By Rich Bockmann
Several of the candidates in the contest to succeed term-limited City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) discussed their plans for economic development at a forum in St. Albans earlier this week.
Democrats Joan Flowers, Greg Mays, I. Daneek Miller and Sondra Peeden gathered Tuesday at Resurrection Lutheran Church for the forum hosted by the Food Bank of NYC.
On the day when a state court’s decision to strike down the city’s living wage bill was on everyone’s mind, Flowers said she would work to leverage the city’s spending power to create living wages.
“The first thing we need to do is to use the city’s procurement and contracting power to create a living wage so that those people who do have a job with the city or with contractors who are contracting with the city can have a living wage,” the private attorney said. “Once we have people who have a living wage, at that point we can then talk about other ways of bringing other jobs in, because even though we have manufacturing or we may have a retail hub, if people don’t have jobs, they can’t afford it.”
Mays, a Community Board 12 member and founder of the A Better Jamaica nonprofit, said he thought one of the biggest problems facing the district was structural unemployment, such as the kind experienced by convicted felons.
“To me, the solution for these folks, in particular, is probably entrepreneurship,” said Mays, who holds a master’s in business administration from Harvard University.
“So I would really get a sense of the number of people who are structurally unemployed and I would specifically develop some programs that are designed to bring those folks into the economic landscape,” he said, pointing to the city Department of Probation’s community justice program as an example.
“Well, well, well,” one man sitting at the back of the church interjected loudly.
“It sounds good, but I’m one that’s been incarcerated and I need a job,” he said before the moderator reminded the crowd of about 100 that questions would have to be reserved for after the forum.
“Well, let’s talk afterwards,” Mays said, “and maybe we can create one.”
After 12 years representing the district, Comrie will be term-limited from his seat at the end of the year, and after dropping out of the borough president’s race he gave his endorsement earlier this week to Miller.
Miller, president of the Queens chapter of the Amalgamated Transportation Union, said he believed good-paying jobs and robust government services were the keys to economic growth.
“I think living wage jobs are the most important thing that’s going to go on here,” he said. “You can’t do more with less.”
Peeden, a management consultant, said she would focus on creating private/public partnerships to rejuvenate neglected areas.
“You look at Dunkirk [Street],” she said, “and on Dunkirk we have all those empty warehouses and 75 percent of those warehouses are underutilized. We need to get light manufacturing in there. We need to get retail in there.”
The Food Bank of NYC has been organizing forums across the city to draw attention to the 60 million meals it says the city will lose Nov. 1 as a result of cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
