By Beth Mellow

In a crowded upstairs room at Council House on West 72nd Street last Thursday evening, six Democratic candidates, and one Green party candidate for City Council, debated and discussed hotbed issues ranging from affordable housing to city taxes. The candidates are vying for an opportunity to secure the District 6 City Council seat vacated by Gale Brewer when she announced that she would run for Manhattan Borough President earlier this year. The Democratic primary for City Council will take place in September.
Candidates participating in last week’s meeting included (in alphabetical order) Ken Biberiaj, Debra Cooper, Noah Gotbaum, Marc Landis, Helen Rosenthal, Tom Siracuse, who is a Green Party member, and Mel Wymore. Although there were many nuanced differences, and a few larger divides, in the way candidates viewed topics, a belief that the community needed to secure more control over its destiny emerged as the central thesis of the evening. Time and time again, in regards to various municipal issues including education and housing, the candidates declared that the state government, or mayoral appointees, hold too much of the power in policy making.

In addition, each of the candidates also debated issues not only relevant to the Upper West Side community, but also the city at large, including Hurricane Sandy recovery. As one candidate, Debra Cooper, stated, “The Upper West Side is a specific geographic space but we have always been the leader on progressive issues affecting the rest of the city, state, and country.”

Last week’s event was hosted by the Social Action Committee of the National Council of Jewish Women, New York, West Side Federation of Neighborhood & Block Associations, and the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development. Here is a summary of how candidates weighed in on various topics.

Housing
While all seven candidates expressed concerned over rising rents on the Upper West Side and throughout New York City, each came to the topic with varying opinions on how to cap increasing housing costs. Some of the candidates mentioned problems surrounding the Urstadt law, which enables state government, instead of New York City, to set parameters for rent regulation, while others talked about the need to bring Mitchell-Lama style housing back for the middle class. See their opinions below:

Tom Siracuse: “I live in a rent control apartment, and if it weren’t for rent control, I wouldn’t be here today. Rent regulated apartments form the bedrock of working class and middle class people living in the city.”

Debra Cooper: “We need to repeal the Urstadt law. We can’t accomplish this without getting the Republicans out of control of the state senate. That will require some political organizing.”

Helen Rosenthal: “We have to work harder to connect with the community [on housing issues]. I worked with residents of Trinity House (a Mitchell-Lama building located on West 92nd street) to fend off a purchaser. They are now hoping to have a tenant buyout.”

Ken Biberiaj: “We have to support the young families that are living here and we have to hold HPD accountable to make sure that rent stabilized units are not deregulated.”

Mel Wymore: “Housing is a broken system in New York City because there are so many different programs between the city and the state working at odds with each other.”

Education
From overcrowded classrooms to free tuition at CUNY, all the candidates felt passionately about the state of education on the Upper West Side and throughout the city. Many of the candidates had personal experience with the New York City public school system, including Siracuse, who spent 29 years as a high school teacher; Landis, who helped establish Frank McCourt High School; and Gotbaum, who has been part of school boards and parent organizations over the past several years. Read what some of the candidates had to say about the current school system and how to improve it.

Marc Landis: “We need to give families options that don’t cost $40,000 a year.” He also stated, “I want to make sure the city council has more of a say on educational policies. It shouldn’t be only up to mayoral appointees.”

Noah Gotbaum: “I have fought against charter schools, high stakes testing, and demonizing teachers. The DOE right now doesn’t listen to parents and communities and are out to privatize our schools.”

Tom Siracuse: “We must restore free tuition at CUNY for students who graduate from New York City public schools.”

Debra Cooper: “We need to improve access to early childhood education. When you prepare kids as preschoolers, they do better once they get to grade school.” She added, “We need to work on classroom overcrowding too. The current elementary school bulge, will become a middle school bulge, which will in turn become a high school bulge.”

Ken Biberiaj: He believes it’s important to provide children with access to their local schools rather than sending them to other neighborhoods. “We’re zoned for P.S. 87 and we only have a four percent chance of getting our child into preschool there. When a school is right there, it doesn’t make sense that they won’t enroll your child.”

Mel Wymore: “We need to make sure that our resources are shared more effectively. There are some PTAs with million dollar budgets, while others have only $20,000.”

City Council and the Mayor’s Office
All seven candidates agreed that there was a need for reform, or at least some improvement, in the functioning of City Hall and City Council. In fact, certain candidates believed that Speaker Christine Quinn’s relationship with Mayor Bloomberg had become too friendly, and as a result, is affecting proceedings at City Council. Additionally, others felt that Quinn’s leadership is skewed, claiming that she favors districts where council members are most helpful in pushing forth her agenda.

Noah Gotbaum: “City Council has become a lap dog. Christine Quinn and Bloomberg have gone together like this (shows crossed fingers to the audience). We need a strong City Council.”

Ken Biberiaj: “While I don’t agree with Bloomberg on everything that he has done, I believe that we have made progress on many fronts over the past few years.”

Marc Landis: “We need to break ties that bind in the council. I will only support a next speaker who will work on creating those reforms.”

Debra Cooper: She believes that Quinn favors some council members, and by extension, their communities, based on their loyalty to her. Cooper explained, “You shouldn’t have the power to punish those who do not support you.”

Tom Siracuse: “We need a city council that is not dominated by one party.”

City Taxation
The candidates also weighed in on city income tax. All believed that there were issues with the current system, with many citing the fact that the current tax laws impose the same percentage on all residents who earn more than $60,000 annually.
Ken Biberiaj: “We don’t have control of our destiny. We have a 70 billion dollar budget in New York City, but so much, including taxation, lies beyond our control.”

Marc Landis: “As a member of the Democratic party, I have been a proponent of the progressive tax through and through.”

Noah Gotbaum: “It was our own Democratic party that took a pass on the millionaire’s tax.”

Recovery from Super Storm Sandy
Although District 6 was minimally affected by the hurricane, recovery and future preparation was still important to many of the candidates.

Mel Wymore: “We need to re-design our drainage system because currently our drainage system and sewage system are connected [which creates a whole host of problems during and after a major storm].”

Helen Rosenthal: “We need to demand from the government that they issue bonds [to help with the recovery].”

Noah Gotbaum: “There was a shortsightedness in excluding the community from preparation. We had 20,000 New York Cares volunteers interested in helping out, but no way to get involved.”

By Debra Cooper

Just hearing the word rats makes most of us cringe. But now we must cope daily seeing them scurry across the subway tracks, nightly rustling through plastic garbage bags and boldly scampering across our sidewalks, streets and parks.  The plague of rats has forced the closing of the original Magnolia Bakery and videos of them invading our sacrosanct locations like Fairway Market flood the internet. And it comes as no surprise to anyone living on the West Side that our neighborhood now has the highest number of rat complaints in the city.

The problem of rats goes well beyond the “ick” factor. In fact, rats have been shown to be a trigger to children suffering from asthma and have been associated with the spread of diseases such as leptospirosis, which a recent study reports is becoming more prevalent in communities like Washington Heights where rat infestations exist.  The influx of rats in a neighborhood also increases stress and tension between residents and business and landlords. And like graffiti in the seventies, rats are a sign that we are losing control of our quality of life.

Obviously, we will never have a rat free city. However history as shown with proper attention and smart strategies we can make a real difference.  In the 1970s, New York City was known to have one of the best rat-control programs in the country coordinated with a special federal government office within the Centers for Disease Control to assist urban rat programs. Then with Ronald Reagan’s severe cuts in federal aid to cities, New York cut its budget for pest control by more than 70 percent producing a corresponding increase in rat sightings and complaints.  Starting in the late 1990s, we again saw a greater emphasis and focus on rat control, and once again experienced a decline in rat infestations until recent years.

Now it is time for us again to take back our streets, parks and subways, and here is a strategy to start:

First, we must restore the city’s commitment to eliminating rats. While Mayor Bloomberg deserves credit for improving information through the city’s “Rat Portal” and training with its Rodent Academy, recent budget cuts have proven to have a negative impact. In the last three years, the City’s Pest Control budget has been reduced by more than $3 million, that’s nearly 25 percent. Not only have these cuts likely contributed to increases in rat sightings, two years ago Borough President Stringer reported that these cuts were not saving the city money, but actually costing us more because of the lost fees generated by cutting crucial personnel.

Second, every expert will tell you that the key to eliminating rats is to cut off the food source. It is said, “If you feed them, you breed them.”  While progress starts with building owners, home owners and restaurants doing a better job of having enough hard plastic rat-resistant containers with lids and properly disposing trash, there is more the city can do. Recently, the Upper West Side Shake Shack placed a solar-powered metal receptacle created by BigBelly Solar on their corner and Councilwoman Gale Brewer has announced a pilot program to place similar receptacles in Verdi Square, a known rat hangout.  The trash cans have a hinged metal door that keeps rats out, and a solar-powered compactor that reduces the need for pickups. Cities like Philadelphia, Boston and Albany are employing these trash cans citywide which not only fight rodents, but also have significant benefits in reducing traffic and environmental impact by requiring fewer pick-ups and actually saving money.  In fact, when Philadelphia adopted them across the city, it reportedly saved $900,000 in the first year.

And third, it’s time for a second Rat Summit. Eleven years ago, then Councilmember Bill Perkins, together with the Daily News and Columbia University, brought together city, state and federal officials, scientists and community activists, to discuss the extent of the city’s rat problem and the best ways to reduce the rat population. That Summit led to reducing reliance on the use of poisons and a greater emphasis on integrated pest management. Today, we need to focus on new issues related to after effects of Hurricane Sandy and impacts of new technologies and strategies. Working together, can lead to better pest management and it is a commitment we all need to make.

Debra Cooper is a state Democratic Committeewoman and a candidate for City Council on the Upper West Side.

Cooper has a history of fighting for progressive causes, and counts her experience winning elected office to serve on the state Democratic committee as a leg up on her opponents: Ken Biberaj, Marc Landis, Helen Rosenthal and Mel Wymore.

“I campaigned back then, and I was out on the street at the time. I’ve done a lot of campaigning for other candidates in the district and elsewhere,” she said. “I’m actually the only candidate who’s ever run for and won something, so I think that does differentiate me.”

Her political convictions were founded early, Cooper said, based on her time growing up in Guilford, an idyllic Connecticut town that invested heavily in public education.
“It was the epitome of what America could be, and it had a town hall form of government,” Cooper said. “The town itself just evoked a sense of civic responsibility in me. I remember walking down the town green and thinking what a wonderful place America was—and that I was a feminist.”

Cooper convinced her parents, both Holocaust survivors who came to America and worked in factories to save enough money to move the family to Connecticut from an apartment above a grocery store in New Jersey, to send her to study at Brandeis University. She went on to earn a master’s in education from Boston College and then moved to New York to study psycholinguistics, specializing in child language acquisition. She had also headed learning-disability programs at two public schools in Massachusetts before that.
“I have a very extensive background in teaching and testing,” Cooper said. “I do know a lot about standardized testing. I know their inadequacies. I know what they can measure and what they can’t measure.”

After moving to the Upper West Side, Cooper married and had two daughters. She became active with the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and with her children’s schools, but she can pinpoint the day when she started to think about politics more broadly.

“I became involved in political life in New York City two days after George H.W. Bush was elected,” Cooper said. “The next day, I found out that the Reagan administration decided to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade through the Webster decision. I had been marching for women’s rights for a long time, I was very much a feminist.”

Cooper recalled that she was so distraught with the direction the country was taking that she walked into the headquarters of NARAL ProChoiceNY and offered her services as a volunteer; she eventually worked her way up to becoming a board member.

With the support of Jerry Nadler, Scott Stringer and Linda Rosenthal, Cooper was elected to the state Democratic committee in 2006 and has been heavily involved in party politics. She’s been active with Ansonia Independent Democrats, working on neighborhood issues from unionizing workers to preserving zoning.

“I’ve been a leader on issues. I’m not afraid to tackle things that make other people uncomfortable. I wrote the resolution on the millionaire’s tax when the governor was saying absolutely no way was he going to pass the millionaire’s tax,” Cooper said.

One of the issues that Cooper sees as a priority is preserving middle-class housing and opportunities for the neighborhood. She supports expanding programs like Mitchell-Lama housing and strengthening public education, through systemic reform rather than an influx of charter schools.

Many of the five candidates have similar priorities for the district and similarly progressive views on issues, but Cooper thinks that her deep experience will set her apart.
“I think I have a broader perspective. There’s that famous Steinberg cartoon that shows Manhattan and then it shows the rest of the country, and it shows that Manhattan takes up 90 percent of the map. If you look at the streets, it’s the Upper West Side,” Cooper said.

“That tells you something about how Upper West Siders see themselves. They live in this community that has a really big vision, and it sets the standards and becomes an example for other places.”