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.”

How we should be hearing reality during a needless bus strike

By Helen Rosenthal

As we now know, New York City spends more than twice as much busing our kids to school compared to any other city. The mayor’s plan to bid the contracts to lowest-bidder bus companies who keep their costs down by hiring the newest, lowest-salaried employees—is not likely to have much of an impact on the $1.1 billion the city spends annually—nor is it structurally sound. Eventually workers’ salaries will increase again with longevity.

Real budget savings will happen when the routes are managed more efficiently.

Parent coordinators on the Upper West Side say that it’s not unusual to have two kids who live on the same block come in two separate buses with fewer than six kids on each bus—buses that are meant for 20 kids. The reason that New York City spends so much money on buses is because they are used inefficiently. It’s not about the union drivers and matrons asking for job protections—and frankly it is in our best interest to have drivers and matrons with experience, especially when they are helping our special needs kids get to school.

We count on city government to spend our tax dollars wisely and efficiently. How efficient are the 7,700 bus routes that are devised by the Department of Education? According to the DOE, nearly 400 routes have fewer than 6 children, and 27 routes have just one child. How many routes are filled to 90 percent capacity? What incentive does the DOE have to maintain efficient routes?

Meanwhile the strike, going into its fourth week, is having a real impact on kids, their families, and the workers.

One Upper West Side family struggles daily to get their son to his special needs school in Brewster, 23 miles away, along with their two other children who attend local public school. After a harrowing year identifying the right school, he finally settled into a routine with a bus driver and matron who are extremely kind and attentive. Needless to say, all of that is turned upside down again.

Maria, a bus driver who lives in the Bronx, is striking because she has seven years of experience, makes $34,000 annually and is mother to three young children—asking her to give up her “seniority” would have too great an impact on her family. As a taxpayer and parent, I appreciate her seniority—her commitment—to the kids she safely brings to schools.

Our children deserve experienced drivers, matrons, and mechanics—we count on them every day.

At issue is the RFP (Request for Proposals) that the mayor plans to issue this week so bus companies can bid for these contracts. Unlike the previous contract, the RFP does not include the employee protections that give workers with seniority first dibs on available jobs.

ATU 1181, the union representing the striking bus workers, recently asked Mayor Bloomberg for a “cooling off” period which allows them to go back to work with the understanding that the Mayor would hold off on putting their contracts out to bid. This would give time for the two sides to come to an understanding about employee protections; it would also give the DOE more time to properly analyze how many bus routes are needed.

Most importantly, a “cooling off” period would end the disruption in the lives of the 150,000 children and their families who count on the bus each day. It would allow parents, drivers, matrons, and mechanics to get back to work. Our New York City economy needs this to happen.

Helen Rosenthal is former Chair of Community Board 7 and is currently a candidate for NYC Council, the Upper West Side District 6.

While Brewer is widely rumored to be preparing for a run for borough president, four candidates are hoping to succeed her in representing the 6th District, which covers the Upper West Side from West 55th to 96th streets. All four candidates jumped into the race months ago, and now recent campaign filings give residents a sneak peek at who might be a serious contender come next September.

At this point, however, all four candidates are fairly close when it comes to the numbers. The front runner in total dollar amount filed is Helen Rosenthal, one-time chair of Community Board 7 and a former city employee in the Office of Management and Budget, who brought in $152,981 with 709 contributions.

“This early in the election, campaign filings matter primarily to the extent they reflect a campaign’s organizational strength and in-district support, and it allows us to focus more on talking to voters and building grassroots support,” Rosenthal said in an email. Her assessment could easily apply to the other three candidates in the race, who are also well-positioned financially.

Ken Biberaj, vice president of the Russian Tea Room, who made headlines for fully funding his campaign in only four months, registered a total of $131,020 from 982 contributions. “It is very exciting to be done fundraising and now have the ability to focus on having a conversation with Upper West Siders and the issues that matter most to our community,” Biberaj said in an email.

Both Marc Landis, an attorney, who reported $111,143 from 446 contributions, and Mel Wymore, a former community board chair, who reported $111,863 from 303 contributions, echoed that sentiment. “I look forward to focusing on the critical issues of the campaign: improving our education system, expanding our affordable housing options, improving our quality of live and reforming how our government works,” said Landis in an email.

“Everyone involved in the race now either has made or will shortly make the full budget,” said Jordan Jacobs, Wymore’s campaign manager. “Who raised more actually has no meaning to the race.”

Insiders agree that at this point in the race, having the least—or the most—money in a campaign account is no indication of where a candidate will fall on the ballot.

“Because of New York City’s extraordinarily generous and almost universally participated in campaign finance program, everybody will have the same amount of money, so the money has less meaning,” said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.

Sheinkopf’s consulting firm has been hired by Biberaj’s campaign, but he spoke in general about City Council elections and not as a representative for the campaign.

The matching program gives candidates $6 for every $1 raised from New York City residents, for up to $175 per person. The program was intended to level the playing field and give candidates without access to big money a chance to compete, although the West Side candidates are all neck and neck at this point.

Sheinkopf said that it’s way too early to make predictions on front runners based solely on fundraising totals.

“Unlike most people in my business, I got rid of my crystal ball a long time ago; it didn’t fit in my wallet,” Sheinkopf said. “Early money helps define the race for people in the media business and for local community activists. But the general public, they don’t care.”

The new school, which will be called P.S. 342/Riverside Center School, will be located on the corner of West 61st Street and West End Avenue, in one of the five buildings that are planned to make up the new high-rise development. Riverside Center is the last piece of the Riverside South development puzzle, building out what was once abandoned rail yards into shiny new communities on the Upper West Side. The area bounded by West 61st Street, West End Avenue, West 59th Street and Riverside Boulevard will be home to five residential buildings, with an estimated 2,500 apartments. There will also be 3.4 acres of public open space, retail space, restaurants with outdoor dining, a movie theater and an underground parking garage for residents. The original plans, however, didn’t account for the assured influx of children into the local school system.

Helen Rosenthal, a member of Community Board 7 who was chair at the time when the plans first came before the board, said that when Extell presented their proposal, the community was still smarting from the overcrowding that resulted from the construction of the Trump Tower buildings south of West 72nd Street.

Though the developers had made a deal with the city to offer a piece of land for sale to build a school, the Department of Education determined in 2006 that there was no need for a new school in the district. Meanwhile, Rosenthal said, P.S. 99 was keeping track of the stream of new students coming from those addresses and parents were growing more concerned about overcrowding problems at all the Upper West Side elementary schools.

“We were started to track this big overcrowding at 199 and we knew it was going to hit P.S. 87,” Rosenthal said. “Clearly this was the most important piece of infrastructure that had to come with new development. We had learned our lesson that with many apartments going up, of course there’s a need for a public school.”

The board negotiated with Extell, originally asking for a 150,000-square-foot school. Eventually Extell agreed to construct the “core and shell”—walls, ceilings, electrical and HVAC systems—for a 100,000-square foot school, after they initially pushed back against the cost of providing a school building.

One of the questions that had been lingering was whether or not the School Construction Authority could afford to utilize all 100,000 square feet of the space or if the school would be confined to 85,000 square feet. The Department of Education confirmed in February that it would exercise that option, turning the potential 488 seats into an expanded 600 seats.

The school, which is slated for a parcel of land that Extell is currently selling, is currently expected to open in 2015. Extell Vice President Donna Gargano wrote to state Sen. Tom Duane, in response to his letter expressing local concern that the sale would delay the school, to assure him and his constituents that the school would still go up as scheduled, no matter who owns the land.

“The land use approvals granted to Riverside Center by the City Planning Commission and the City Council require that the school be located in one of the first two of the project’s buildings to be completed,” Gargano wrote. “This obligation, like the other obligations incorporated in these approvals, is binding on all successor owners of any portion of the Riverside Center site, including any purchaser as a result of the current offering.”

The school is planned for three sections, with two pre-kindergarten classes, but there is no decision as of yet as to how it will be filled—whether it will be a zoned or district school, and what kinds of programming it will adopt, are now under the purview of the Community Education Council and the Department of Education.

Helen Rosenthal is a member of Community Board 7 and a candidate for New York City Council.

If Helen Rosenthal wins the City Council seat she’s vying for next fall, we may be seeing a lot more graphs in city government.

“My family teases me because I do think in charts,” Rosenthal said in a recent interview at one of her regular Upper West Side spots, Café 82. “I definitely am a data-driven person, but if you can lay out the data without preconceptions, it will bring you to where you need to go. It is what it is. You can’t muck with it.”

Rosenthal, who has lived on the Upper West Side for over 20 years, is hoping to represent her home district in the City Council following the 2013 election to replace Gale Brewer, who is term-limited. With a background of using numbers and statistics to make crucial policy decisions, Rosenthal hopes to bring practicality and real analysis to the Council along with her infectious enthusiasm for addressing local issues.

Rosenthal grew up outside of Detroit and went to public school. She graduated from Michigan State University and got a master’s in public health before moving to New York City to work in the Office of Management and Budget. She worked under the Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani administrations, overseeing the budgets for 16 public hospitals and dozens of health clinics, crisscrossing the city to see the conditions at the hospitals to understand why money was needed and how it would be used.

“Luckily, I was there at a time when the budget people wanted to do right,” Rosenthal said. “We were not bean counters; we were helping make policy. Our job was to make sure that how we were spending the money was as fiscally responsible and efficient as possible.”

She recalled a time in the late ’80s when her department, in the midst of figuring out how to fund treatment at the height of the AIDS crisis, suddenly had to manage a tuberculosis outbreak. Regardless of the cost, they had to find a way to contain and treat the disease before it became a citywide catastrophe. Rosenthal compares that imperative to the one facing the city in funding the removal of PCBs from schools.

“When you have to fund something, you have to fund it,” she said. She has been a vocal critic of the city’s slow response to PCBs, and played an integral role in getting a new school opened on the Upper West Side when she was chair of Community Board 7. Rosenthal served as its chair from 2007 to 2009, preceding Mel Wymore, who is also running for the District 6 Council seat.

“We need to be thinking harder and more creatively about investing in ways that will create jobs,” Rosenthal said, pointing to the recent deal with Cornell University and Israel’s Technion Institute to build a new tech campus.

Rosenthal and her husband, an investment banker, have two daughters; one in high school and one in college. She is the chair of ParentJobNet, a nonprofit organization that helps public school parents connect with jobs and receive career training and counseling free of charge.

She believes that the City Council should be focused primarily on jobs and the economy and on community investment.

“I think that all residential buildings above a certain size should give back to the community,” she said. “If a 100-apartment building goes up, I’m not saying that apartment should be building a new school, but certainly they could be putting some money into an endowment for more teachers or maybe some other infrastructure.”

Rosenthal has raised over $60,000, enough to meet the city’s minimum for matching funds as of the January filing. She’s hoping to maintain that momentum.

“[On the City Council,] you’re responsible for thinking about public policy for the city, but also you’re responsible for that pothole on the corner,” she said.

Wymore likely made a bit a civic history by becoming the first transgender chair of a community board.

The Arizona native, who moved to the Upper West Side in 1988, has been on the board for 13 years. She said her proudest accomplishment has been the revitalization of the 59th Street Recreation Center.

As chair, Wymore wants to broaden the board’s agenda beyond zoning applications and permits.

“There’s a whole plethora of issues out there in the community around which there are no application processes, such as healthcare, senior citizens or housing,” Wymore said. “The community board has an opportunity to engage on these issues and make a difference.”

Rosenthal, who planned to run for City Council before term limits were extended, will stay on the board she has served on for more than 10 years.

Rosenthal said she is most proud of her push to provide detailed analysis of new developments in the neighborhood, increased meeting transparency and community outreach.

Rosenthal was also appointed co-chair of a mayoral task force on the future of community boards.

Helen Rosenthal says her mission has been to put the “community” back in the community board. It was community outreach that made her former job, overseeing health care budgets under Mayors Koch, Dinkins and Guiliani, come alive.

“What made it real was going to individual hospitals,” she said, “seeing their working conditions and asking, ‘What would the impact be?’ ”

In her two years as chair of Community Board 7, Rosenthal has acted on her passion for outreach, deftly connecting people and groups to involve them in a process of creative problem solving. She started with the board’s website, adding a Google translator so it could be read in Spanish or English. She poses a “Question of the Week” to get people talking about quality of life

Helen Rosenthal has started novel initiatives like a “Green Committee” and a “Crane Watch” on the board’s website. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

issues. She also posted a “Crane Watch” in response to a heightened concern for the risks involved in the use of large cranes on construction sites throughout the neighborhood. And after analyzing the impact of street fairs, she prominently posted the revenue earned by nonprofits in a scrolling box on the site called “Priority Issues.”

“Love ‘em or hate ‘em, street fairs bring in revenue for not-for-profits in our community,” she said.

Furthering this connection, she and street fair producer Mort Berkowitz made nearly 20 free tables available to neighborhood nonprofits at a recent fair on Broadway, giving these groups public exposure and a chance to get acquainted with each other.

A new initiative with Marjorie Cohen, executive director of the West Side Crime Prevention Program, will invite all neighborhood nonprofits to a round table forum. Rosenthal would also like the community board to be “less reactive, more proactive” on affordable housing, which she said is threatened.

“There are only three remaining Mitchell-Lama units left on the Upper West Side,” she said.

One of those, Trinity House, on West 92nd Street, was built as part of the government-subsidized Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program in 1968. Now that the 40-year mandatory preservation period has lapsed, the owner, Trinity School, is looking to sell the 200-unit building to a developer.

“She has really been a leader in helping the tenants maintain their housing,” said Barbara Adler, executive director of Columbus Avenue BID.

Rosenthal’s “Green Committee,” a novel community board innovation, brings often-contentious groups to the table to find solutions for enhancing the quality of city life.

“The divisions that often occur on community boards, so far, she’s avoided that,” said Berkowitz. “I don’t think the woman has a negative bone in her body.”

Yoga, reading and biking are a few activities that restore Rosenthal, as well as time spent with her husband and her two daughters, ages 12 and 15.

“With the community board, and life in general, it’s a process,” she said. Her goal is to bring people into that process.