Long COVID winter is coming (reprise)

  

Queens Post

 

About 80 attendees gathered outside a Long Island City restaurant Friday to bring attention to the hardship facing many small businesses.

Elected officials and a coalition of Queens business owners met outside Little Chef Little Café, located at 5-43 48^th Ave., and called on the federal government and local leaders to help them get through the economic crisis and navigate stricter lockdown measures before they are forced to permanently close.

The business owners appealed to city, state and federal officials for financial relief and other assistance. Organizers used the hashtag “SAVE OUR SMALL BIZ” to highlight their cause and several supporters carried signs with “rent relief” written across them.

The event was organized by the Western Queens Small Business Council, small business owners and other local business advocates. State Senator Jessica Ramos, Assembly Member Ron Kim and Assembly members-elect Zohran Mamdani and Jessica González-Rojas were also present along with Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and Queens Borough President-elect Donovan Richards.

Organizers took particular aim at Washington and said that the New York Congressional delegation needs to come up with a proper recovery plan that would include a bailout package and rent relief for small businesses.

“Get out of all the federal stuff and come home and help us,” said Roseann McSorley, the owner of Katch Astoria, who led the event.

“This is a crisis…the businesses in this borough and every borough are going to fail, we aren’t going to survive,” McSorley said.

McSorley said that small businesses should be treated like airlines and other major corporations that have been given federal funds.

Several business owners described the struggles they are facing to stay out of the red with restricted indoor capacity and earlier closing times being of particular concern to restaurant and gym operators. They said that they have received little direction from the city and state with regard to the ever-changing regulations.

They appealed for clearer COVID-19 operating guidelines that are translatable and understandable.

That message was echoed by Ramos who said that Governor Andrew Cuomo has failed to help small businesses through the pandemic.

“The governor has been twiddling his thumbs for the past seven months, he’s done nothing,” Ramos said.

 

Subway in vain: Austerity cuts and fare increases coming without Fed aid

Gothamist

The MTA called an emergency board meeting on Wednesday to outline the most draconian cuts it would make if the federal government doesn’t deliver on its request for $12 billion before the end of the year.

The agency says it needs the funds to balance the budget and get through 2021. In November, they will present next year’s budget options to the board, which it must vote on by December 31st. (Last year’s operating budget came in at $16 billion.) If the $12 billion doesn’t come through, the MTA is considering slashing subway and bus service by 40 percent, and commuter rail service by 50 percent. 

Layoffs and fare and additional toll hikes other than the planned ones are also on the table. Nearly all capital projects would be put on hold under this plan.

In July, the agency estimated that it was losing $200 million a week from a combination of the dramatic drop in ridership and tax revenue and the increased cost of cleaning buses and trains to lower the risk of coronavirus infection. Subway service is down 75 percent from pre-pandemic levels, and buses are down 45 percent. Foye says if service levels continue at this rate the financial shortfall will be far worse than the Great Depression.

The MTA exhausted its first round of $3.9 billion in federal relief funding at the end of July. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate went on recess without passing a second relief bill.

“The future of the MTA and the future of the New York region rests squarely in the hands of the federal government, the U.S. Senate specifically,” Foye said. “If they fail to do so, horrendous choices lay ahead.”

The MTA estimates that cutting subway and bus service by 40 percent, and laying off 7,200 transit workers would save the agency $880 million a year.

But the president of the Transit Workers Union Local 100 and board member John Samulsen said there’s no way the union would accept these cuts. “We’ve paid with blood,” he said, “That you’d come to ask the workers that just put their necks on the line by being on the frontline of this fight against Covid-19 is ridiculous.” The union says nearly 100 transit workers suffered COVID-related deaths.

The MTA’s CFO Bob Foran also predicted the agency would need to cut 50 percent of commuter railroad service to balance the budget, leading to 850 Long Island Railroad job cuts.

Speaking Wednesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo added the state doesn’t have enough money to prevent these types of cuts. “It’s not mathematically possible,” he said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said they’ll fight to secure the funding.