New York Note
Some words on the vote
Happy Election Day! I don’t feel like I need to give you a lot of advice about the candidates in New York City, but I thought it might be useful (if late, considering how many people have already voted by now) to say a couple of things about the six ballot propositions, for which the argumentation on both sides, seems to be just diabolically badly written.
Proposal #1: Amendment to Allow an Olympic Sports Complex on Forest Preserve
This state question is really irritating, because voting for it will ratify an old crime, but voting against it will make it impossible to do anything about it. The crime was the development for the Mount Van Hoevenberg Winter Sports Complex for the Winter Olympics in 1932 and 1980 and other events, in particular the bobsled run, on land that was constitutionally required to be kept “forever wild”. You can’t actually “allow” it, regardless of what the language of the amendment may say; that train left the station a long time ago.
What the amendment does, rather, is to say “It’s not illegal any more!” Voters are offering them a pardon. Instead there is some restitution; a package of 2,500 acres of Adirondacks land that will remain forever wild in place of the original (which is frankly not that wild, I think—it’s been settled, however sparsely, for centuries, and that’s just the white people).
But given that the land in question is already lost, it’s probably the best that can be done. I’ll vote yes.
Proposal #2: Fast Track Affordable Housing to Build More Across the City
Three proposed revisions to the city charter have to do with affordable housing; they were the creations of a Charter Revision Commission appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, they’re ostensibly aimed at breaking down some of the bureaucratic barriers, but some have also suspected some kind of plot on the mayor’s part to grab some of the City Council’s power. The pleasant thing about that is that Eric Adams is definitely not going to be the next New York mayor, so we can look at the proposals on their own merits.
Proposal #2 creates two new processes for fast-tracking affordable housing projects; one keyed to publicly financed projects, and the other to the 12 community board districts with the lowest rates of affordable housing development over the past five years. Both remove City Council approval from the list of requirements, which may sound undemocratic, but the community board review might be thought more Democratic. After long hesitation, I’m inclining to Yes.
Proposal #3: Simplify Review of Modest Housing and Infrastructure Projects
This fast-tracks small-scale projects, also subject to community board review but not City Council. Again, Yes.
Proposal #4: Establish an Affordable Housing Appeals Board with Council, Borough and Citywide Representation
This is the most charged. Projects that are not fast-tracked will be approved, as always, by the City Council, with the member whose district is affected enjoying a kind of courtesy veto right. Whenever the City Council rejects an affordable housing project, though, the decision can be appealed to a board consisting of three people: the Council Speaker, the borough president, and the mayor. There is a question of NIMBYism operating here, and maybe a question of particular Council members. I love my own member, Gale Brewer, known as a staunch progressive and have loved her for years, for various reasons, but it’s come to my attention that there has not been one single affordable unit built in my Upper West Side neighborhood, even as awful luxury condos spring up along Broadway without pause, and I don’t think that’s right. Voting Yes on this one too. (Non-billionaire Greenwich Village residents might like to think about this too.)
Proposal #5: Create a Digital City Map to Modernize City Operations
Are you kidding? Of course!
Proposal #6: Move Local Elections to Presidential Election Years
Why do we have to hold our mayoral election in the year before a presidential election? It’s said that holding an election when nothing else is going on decreases turnout, but this is just an awfully funny year for worrying about that, because the turnout is already exceptionally high (factors are the horror at Donald Trump and his terrible presidency looming over the Republican Party and Zohran Mamdani and his extraordinarily attractive mayoral candidacy lighting up the Democrats in two different directions.
On the other hand, the small number of contests in an odd-numbered year, in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City, attracts a tremendous amount of attention from the punditry to issues, ours, that don’t always get a lot of attention, and what they represent for the current state of party politics.
Also, nobody’s explaining how it’s done: do all the City Council members just get their terms cut short by a year in 2028?
So I’m actually voting No on this one.
Other than that:
Manhattan District Attorney (a state office):
Alvin Bragg, the only prosecutor who has ever gotten a criminal conviction against Donald J. Trump, 34 of them in fact. He has also implemented bail reform with extremely good results, defeating the fear that letting more defendants off cash bail would lead to rises in crime rates, which has driven the Republicans to insanity (even as the city reaches historic lows in violent crime, they can’t stop lying about it). There’s a slightly mysterious candidate, Diana Florence, under the label A Safer Manhattan, and she has a gigantic advertising budget—one of her things has been to take over the marquee of the Beacon Theater (the venue for many high-end comedians and beloved rock revival tours, Bob Dylan was there not long ago)—I think there’s something suspicious about her, but I’m hopeful it won’t matter.
Other than that, there’s not a lot I need to say, but for the sake of completeness:
Manhattan Borough President:
State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal
Mayor of New York City:
Zohran Mamdani!!!
City Comptroller:
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine
Public Advocate:
incumbent Jumaane Williams
City Council Member:
incumbent Gale Brewer (running unopposed)
Re #5: why on earth would the planning, or zoning, or various infrastructure-related bureaus just do it? Why have they put that to a vote? Did they hafta get a ballot measure to buy some paper and colored pencils when they made maps before?
In my experience in California, the home of endless ballot initiatives, the diabolically written ones are usually due to incompetence from activists trying to be too clever by half. A recent initiative to ban "factory farms" in Sonoma County was written by an animal rights group out of Berkeley that had a paragraph tucked away that a committe made up of local officials and animal rights group members would define what a "factory farm" was, with authority to shut them down if they did not meet loosely worded requirements. Because of the proximity of urban and rural land use farms in Sonoma are already subject to massive amounts of monitoring of waste disposal and animal abuse prevention.