City Council Goes About
the People’s Business

s the City Council and the Mayor continued to thrash out the City's budget, the Council met as usual to carry on their other crucial work for the people of New York. They voted on various Bills and Resolutions, rose to state their positions on certain issues such as the right to accessible housing for the disabled, tuition fees for undocumented students, police misconduct at an education rally, and the need for child care services. They also encouraged their colleagues to join them on particular pieces of legislation.

Councilwoman Margarita Lopez, Chair of the Committee on Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse and Disability Services, spoke very strongly about a Land Use Bill pertaining to housing projects to be built by the New York Partnership. She said, "Consistently the New York Partnership produces housing that is not wheelchair accessible. Public funding is used to produce it, but the Partnership is utilizing a loophole that allows them to do this." She continued, "The Council has a moral responsibility, and a responsibility based on laws that they themselves have passed stating that housing should not discriminate against anybody. With this kind of housing, defacto discrimination is occurring against people in wheelchairs because it's impossible for them to live in it." And she stated, "We need to stop putting money into this kind of housing, and the law needs to be fixed to discontinue allowing the New York Partnership to build it."

Councilman Philip Reed said, "I would like to extend my appreciation to Councilwoman Lopez for bringing this issue of accessibility to our attention. Too often we put things in place and then we ignore them." He went on to say, "In thinking through what she said, I believe the Partnership prides itself on providing what is euphemistically called affordable housing. All too often the disabled community is left financially strapped because of their inability to find proper employment--in other words, they've already faced other discrimination--so they are profoundly, perhaps even more than anybody else, in need of affordable housing. When we talk about 'affordable,' we need to put 'accessible' in the same sentence."

Councilman Bill Perkins rose to commend his colleagues Councilman Miguel Martinez for submitting his Resolution 67, and Charles Barron, Chairman of the Higher Education Committee, for expeditiously moving it forward. This very important Resolution calls for the state education tuition law to be changed so that undocumented CUNY students can be treated as in-state students, not out-of-state students so they have to pay double the tuition rate. Said Perkins, "This Resolution basically declares that all New Yorkers are equal, and that just because you're an immigrant you should not be discriminated against when it comes to tuition."

As to education and the rights of young people, Charles Barron said that he's like to call on his colleagues to join him in commending the hip hop community for the great rally they'd held as thousands of them came together at City Hall around the subject of education. He continued, "And I'd like to condemn the Police Department for its behavior at the rally. They have to learn that our youth are not animals: they don't need to be corralled, or pepper sprayed. During the termination of the rally, a very popular artist, Wycliff Jean, was only trying to gain entrance to speak and he was arrested."

Barron also related his experience witnessing how a sergeant approached a young Black teenager at the rally who was in the street looking for her sister. The officer didn't know Barron was behind him and ordered the young woman to 'Get behind that barricade before I drag your behind through the street and throw you in the paddy wagon." Barron told him, "Sir you'll do nothing of the sort. She has a right to be here," and then helped her find her sister. "Our police department needs to learn a lesson," stated Barron. "This relationship has to change because this is what our youth experience every day in their neighborhoods. Those youths came to the rally to support education, the City Council, their teachers. Some of them even took time off from school to do it. They did not deserve to be treated that way."

Speaking of what is deserved by even younger New Yorkers, Councilman Bill DeBlasio, Chair of the General Welfare Committee, thanked his colleagues in the Council "for the tremendous support you have given to the children of New York City by being so forceful in supporting the child care services provided by the Administration for Children's Services. I think it sent a very powerful message to the Mayor about how we feel."

He spoke too of a very important editorial which had appeared that day in the New York Times commending Bloomberg for putting childcare front and center in his new anti-poverty policies. "So I would just like to point out the obvious," said DeBlasio. "It's fantastic that the Mayor has focused on child care in his new policy statement. But now we have to put our money where our mouth is and insure that resources are available to ACS to keep increasing the supply to child care of New York City. Almost 40,000 children are on the waiting list as we speak. So let's follows the lead of our Mayor," he concluded, "and help him put his words into action by supporting those resources to ACS."

Shortly thereafter the meeting was adjourned, and, it is to be presumed, the Council Members went back to their pressing budgetary negotiations.