call attention to Gotham’s decaying infrastructure. And someday he might even have standing to do so. That would be right after he gets the water bills straightened out.

Daily News

No modern mayor has advanced an agenda that large and specific, particularly in the face of huge obstacles. (For example, where exactly will new power plants be built?) But, by his count, Bloomberg has 1,114 days left in his mayoralty. Go to it, Mike.

Streetsblog:

More on sustainable transportation please, but hold the alfalfa sprouts

http://www.apolloalliance.org/state_and_local/New_york/index.cfm

(Unfortunately the NYC version of the site isn’t live now)

Everyone should fully read the report. It contains many startling findings. Here are several that relate unions:

Construction
“For the construction sector, excess congestion causes a loss across all of the counties within the metropolitan region. Increased operating costs are estimated by HDR [the economists hired by the Partnership] at $155.7 million a year. Revenue losses are estimated at $1.3 billion annually and overall employment losses at 5,200 full-time positions.” (p.35)

Wholesale
“The effect [of congestion] in this sector is seen entirely as an increase in operating costs — almost $1.3 billion a year across the entire region and $688.1 million in the Manhattan CBDs. (p.36)

Taxis
“Excess congestion is estimated to reduce the number of trips a taxi cab driver can make in a shift by 5.3 trips in the Manhattan CBDs… Those 5.3 additional trips are worth roughly $8,000 a year per driver in lost income. Over the industry sector, this results in a loss of $181.5 million annually.” (p.36)

Services & repair
“In the Manhattan CBDs — the only area where data for this sector is available — excess congestion results in one fewer trip per driver per day, resulting in a loss of $7,000 in annual income per driver.” (p.36)

Also noteworthy is the dramatic harm the report finds done to manufacturing:

Across all sectors in the NYC region due to traffic congestion… (p.31)
-44.5% of all losses in business revenue is borne by the manufacturing sector (1st place)
-12.9% of all increases in business costs are borne by the manufacturing sector (2nd place)
-38.9% of all job losses are in the manufacturing sector (1st place)

Lastly, the report contains major findings for the outer boroughs. It turns out the boroughs and inner-ring suburbs are swamped with Manhattan-bound auto traffic. Using a hypothetical 15% reduction in vehicle trips south of 59th in Manhattan, the report finds the following reductions in vehicle hours traveled (p.15):
Long Island City: -27%
Greenpoint/Williamsburg: -24%
Downtown Brooklyn: -29%
125th St Harlem: -14%

I think this is what psychologists call transference. Since the politics of actually winning congestion pricing are very complicated and problematic it is much easier to focus on someone other than ourselves who has some degree of political power. The labor movement is a substantial political power in NYC and probably always will be. However, don’t expect them to carry the congestion pricing ball politically for you. And I hate to alert you but everything you want to do, all the whiz bang technology gizmos, tolling the bridges, taking away lanes of traffic for BRT, 2nd Ave Subway, East Side Access, all of it, has to go through Albany.

And there are a few basic misconceptions about Ed Ott, the CLC and the unions in NYC, NYS and the US.

1) you should not confuse historic militancy with progressive politics. Take the UAW since Steve went on, founded in militant struggle, but hand in hand with the the industry fighting CAFE. Have you ever been to Detroit, a city dominated by the union and the industry, empty center ghetto with a few coliseums, casinos and conventions centers (lots of parking, cheap). Miles of interstate everywhere, huge trucks, New Urbanism its not. UMW and USWA, the founding union of the CIO, “carbon emissions, what carbon emissions”.
Also, the UAW is still in the AFL-CIO as oppoosed to the Teamsters IBT (now theres a progressive group) who left.

2) Steve is also of the opinion that unions do not organize because it threatens their power. While there may be a couple who have that as their “motivation” not to do something, for the most part organizing is very difficult and the laws are stacked against us.

3) Mike thinks the private unions in NYC are powerless. Well they were powerful enough to keep Brian McLaughlin in power for more than a decade. And they have peopled the leadership of the central labor council since its creation. They are called the Building Trades and yes Ed Ott needs their votes on the Executive Council to continue as leader. Maybe a few punchlines about sprout eating can help him do that. Go by the “Sticks and Stones” rule.

JK, moreso, was oblivious to the long-term domination of the Building Trades. Ironically, while the Building Trades focus on Ed Otts behavior more than you do, the immigrant guys are eating their lunch on all the small reconstruction and rehabilitation jobs around the city. Their only real handle is on mega projects like Atlantic Center. Meanwhile the death toll among immigrant construction workers hits the ceiling (try Jimmy Breslin’s magnificent book, “The Short Sweet Dream of Edmund Guttierez”).

4)JK has determined Ed is weak from a “transportation policy perspective”. While I may concur that Congestion Pricing is an excellent policy path for all of us the case has not been made to the people who keep Ed in power. Some may actually believe it or know it but if their members do not it really doesn’t matter to the leaders. Because, believe it or not labor leaders don’t try to get too far out in front of their members. Why? you ask. Because to some extent, despite everything you read, unions are basically democracies, for the most part parliamentary democracies.

Again, since you haven’t convinced people in actual power (Bloomberg, Silver, Bruno and Spitzer) who can actually make it happen it is much easier to attack Ed Ott for not sacrificing himself and many of the members for good transportation policy.

5) But it is mostly the political component that you miss. Ed Ott, on this matter, is not far from fucking Bloomberg and he is the mayor. Its not like Bloomberg is doing back flips over the Partnership report. Its basically outer borough versus Manhattan along the same lines as private unions versus public unions. And, even if you had all five boroughs lined up, even if Markowitz and Weprin wanted it, even if Shelly Silver was rallying the Assembly, and Spitzer laid it all on the line in the first part of his term, even then you would need Bruno to do it. Thats the way it works.

Work hard try to meet with Ed and the Building Trades try to establish the Logic of Collective Action. Its easy to make the case the 1199 and DC 37, all you have to do is tell them you will have more money to pay for health care. But you have to make the case to a high-school educated guy in Queens who drives to a job site in Yonkers, makes about $70,000 a year and already owns two cars. Oh by the way, he won’t be at any rallys or read this blog, he’ll be watching TV.

Tom Brokaw: Well part of the culture at the moment is not less is more, but more is more. Um, that is celebrated in the tabs and on television and [everywhere else].

Ed Ott: People come to this city to work hard. They didn’t come to this city to work hard so they can live in the dark and eat alfalfa sprouts. [laughter from crowd]

It’s a good line, but I’m trying to make a serious point here. The thing that’s important is some of our problems are rooted in privilege. And people want high-rise apartments on the river with all of the accouterments. But they don’t want to have real rational planning on where the power’s coming from, what neighborhoods those get put in, and we have to get very careful as we go forward that we plan this properly. So people have the benefits of a hard-working life, but they don’t have it at some other community’s expense.

Majora Carter: I think that’s one thing we can all agree with.