Uptown Radio

Bill de Blasio, public advocate, speaks outside City Hall criticizing Mayor Bloomberg's proposed budget (Photo/ John Light)

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HOST INTRO

Another potential 2013 candidate for mayor has blasted Mayor Bloomberg for his 2013 budget. The budget would cut the number of contracts awarded for after school and early child care programs by about half. In the week since the mayor unveiled his budget, educators and parents have taken to the streets to protest. And today, Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio added his voice to the growing outcry. John Light reports.

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JOHN LIGHT, REPORTER

At a press conference outside city hall, De Blasio said that Bloomberg’s proposed cuts are part of a trend that he finds unsettling. When the recession began, the public advocate said, there were more than 130,000 kids in after school programs and childcare programs.

BILL DE BLASIO

If this budget passes as it is, that combined figure will go to 53,000. 80,000 fewer kids.

JOHN LIGHT

De Blasio’s office has put together a report, called “Cut Now, Pay Later.” It argues that while the cuts may save money now, they’ll cost the city in the long run.

BILL DE BLASIO

We have a Harvard study that shows for every one dollar invested in early childhood education generates two dollars in economic activity.

JOHN LIGHT

Though De Blasio’s report looked to the future, some people in the crowd were focused on the next few weeks. Wanda Torres works at a daycare center in the South Bronx.

WANDA TORRES

We got a letter on Monday saying our contract wasn’t going to be renewed. So as of June 30th we’re no longer going to receive funds, and we’re going to be shut down.

JOHN LIGHT

Torres says that many parents who send their children to her daycare center are not sure where else they might be able to send their kids while they’re at work. She says … some parents have considered leaving their jobs or working part time, but for many, that’s not an option.

WANDA TORRES

If they leave their job, then who’s going to support their kids? So they were asking us if we have anything, but we’re just in the same place that they are. We don’t have any definite information as to what’s going to happen.

JOHN LIGHT

Educators across New York have rallied students and parents to protest the proposed cut since Bloomberg’s budget presentation last week. Just yesterday, Bloomberg announced a public information campaign — the largest ever of its kind — to address chronic absenteeism in public schools. Manhattan parent Elzora Cleveland finds Bloomberg’s focus on absenteeism ironic in light of his proposed cuts.

ELZORA CLEVELAND

It’s very interesting that he wants to target absenteeism at a time like now but yet he opts to close after school programs and early childhood education programs. I mean, that is going to have a ripple effect of more absenteeism.

JOHN LIGHT

When he presented the budget, Bloomberg admitted that he may not get all the cuts he’s asked for.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

Well, number one, we work with the city council between now and June 30th. So we’ll see how all of that works out.

JOHN LIGHT

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn — who’s a likely candidte to succeed Bloomberg — will be overseeing any changes to the proposed budget. And Quinn vowed last week to reinstate funding to after school programs. Hearings on the cuts will begin Monday, May 14th.

John Light, Columbia Radio News.

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HOST INTRO:

If you’re a New Yorker, and you like oysters, clams and scallops the freshest you can get come from the waters around Long Island. These shellfish pump water through their bodies to breathe and eat. And if you eat them, you also get any toxins that stay behind. That’s why shellfishing is monitored by New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation. It tests water quality–and forbids shellfishing if the water’s not clean enough. But lately, the agency’s been falling behind — enough so that the Federal Food and Drug Administration is taking notice. And people who make a living with shellfish are worried.

John Light reports.

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JOHN LIGHT, REPORTER

Vincent Dimino has been selling fish in New York for 53 years. He’s built quite a business, buying fish from all over the country, and then prepping them for sale in his market in midtown.

SOUND: FISH BEING GUTTED ON “PREPPING,” ICE BEING SPREAD ON “MARKET”

JOHN LIGHT

He says he can tell when the Department of Environmental Conservation is going to cut off shellfish harvesting.

VINCE DIMINO

Regulations are if there is more than one inch of rain at one time, they close everything down for twenty-four hours. Two inches, forty eight hours, and so on.

JOHN LIGHT

A rainy day on Long Island means no local shellfish in New York, because rainwater runoff is one of many sources of contamination.

SOUND: DEC PHONE RECORDING OF SHELLFISHING ADVISORIES

“YOU HAVE REACHED THE NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION EMERGENCY SHELLFISH CLOSURE INFO MESSAGE LINE. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY MAY 4 2012…” FADE UNDER

JOHN LIGHT

The DEC updates this message every day.

FADE UP

“ARE CLOSED TO THE HARVEST OF SHELLFISH AND CARNIVOROUS GASTROPODS”…FADE UNDER AND OUT

JOHN LIGHT
Still, this past winter the Food and Drug Administration reported that New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation is dangerously short-staffed. The FDA called the department “highly dependent on borrowing staff and resources from other programs.” No one at the DEC could give an interview on tape,
but a spokeswoman provided a statement through email. In it, she wrote that one of two vacancies on Long Island had been filled in May of last year. And the agency “feels that we are adequately staffed at this time.”

FADE UP SOUND OF BEACH

A lot of people just want the DEC to do it s job.

SOUND OF MIKE TALKING

Mike Osinsky is an oyster farmer in Green Port, Long Island. He delivers oysters to restaurants all over Manhattan — about a ton a week, he says. He raises the oysters on his property, and sorts them for sale using this machine. On a recent morning, it’s misty and cold, so a wood burning stove is heating Osinsky’s bayside home.

FIRE AMBI

He’s worried about the chilly weather stunting his oyster crop. But his immediate worry is that the DEC will close his bay because of a dangerous algae that’s spreading.

MIKE OSINSKY

I’m a little concerned right now because Sag Harbor’s closed, Shinnecock Bay is closed, Mannatuck Inlet in closed.

JOHN LIGHT

Osinsky business is relatively new — he’s only been at it for nine years. Before then, he was a software programmer on Wall Street. He says last year was his biggest — that’s when he hit a ton a week.

MIKE OSINSKY

Which is for me sort of a threshold, I’m going to pour some more money into this, I’m going to build a hatchery. If I’m doing a ton and I’m turning away business like crazy, I might as well do ten tons.

JOHN LIGHT

Osinsky says he would like to build an oyster hatchery. But Osinsky says the Department of Environmental Conservation has yet to approve his oyster hatchery location, and he’s been waiting for over a year.

FADE OUT AMBI

Seafood is more highly regulated than anything except medicine, says Roger Tollefson, who is head of the New York Seafood Council. The council works with fisherman and wholesalers to promote New York seafood. Tollefson also trains shellfishermen in state and federal regulations — and, specifically, about how the DEC works.

ROGER TOLLEFSON

In the past, when money has been tight, they’ve looked to cut things. And in the past it’s been threatened that they would no longer test for the harvest areas in New York State.

JOHN LIGHT

But Tollefson says an interstate trade regulation stipulates that the Department of Environmental Conservation, and no one else, test the waters.

ROGER TOLLEFSON

If the DEC were to stop testing these samples in a timely manner, it would shut down an industry.

JOHN LIGHT

Shellfishing on Long Island is fading, despite the modest success of boutique shellfish farmers like Mike Osinsky. And a shutdown would mean no local shellfish for businesses that have come to rely on it —
They include Vince Dimino’s fish market, and Camaje, a restaurant in Manhattan, near Washington Square Park.

RESTAURANT

JOHN LIGHT

It’s late afternoon, and Camaje owner and chef Abby Hitchcock is getting ready for the dinner shift.

FADE UP KITCHEN AMBI

She says shellfish dishes, like scallops, are some of her most popular.

ABBY HITCHCOCK

They seem decadent and delicious and they’re something people mess up a lot when they cook at home, or they’re afraid they’re going to. And so it seems like kind of a cool restaurant thing to order.

JOHN LIGHT

Restaurants like Camaje depend on wholesalers, like Vince Dimino. And he could always buy more shellfish from further away — like Canada or the Gulf of Mexico. But New York Seafood Council’s Roger Tollefson says that would be a shame.

ROGER TOLLEFSON

I think one of the benefits and beauties of living in this area is that we can buy local. And the consumer should really always demand local products whenever they can get them. But they shouldn’t be excluded from it because we can’t afford to test the waters.

JOHN LIGHT

Tollefson plans to continue training shellfishermen to work with the Department of Environmental Conservation. The Food and Drug Administration will reevaluate some of the DEC’s Long Island units
later this year.

John Light, Columbia Radio News.

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BY JOHN LIGHT

Around 7 percent of New Yorkers who take their own life do it in a subway-related way. Many lie on the tracks, or jump in front of oncoming trains. The MTA code for it is 12-9. John Light reports that memories of these incidents stay with train operators throughout their careers.

ACLU of Maryland wants a law prohibiting employers from logging in to job applicant’s facebook pages.

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BY JOHN LIGHT

The ACLU of Maryland is working with that state’s legislature to pass a law prohibiting employers from logging in to job applicant’s Facebook pages. The bill has passed the state senate, and is being considered by a committee in the house. John Light spoke with Melissa Goemann, the legislative director of the ACLU of Maryland. Light asked her, first, to explain the scenario that peaked the ACLU’s interest in social media privacy. Goemann told him the story of a man named Robert Collins.

The Department of Transportation has been using materials like this promotional chart to survey people's biking habits in neighborhoods where the city will install the first bike share stations. Photo by John Light

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BY JOHN LIGHT

Portland Oregon got its first bike share in 1994, followed in recent years by Denver, Minneapolis and Washington DC. Last year, Boston got a bike share. And this summer, the popular program comes to New York.

All it takes is a credit card and any New Yorker will be able to use any of 10,000 bikes that will be available around the city. But New York is not just the latest but also the most diverse city to try bike sharing.

A professor at Virginia Tech named Ralph Buehler had his students interview people who used Washington DC’s bike share. Overwhelmingly, the short term users– bikers who rent a bike for just one ride– were white were young, they were male, and they were very highly educated — 43% had masters degrees. Dr. Buehler thought these statistics might be a reflection of bikers in America overall, not just bike share users.

“I think some of the things that we pick up here are probably what we pick up, not just in bike sharing, but in general in cycling in the US,” he said. “It may not be a problem or an inequitable issue within bike sharing but within bicycling in the US at the moment.”

Aware of these findings, the New York Department of Transportation has been trying to be inclusive as they plan their bike share. Part of this effort includes holding evening meetings in the neighborhoods that will get bikes.

Last Tuesday, the DOT hosted one at Hunter College’s 25th street campus, on the East River. True to Dr. Buehler’s study, the people at the meeting are mostly young and white. But the DOT says it does recognize that others may want to get involved.

Seth Solomonow, a spokesperson for the DOT, suggested that the bike share could be a cheap way for people living in New York’s lower income, nonwhite communities to get around.

“One of the key elements of bike share is that it is really so affordable,” he said. “We were talking about the cost of a metro card being about $95 for a month. That’s what we’re talking about for membership for an entire year. And you could have unlimited free trips of basically from half an hour to 45 minutes for an entire year for that investment.”

Nine different nonprofits on the Lower East side have formed an organization, called Local Spokes, that focuses on biking. The organization has surveyed over a thousand Lower East Side residents. Douglas Le, one of the groups leaders,  said that issues of access are associated with income level,  but that other factors like race were less important.

“We did find that lower income folks face different challenges than higher income folks,” said Le. “We didn’t see as much of any kind of destinction between, you know, Asian, versus latino, versus black or white, or the surveys that were done in Chinese or Spanish versus English.”

The neighborhoods that Local Spokes works in are at the nexus of the new bike sharing system. But Le is concerned that some of the lower income residents of his neighborhood may not be able to use the bike sharing system that they live within. One of the issues, he says, is credit cards. Most bike share systems require a credit card for payment and to establish the for identity of the user.  Jon Orcutt, the Director of Policy for the DOT says the city program is working on it.

“We don’t want lack of a credit card to be a barrier for New Yorkers accessing the system. So we’re looking for a variety of ways to do that,” he said. “We’re talking with the housing authority about how housing authority tenants could participate, since the authority knows who their tenants are.”

Another issue that both the DOT and Local Spokes are looking into is the price tag. Le says that it would be easier for many New Yorker’s to pay in installments.

“Though $100 is affordable for most families in the city, it may not be affordable up front,” said Le. “So can they pay it throughout the year?”

And even if those issues are figured out, the bike share only reaches so far. DOT eventually hopes to expand the program east into Brooklyn and north into Harlem and the Bronx, but Jon Orcutt, the DOT’s director of policy, said it could be years before that happens. The first priority was the city’s business district.

Still, Le said it’s nice to see that the department is making an effort to communicate their plans to residents. They’ve held information sessions in Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese. The sessions haven’t been well attended, but Seth Solomonow said there are more foreign language sessions in the works.

“I think in a place like New York you can’t make everyone happy, and they know that more than anyone,” said Le. “But I do want to acknowledge that DOT has made an effort in terms of being transparent about their process.”

The DOT has yet to set an exact date for the opening of the program this summer. Until then, it will be holding information sessions and gathering input on their website. Whether New York’s bike share will turn out to  be  any more accessible than any other cities remains to be seen.