Building that fairer city
The author who aims to end New York’s “tale of two cities” scripts a new story to launch his second term: Mayor de Blasio aims to make this “the fairest big city in America.” Unlike “biggest” or “safest” or “richest,” “fairest” is in the eye of the beholder — and we take significant issue with de Blasio’s vision.
There’s much to recommend in it: pre-school for 3-year olds; all public school children reading proficiently by third grade; body cameras for police.
We too want a city in which equal treatment is on the rise. But if de Blasio’s serious about making this city the fairest of them all, he’s got to take on tough political battles from which he has so far shied away, cutting as they do against the grain of entrenched interests and ideological orthodoxy.
Starting with education, where de Blasio has in big and small ways hampered the growth of charter schools despite the proven success of the best of them to supercharge children’s progress.
Disrupting a system that has for too long forced low-income kids unlucky enough to live in certain neighborhoods to attend low-quality schools, they are pure vehicles of fairness.
Indeed, if getting all kids, no matter the adversity they face at home, to read at level by third grade is a noble goal — and it is — charters are closer to the promised land than anyone. In the name of fairness, let charters bloom. By the way, the deadline for another magnet for excellence in the public schools is Monday, the time to sign up for the gifted-and-talented test. In the city’s best-heeled districts, most pre-K tots take the test — like the Upper West Side, where 84% did last year. In the poorest, like the South Bronx, only 7% signed up, and so few passed that there weren’t enough to form a single class.
Unfair. Sign up every kid for testing unless parents opt out.
De Blasio’s vision of a fairer city doesn’t include Rikers Island, which he’s committed to shutter within five years after leaving office. It should.
He says he wants the City Council to forge ahead with approving new jail sites in each borough — but not, definitely not, in Staten Island, which he ruled out even though 1,145 defendants from the borough were detained at Rikers last year while awaiting trial. How is that fair?
Speaking of the boroughs: Homeowners have suffered stiff property tax hikes owing to rising city valuations, as have co-ops and condos and the landlords who’ve also had to absorb de Blasio’s double rent freeze. Tax assessments zoomed up in de Blasio term one to fuel a city budget boomed by $10 billion.
Staring down a lawsuit charging discrimination because quirks keep some owners (like one Bill de Blasio of Park Slope) paying less, the mayor said he’d deal with the disparities after reelection. Well, here we are. Bring on the fairness. No single cry screams fairness more than Mayor Robin Hood’s millionaire’s tax proposal to save the staggering subways and meanwhile fund half fares for the poor. Don’t believe the hype, or that riders can afford to wait for the sea change necessary in the state Legislature.
Fairness is already baked into a state tax system that, properly progressive, asks the wealthiest to pay more.
Meanwhile the mayor petulantly dismisses widely supported congestion pricing, which would score not one, not two, but three blockbuster wins for fairness.
By putting tolls onto the four currently untolled East River spans while lowering tolls on crossings outside central Manhattan, the Move NY plan would raise more than enough funds to fix the subways — transit low-income New Yorkers rely on.
De Blasio cries “unfair” on behalf of drivers — but drivers crossing the Throgs Neck, Verrazano and other outlying tolled bridges serving areas not reached by subways will pay less.
And last but not least, congestion pricing curbs traffic, making bus rides go faster and speeding hardworking commuters home.
Fair’s fair: to fulfill his sky-high, mayoralty-defining aspiration, de Blasio will have to broaden his too-narrow horizons.