Open Letter to Senator Chuck Schumer

July 23, 2021

 
Dear Senator Schumer,

My name is Leslie Clark. I am on the steering committee of the West Village Residents Association.  Our membership has doubled and then doubled again since September 30, 2020.  I remember the date so well because that was the day of the one and only public City Council hearing on making the Open Restaurants program permanent.  It was also on that date that Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg – who created this temporary program -- cautioned the City Council not to make a decision “in the Covid heat of the moment . . . that two years later we realize perhaps doesn’t fit the times.”

 Our organization agrees with Commissioner Trottenberg.   This sudden movement from a temporary to a permanent Open Restaurants program was premature because any temporary program did not have to consider the permanent and on-going uses of the public right-of-way. 

 As Polly Trottenberg also told the City Council members during that one and only public hearing, the public roads are used for many essential community services: buses, school buses, basic utilities, Verizon, Con Edison, water mains, ambulances, fire engines, access-a-ride, street sweepers and snow plows.  

 So we are opposed to this program because it was created with scant democratic process.  And we are opposed to this program because it permanently privatizes huge swathes of public land in the interest of just one industry.  

Such a privatization of public property is not only profoundly undemocratic – it will change the nature of our neighborhoods. The landlord may not actually possess the sidewalk and roadbed in front of his property – but he controls its access and price. That landlord will inevitably want to rent to a restaurant that can take advantage of the “public” sidewalk and roadway in front of his property.  Small, local retail – stationary stores, toy stores, laundries, florists, locksmiths, shoe repair businesses – will not be able to compete in such a market. And this will fundamentally change the essential character of our communities.

The argument that “outdoor dining” is the one-and-only route to New York’s economic recovery does not hold water. This great city does not need to make sweeping, ill-conceived public policy changes out of economic panic. There will always be people eager to take a chance and start a business in a city of eight million people. And those same people will be eager to invest their lives in our neighborhoods.

New York City has endured many crises in its long history – and has always survived and transformed itself into a newly vibrant place for all its citizens.  That will happen again – but not by ceding common property to just one industry “in the Covid heat of the moment.”