The City Council, Wednesday, passed legislation requiring residential building owners to allow bicycles in elevators, and to allow foldable bicycles in commercial and residential building elevators. The bills, which do not address space or safety concerns raised by the industry, now go to the Mayor.
Immediately after declaring victory in the State Senate primary for the 31st District, Tuesday, Democrat Marisol Alcantara aligned herself with the Independent Democratic Conference. It’s not clear yet if that will be better for the Republican majority or Democratic hopefuls, but leaves IDC leader Jeff Klein more powerful in any case.
Define dead. The Department of Buildings counted 12 construction related deaths last year and OSHA counted 17–different ones. Turns out OSHA is looking at construction workers killed as a result of worker safety problems and DOB counts only fatalities that involve safety issues for people other than construction workers.
Governor Cuomo announced his long awaited plan for spending $2 billion on housing programs Wednesday, sort of. When the Legislature appropriated the money they left the details to be worked out in a Memorandum of Understanding between the Governor and Legislative leaders. The Governor, however, issued the memorandum without an understanding. The Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader said they’d look at it.
The Mayor’s office, yesterday, opposed City Council bills calling for a report on city-owned vacant properties and registration requirements for privately owned vacant properties. The Council apparently believes the bills would encourage housing development, but the Administration said that the information was already available in various reports and databases and that the reports would just encourage speculation and raise land prices.
HUD, yesterday, issued a guidance to landlords barring policies that discriminate against tenants who can’t speak English, or speak with an accent, noting that language can be a proxy for discrimination on the basis of national origin.