Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at how an alternate-side parking experiment is going in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. We’ll also get details on the C.E.O.s on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s fledgling business council.
Mark Abbott knows the time-consuming dance that is alternate-side parking only too well. He likes having to participate only once a week. He lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, where a pilot program means that people in certain blocks now have to move their cars only once a week instead of twice for street cleaning. After the trial ends next month, the Sanitation Department will decide whether the streets in Prospect Heights are as clean as they always were — or cleaner — and whether the less-frequent alternate-side rules can be made permanent. The Sanitation Department began the program at the beginning of the month, saying that it had long heard from Prospect Heights residents who questioned why the agency needed a total of four days of alternate-side parking every week — two days on one side of a street and two days on the other side. In the adjacent neighborhood of Park Slope, drivers only have to move their cars once a week. Crystal Hudson, the City Council member who represents the area, said that the agency had also heard from her. “My thought is if you reduce the number of times people have to remove their cars, compliance will increase,” she said, meaning that fewer cars would block street sweepers on cleaning days. “People have to allow Sanitation to do its job.” And in neighborhoods where she said block associations often pitch in to clean streets, multiple-day alternate-side rules “don’t match with the reality.” As my colleague Emma G. Fitzsimmons observed last month, many drivers resent having to sit in their cars during street cleaning hours. Many simply ignore the rules, accepting $65 tickets as a less expensive alternative to a garage. And garages can be costly: Some drivers are willing to pay condo-like prices — $250,000 and up — to buy a spot in one. The pilot program in Prospect Heights came as the city revived so-called stickers of shame, the electric-colored badges that are slapped on cars that don’t move for street sweepers. The stickers were a fixture of life in New York City for 25 years — a deliberately humiliating fixture — until the City Council banned them in 2012. The Sanitation Department says that it has put stickers on 5,000 cars since it resurrected them at the beginning of the month. It also says that the new stickers are scofflaw-friendlier: They are designed to come off easily with water and a scraper. The department says the once-a-week program in Prospect Heights is going well so far, with street sweeper operators reporting that they are swerving around fewer cars than before the pilot program began. The Sanitation Department said that 80 percent to 90 percent of car owners are complying with the relaxed alternate-side rules, well above the citywide figure of 50 percent. But a spokesman noted that the less-frequent alternate-side schedule “will not continue if compliance is not there.” Some block associations have emailed or posted alerts to prompt recalcitrant drivers to comply with the relaxed rules. “As our neighbors were getting worried” about boosting compliance, “I was like, we got to get people to move the cars,” said Steve Flack, the president of one local group, the Sterling Place Block Association. He remains concerned, even as he said that “most of my neighbors have been doing a really great job.” Hudson said that the pilot program was working after a bumpy first week, when some cars were ticketed on days when they no longer had to be moved, though the tickets were dismissed. She said that the target for alternate-side compliance in the pilot program was “as close to 100 percent as possible.” Hudson said she hoped the program would lead to changes in the way the city decides which neighborhoods should have to move their cars more than once a week. “Black or brown or lower-income neighborhoods have been deemed dirtier and therefore are required to have street cleaning more frequently than neighborhoods that are whiter and wealthier,” she said. The Sanitation Department said that it does not make such decisions based on the wealth or racial composition of a neighborhood, but rather on density and “observed street conditions.” WEATHER Partly sunny, with a high of 83, but showers and thunderstorms are likely, especially after 2 p.m. Rain may continue through the evening, with temperatures falling to around 71. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Sept. 7 (Labor Day). QUOTE OF THE DAY “I can’t wait to meet him again in this stage of life.” — Rupert Grint on Ron Weasley, the character he played in the “Harry Potter” films. Grint will play the same role on Broadway when he joins the cast of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” next year. The latest Metro news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Mamdani persuades C.E.O.s to join his business council
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has struggled to win over Wall Street, is expected to announce the appointments to his fledgling business advisory council today. My colleagues Dana Rubinstein and Robin Hirsch write that the list of 15 executives from the financial, real estate and health care industries includes Scott Rechler, who runs the real estate behemoth RXR; Hamdi Ulukaya, the billionaire chief executive of Chobani, the yogurt and beverage maker; Kevin Ryan, a prominent tech investor; and Priscilla Sims Brown, the chief executive of Amalgamated Bank. But it does not include executives from some of the city’s largest employers in finance, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, American Express or BlackRock. There are also no appointees from big technology firms like Alphabet or Meta. City Hall reached out to executives including Jose Tavarez, the president for New York City at Bank of America, and Ken Chenault, a former chief executive of American Express, but neither joined the panel. A spokesman for the mayor said that he could not discuss specific conversations with candidates, but said that some executives were unable to manage the council’s time commitments, while others did not receive clearance from their companies or were concerned about the level of media attention that could be focused on the council. Mamdani wants the council help invigorate the city’s economy. He said in a statement that it brought together “the people building the next generation of New York’s economy — in finance, tech, life sciences and beyond — to help us double down on what makes this city the best place on Earth to start a company, grow a business and build a career.” But he is the first mayor in at least 25 years not to have a deputy mayor for economic development. He has won some support among business leaders by retaining Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. Still, others remain unpersuaded, citing his slow approach to naming an economic development chief (though business leaders embraced his final choice) and his anti-Israel rhetoric. METROPOLITAN DIARY St. John the Divine
Dear Diary: As a tourist in the city years ago, I was taken to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. No one else seemed to be there. Chairs had replaced many of the pews on the floor of the enormous interior in preparation for a concert. Soft recorded music was playing. As we walked around the periphery, the recorded music was replaced by beautiful live piano playing. As we finished our tour and rounded the last corner, we came upon a man in a uniform who was sitting at the piano and playing. We approached him, and he stopped. I complimented him on his playing. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank Mozart!” He was the piano tuner. — John May Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
