City council wants nothing to do with their law to close Rikers Island

 

 Queens Chronicle

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica) and Member Carlina Rivera (D-Manhattan), chair of the Criminal Justice Committee, released a joint statement last Thursday in response to concerns voiced by Mayor Adams about closing Rikers Island.

During a fireside chat at New York Law School in Manhattan last Tuesday, he said the plan to do so “was flawed from the beginning.”

In their response, the councilwomen said the 413-acre facility cultivated a culture of brutal violence and dysfunction, then emphasized that the city must adhere to the 2019 law to close Rikers by Aug. 31, 2027.

“Public safety demands that we remain on-track to closing without delay,” said the joint statement. “To achieve this goal, it is imperative that Mayor Adams’ administration take responsibility for implementing the law, including working collaboratively with stakeholders involved in the criminal legal system to advance necessary progress.”

The mayor’s administration has missed several deadlines related to turning over unused parcels of land from the city’s largest jail complex for the development of an energy hub, reported the Queens Daily Eagle.

The Office of the Mayor said via email that Adams will always follow the law.

“It has become painfully clear that the plan passed by the City Council during the previous administration leaves open serious questions about the city’s ability to keep New Yorkers safe, while the costs are exploding,” a City Hall spokesman told the Chronicle on Aug. 31.

When conceived, the closure of the facility was estimated to be approximately $8 billion. In October 2022, the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform said it would be closer to $10.2 billion due to inflation.

“This is due to: necessary environmental remediation and landfill stabilization; the island’s isolation and single bridge on and off; and the presence of active jails, which would limit construction hours and require a staggered schedule to maintain sufficient capacity during construction,” according to the report. “In addition, the city would have to pay over $800 million to demolish the existing jails on Rikers. The city has already spent $500 million on design, demolition, project management, and site preparation for the new borough-based jails.”

The commission also said scrapping the shutdown plan and modernizing Rikers would cost 15 percent more than the $10 billion price tag and take years longer. Smaller borough-based jails will save the city $2 billion in operating costs annually, it said.

The city must make consistent investments in pretrial services, alternatives to incarceration and re-entry services, while addressing unacceptable lengths of stay with the courts, district attorneys and public defenders, said the councilwomen’s joint statement.

The mayor also blamed the city’s courts for failing to process cases. Commissioner Louis Molina of the city’s Department of Correction said that he believes the jail population will hit 7,000 by 2024, reported the Queens Daily Eagle. The new jails will have room for no more than 4,200 inmates, the mayor has said.

Asked about the rising costs of the jail and where the detainees will be placed during the transitional period, a City Council official said it’s up to the mayor to address.

 

City Council approves luxury public housing rezoning for Soho and Noho

  

Bowery Boogie

Two years of controversy was capped Wednesday as the city passed a sweeping rezoning of the SoHo and NoHo neighborhoods.

The City Council voted overwhelmingly to approve the SoHo/NoHo rezoning by a 43 – 8 margin, thereby completing the final step in ULURP. The passage happened in the nick of time, with just two weeks remaining in Mayor de Blasio’s term.

The councilmembers who voted no were Ben Kallos, Carlos Menchaca, Robert Holden, Inez Barron, and Kalman Yeager.

Next stop is de Blasio’s office for the proverbial rubber stamp.

In a gloating joint release, Councilmembers Carlina Rivera and Margaret Chin (who is leaving office) hailed the vote as a victory for housing, despite “roadblocks from from private interests, political pressure, scare tactics, and misinformation.”

“The final zoning map and text are a product of countless hours of negotiation with the Administration and in-depth discussion with community stakeholders,” Chin said. “As a City Council Member I believe it is my responsibility to create equal housing opportunities in high-opportunity neighborhoods for low-income New Yorkers, and I am confident that this rezoning accomplishes that goal.”

“This historic rezoning will create a rational framework for equitable housing generation and retail operation – one that I hope we will see replicated in neighborhoods throughout the Five Boroughs in the years to come,” Rivera echoed. “Through hard work and rigorous process, made possible only by the unwavering dedication of our teams and advocates to building a better future for all New Yorkers, we were able to balance the concerns of community stakeholders while centering our main goal: to incentivize the creation of affordable housing in a transit- and resource-rich neighborhood.”

The most vocal opponent of the rezoning, Village Preservation, wasn’t buying it, though.

“This plan is a giant giveaway to real estate interests, with the promise that a tiny percentage of that enormous gift will be returned to the public in the form of new affordable housing,” executive director Andrew Berman responded in a statement. “The reality is in by far the majority of cases, it won’t. What it will do is prompt a flood of luxury condos, giant big-box chain stores and high-priced corporate offices and hotels, and generate enormous pressure and incentive to demolish hundreds of units of affordable rent-regulated housing in the area, displacing lower-income residents who are disproportionately seniors, artists, and Asian Americans.