Crain’s Insider – Wednesday, June 1, 2011
June 1, 2011 Leave a comment
Today’s News Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Hunts Point Down to the Wire
At press time, the Economic Development Corp. had not negotiated a lease with produce vendors at Hunts Point. The current lease with the Terminal Produce Cooperative Market expired last night at midnight. The city is competing with New Jersey to ink the cooperative to a 30- or 40-year deal. Negotiations began in earnest almost a year ago. Even if cooperative members decide to move the market, it would remain in the Bronx for several years until New Jersey could build a facility. Absent a new agreement, the current lease remains in effect month-to-month.
Schneiderman’s Suit
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman cast a wide net in suing the federal government yesterday to ward off hydrofracking in the Delaware River Basin watershed. He named the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as defendants. He sued Washington even though the state Department of Environmental Conservation has the final say on drilling in New York. Schneiderman’s office said drilling in Pennsylvania and New Jersey could affect water drunk by millions of New Yorkers.
Futurist’s Predictions Come to Pass
City government is finally catching up with Andrew Rasiej, the self-described futurist who ran for public advocate in 2005. Rasiej said Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s recent push to make New York the nation’s leading digital city echoes themes of his own quixotic quest to unseat Betsy Gotbaum—namely, that technology should reinvent government and help citizens organize themselves. However, Bloomberg’s tech plan omits a key element of Rasiej’s platform: Wi-Fi that covers the city and its subways. “To this day, if you see something you can’t say something, because the subway system doesn’t allow outside calls,” Rasiej said.
City’s Manufacturing Decline
New York City is rustier than the Rust Belt. The city lost the highest percentage of manufacturing jobs in the state between 2005 and 2009, according to the Business Council of New York State. The city saw a 28% drop in manufacturing positions. The next biggest percentage loss, 19%, occurred in the Finger Lakes region. However, New York City manufacturing jobs are such a small component of the city economy that the council does not even include them in its published report; it provided them separately to the Insider . Despite the steep decline in that sector in the second half of the decade, citywide employment grew 2.3% during the period.
TLC tries to cover its bases
Livery base owners remain opposed to the city’s plan to issue borough taxi licenses with newly sold yellow taxi medallions. The city believes that it can win over the holdouts by offering them low-cost financing and other incentives to purchase packages of 1,500 new medallions that come with a total of 6,000 licenses.
“We are fully committed to attractive, affordable financing to existing bases,” said Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky. “All stakeholders agree the status quo is unacceptable. The only debate now is on the details.”
But livery base operators disagree. New medallions may mollify yellow taxi operators and raise revenue for the city, but livery drivers say the licenses should be decoupled from the sale of medallions, because even with financing, they would be too expensive. They also say 6,000 licenses to pick up street hails are not enough to satisfy likely demand, since there are 22,000 livery vehicles.
“Decoupling is the sticking point,” says a livery industry insider.
Linking the licenses to yellow medallions was thought to be a novel way to create a new business model for livery operators, whose investment would be sure to grow. Corporate taxi medallions fetch as much as $950,000.
Yassky would not say what kind of financing would be offered or how much it would cost the city, but two groups representing taxi and livery operators estimate that financing costs would be more than offset by the $1.5 billion that new medallions could fetch for the city in 2013.
The New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers endorsed the plan last week, but would like half of the new medallions set aside for livery drivers and operators. Yassky said that is being discussed but he stopped short of endorsing the 50% figure.
Faced with opposition in Albany, the Bloomberg administration has sensibly recruited outside elected officials, notably Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr., to play key roles, an insider said. But Díaz’s involvement, announced Friday, came as news to many involved in the discussions. They have since rushed to reach out to him.
At A Glance
MOVING ON: Justin Bernbach, state and community affairs managing director for American Airlines, left the airline yesterday. A former Jeopardy! champion and aide to Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, Bernbach will become Northeast director of government relations for engineering and architectural consulting firm HNTB on June 15.
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