By Bill Parry
Mayor Bill de Blasio came to LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City Monday to deliver his first State of the City address and present his progressive plan to attack income inequality.
“That is what we want for New York City — to lift the floor to offer every New Yorker a fair shot,” he said. “Fighting to end the Tale of Two Cities, not just because it’s moral and just, but because it makes all of our lives different.”
He described how the city’s financial sector bounced back from the recession nearly five years ago but said that the public sector was slow to catch up.
De Blasio pointed out that“46 percent of our city’s residents live at or near the poverty line. Our middle class isn’t just squeezed; it’s at risk of disappearing altogether.”
During the 43-minute speech, de Blasio outlined his plan to expand living wage laws. He said he will call on Albany to allow the city to raise its minimum wage.
“In the process we will send a powerful signal to the people of New York that we honor work and that we are committed to making work pay,” the mayor told a packed audience in the college’s Performing Arts Center. He said he wants municipal ID cards for non-citizens as well as a new jobs plan to battle unemployment.
Universal pre-kindergarten remains central to de Blasio’s vision.
“We will offer every child from every borough of this city, truly universal, full-day pre-K. We will provide quality extended learning programs for every middle-schooler, and for this we won’t wait. We have a detailed plan to put his program into effect this September,” the mayor said. De Blasio added that funding would come from taxing New Yorkers who make over $500,000 a year.
The new mayor also pledged to preserve or construct 200,000 units of affordable housing for which a plan will be released May 1.
He warned of an unprecedented budgetary challenge with more than 150 municipal labor contracts unsettled.
De Blasio worked several quotes from Fiorello LaGuardia into his speech and was even introduced by Katherine LaGuardia, the granddaughter of the mayor who guided the city through the Great Depression.
“Mayor LaGuardia called for ‘government with a soul.’ He saw beyond the numbers in a budget, understood that those numbers represented real people who were just trying to live their lives and asked only for a little help and that is what we resolve to do,” de Blasio said.
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparry@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718.260.4538.
