Speaker Julie Menin on What Comes Next for New York City

(upbeat music) - Welcome everyone to the New York City Workforce Drop. My name is Greg Morris. I am the CEO of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition. Every week we come at you with a new and dynamic conversation with leaders and thinkers. We've been lucky enough to have a handful of elected officials. Today is the first day that someone who's coming to the drop had their security with them. Because we have today with us, the New York City Council speaker, Julie Menon. Julie, welcome to the NYC Workforce Drop. It is thrilling to have you here. I'm honored and grateful for you making the time to do this. And I know we are on the clock because you got a lot of ground to cover and you got a lot coming at you. Welcome to the Manhattan neighborhood network and our NYC Workforce Drop podcast. - Thanks Greg, it's great to be with you. We've known each other a very long time since I first started in the City Council. So great to be back with you. - Thanks so much. I was actually checking the photos of things, looking back and the first photo of us I have, it's from January of 22. We are both masked up at the Stanley Isaac neighborhood center where I served as executive director. That was your council district. We had the opportunity, it's the holiday season then so you can see in the background all the garland and all the, but all I could think of was all of what we went through then. Listen, you are a seasoned and experienced leader and thinker, you have history in the public and private sector. Multiple time city commissioner, your civic leader, your community board chair. By the way, I'm on a community board. So I'm gonna have a whole separate pod on just that at some point because that is a whole separate thing and I do wanna flag for everyone here. Just this morning I was at the Abney Power Breakfast with Speaker Menon and she was sort of, I think shaping a little bit of the course for what it is that you are seeking to accomplish in your role and your capacity and how you wanna support the council. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about that? - Happy to Greg. Well, first of all, let me just say it's great to be with you once again. We did work together when you were at Isaac Center and we did a number of different projects together including providing free Wi-Fi for Nights Your Residence, which is a project that I launched several years ago. And now as Speaker and it was great to see you this morning, I laid out a vision of what the council, we need to focus on in terms of a pro-activision for the council. The council has in the past been more reactive in terms of land use issues that come to us as are known U-lurps where we react to them and negotiate and what we're really talking about is in this affordable housing crisis that we are in, we need outside of the box thinking. And so the council and I laid this out today is looking at a number of different ways to build more affordable housing. Everything from looking at the 215 public library branches, some of them are suitable for developing on top of where we can build affordable housing such as in Deputy Speaker Natasha Williams District, we could get another 400 units of housing there. And many of these library branches around the city, we are looking at to release a plan to build more affordable housing. We're looking at some of the city-owned assets vacant land under utilized or under-purpose buildings. And so we've got a number of different ways that we really want to do that so that we can be a true partner in tackling this affordability crisis. This is an affordability crisis. And I heard today you talk about the importance of quality of life. I heard you talking about the city's economic future. I heard you leaning in too on the idea of how it is that the city needs to save money and how it is that we look at how we've been spending money because if we're going to manage affordability, we've got to do a couple things at the same time. We've got to manage sort of our economic position. We've also got to figure out where we're putting the dollars, where we've been hiding the dollars. In the beginning stage of your sort of leadership, you've already leaned in on the idea of taking a close look at how it is the city's procurement system is starting to work, or has been working, and how you want to look at how you want to look at think about that. Absolutely. Our procurement system is broken. And so when we see that it costs in New York City Parks Department $4 million to build a bathroom in a park, that's absurd. $4 million for a single bathroom. Or we see, for example, that it takes up to a decade just to renovate a park. None of that is acceptable. And that is what causes immense frustration for New Yorkers who want to take their kids to the park, or there might be living in a community with a dilapidated park. And it's an unbelievably frustrating to see that from city government. And so we are going to tackle this issue of procurement reform. It's not sexy. It's not talked about a lot, but to me, it's unbelievably important, because we're trying to get city government to really work for New Yorkers. And when people see government spend $4 million on a bathroom, or take a decade to fix their local park, it's very annoying. And so we are going to tackle that issue. We're also looking at no-bid contracts. I've been speaking about no-bid contracts for a very long time. We're now advancing legislation to eradicate the practice of long-term use of no-bid contracts and emergencies, which is why, for example, in the last four years in terms of the asylum secret crisis, it costs the city $4 billion, because the city kept giving out these no-bid contracts. And rather than competitively bid. And if you think about it, and I used to own a small business, you would never, ever, just if you needed some work done, just take all, just take the first bid and go along with that. No. So it shouldn't be the same for city government. So we're looking at all of these things, and we're going to crack down, and we've got this legislation that really basically cracks down on the long-term use of no-bid contracts. And that can save the city billions of dollars. And that's money quite frankly that we need for universal childcare, which is something the council has been working on for many years. And we did a whole package of bills in 2022, called the Universal Child Care Act, that was supposed to put New York City on a path to universal childcare. But one of the challenges there is we actually need to build more childcare facilities. Right now, it is very difficult in the city to do so, and there's a lot of issues around late payment. So we are working on tackling a lot of those issues so that we can get more childcare facilities built. We can tackle the payment issue, and we can ensure that we are actually getting to this goal of universal childcare. You know, I was so curious. I went back in the files a little bit here for fun. Now you've had a number of roles in city government, and media and arts, consumer affairs, all with great impact. I rewound the clock to, it was an event that city and state hosted called Above and Beyond. Gerson Barra was hosting this, this is 2015. Wow. And I just went back just to see. I thought it was fascinating. He asked you, what can government do better? Gerson Barra asked, and shout out to my parents who may listen to the podcast, who are huge fans of Gerson Barra. He asked you, what can government do to make life better? The first thing you said was, take care. UPK, we have to address sick leave, MWBE contracts. So you were leaning in in 2015 on how it was. And maybe this comes from being a small business owner, maybe this comes from your history in both private and public service. You know, you were thinking about how it is that we try to create opportunities for childcare to be addressed. You're also working mom. Right. I was fascinated that that long ago, you were sort of leaning in on that. Wow. Thank you for reminding me of that. That was a decade ago. Look, I think any working parent will tell you in terms of childcare, it is the top priority. We have about 300,000 parents, Greg, that left the workforce in New York City in recent years because they couldn't find affordable, inaccessible childcare. 300,000, mainly women, but men as well. And that is an economic cost to our city as well. That cost us over $2.2 billion in lost economic output. So this idea of childcare, it's not only normatively, the right thing to do, but it also is fiscally the right thing to do. And it also will allow businesses in the city to be able to keep their workforce because by providing childcare, it allows New Yorkers to be able to work for those that cannot afford to have childcare. So this is an unbelievably important issue. And childcare doesn't just mean nine to three. Most jobs are not nine to three. That's exactly right. After a school component is also important. And that's actually something that we are looking at in terms of how do we address the after school component because for so many workers, great, you can get childcare, but then what do you do at three o'clock? Because your job doesn't end at three o'clock. And I appreciate you saying that. And I also appreciated today at the Power Breakfast. Let me say, I'm thrilled that the council has, for the first time that I'm aware of, put forward a committee on workforce development, which is thrilling. When we saw that, I mean, I've been beating that drum forever that you received that you heard that you put that forward is thrilling and that you leaned in today, the Abney breakfast about, and I think what you did was, you were tying together workforce development and economic development. Yes, exactly. Thank you for noticing that. See, I keep track of these things. I may note, say, I'm paying attention during a long speech. No, I really appreciate that because that's exactly right. I did create this committee on, and workforce development that will be shared by Council Member Juan. And the reason why is because workforce development is so important, it's a key to our economic future, is to create these pipelines of opportunity. And so I really felt this deserves its own committee, its own focus, its own strategy. So that is exactly what we're doing. - And for those of you listening, the speakers said today, workforce has been a series of programs. We need to figure out how to weave that together so that we can talk about progress and impact. And I just wanna note for you, this is something that the coalition, I think a lot of our folks were listening, they're doing back flips right now because the first time someone is talking that talk, that we have been championing, we had a conference in December, we talked about affordability as workforce policy. You also were highlighting the number of jobs. I also love this. You said today, we had a slight jobs bounce back, but not nearly what other places did. And you started to flag during your speech, why are we losing ground to other cities? - Well, we are, it's just terrible. I mean, we created about 30,000 jobs in the city last year. That's a poultry number. If you compare it to the 187,000 jobs that were created annually for the last four years, it's just, it's a shocking number. And if you look at what's happening across the country, it used to be years ago that New York was primacy in terms of the number of financial jobs we had. We had almost double the number of Texas. Now it's almost the same or basically a parity in terms of the financial sector in New York versus Texas. Texas, what are we doing here? I mean, this is really not, does not bowed well in terms of the economic perspective for New York City. So we need to do more to attract new businesses, top talent, create tech corridors here in the city. So they were constantly keeping businesses here and attracting new businesses, which then of course create more jobs. - You know, the city government is not, as you already pointed out and as we know, it's not necessarily some of the mechanations that need to take place to solve problems, to address problems, the intersection of what's a priority versus what's a policy action versus what's a solution that's gonna benefit. I mean, New Yorkers are never happy for any reason. I don't think except we know that there's no place better. - Right. - But I just want to note for our audience, the work that you did specific to the census was tremendous. And I would argue, it may have been true that most folks don't realize that your work specific to the census was able to address both an issue to identify people who live in the city. So what is it? 620,000 more people in the city that had been the previous census. And that leads to dollars flowing into the city. And I know you're a champion on the census. And I may be folks who say, "That's a form, you fill it out." I don't know. But you know, you talk about difference making. The work that you did in the census as the leader of that particular shop in 2020, you wanna say a word or two about that because-- - Sure. - I have to believe that was both big picture and also had a lot of mechanational small on the ground stuff that had to be done to get there. - To me, the census is one of the most important issues that affects the future of our great city. And I served as census director in 2020 in a senior role at the city law department working on the citizenship case with our New York Attorney general, to James, where we successfully sued the Trump administration to get the citizenship question off of the census. And that question hadn't been asked Greg in 70 years, are you a US citizen? And that question had we not have won the lawsuit would have had devastating consequences to the city of New York because we would have lost billions of dollars of funding. - Billions. - Because it's not only about our undocumented New Yorkers, it's also if someone who's undocumented is living with a family, that whole family then would be likely to fill the census out. So we would have lost billions of dollars, we would have lost additional congressional representation. And so we fought back and we won at the US Supreme Court. But as I said this morning, my concern is that you've got house Republicans who are trying to add the citizenship question back onto the census. And that is simply unacceptable. So last year I introduced a bill which passed the council and was signed into law to create a permanent office of the census embedded within New York City government because when we started our work on the census when I was appointed 2020 census director, we were racing against the clock. Thankfully, we were able to finish number one of all cities because we disseminated half our money to trusted community voices on the ground. We did, we texted and phoned banked millions of New Yorkers. We did 36 media campaigns and 27 different languages. I mean, we had a lot of strategies to work to get, particularly to reach hard to count communities. But the reason why we need this permanent office of the census is because we need to start this strategy now. Now what's happening with ICE? What's happening with the fear with an immigrant communities? We need to start that organization right now on the ground. You know, I want to make mention to one of the things that you also talked about just to rewind the clock back to that 2015 convening. One of the things that you were particularly proud of during that city and state gathering is the municipal ID. Yes, yes. And I want to spend a minute on that because that's tremendous. I see you smiling in the moment because that was life changing. It was life changing. And the role that we had in municipal ID was the financial empowerment role. Because I served with serving as commissioner of consumer and worker protection at the time. And we knew that New Yorkers, or about 600,000 New Yorkers, were unbanked. And by being unbanked or even underbanked, that meant that they really were not having the kind of financial empowerment that you need to be able to address some of the income inequalities that exist. So we wanted the muni ID to serve as sufficient identification to open up a bank account. Because if you're undocumented, our undocumented New Yorkers were then not able to open up bank account. So we spent a lot of time on this and getting certain banks and credit unions to accept the muni ID as sufficient identification to open up a bank account. And the muni ID was an amazing program. And partnering with their incredible New York Public Library system so that New Yorkers could pick up their muni ID at the public library. One of the most interesting things Greg is that the New York Public Library system is viewed as one of the most trusted sources. So for New Yorkers, it ranks almost number one at time and time again in terms of a place that you trust. And so that is why we wanted to make sure that the muni-- people could pick up the muni IDs at a public library. It's why when I ran the census, we partnered with the Public Library system and had a whole plan of outreach with the Public Library system because they are the trusted voice. And it's also why going back to the affordable housing plan I mentioned, why partnering with the Public Library system is such a win-win for us. I love that. I love the lab-- we're a champion of the libraries. We always stand with libraries. Libraries are more than just right now, places where folks get books, their community hubs, and centers. In our final two minutes, here it is. I do want to say one, two things. When you received the recognition to step up into this role, when they voted on you, you said, we live in a day when the first Muslim mayor of New York City and the first Jewish speaker of this council are serving at the same time. This moment is truly historic, you said. But we'll write this interfaith leadership into the history books as if we can act as an opportunity for all of us to come together, to comp tensions, bridge divides, and recognize we are one city, no matter the religion we practice or the language we speak. How do you make that happen in your final minute? Well, I think part of it, and thank you for raising that. I'm really proud to be the first Jewish speaker. And I think it is so important that this is a time where we have the first Muslim mayor. This is a time for communities to come together. I've been working on fighting anti-Semitism for a very, very long time, which is on the rise. When I served as chair of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan for seven years after 9/11, I stood up for the Islamic Cultural Center in Mosque. I wrote that resolution. I got it through my Community Board and stood up in the face of really vile hate at that time. And so it is a historic time to try to come together, to try to calm tensions, to try to turn the rhetoric down. So that is what we are trying to do. And I think it is incumbent upon us. We also, I created the committee to combat hate that is chaired by Council Member Yusuf Salam. So I think that's really important as well. And I think that committee is going to be very, very active in looking at all different forms of hate, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Asian hate, hate against LGBTQ community. Really trying to see what programs can the city of New York and the city council do to help to combat hate in all of its vile forms? - I can't thank you enough for making this time, Speaker Benin. I don't want us to lose sight of the reality of you are a working mom. You have been championing the public and private sector for a considerable period of time in New York City. You are leading the council through a very challenging moment on a city and state and federal level. NYCEDC this coalition stands with you. I also want to acknowledge you are the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors. And I think that you are focused on bridging divides and creating the excellence that the city needs to bring people together is critically important. You are the right person at the right time. and we are thrilled to partner with you. You once said, once again, Again, from 2015, there's no elevator to success. Take the stairs. It's not a sprint. It's a marathon. Still hold true? It absolutely holds true. I tell my kids that all the time. Because sometimes there's this sense when you're in the moment that you think everything comes down to this one particular moment. But again, it's a marathon. And it just is. And you've got to tune out the noise. Because sometimes, particularly in politics, you have a situation where there's some loud voices around. And you've got to really look at the overall big picture and focus on the long game. Speaker, Julie Manon, thank you for making this time with the NYC Workforce Drop. We wish you tremendous success. We look forward to partnering in all ways, shapes, and sizes big and small. Thanks, Greg. I really appreciate you having me. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)