By Tom Allon
There has never been a better time to be a progressive in New York City. The new mayor, the city public advocate, city comptroller and most of the City Council are from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and we will now see if a concentrated focus on the poor and middle class will help vault them to a better station in life.
In fact, New York will become a visible laboratory for ideas that will try to lift many up from poverty and stagnation.
Bill de Blasio won the mayoralty largely on his promise to end the “Tale of Two Cities,” something that has bedeviled New York and other major urban centers around the world going back to the time of Charles Dickens. His new deputy mayor, Lillian Barrios-Paoli, pledged last week that one of her main goals was to make New York “one city” as she criticized the current policy on homelessness.
And there was an eye-opening and heart-wrenching series of articles in The New York Times recently about Dasani, a young girl in Brooklyn who was living with her seven siblings and parents in a decrepit shelter. Can the new mayor and his administration help the growing number of Dasanis in this city?
We should hope so. I am one who prays de Blasio succeeds in giving hope and help to Dasani and her family. Isn’t that what this holiday season is about — helping those less fortunate?
But how can a mayor accomplish this?
Well, it will take some short-term fixes and long-term planning. As Confucius once said, “If you want to think of only one year, plant rice. If you want to think ahead for a decade, plant a tree. But if you want to plan for 100 years, educate a child.”
De Blasio must “plant rice” by speaking passionately about creating good jobs with good wages and encouraging the development of more affordable housing. He must “plan for 100 years” by sticking to his guns on universal pre-K and improving public education.
The new mayor can help create good jobs by luring more Cornell-Technion-type college campuses to the five boroughs, by making New York a center for new industries such as biotechnology and by helping incentivize the growing tech sector. He can even give tax credits to those who hire unemployed New Yorkers.
Building affordable housing will need to be championed by the mayor with the same zeal that Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg took to fighting crime. It will need public-private partnerships that attract capital to this vital sector.
And de Blasio will need to fix the city Housing Authority so its tenants won’t have to wait months to have simple repairs made or heat and elevators fixed.
On education, de Blasio can’t get sucked into the charter vs. public school debate and polarization. His focus needs to be on empowering the new city schools chancellor to insist that new teachers have two to three years of rigorous classroom training and that current teachers are relentlessly retrained so they can succeed. All the evaluations in the world cannot make up for improper training or the lack of teacher mentoring.
In fact, the mayor and chancellor would be wise to study those charter networks that are succeeding, because what they all have in common is rigorous teacher training year-round.
Universal pre-K is a wise, 100-year move that won’t immediately bear fruit. I suspect Gov. Andrew Cuomo will find $500 million somewhere in the 2014 budget to allow de Blasio to achieve his signature education program.
And maybe in 2015, when the governor and the legislative leaders are past re-election, we may see a small tax increase on the wealthy to sustain this vital program.
Every 100-year journey, Confucius also said, starts with one small step.
On Jan. 1, as the mayor is inaugurated, we’ll see if he can start that long journey to give hope to the many who have been hopeless for so long.
If Nelson Mandela could achieve what he did against greater odds, there is hope for our great city, too, to become the shining city on the hill where every child has hope.
Tom Allon, president of City & State NY, was a Republican and Liberal Party-backed mayoral candidate in 2013 before he left to return to the private sector. Reach him at tallon@cityandstateny.com.
