The mayor never bothered to prepare the city for any lean years.

Via Jason Riley and The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 18, 2008:

“Next to the assumption of power is the responsibility of relinquishing it.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

Citing the financial crisis, twice-elected New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to scrap the city’s term-limit law. He’s asking the city council to pass a bill that would allow him to seek four more years in office.

Obviously the mayor believes that he’s indispensable to Gotham’s well-being, which will come as no surprise to any journalist who’s met with him. What’s passing strange is that so much of the local press seems to share the mayor’s inflated view of himself.
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A familiar issue facing many tenants in Mitchell-Lama complexes that have been privatized under Bloomberg: The owners refuse to make repairs or maintain the apartments of long-time tenants who receive some sdort of housing subsidy. This puts pressure on them to move out to make room for market rate tenants. A friend sent us this quote, which has great resonance in this mayoral election

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” — Ben Franklin
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From Sue Susman:

Hi, all.

The article below says Gluck & Chetrit, developers of “Columbus
Square” (5 new apartment buildings and more between 97th and 100th Streets along Columbus & Amsterdam Avenue and in between) have agreed to put the apartments under rent stabilization in terms of increases - in exchange for tax abatements. But the rents are so high that tenants - at least in the second year after the special deals expire - will have to earn more than the “high income” at which landlords may legally deregulate the apartments.

I’m hoping to see the agreement - and whether Gluck & Chetrit agreed NOT to deregulate.

More specifically: Rent stabilization is based on the REGISTERED rents. But the article says “AFTER FACTORING IN THE OFFERS OF FREE RENT, one-bedrooms START at $2,799 and two-bedrooms at $4,103. Alcove studios start at $2,535, but there are no concessions on those units.” - emphasis added.

Given the 3 months free, the registered rents would be 1/3 more than the article reports - or $3732 for a one-bedroom apartment and $5470 for a two-bedroom. So if the tenants stay for a second year, their rents would be the higher amounts. And their incomes would have to accommodate that.

Typically, a prudent tenant pays no more than 33.3% of household
income in rent - and landlords often refuse to rent to tenants who would have to pay more than that percentage of their income in rent.

So the tenant in a one-bedroom apartment that rents for $2,799 would have to have an annual income of at least $100,764 — but if the actual rent is $3732, the income would have to be $134,352.

In a two-bedroom apartment that rents for $4,103, the tenant would need an annual income of at least $147,708 — but if the actual rent is $5470, the tenant’s income would have to be $196,944.

BUT the current law is that when the rent of an occupied rent stabilized apartment is $2000 or more AND the household income exceeds $175,000 for 2 consecutive years, the landlord can remove it permanently from rent stabilization.

The bill that would increase high-income decontrol so that the income would have to be $240,000 might help the tenants who move into Columbus Square - if the bill passes. But so far, no major tenant bills have passed the state legislature.

- Sue

Via The New York Times: Bounty for Brokers

WITH the economy sluggish and rents falling, new rental buildings have been offering ever larger incentives to tenants and their agents. But Columbus Square, the complex of five new glass rental buildings going up on the Upper West Side on and around Columbus Avenue between 97th and 100th Streets, is raising the stakes.

The developers, the Chetrit Group and Stellar Management, have already been offering free rent and broker fees in the first two buildings to be ready for occupancy. Last week they sent brokers an e-mail blast with the subject line, in capital letters: “$1,000 agent bonuses plus three months’ free rent.”

Brokers get the $1,000 bounty if they bring in buyers who move in by Oct. 15. Jeffrey Davis, the project manager at Columbus Square, said the project was not facing any financing or other deadlines. But, he said, the developers wanted to speed up business toward what they consider the end of the summer leasing season, and get renters to move in while construction is still under way.

“In this market you have to be creative,” Mr. Davis said. “I figured if I could incentivize everybody I would get more deals done.”

The offer raises ticklish questions for real estate agents who bring in renters, because the agents technically represent the interests of the landlord. Do they disclose the possibility of a $1,000 bonus, and if so, do they use the bonus as an incentive for the renter — instead of keeping it themselves — to help close the deal?

The first building in the project, a 29-story tower at 808 Columbus Avenue, has 359 apartments, of which 200 are now completed and 110 rented, Mr. Davis said. The building’s amenities include a 70-foot saltwater pool, an outdoor sundeck and a Whole Foods grocery.

A second building, at 801 Amsterdam Avenue, is also near completion, with 13 of 100 apartments rented. The free rent offers — three months at Amsterdam Avenue and two months at Columbus — lower the costs to renters, but preserve the higher rent written into the lease.

The high rent may be particularly important at a project like Columbus Square, whose developers agreed to take part in the state’s rent stabilization program, limiting rent increases in exchange for tax abatements. Mr. Davis said the regulated rent levels would be based on the initial rents.

After factoring in the offers of free rent, one-bedrooms start at $2,799 and two-bedrooms at $4,103. Alcove studios start at $2,535, but there are no concessions on those units.

The new development was bitterly opposed by residents of its neighbor, a 2,500-unit development called Park West Village. As part of the Columbus Square project, a T. J. Maxx store, a bakery and a bank are going up on Columbus Avenue.

Mr. Davis said the new retail stores would turn this section of Columbus Avenue into a more attractive destination for renters.

E-mail: bigdeal@nytimes.com

* After touting environmentally friendly policies like painting the roofs of city buildings white to make them more energy efficient, Bloomberg has come under criticism for taking a helicopter flight from New York to New Jersey to attend a U2 concert. Also, the pilot took a test flight there before the mayor came aboard, which means quite a bit of fuel was wasted for the trip.

* Elizabeth Benjamin reports that Bloomberg has launched a negative television ad against Thompson.

* Is Michael Bloomberg a financial wizard? Not if you ask the 300 city workers that were laid off today due to budget cuts, reports The Daily News

* A third set of answers from Joyce Purnick about Bloomberg.

Via Gay City News:

In the wake of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s comments pegging the chances of gay marriage moving in Albany this fall at “zero, zero,” and charging that his Democratic opponent in the November 3 election is “afraid to go near any of these issues,” Senator Thomas K. Duane and City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., have struck back hard.

“Once again Mike Bloomberg is talking out of both sides of his mouth,” Thompson’s campaign argued in an email to Gay City News. “The fact of the matter is Mike will stand up in press conferences and talk the talk but at the end of the day he never walks the walk. Mike Bloomberg has consistently supported the Republican Party and its anti-gay marriage agenda.”

Duane, an out gay Chelsea Democrat who is leading the efforts to win Senate approval for Governor David A. Paterson’s marriage equality bill, already passed by the Assembly, was more specific in his critique of Bloomberg.

“As far as I know, the mayor hasn’t been in on any discussions with Senate Democrats or with Senate Republicans on strategy for getting marriage passed,” he told Gay City News on September 24. “There have been people involved with his administration that I’ve talked with and others may have spoken to, but I don’t know of the mayor personally speaking to anyone.”

Duane said he continues to believe that the marriage equality bill has “an excellent chance” to move quickly. “I remain confident it will get done this fall,” he said.

Duane and Thompson were responding to comments Bloomberg made in a September 17 interview with Gay City News published online on September 20.

Duane challenged a central tenet of the mayor’s appeal to LGBT voters — that his strong financial backing of the State Senate Republicans, whose campaigns he has supported to the tune of as much as $2 million in the past two election cycles, allows him the leverage to round up GOP votes in favor of gay marriage.

Advocates across the board acknowledge that some Republicans will be needed to win approval in a closely divided 32-30 Senate in which Democrats have control by the smallest of margins.

“His offer to come testify is the easiest political commitment to make, but the time for hearings is past,” Duane said. “I held hearings on the bill years ago. I can’t say he’s expended much political capital on this.”

In casting doubt on the mayor’s commitment to the issue, Duane recalled that Bloomberg appealed a Manhattan district judge’s 2005 pro-marriage equality ruling, at the same time he first voiced support for the right of gay and lesbian couples to wed.

In his comments last week, Bloomberg said he “suspect[s]” Republican Senators Frank Padavan of Queens and Martin Golden of Brooklyn, who have aggressively fought movement toward gay marriage in the past, would vote yes “if it came down to it.”

Asked about the prospects of changing the minds of these two Republicans, Duane said, “I have everybody on my gettable list, however those two particular senators are not on anybody’s top priorities list.”

Bryan Gorman, Padavan’s director of public affairs, said that the mayor has not had any conversations with the senator about the marriage equality issue. A call requesting comment from Golden’s office about any discussions he has had with Bloomberg was not returned as of press time.

Thompson was responding to a different argument raised by the mayor — that the comptroller is avoiding discussion of his support for gay marriage as he focuses instead on pulling out his base in the African-American and other people of color communities. Several times during the September 17 interview, Bloomberg pointed to what he said is the social conservatism of the black and Latino communities.

The statement from the comptroller’s campaign distinguished Thompson’s record from the mayor’s by emphasizing his support for more comprehensive AIDS education, including classroom condom demonstrations, and his advocacy for two bills passed over Bloomberg’s veto, but never implemented — one that would require contractors doing significant business with the city to offer their gay employees the same partner rights given to married couples, and another establishing anti-bullying policies in city schools protecting specific groups, including gay, lesbian, and transgendered students. (Last year, the Bloomberg administration rolled out its own program to combat harassment in the schools.)

The Thompson campaign also noted the comptroller’s success, as head of the city employee pension funds, in forcing 75 companies in which New York invests to adopt workplace fairness policies encompassing sexual orientation and gender identity, an effort for which he received the Champion Award from Out and Equal Workplace Advocates, an LGBT non-profit.

Duane’s optimism on the prospects for enacting the marriage bill this year was echoed by other advocates.

“We don’t agree with Mayor Bloomberg’s statement that marriage equality does not have a chance of coming up for a vote this fall,” Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the LGBT community’s lead lobbying group in Albany, told Gay City News in an email message. “The mayor is focused on New York City and his race for re-election, and not on the details involved in moving the marriage bill forward in Albany. We know from the work that we do daily on this issue that marriage equality is still very much in play in 2009.”

Van Capelle’s comments included a hint of pique at the mayor for talking down marriage equality’s prospects at a critical juncture in the legislative process.

“The mayor’s statements were disappointing,” he wrote. “Nobody ever thinks we will win and in the end we always do.”

Duane sounded less concerned about the impact of Bloomberg’s words.

“Regardless of what the mayor says, we will move forward full steam ahead and his comments won’t change that,” the senator said.

Christine Quinn, the out lesbian speaker of the City Council, who has traveled to Albany several times this year to lobby senators on marriage equality, told Gay City News, “I disagree with the mayor. I do believe that there is a real potential and a very real potential in the near future.”

Quinn was cautious, however, about making a specific prediction of favorable Senate action this year.

“If I knew exactly when” the measure would move, “I would probably know who was going to win the trifecta at Belmont,” she said, but added, “I don’t see any reason to think that there is not potential to have this vote.”

Quinn said she recently met with John Sampson, the Brooklyn Democrat who now heads up the majority caucus in the Senate.

“He was overall very supportive of the issue,” she said. “Obviously in the position he’s in, he’s counting votes.”

Asked whether Bloomberg offering a negative assessment concerned her, Quinn said, “People have to answer questions honestly.”

Michael Bloomberg’s progress not politics is the perfect Madison Avenue campaign slogan. Based on focus groups and polling data, it’s a typically slick piece of political hype. I can almost see the boyz sitting around the table tossing around ideas — Eureka! Progress not Politics. We can sell that.
 
It fits the Bloomberg public persona — above politics — and his modus operandi — the hired help does the politics, not me.  Thus, voters don’t sense any discord between the man and the message, an essential element of a successful campaign slogan. There’s a kind of honesty to it. It is not a slogan that Rush Limbaugh could use. Bloomberg has been selling himself not as New York’s mayor, but as its CEO.  He decides what’s best for us (i.e. progress) and he goes forward with the policies and programs to get it done — politics be damned.  
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The rationale offered by those who forgive Michael Bloomberg’s override of term limits is that he is an indispensable leader. Bloomberg true believers base their belief on the quality of his fiscal and economic stewardship, or more precisely what they have been told about it. We don’t understand Joyce Purnick’s stance. Presumably, she knows better. The business-financed Citizens Budget Commission certainly does. In its March, 2008 letter to the mayor, it wrote:

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

The Executive Budget you will present next month is a critical juncture for New York City and for your mayoralty. This is the last budget you will propose and administer, and one of the last two you will formulate.
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* Columbia University’s Teacher’s College produced a study that showed Bloomberg’s claim that graduation rates are up at small schools are misleading, reports The Daily News.

* Richard Lipsky argues that when it comes to Thompson debating Bloomberg on education, Thompson has a good chance of having a knockout.

* Here’s an example of “Do What I Say, Not as I Do”: The New York Times reports that Mayor Bloomberg is not a healthy eater, throwing salt on everything and eating high fat foods, despite asking the city food providers to lower sodium in their dishes by 20 percent or more and banning the use of trans fat.

* Joyce Purnick answered readers questions about Mayor Bloomberg, responding to one reader that Mayor Bloomberg did not want give voters a chance to weigh in on term limits in a referendum because he knew they would vote no.

* The Queens Courier writes about how term limits is playing out in this year’s election.

* Some of the Republican candidates running for citywide office are disappointed with Mayor Bloomberg for forgetting that they’re in the running, reports The Daily News. In an interview, Bloomberg said that the Democratic challengers for comptroller and public advocate are “running against nobody, I assume.”

* City Room says the mayor’s race is all about education today.

* Queens Crap has part five of the Bloomberg: He’s Just Like One of Us series.