New York City is really reeling
Inever root against New York City, and I’ve been trying to write in recent weeks about the good that could come out of this mess we’re in, but I’m not feeling optimistic about our prospects. Things feel brittle and ominous, in the stillness after the first wave and before fall and the flu season and the school year that’s supposed to start in the only big city in America that’s planning to have kids in classrooms in September.
Two hundred and fifty thousand infections and 25,000 deaths later, the city doesn’t seem to have much of a plan past buying time and hoping for the best.
Shootings are way up, and all over. There’s been a run of buildings collapsing. And now trees are crashing down, and the power is going out, in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Isaias. Some calls to 911 during and just after the storm about those trees were routed to an answering service. Nearly eight years after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the city, there’s no sign that it’s become more resilient.
To the contrary, the seven fat years are old news now. Much of the economy is still shut down and won’t fully reopen until the schools can, and that’s not happening this fall. Washington isn’t helping the states. New York State, which has to balance its own budget, isn’t going to be helping New York City. And that means that there’s going to be a lot less money to go around, and that the hard choices that got deferred when money was pouring in, thanks to the Fed’s low interest rates and global capital seeking shelter here, are only going to get harder.
There’s going to be less money to go around. More garbage on the streets, and less maintenance of the streets. Fewer building inspections. Weeks before Isaias, the year’s tree trimming budget was sliced by 80%.
And that means more stuff falling from the sky, something I’ve thought about a lot since a cinderblock crashed through the windshield of the car my family was in two-and-a-half very long years ago.
Yet the city’s political class is still having the same old conversation from February — 56,447 hospitalizations and 23,567 deaths ago — about resisting Trump, fixing America’s original sins, and taxing the rich more.
That starts with Bill de Blasio prattling on, day after day, about how real New Yorkers are tough and New York City always comes back stronger from tragedy, and how he doesn’t care about the people with means who are leaving the city and its schools and its shared systems since someone will want to replace them. He hasn’t really said how we’re coming back, just that we are. Of course, he’ll be old news and that will be someone else’s problem in 17 months.
Honestly, de Blasio sounds an awful lot like Trump talking about the virus “miraculously” disappearing, just another of those men who want to say words and have the cameras stay on him while hoping that things turn his way and retcon some sense into his babbling to fill dead air.
Meantime, Gov. Cuomo is still taking a victory lap for “beating” the virus while leaving the mayor and the school unions to hash out what happens in September.
Amidst the buck-passing, parents are panicking, small businesses are shuttering, and venture capital is looming again at a moment when cash is king. We’re in a very weird recession where much of the economy is shut down but the secondary home market is booming. Those with the means to do so are leaving Dodge, for now or for keeps.
And that means more shoes dropping here, and bullets and bricks and trees.
If any of the many 2021 mayoral hopefuls have a real vision for how we emerge from this into a better tomorrow in the midst of this, it’s news to me. I’d love to be wrong; my email is harrysiegel@gmail.com
The mayor sounds an awful lot like Trump