Progressive Democrat Issue 121: NYC FOCUS

I want to keep pushing this because it is heating up. There was an article recently that suggested the $205 million taxpayer money the city wants to give Ratner is a done deal. I talked to someone in Councilman Yassky's office and they say it is NOT a done deal and the final vote will not come down until sometime in June. So we really need to push on this.

The Mayor's Budget contains some very, very unpalatable things. We need to urge the City Council to reject the budget as long as some of the worst expenditures are in there.

In particular let's consider $205 million budgeted to support Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. This is money that each and every New York City Taxpayer, including those in Manhattan, Staten Island, Bronx and Queens, is being asked to spend so that a private developer can make gobs and gobs of money. Now SOME of that money will go to infrastructure inprovement, which I will address in a moment. That particular expenditure has problems but is not so bad in principle. But $100 million of it is nothing but a gift to a wealthy developer to get him off the hook of actually PAYING for the land he wants to develop. There are two reasons why the $205 million is problematic and should be rejected.

Reason 1: $100 million of this $205 million is slated for land acquisition costs on behalf of Forest City Ratner. It should be remembered that $100 million is precisely the amount Forest City Ratner bid to acquire the site, so the mayor has proposed that NYC taxpayers, all of us from every Borough, purchase the land for Bruce Ratner so he can make a profit. In the words of my City Councilman, David Yassky, "There's no justification to spend public money like this. Government money should be spent on transportation infrastructure, schools and traffic calming - not subsidies for a private company.” We should support David Yassky’s sentiments that the city should NOT be spending its money to purchase land for a private development agency. The remaining $105 million is slated for infrastructure improvements associated with the area.

Reason 2: A perhaps more fundamental reason why the City Council should reject the entire $205 million budgeted for Forest City Ratner’s project is the fact that this project was approved without a business plan being filed. The Empire State Development Corporation was forced to reveal that they had approved Forest City Ratner’s project sans business plan only when Assemblyman Jim Brennan sued the ESDC to see the business plan. We are being asked to fund a project that has no business plan. Approval of a plan of this scale without a business plan is a colossally irresponsible action and the City Council should not sink any taxpayer money into a project that has not properly filed a business plan. Mayor Bloomberg, supposedly a businessman, should know better than to support throwing money on a project with no business plan. Even the $105 million that the city has budgeted for infrastructure improvements associated with the site should not be spent as long as a business plan has not been filed.

For these reasons, Mayor Bloomberg’s budget should be rejected by the City Council pending removal of the $205 million budgeted for Ratner’s plan. Why should we be buying the land for Ratner's profit, and why should we be spending ANY amount of money on a project that has no business plan? Imagine going to a bank and asking for even a loan (let alone a gift of money!) for your business if you had not business plan!

You can contact your City Council member here.

I am now also urging people to contact the local media to complain about how their tax money is being spent. If you don't speak out, Ratner will get pretty much everything he wants with no real requirement to keep the many promises he has made. So speak out!!

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