Mayor Adams neglects hiring rat czar to make up a czar for open streets and restaurant shanties instead

AMNY

Mayor Eric Adams has tapped Ya-Ting Liu to be the city’s new chief officer of the public realm, as he signed an executive order officially creating the new cabinet position that will oversee the creation of more “extraordinary public spaces” across the five boroughs to “drive” the city’s economic rebound from COVID, according to his office.

Adams first announced he would add the new role to the top ranks of City Hall during his State of the City address late last month, based on a recommendation from the New New York Panel convened last year, which issued a December report mapping out plans for the city to reinvent its economy post-pandemic.

“Our city’s public spaces are too important to fall through the cracks of bureaucracy, and now they won’t,” Adams said, in a statement. “New Yorkers need to know there is one person at City Hall whose number one goal is to improve their quality of life by creating incredible, new public spaces and ensuring the ones we have are clean, equitable, and safe. As someone who knows how to think big and ‘Get Stuff Done’ for New Yorkers, Ya-Ting Liu is the right person to serve as the city’s first-ever chief public realm officer.”

In her new role, Liu will work to implement the mayor’s $375 million plan to improve and create several public spaces across the city, according to City Hall. Those projects include: the “Broadway Vision Plan” to reimagine Broadway in Manhattan, a “full reconstruction” of Jamaica Avenue in Queens (!!!) and making certain open streets permanent in the Bronx and Staten Island.

She’ll also oversee the implementation of a permanent outdoor dining program in conjunction with the City Council.

“In New York City, the public realm is everyone’s living room. It’s where we eat, play, and gather. Having beautiful public spaces accessible to all people is one of our greatest assets — it is what makes New York City so special,” Liu said, in a statement.

“I am thrilled and honored to be the first-ever chief public realm officer for the City of New York, and I look forward to working with our businesses, community partners, and city agencies to build vibrant, attractive, and inclusive public spaces in all five boroughs,” she added.

Prez FDNY Union: "Lives in danger" from the road sheds

 Dear Neighbor and Allied Groups,

Below, please watch the video of Andrew Ansboro, President of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, powerful statement on the road bed dining sheds. He clearly states "lives in danger".  You can read his statement here.

Tomorrow will be Mayor Adams' and City Council's first step to making Open Restaurant permanent. The torpedoing of this legislation is nothing shocking. The Hospitality Alliance and Open Plans New York have been lobbying hard for this to happen. But, tomorrow will be one of the only chances for the public to push back.

Please take to time to provide testimony tomorrow on Zoom or via written testimony (by Thurs 11:59 PM). The how-to-do-this is laid out below. Or, click here.    If the text amendment passes, our streets will forever be altered, and our quality of life upended. This is not hyperbolic. Department of Transportation will be granted enormous amounts of power and latitude to dictate the future of our streets. City Council is not only ceding our lands to one business sector and landlords but diminishing their checks and balances over DOT. The amendments (and there are quite a few scheduled) on the table tomorrow will allow DOT full rule-making authority with very little oversight. 

**Sign up anyway just in case (as opposed to Open Restaurant amendment)  with a backup plan to submit written testimony by the deadline (or do both). Tomorrow will be a long day of testimony. Over 100 people have registered so far, but we fear it is mostly Hospitality and Open Plans NY members and supporters. So help stack the deck our way!

Check this out too:

Today's Good Read (comment sections are pile-on from real estate, hospitality, and bike fanatics)
Potential for Permanent Crisis as Protests Continue over Open Restaurants

Mayor Adams literally broke bread with Andrew Rigie of the Hospitality Alliance on Sunday along with the two City Council co-chairs ahead of tomorrow's hearing.

Onward and thank you!

 

HOW TO TESTIFY OR SUBMIT WRITTEN TESTIMONY

Public testimony will begin immediately following the testimony of any invited experts and will be limited to two minutes per person to allow as many people as possible to present their views.

Members of the public can sign up to testify via Zoom Web or phone at least 24 hours in advance of the hearing. Translators are available, see sign-up ASAP. Please check your SPAM for a confirmation email.  *SKIP THE UPLOAD TESTIMONY QUESTION PORTAL OPEN NOW!

The hearing will be webcast live at https://council.nyc.gov/livestream. (See Virtual Room 1.) Submit written testimony to the Council by uploading it to https://council.nyc.gov/testify or by emailing it directly to testimony@council.nyc.gov. Deadline is 72 hours after the hearing has been adjourned. CLICK the arrow for the CHEAT SHEET that includes how to log-in and attend links, abstract of the legislation, and food for thought. https://bit.ly/cheat-sheet-textamendment-hearing

 

 

The Boomtown Rats

  

NY Times

 Brittany Brown and her friends were finishing an outdoor dinner in Chelsea recently when, from the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something move near the edge of their table.

Moments later, she thought she saw it again.

Then she made eye contact with a man sitting nearby, and he confirmed what worried her: A rat had been on the table. If that weren’t icky enough, one skittered through the restaurant shed as she left.

“It’s gross and it’s kind of unnerving,” said Ms. Brown, a copy editor who has lived in Manhattan for four years. She did not want to name the restaurant and single it out for what she considers a bigger issue.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” she said.

Rodents are among New York’s permanent features. But across the city, one hears the same thing: They are running amok like never before.

Through Wednesday, there had been more than 21,000 rat sightings reported to 311 this year, compared with 15,000 in the same period in 2019 (and about 12,000 in 2014). The rate of initial health inspections to uncover “active rats signs” nearly doubled in the latest fiscal year. There have also been 15 cases this year — the most since at least 2006 — of leptospirosis, which can cause serious liver and kidney damage and, in the city, typically spreads via rat urine, according to health officials. One case was fatal.

So add a plague of rats to everything else New York faces in trying to rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic. By some measures, the problem may have eased slightly before the coronavirus came. But the rodents have roared back since, thanks to a confluence of factors.

The spike is mostly in areas long known as infested, health officials insist. In one such area, Manhattan’s East Village, it was evident on a recent Friday night.

Jean O’Hearn, a lawyer, said she had never seen so many rats on her block, East Third Street between Avenues A and B, in 28 years there. As if on cue, one raced out from under a white S.U.V. about eight feet away and crossed the sidewalk.

“Oh, there they are!” exclaimed a neighbor, James Gilbert, as the rodent wiggled through a side door into a courtyard behind Ms. O’Hearn’s building. Seconds later, two more dashed from the street toward several trash bags.

“They’re everywhere,” Mr. Gilbert said.

Another neighbor, Maria Cortes, chimed in: “They’re everywhere — and they’re fat!” Ms. Cortes, a 45-year tenant of the building, said she jangles her keys when she approaches the front door to clear rats from her path.

The vaccine mandate big chill

 

NY Daily News 

New York City restaurant and bar owners fear that their bottom line could freeze up this winter if Mayor de Blasio doesn’t renew an emergency permit allowing them to use propane heaters for outdoor service.

The permit, first issued by de Blasio in October 2020, lifted a ban on portable propane heaters to help keep eateries and watering holes open at a time when indoor service was prohibited because of COVID-19. But the waiver expired over the summer, and de Blasio has not said whether he’ll roll out another one ahead of this cold season.

James Mallios, owner of Amali, a Mediterranean restaurant on the Upper East Side is concerned.

Mallios said the propane heater permit was “one of the few bright spots” during the pandemic and that his restaurant would’ve gone belly up without it.

“Without exaggeration, if we did not have propane heaters last season we would be out of business,” said Mallios, who estimated he could lose nearly half of his 75-seat capacity if he can’t have propane heaters this winter.

Mallios is one of 85 restaurant and bar owners who sent de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson a letter in April, pleading to keep propane heaters burning this winter.

Neither men responded to the note, Mallios said. “That was disheartening,” he added.

 Before de Blasio’s emergency permit, propane heaters were long prohibited in commercial and hospitality settings due to fire hazards.

FDNY data shows there have been no propane-related explosions or fires at any city restaurants or bars since de Blasio’s order, which specified that heaters could only be placed on sidewalks, not near street seating.

Still, FDNY inspectors have issued more than 1,200 propane compliance violations and confiscated at least 1,000 improperly stored tanks since the ban was lifted, according to the data.

“In some of the most egregious incidents, 20-pound containers of propane were found on roadways, concealed by planters and other objects designed to provide vehicle impact protection,” said Frank Dwyer, an FDNY spokesman.

 

The D.O.T. and Dept. Of City Planning suddenly cares about community input on open restaurants program

 

 Gothamist

Nearly 12,000 restaurants have taken part to date in the city's Open Restaurants program, the spinoff initiative from the Open Streets program which allows restaurants and bars to use street space for outdoor dining structures. While most New Yorkers seem to have embraced the changes to our urban landscape with open arms—one survey found that two-thirds of New Yorkers think the city “was right to close its streets to cars and open them to pedestrians and restaurants”—many believe there is still plenty of room for improvement. And with Open Streets and its various offshoots set to become permanent parts of the NYC landscape, the city is working on just that.

The Department of City Planning (DCP) and Department of Transportation (DOT) announced this week that they are launching a public engagement process to improve the designs and rules regarding permanent outdoor dining setups.

“Open Restaurants not only helped save New York’s world-renowned restaurant industry, it also showed how we can dynamically reimagine our streetscape,” said DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman. “Developing design guidelines will ensure that this emergency program can be transformed into a permanent part of our city, anchoring restaurants in our communities so that this program continues to flourish.”

While Open Restaurants was enacted under emergency executive order by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic—the mayor has said that the program has helped save around 100,000 jobs—the city and legislature are now engaging with the more complicated task of making it permanent. That includes a zoning text amendment which many restaurateurs are in favor of (it's currently in public review) that would remove geographic restrictions of where sidewalk cafes can be located.

Where the public's input will come in is in trying to determine how to best "integrate these new setups into the complex environment of NYC streets," as the DOT put it. That input will come via in-person and remote roundtables over the next six months—the schedule of those events will be listed on the DOT webpage and on NYC Engage—culminating in the release of new design guidelines by Spring 2022.

Isn't it nice that asshole Hank Gutman and the D.O.T. and those asshole city planners are deigning, deferring and abdicating their responsibilities to the citizens to fix the mess they made with their shithead policy making without thinking of the ramifications of them. Like a commentator said the other day about how these are supposed to be for the benefit of people's health even though you're still eating on the gutter. 

Meanwhile, residents and even lawmakers are demanding to shed the sheds.

Queens doesn't want no stinkin' restaurant sheds

 

Queens Eagle 

The Queens Borough Board voted Monday night against the city’s plan to permanently expand outdoor dining throughout the five boroughs.

With 13 voting against and 6 voting in favor, the City Councilmembers and Community Board chairpersons on the borough’s advisory board overwhelmingly said the city’s plan to permanently allow sidewalk cafes wasn’t fleshed out enough to get their OK.

The board, which issues advisory opinions, said that it wasn’t keen on voting to allow the Department of City Planning and the Department of Transportation to implement the program before the details of the program have been codified.

“We appreciate what the text amendment is trying to do, pretty much we could agree with it, our issue really revolves around the fact that the text amendment is coming fist, before we have a fleshed out program from DOT,” said Betty Bratton, the chair of Community Board 10. We’re opening the door to do something before we have an understanding of what we're going to do.”

“We don’t need to give permission for something to happen, before we know what the permission is going to allow,” Bratton added. “Otherwise...we’re buying a pig in a poke.”

The city has been shopping around its text amendment to community boards for several months.

Citywide, 20 boards voted in favor of the text amendment, 23 against, one had no objections and one board, Queens Community Board 14, waived their right to vote.

The amendment would essentially remove geographic restrictions on sidewalk cafes. Currently, sidewalk cafes are only allowed in a few parts of the city.

The expansion would apply to most commercial corridors in Queens and throughout New York City, but how the program would work – barring the fact that DOT would enforce it – has yet to be written.

Community Board 13 voted in favor of the amendment but at Monday’s Borough Board meeting, board chair Bryan Block said his members still have worries.

“We had serious concerns..about enforcement by DOT,” Block said. “We don’t want to stop restaurants...we want to support our restaurants but enforcement is key.”

Block said that his district already doesn’t have all of its quality of life issues addressed in a timely or efficient way, especially when it comes to late night parties.

According to DOT representative Albert Silvestri, the NYPD and Department of Environmental Protection would continue to enforce noise complaints coming from restaurants participating in the new program. However, if a restaurant continues to be the subject of complaints, it would “impact their standing within the program.”

And now a final word, actually another prepared statement full of Transportation Totalitarians talking points from Commissioner Hank Gutman:

 "Open Restaurants not only helped save New York’s world-renowned restaurant industry, it also showed how we can dynamically reimagine our streetscape,” DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman said in a statement. “Developing design guidelines will ensure that this emergency program can be transformed into a permanent part of our city, anchoring restaurants in our communities so that this program continues to flourish.”

 Restaurants are already anchored in communities you dotard. GTFOH 

Manhattan's open restaurants shanties inspired by Queens Crap

These look like Fedders apartments!

Great job #OpenRestaurantsNYC!!! https://t.co/hUNoXdB6dv pic.twitter.com/zXmfYacygy

— This is JQ LLC (@ImpunityCity) August 19, 2021

Return of the rat

 

Ridgewood Post

The number of rat complaints has jumped significantly in Queens this year, with complaints in neighborhoods like Woodside and Ridgewood more than double what they were a year ago.

There were 1,812 complaints across Queens for the Jan. 1 — June 30 period this year, up more than 27 percent from the first half of 2020 when 1,424 complaints were filed with the city, according to 311 data.

The increase, in part, can be attributed to the reopening of restaurants and New Yorkers returning to the office, experts say. Rodents rely on the food waste generated by these establishments, which were closed for much of past year due to COVID-19.

The rodent problem, however, is still high even compared to pre-pandemic records. The number of rat complaints during the first half of this year is higher than the first half of 2019, when there were 1,528 rat complaints in Queens.

Certain neighborhoods have seen a big uptick in rat complaints over the Jan. 1 — June 30 period compared to 2020, 311 data shows.

For instance, the greater Ridgewood area (11358) saw a huge rise in rat complaints year over year. Rat complaints more than doubled in the ZIP code, which also had the highest number of rat complaints in Queens both in 2020 and 2021.

There were 221 rat complaints in Ridgewood during the first six months of 2021 compared to 103 complaints during the first six months of 2020, according to 311 data.

Woodside (11377), the ZIP code with the second highest rodent complaints in Queens, also saw a jump. Residents of the neighborhood filed 180 rat complaints with 311 during the first half of this year, compared to 89 times during the first half of 2020.

The number of rat complaints has also increased in the section of Astoria represented by the ZIP code 11105. There were 106 complaints filed with 311 during the first six months of 2021, up from just 66 during the first six months of 2020. The ZIP code comes in third for the most rat complaints in Queens this year.

Corona (11368) and Briarwood (11435) had the borough’s fourth and fifth most rat complaints during the first half of the year respectively.

Both neighborhoods experienced an uptick in rodent complaints as well. There were 86 rat complaints in Corona during the first half of this year — up from 58 for the same period in 2020. In Briarwood, there were 81 rat complaints— up from 43.

There should be no doubt why rats are proliferating in the world's borough and the blame lies with the restaurant shanties taking up parking and sidewalk spaces. But I think the reason for the rodent rise in Briarwood is a combination of the highway modernization by the van wyck expressway and the construction site of the Kew Gardens tower jail nearby has become a nice complex for rats to burrow and breed.

NYC Plans To Make Eating & Drinking Road + Sidewalk Sheds Permanent

 

 

 Neighborhoods United

Dear Neighbor,
We wanted to make you aware that the Department of Transportation is initiating a public meeting at every Community Board in the city to push through the ZONING TEXT CHANGES that will allow Open Restaurants and Bars to become PERMANENT. 

In many areas,  the eating and drinking sheds have become severely problematic. As such, we are adamantly opposed to Outdoor Dining Sheds becoming a permanent fixture in NYC. 

We appreciate that these sheds were a lifeline for the hospitality industry during the pandemic and allowed residents a safe place to social distance. Since Covid restrictions have been lifted, we think it is time for the emergency dining sheds to be retired, and the sidewalk cafe process is reinstated regarding alfresco dining.

However, you feel about the Open Restaurants program, no public input or proper environmental impact study was commissioned. Instead, the city rammed the sheds through behind closed doors with little to no oversight, calling it an unbridled success with few issues to resolve. And agencies, like the Dept. of Transportation, testified two weeks ago that there was no increase in noise or any other quality of life or safety issues related to Open Dining Sheds. This is demonstratively false!

We now have the opportunity (and one last chance) to come out and voice our concerns.

WE URGE YOU TO SHOW UP! IT IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE BODIES AND VOICES IN THE ROOM!

Transportation, Public Safety, & Environment Committee
Tuesday, July 13 at 6:30 pm
Boys Club of New York
287 East 10th Street (at Avenue A)

*Please attend all four upcoming citywide community board meetings, if you can?  Click here for more info about when and where.

FYI:

• Citywide Text Amendment: Open Restaurants (zoning changes to facilitate outdoor dining 
• Click here for the text amendment application

We appreciate your consideration, and please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Kind regards,

Diem Boyd, LES Dwellers
Tamara Daley, Orchard Street Block Association
Jan Lee,  The Chinatown Core
Stuart Zamsky, The East Fifth Street Block Association