Press Coverage
“Nearly half of New Yorkers who are retirement age have less than $10,000 saved up,” said City Council Member Ben Kallos.
The plan is sponsored by the city for private sector employers that have at least five workers and don’t already offer a retirement plan.
Employees will be automatically enrolled with 5% of their wages going into their retirement fund. They can adjust the amount or opt-out. Gig workers are allowed to opt-in.
“There will be no employer matching. No employer liability. All the employer is doing is facilitating the payroll deduction,” Kallos said.
Kallos, who has proposed legislation to ban NYPD from using any weaponized robots or drones, told the Times that the dog underscored what he called the “militarization of the police.”
“At a time where we should be having more beat cops on the street, building relationships with residents, they’re actually headed in another direction in trying to replace them with robots,” the Manhattan rep said.
Also in attendance Tuesday was City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who said his chief concern remained the three to four hours of new afternoon shadows that the Blood Center tower would cast over St. Catherine's Park, which sits across the street.
Kallos, whose position could be influential once the City Council considers the proposal, has not taken a formal stance on the project but has strongly hinted that he opposes it.
Kallos said the Blood Center should move forward instead with an alternate proposal it has included in planning documents: a modest, five-story building that would achieve its stated goals of creating new lab space and replacing its current, 91-year-old home.
"It seems that the as-of-right development could accommodate the Blood Center's needs," Kallos said.
Kallos — who issued a subpoena to learn that the NYPD leased Digidog at $7,850 a month for 12 months, with a minimum payment of $94,200 — cheered the robot’s return to its maker.
“Our city needs more community policing, officers connecting to residents, not scary military-style gadgets that scare folks,” the Upper East Side Democrat said. “We did the work to find out how much was spent on this and we put pressure on the city to adjust priorities. I am glad the robot dog has been put down and we can use the money that would have gone to buying more of these to invest in communities and building better relationships with residents.”
Mr. Kallos, a Democrat who represents the Upper East Side, took a different position, saying the device’s presence in New York underscored what he called the “militarization of the police.” He said the robotic dogs resembled those featured in the 2017 “Metalhead” episode of the television show “Black Mirror.”
“At a time where we should be having more beat cops on the street, building relationships with residents, they’re actually headed in another direction in trying to replace them with robots,” he said.
Another point of contention is the Blood Center’s plan to construct a larger lab which processes microbes that are “indigenous or exotic, and they can cause serious or potentially lethal disease through respiratory transmission,” according to the CDC.
The neighborhood group leading the opposition, Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, claims the organization and Longfellow have not been transparent about bringing such a facility to the site, or how the lab will be used. (Council member Ben Kallos, who represents the area, told the Post, “I hate to think of what they’re cooking up in there.”) The Blood Center contends that it’s always had such a lab on site.
As a result, nonprofits were reimbursed for only 60% of their funding requests for the last fiscal year. They were expected to receive even less this year because more organizations sought funding through the initiative.
“The baseline means that they’re not gonna have to worry about this happening again,” said City Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of the committee on contracts.
And Councilmember Ben Kallos, a candidate for Manhattan borough president, said raising the voucher value will help New Yorkers move from shelters and into “tens of thousands of vacant apartments in our city.”
He said the city could go even further by moving families from shelters into empty condos.
“If we took every single condo and put a homeless family in there, that would eliminate half the homeless in our shelters,” he said.
City Councilman Ben Kallos, who represents the area, said the Blood Center has not been transparent about the lab.
“I hate to think of what they’re cooking up in there,” he said.
The Blood Center told The Post the lab will be for its use only and “is a necessary component for the research and development of new antivirals and vaccines.” It said it has used the lab for hepatitis and HIV research in the past.
The Blood Center has tried unsuccessfully for a rezoning and expansion several times, Kallos said.
The bill’s passage came on Earth Day amid a flurry of environmental initiatives. But Ben Kallos, the district’s council member, said “a bunch of kindergartners” persuaded him to propose a city ban on pesticides in 2014. “It went nowhere,” he said.
Mr. Kallos said he tried everything as climate change pushed environmental issues higher on the agenda. He recalled holding “the best, cutest hearing ever” in 2017. Children mobbed the floor of the council chambers singing “This Land Is Your Land.”
Still, he said, City Hall and the Parks Department were resistant. But as word of the bill spread, public-housing residents and environmental groups teamed up with Ms. Rogovin’s students and their parents in a widening circle — and eventually signed up enough Council sponsors for a veto-proof majority.
Ms. Rogovin, 73, stuck with the mission even after she retired in 2018 after 44 years of teaching, and as her original kindergarten activists were entering puberty.
New York, NY—The City Council, on Earth Day, passed unanimously Council Member Ben Kallos’ bill to ban toxic pesticides in parks, playgrounds and public spaces.
It’s a hard-earned victory as the Council Member first introduced the bill, which is sponsored by 31 other Council Members, back in 2015, so the passing of the bill on Earth Day is more than just symbolic.
At a press conference earlier today at the Stanley Isaacs Playground on East 96th Street and 1st Avenue, just before the council voted unanimously, Kallos stood with the Council Speaker, Black community and think tank leaders and environmental advocates to say that the bill bans all city agencies from spraying highly toxic pesticides such as glyphosate.
Kallos also noted it is the most far-reaching legislation to implement pesticide-free land practices in New York City Parks and public spaces.
The two winning projects in this year's round of participatory budgeting in Ben Kallos's District 5 are: $750,00 for laptops and other STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs at 15 schools in the district; and $187,000 to plant 50 trees with guards on sidewalks.
"I am proud of the millions of dollars our community has voted on over the years. Our residents have prioritized education and beautifying our neighborhood this year," Kallos said Wednesday when his office announced the results.
The city council wants to force NYPD to reveal the cost of its new “Digidog,” days after Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested the city “rethink” its use of the dystopian police robot dog.
Council leaders on Monday subpoenaed the NYPD for any robot-related contracts or agreements with Boston Dynamics, the company behind the four-legged robo-cop.
“The public should know how much each of these devices is costing the city,” said Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan), who issued the subpoena along with Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
One problem is that commercial rents here don’t obey normal laws of supply and demand. Generations ago, many proprietors owned their stores. Nowadays, most rent and they often lease from limited-liability companies or sprawling investment groups disconnected from the neighborhood. So though owners ask for sky-high rents, many can afford to leave a space empty for years, waiting for a deep-pocketed occupant to come along and snap it up.
The tax code doesn’t help, since property owners can count losses from vacancies as offsets on what they owe. Some mortgages have minimum rent rates locked in, and others are securitized and sold as financial products — all of which makes it extremely difficult for tenants to negotiate lower rents with their landlords in response to, oh, say, a world-changing pandemic.
With such a complex welter of causes, it’s unlikely legislation sponsored by Councilman Ben Kallos, which would require disclosure of obscure property owners’ identities, will do much to help fill empty retail spaces. It will shine a light on who it is that’s behind the glass, though, and we count that as a step forward.
The NYPD needs to “rethink” its new “Digidog,” Mayor de Blasio said Wednesday — a day after a clip of the robotic dog in action went viral and sent tongues wagging.
Hizzoner hesitated when he was questioned about the video, which been viewed more than 8 million times and left some to compare the programmable pooch to an episode of “Black Mirror.”
“I haven’t seen it, but I certainly share the concern that if in any way it’s unsettling to people, we should rethink the equation,” de Blasio said at his daily press briefing. “I don’t know what is being done to test it — I’ll certainly talk to the commissioner about it. I don’t want people to feel that something is happening that they don’t know about. So we’ll work that out.”
The clip showed the “Digidog” casually strolling out of a housing project in Manhattan following the arrest of Luis Gonzales, 41, an NYPD rep said Tuesday.
Cops arrived to the scene to find Gonzales sequestered inside an apartment with a mother and baby, who exited unharmed, the NYPD said. Gonzales was apprehended after about two hours of negotiations.
The city should boost its free supper program for students, says Manhattan Councilman Ben Kallos.
The push would build off of existing programs providing free breakfast and lunch at city schools.
Kallos, a Democrat, says if the city expands after-school programs, it will be able to tap federal funds for late-day meals.
“We’re leaving tens of millions of dollars on the table,” Kallos told the Daily News. “We could guarantee every child three square meals a day and end youth hunger as we know it.
“We should have community schools where the schools are there from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. while parents are at work,” he added.
The Education Department already offers supper at after-school programs, but at a far lower rate than free breakfast and lunch. In fiscal year 2019, the latest year for which the department had data, an average of 58,128 suppers were given out per day. That compared with 218,153 free breakfasts before the bell per day and 603,244 daily free lunches.
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Taking a walk along Third Avenue in the 80s and 90s near his home, City Councilman Ben Kallos points to one empty storefront after another and recalls some of his favorite Upper East Side shops and restaurants.
“This was an amazing steakhouse,” said the Manhattan native, referring to a place on the west side of the avenue. Across the street was a Modell’s Sporting Goods; he also sees a former taco place and a storefront with a red awning that used to be Pesce Pasta. “It was a great place for an Italian lunch and it's been vacant for a number of years,” he said.
Empty storefronts were a blight on the city long before the coronavirus pandemic forced so many restaurants and other businesses to close. Now, with thousands more businesses shuttered for good, including big chains, Kallos has introduced new legislation aimed at pressuring anonymous building owners to accept new tenants by naming them. His bill would also enable the city to collect tens of millions of dollars in unpaid fines.
The NYPD's robot dog is once again stirring privacy concerns and cyberpunk prophesies of some New Yorkers, after the four-legged machine was spotted inside of a Manhattan public housing complex on Monday.
A video shared on Twitter shows the robot trotting out of a building on East 28th Street in front of two NYPD officers, then slowly descending the stairs as bystanders look on in shock. "I've never seen nothing like this before in my life," one woman can be heard saying.
The remote-controlled bot was made by Boston Dynamics, a robotics company famous for its viral videos of machines dancing and running with human-like dexterity. (Versions of "Spot," as the mechanical dog is known, can open doors, and are strong enough to help tow an 18-wheeler.)
Since October, the NYPD has dispatched the robot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage situations, raising fears of unwanted surveillance and questions about the department's use of public dollars. The mobile dog, which comes equipped with automated sensors, lights, and cameras capable of collecting "limitless data," is sold at a starting price of $74,000.
A spokesperson for the NYPD said the robot dog was on standby, but not used, during a domestic dispute at East 28th Street on Monday afternoon. After a man allegedly barricaded himself inside a room with a mother and her baby, officers showed up and convinced him to let them exit. The man was arrested for weapons possession, police said.
In 2015 and again in 2017, dozens of young students from the school came to the City Council to “testify” on behalf of a proposed law: a ban on chemical pesticides and herbicides in all public areas, including parks and public housing.
They brought homemade posters and signs, and chanted: “Hey hey, ho ho, toxic pesticides and herbicides have got to go!”
Yet for six years, versions of that ban languished in the chamber. The most recent ban, Int. 1524, submitted in April 2019 just a few days before Earth Day by Council Member Ben Kallos, now has 32 co-sponsors -- two shy of a veto-proof majority.
A main obstacle to the legislation, Kallos and one of the bill's authors say, is the city Parks Department, which is responsible for the vast majority of city pesticide and herbicide use.
“We’ve been unable to persuade the Parks Department that they don't need to spray toxic chemicals that can hurt their workers and our families and children,” Kallos said. “I’ll take weeds all day long over cancer. I don't know why this is such a big problem.”
City Councilmember Ben Kallos, Assemblymember Rebecca Seawright and U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney spoke Tuesday outside Eleanor Roosevelt High School. (Office of City Councilmember Ben Kallos)
UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A cohort of Upper East Side politicians and educators celebrated the billions of dollars heading to New York City as part of the federal stimulus package, highlighting the funding for schools in a news conference Tuesday.
The $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan includes $5.2 billion for 3-K, pre-K and other education funding for New York, according to U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who spoke Tuesday morning outside Eleanor Roosevelt High School.
Maloney said the funding would help schools safely reopen during the pandemic and fund universal 3-K across the city's school districts