Press Releases

Currently members of the public usually must show up at day time public hearings at City Hall or 250 Broadway that can last hours with public testimony often limited to only two minutes thereby limiting input and engagement in the legislative process from the public.
 
“New Yorkers should be able to ‘like’ and comment on City Council legislation to make civic engagement as easy as Facebook,” said Council Member Ben Kallos, Chair of the Committee of Governmental Operations. “Government must engage residents where they are in the way they want to engage, which means updating our legislative rules so people can engage online.”
 

Litter strewn sidewalks on the Upper East Side are about to get cleaner following an investment of $20,710 by Council Member Ben Kallos in 38 new large trash cans personally delivered by Sanitation Department Commissioner Kathryn Garcia.

The large trash cans are targeted to street corners with high numbers of trash complaints in order to prevent trash overflow and spillage of litter on to the street. The 38 large trash cans will start from 70th Street and First Avenue through 98th Street and Lexington, with 27 large trash cans just for the East 86^th Street commercial corridor.

“I am here to clean up the Upper East Side with larger trash cans that can prevent overflow and litter that spills onto the streets,” said Council Member Ben Kallos. “Thank you to Commissioner Garcia and the Department of Sanitation for twice a day pickup and these new larger trash cans to help keep the Upper East Side clean.”

New Yorkers have won a rare victory over developers by stopping a skyscraper in a residential neighborhood. Even when a Borough President, Council Member, Community Board, neighborhood association, and local residents pool resources, the odds may be against us, but together we can win. I am glad we stopped this loophole before it was too late.

Four Foot Lot Allowed Developer to Skirt Law

New York, NY — Foundations are getting poured for a 521 foot skyscraper at 180 East 88th Street that would be against the law, but for a determination by the Department of Buildings that by creating a 4 foot by 22 foot lot, the property does not front on East 88th Street despite its address so that it can ignore limitations that would lower the building’s height. Council Member Ben Kallos and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer are opposing the zoning determination with a letter and are seeking a reversal of the decision.

“The law must apply evenly to all New Yorkers including developers,” said Council Member Ben Kallos. “Zoning laws were created to protect our residents from over-development and must not be eroded by creating new loopholes.”

“At first glance, this project looks like a prime example where the Department of Buildings has failed to enforce the law,” Manhattan Borough Presidents Gale Brewer said. “The zoning here is what it is, not what the developer wishes it were.”

Education, Giveaways and Enforcement by City Agencies and Non-Profits Enters Third Year of Improving Safety for Cyclists and Pedestrians

New York, NY — The Upper East Side’s “Bike Safety” program is expanding from 59^th to 96^th Street to Midtown East, bringing full coverage to the area from 30^th Street to 96^th Street. Council Members Ben Kallos and Dan Garodnick are funding and coordinating education, safety equipment giveaways, and increased enforcement.

Since the summer of 2015, the Bike Safety program has succeeded in its goal of helping pedestrians and cyclists safely enjoy city streets, as covered by CBS, NBC, Our Town and amNY. Following last year’s Bike Safety program in August, the NYPD’s 19^th Precinct reported a year-to-date 15% decrease in bike and pedestrian collisions.

The expansion to the Bike Safety program is the result of work by Council Members Ben Kallos and Dan Garodnick, the New York Police Department’s 17^th and 19^th Precincts (NYPD), the NYPD Transportation Bureau, the Department of Transportation, Citi Bike (Motivate), Transportation Alternatives, and Bike New York.

New York, NY – Taxpayers will save $430 million in settlements and judgments that the city had planned to pay for lawsuits over the next five years following pressure from Council Member Ben Kallos.

The Law Department plans to expand a “Vertical Case Handling” pilot that assigns individual attorneys to cases from beginning to conclusion with an investment of $18 million. For the previous two years of questioning Governmental Operations Committee’s Chair Kallos challenged the Law Department’s assertion that despite a 2014 policy and funding decision to more aggressively fight frivolous lawsuits, the City expected to pay out ever-increasing amounts of money to settle lawsuits.

It has come to our attention that the above mentioned building planned and permitted for the west side of Third Avenue between 87^th and 88^th Street used a questionable subdivision strategy so that it could circumvent the explicit intent of the Zoning Resolution Section 12-10.  The resultant building does not have the tower-on-base building form intended by zoning, leaves the City of New York with an unbuildable lot, and treats the development lot and unbuildable lot as separate despite single ownership thereby creating a precedent for a new and dangerous loophole. We request an immediate stop work order and reopening of determinations and approvals for errors and omissions.

“New Yorkers should be able to search the city’s budget to see how every penny of their tax dollars is being spent, we are now one step closer to that becoming a reality,” said Council Member Ben Kallos, a software developer and open data advocate. “Thank you to Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and Finance Chair Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, for their partnership in advocacy for an Open Budget and Mayor De Blasio for making it a priority and now a reality.” 

Manhattan –The East River Fifties community came together on May 10th for a rally and demonstration, organized by the East River Fifties Alliance (ERFA), asking the City to hurry along approval of its residential rezoning plan and vowing to fight any plans to build megatowers in their community.

“We simply cannot allow wildly out-of-scale supertowers to crush our mostly low-rise residential neighborhood,” said Alan Kersh, ERFA’s President. “Our proposed re-zoning plan, which is currently under review by the Department of City Planning, will guarantee that megatowers cannot be built here. There has already been one attempt to site such a monstrosity here, and we need the City to act as quickly as possible to make our plan a reality and to protect our community,” he added.

"The community has done its part by filing and now it's time for the City to do its part by certifying the application to stop buildings for billionaires in favor of new schools and affordable housing," said Council Member Ben Kallos, who represents the neighborhood and is a co-filer on the ERFA rezoning plan. "The fight against superscrapers in residential neighborhoods is far from over."

Mayor de Blasio, the Office of Management and Budget, Speaker Mark-Viverito, Finance Chair Ferreras-Copeland, and Council Member Kallos today announced that the data underpinning New York City’s $82 billion budget is now available for all New Yorkers to explore at nycopendata.socrata.com. The Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget worked with Finance Chair Julissa Ferreras-Copeland and Council Member Ben Kallos to make key budget documents human and computer searchable instead of printed or in lengthy PDFs, available on the City’s Open Data Portal. The data complements the extensive budget documents already published online by OMB.

"New Yorkers should be able to search the city’s budget to see how every penny of their tax dollars is being spent, we are now one step closer to that becoming a reality” said Council Member Ben Kallos, a software developer and open data advocate. “Thank you to Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and Finance Chair Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, for their partnership in advocacy for an Open Budget and Mayor De Blasio for making it a priority and now a reality.”

New York, NY – After more than 120,000 voters in Brooklyn were reported to have been disenfranchised the City Council passed legislation today authored by Council Member Ben Kallos that could have helped avoid confusion on Primary Day by providing voters with the information online and on their phones necessary to participate in elections and verify their votes were counted.
 
The Mayor sought to implement this new policy last week by offering $20 million to the Board of Elections, which the Board of Elections has rejected. The City Council is now mandating many of these reforms, which if signed by Mayor de Blasio, would have the force of law.
 
“Voters shouldn’t have to continually check their status before casting a ballot. But unless Albany finally updates its archaic and disenfranchising election laws, the onus is on voters to verify their eligibility before each election,” said Council Member Ben Kallos. “Voter registrations should not be an obstacle that leads to disfranchisement.”
 

 New York, NY – How New York City spends $82 billion is about to get more transparent, with a city budget that is searchable and computer readable instead of printed or in lengthy PDFs, through legislation from Council Member Ben Kallos that would require the budget to be searchable, posted in open formats, and available for third parties to “build an app for that.”
 
“New Yorkers should be able to search the city’s budget to see how every penny of their tax dollars is being spent,” said Council Member Ben Kallos, a software developer and open data advocate. “Thank you to Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and Finance Chair Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, for their partnership in advocacy for an Open Budget.”

New York, NY – Ninety more 4-year-olds will have free pre-kindergarten seats on the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island thanks to the efforts of Council Member Ben Kallos who organized parents and children to identify new providers to which parents pledged to send children.
 
Of the 90 new seats, 54 will be at the Roosevelt Island Day Nursery and 36 seats will be at the Manhattan Schoolhouse in the Upper East Side. This is an increase over the 425 seats previously offered on the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island for the school year starting in September of 2016 to 515.
 
Parents can apply for Round 2 of Universal Pre-Kindergarten starting on May 2, 2016, including families who already applied, accepted an offer, or have not yet applied. “Universal Pre-Kindergarten means having a seat for every four year old in their neighborhood where children can get an education and parents get the help they need in order to afford to live, work and raise a family in the city,” said Council Member Ben Kallos. “Thank you to Eva Bosbach of the Roosevelt Island Parents’ Network as well as Ariel Chesler and Jack Moran of P.S. 183 for working with me, parents, children, providers, and the Department of Education to bring Universal Pre-Kindergarten to the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island.”
 

New York, NY – New York, NY— Yesterday, over 150 residents prepared for the passage of a Single-use Bag Reduction Law and for the launch of Car Free Day by picking up free reusable bags and Citi Bike Day Passes at an Earth Day Kickoff by Council Member Ben Kallos. “Each of us can do a little to do a lot to save our planet, especially in a city of 8.4 million,” said Council Member Ben Kallos. “Earth Day is a chance to focus on saving our planet, one bag or one trip at a time. Government must provide residents with what they need so they can minimize harm to our environment.”                                                                                                    

“Quality of life is about to improve because not only will these reforms improve the City’s collection efforts, they will more importantly change the behaviors that harm quality of life and jeopardize public health and safety,” said Council Member Ben Kallos. “For far too long, quality of life violations have gone uncollected, with bad actors continuing bad behavior to the detriment of our communities. That is about to change.”

New York, NY – Yesterday, as many as 63,821 Democratic voters in Brooklyn who were eligible to vote last November may not have found their names in poll books, according to data from the State Board of Elections. Mistakes were reported by Board of Elections employees and Election Day workers that lead to poll sites opening late, without poll books, voting machines, and other instances where voters were turned away.
 
This could have been mitigated through the elimination of patronage as well as voter information portal legislation introduced and heard last year by Council Member Ben Kallos, Chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, which has oversight over the Board of Elections. The portal would have allowed voters to check their registration status, update information, request and track absentee ballots, and verify their voting histories.

New York, NY—Nearly 2,000 Upper East Side residents 14 and over turned out in person or online to vote on how to spend $1 million in tax dollars to improve the community as part of “Participatory Budgeting.” Residents were able to vote in the district office 7 days a week as well as at 17 mobile “pop-up” voting locations, by absentee and even online. This is the third year of Participatory Budgeting and the results were:

• $500,000 – 802 votes – Green Roof at P.S. 290  the Manhattan New School (MNS)
• $350,000 – 768 votes – Laptop Carts for 10 schools on the Upper East Side P.S. 77, P.S 198, P.S 290, P.S/I.S 217, M. 225, Eleanor Roosevelt, Urban Academy, Vanguard, Manhattan International and Life Sciences serving over 5,000 students.

The $500,000 for P.S. 290 adds to $1 million previously allocated by Council Member Kallos for a green roof at the location, where the project cost is estimated at $2.8 million. This allocation brings the school to the half-way point during Kallos’ third year in office.

New York, NY — Overflowing trash cans that have led to trash on the sidewalk along the East 86th Street commercial corridor will be addressed with an increase in city trash can pick up from once to twice day as ordered by Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia upon the request of Council Member Ben Kallos.

Council Member Ben Kallos, co-founder of the Eastside Taskforce for Homeless Outreach and Services, said, "We can and must help our homeless off the streets by starting with investing in prevention, improving shelter conditions with increased safety and mental health support, and a focus on permanent housing. Ninety days is not much time to fix a longstanding problem, but the City has not waited, with the launch of HOME-STAT and investments into mental health, job training, and enrichment for our city's most vulnerable. Thank you to Mayor de Blasio, Deputy Mayors Shorris and Palacio, and Commissioner Banks for their focus on the helping the homeless.”

$1.6 billion in outstanding debt could be recovered

New York, NY – Today, the City Council passed three bills co-authored by Council Members Ben Kallos and Julissa Ferreras-Copeland to improve quality of life enforcement by including specific information to identify who is responsible for violations and requiring agencies to consider prior offenses when issuing or renewing permits, licenses and registrations. These reforms will not only improve the City’s collection efforts, but will more importantly change the behaviors that harm quality of life and jeopardize public health and safety. 
The bills passed are:

• Int. 810-A by Kallos, requires agencies to consider prior offenses and outstanding debts to the city prior to issuing or renewing permits, licenses and registrations with reporting on when they are denied.
• Int. 807-A by Ferreras-Copeland, requires agencies issuing summonses to "owner of" to make reasonable efforts to learn the actual name and amen. Currently, violations issued to “owner of” are difficult for the Department of Finance (DOF) to collect on.
• Int. 812-A by Kallos, requires agencies to include the borough, block, and lot number (BBL) and building identification number (BIN) on summonses. A major difficulty in DOF’s collection efforts is that summonses do not contain sufficient information to identify the responsible party.