Andrew Friedman

Mayor Mike could be a Mayor for all New Yorkers

Now that Mayor Bloomberg has been re-elected to a second term, the press has been buzzing about how he might use his next four years in office to improve New York City.

High tech traffic reduction in midtown Manhattan?

Massive development projects along the lines of the failed West Side Stadium?

The Mayor campaigned hard as a man who is dedicated to all five boroughs and all New Yorkers. His second term should be dedicated to the millions of New Yorkers who desperately need an ally at City Hall.

1) Mayor Bloomberg should launch an ambitious citywide program to help every New Yorker to learn English. Currently, almost two million New Yorkers do not speak English. The lack of adequate affordable and effective English language acquisition classes limits one out of every four New Yorkers' job prospects, and their capacity to access vital government services that their tax dollars help pay for. Mayor Bloomberg reached out to these New Yorkers with his multi-lingual campaign webpage and his campaign advertising in many languages. He should now bring real resources to the table to launch a comprehensive English language acquisition initiative.

2) Learning English takes time, though, and new immigrants continue to come to New York City. Mayor Bloomberg should couple his English language acquisition initiative with an effort to make all New York City government services equally accessible to all New Yorkers. In 2003, Mayor Bloomberg signed the Equal Access to Health and Human Services Act, legislation that mandated the provision of translation and interpretation services at Food Stamps, Medicaid and welfare centers operated by the Human Resources Administration. It is now time for Mayor Bloomberg to make a similar commitment to equal access at all city agencies. Two million New Yorkers are depending on him.

3) Mayor Bloomberg needs to enforce the housing code. While the Mayor's plans to build 165,000 new units of housing are impressive, most New Yorkers will still live in housing that was built years ago. Hundreds of thousands of low-income New Yorkers currently live in housing conditions that the City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) have classified as "immediately hazardous." Nonetheless, the City fails to force the landlords to make repairs. Emergency repairs that are required to happen in 24 hours often take years to happen. Mayor Bloomberg must crack down on lawless landlords and work to ensure healthy housing for all New Yorkers.

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Posted at 7:58 AM, Nov 10, 2005 in New York
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