Posted on May 19, 2021 at 3:59 pm by Carol Tannenhauser
Top (l to r): Dee Rieber, Steve Anderson, Jeffrey Omura Middle: Maria Danzilo, Sara Lind, Gale Brewer Bottom: Zack Weiner.
By Carol Tannenhauser
On Tuesday evening, five Democratic candidates vying for the district 6 City Council seat, representing the Upper West Side (minus Manhattan Valley), met in a Zoom forum sponsored by the newly formed Upper West Side Coalition of Block Associations and Community Groups (UWS Coalition.) Present (alphabetically) were Gale Brewer, Maria Danzilo, Sara Lind, Jeffrey Omura, and Zack Weiner. David Gold was absent.
Chris Giordano, a long-time community leader and president of the 64 – 67th Streets Block Association, introduced the forum. The moderators were Dee Rieber, president of the West 75th Street Block Association, and Steve Anderson, the Coalition’s first board chair, from the West 81st Street Block Association. This was the new coalition’s first event.
Questions were asked and each candidate was given two minutes to answer. There was no crosstalk, and it was all civil, even as clear disagreements bubbled up.
Below is a sampling of statements made by each of the candidates on the same subjects. Many more topics were covered, including the police, crime, NYCHA, the mental health crisis, scaffolding, preparedness for climate change, dog poop, and others. You can watch the entire forum directly below. It runs exactly an hour and a half. With the primary coming up on June 22nd, it couldn’t be more timely. You can also read our profiles of all of the candidates here. (The quotes below have been edited and condensed.)
Garbage, Safety, and Civic Engagement
Gale Brewer
“Just the other day, north of you in District 9, we got two ‘big bellies’ (solar-powered trash bins) in terms of the garbage. You know, those rats went away overnight. Overnight they went away! At $4,200, they’re not inexpensive, but we want the city agencies and the City Council to be proactive about cleanliness. That includes graffiti, sweeping, working with the sanitation department, and it includes organics! I’m really pissed that the mayor cut that, and I want it to come back.”
Maria Danzilo
“I’ve been following Gale on Zooms in recent months, and I often say, ‘I’m going in a different direction.’ My platform is safe and clean streets. I’ve been extremely consistent with that from the beginning of this campaign. I haven’t suddenly decided it’s an important issue. We want our neighborhood to be a place where people want to stay and live, not leave. Unfortunately, that’s not the direction we’re going in. I would say, if you like the direction New York and the Upper West Side have been going in in the last couple of years, then, certainly we can re-elect leaders who are playing musical chairs with their offices, or we can go in a different direction and elect leaders with new and fresh visions about the direction we want to go in.”
Jeffrey Omura
“I think whoever wins this seat is going to have to prioritize bridging the divide and bringing this community back together. There’s been a lot of heated rhetoric, but I’ve been saying this over and over: we’re neighbors, we gotta keep talking and listening to each other…What’s been so great about this pandemic is that a lot more people have been able to participate in the process (of government), because of the technology involved. As we move on beyond the pandemic, I’m hoping to bring that technology into the regular meetings that we have. So, if, for whatever reason you can’t attend in person, there will always be that digital option, so that everyone in the community can get involved.”
Sara Lind
“It is hard to get people engaged and to get people to show up to meetings and to make sure that you’re hearing from the various voices in the community and not just the people who show up every month. Some people can’t show up — people with shift work, people with small kids…I think it’s important to get out onto the streets and meet people where they are to make sure we’re hearing from everyone in the district, which is why I’ve proposed something called ‘Citizens Assemblies,’ which are randomly selected demographically representative groups of people brought together for a one-time setting to discuss certain issues.”
Zack Weiner
“A lot of the reason why stores are gonna survive post pandemic, with Amazon and everything, is because the people in this neighborhood care that they do. It affects more than just the storefronts and making the neighborhood a more enriched one. It affects crime. It affects safety. It changes the entire environment. The Upper West Side is a state of mind. It’s a fantastic place. People from all over America aspire to come and start a life here, and they feel like they made it when they get here. We have just this incredible opportunity to to come back and show what we’re about now that we’re coming out of the pandemic. This is something that we can directly influence together.”
Managing the Streets
Jeffrey Omura
“I’m a big proponent of bike lanes. I think we are transitioning to a bicycle-friendly city, but we’ve got to prioritize safety for everyone…We started this transition without educating pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers, about what it means to live in a bicycle city. So we need an education campaign to get everyone on the same page, and then we need enforcement to make sure rules are being followed.”
Zack Weiner
“The bikes are a menace. Honestly, they’re an incredible menace. They scare me all the time. I’ve seen accidents happen, senior accidents….They’re big madness, and we’ve got to address it. People feel endangered.”
Sara Lind
“I have two little kids. I also have my mother-in-law who’s 81 and lives with us. Our streets should be safe for children, for our elderly, for those with disabilities, for all of us to walk down. That’s critical. And I think that’s a core job of the council member, to manage the streets in the district.”
Maria Danzilo
“I’ve learned that a very simple legislative change can be made, which would require bicycle delivery personnel, who are working for third party providers, not the restaurants, to simply add identifying information on their safety vests.”
Gale Brewer
“On the macro level, I have already called for what I call a ‘Public Realms Czar,’ because there are actually 25 agencies that work on this issue and they do not coordinate…I would say that the bottom line is coordination, making sure it’s safe, making sure it’s got some new opportunities, and never forget about the disabled.”
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