Karin Dryhurst

LIVEBLOG: What’s Next For New York City’s Economy

November may have brought positive job numbers for the country, but New York City's unemployment continues to sit above 10 percent as the economy recovers.

Tonight we will hear from city leaders - including Mayor Michael Bloomberg to newly elected City Councilmember Brad Lander - at the launch of DMI's new book, which provides a blueprint for steering the city economy in the wake of the financial crisis.

The launch of From Disaster to Diversity: What's Next for New York City's Economy? will feature a Q&A between executive director Andrea Batista Schlesinger and the Mayor, as well as speeches by Councilmember-elect Brad Lander, LaGuardia Community College President Gail Mellow, and former DMI Senior Fellow in economic justice Mark Winston Griffith.

Check in here for continuous updates throughout the event.

5:39 p.m. Bloomberg and Andrea Batista Schlesinger on stage.

5:41 p.m. The book is a "call to do some thinking together," Andrea says.

5:45 p.m. Bloomberg gets to the core misunderstanding about the government's role in our lives. "You ask the public do you want to cut services or increase taxes. They will always say cut services," until you tell them what that means for their lives, he says.

5:48 p.m. NYC has the technology jobs and more fashion houses than Paris, Bloomberg says. Oscar de la Renta has his plant up in the Bronx instead of China because you need a bow just so.

5:51 p.m. Bloomberg says we don't want to "kill the golden goose," but we want to make sure the city can survive when financial markets go south.

5:55 p.m. "If health care passes as it is, we'd probably have to close all of the HHC clinics," Bloomberg says.

5:56 p.m. It will take education, health care, food, and housing to address poverty, Bloomberg says. But it will also take giving people the "tools to get out of poverty long-term."

6:01 p.m. "Half of the people who file tax returns pay all the taxes," Bloomberg says. "If we try to tax too much, people can easily move to Florida or Connecticut."

6:05 p.m. "The great fear we have is that Albany will try to balance its budget on the back of New York City."

6:07 p.m. Lander up. He says it's a big tent, but surprisingly there is a broad consensus in some key issues: infrastructure investments, a sustainable city, that the public sector has a role to play in the economy.

6:09 p.m. Lander says he and co-authors got ideas from Los Angeles where their economic development office focuses on living wage jobs, affordable housing, and sustainable communities for low-income communities.

6:10 p.m. Lander says Kingsbridge Armory vote a mistake from the City Council.

6:14 p.m. Time for Dr. Gail Mellow, more than a community college advocate.

This morning she was with Arne Duncan and the Masters of the Universe, heads of business, who were talking about community colleges.

6:16 p.m. The average college student is most likely 26 years old, a woman and working.

6:19 p.m. Community colleges put education and skills in sequence so people can move up the ladder in manageable chunks.

6:20 p.m. Goldman Sachs funding LaGuardia Community College because they know small business. Community colleges educate for small business.

6:21 p.m. More students of color going to community colleges, which can be a great leveller.

6:22 p.m. Mellow loves both the student who earns a G.E.D. and wants to be a physcist and the nurses that get trained. "We create middle America. Without community college you would not have a middle class."

6:26 p.m. Mark Winston Griffith here to talk about a role the Public Advocate office can play.

6:27 p.m. Mark notes "how important it is to link activism and policy wonkery with good city leadership. "All of the ideas in this book need some daylight," the CIty Councilmembers to champion these causes.

6:29 p.m. Mark says we need to look back at when community reinvestment was taken seriously, back when the Community Reinvestment Act plowed trillions of dollars into low- and moderate- income communities and communities of color.

6:32 p.m. People think of the C.R.A. and what banks extracted from neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens.

6:36 p.m. He wants to think of the C.R.A. as not just a federal law, but as a city-wide policy for investing in low-income communities. The city can develop that standards for how financial institutions do business in our city. Why not have the Office of the Public Advocate "call them out" when they aren't following those standards.

Update:The quote at 5:55 p.m. from Mayor Bloomberg was incorrect. Bloomberg said New York would have to close HHC clinics, not hospitals.

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Posted at 5:17 PM, Dec 09, 2009 in Economic Opportunity
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