Ask Your Advocate Jumaane D. Williams: June 2025

Ask the Brooklyn Borough President: June 2025

Ask Your Advocate Jumaane D. Williams: April 2025

Ask the Brooklyn Borough President: April 2025

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ASKTHEBP55B

Thanks so much for staying with us here on News Brooklyn for Ask the borough president with Brooklyn BP, Antonio Reynoso, a reminder that if you have a question for the BP, the number to dial is 718-861-6800, and I believe we have a caller on the line right now. So we'll get to more questions. This one from Natalie, who's in Flatbush. Natalie, thanks so much for your call and what's your question for the BP? Hi, good afternoon. Question is, we ride the train, the train from the junction at Brooklyn College, and every morning between the time we get on, there is at least out of the 8 cars, 6 or 7 are occupied with homeless people. We're a lot of times intimidated as women getting on the train, sometimes we're yelled at. Don't come in this car. What is being done? To secure us from being attacked on these trains. Thank you Natalie for bringing that to our attention because it is an experience that people have and want to see resolved. Yeah, absolutely so that they shouldn't feel uncomfortable and what we'll do is we're gonna call the MTA specifically to the stop and around the time that you're talking about to see what we can do to make sure that we solve for the issue to find care for the homeless folks that are on the train because what ends up happening many. Times is that we're warehousing them so they won't be in your stop today they'll be in someone else's tomorrow and the goal here is to actually find care for folks and the city of New York for the last 3 years has started defunding or paying less money into services for uh people with mental health and homelessness so we're starting to see that tick back uh another way. After this outcry from the general public over all the poverty that they're seeing out in the streets, but I want you to know that this is something that was less of a problem in the past, not because there is less homelessness in the city of New York or there's more now. It's just that we were a city of opportunity that really took care of people and I always talk about the example at Bellevue Hospital used to have 200 beds to help people that have mental health issues and now they. It has it has 19 beds and for people to really have a perspective of the care we no longer do in the city of New York. The the only equivalent time to this was during Giuliani's era when he was the mayor of the city of New York. They didn't have any beds, so they just put all the people with mental health issues into Rikers, and Rikers Highland had more than 14,000 people living in it, 14,000 people right now there's about 6000 people. Awaiting trial in the city, so Rikers Island was for all intents and purposes a pseudo mental health facility, which was terrible. We were jailing people because they were sick, not because they were criminals, and what's happening now is that we're not jailing people that are sick necessarily, but we're also not giving them care so you see them out in the streets, you see them in your train station. So what we'll do is we'll contact the MTA and the mayor's office and see if they can get a team out there to start addressing the issues of helping these folks that are on that. That's the best thing we can do and we've heard from the mayor on this topic countless times because subway safety has been something that comes up time and time again throughout his tenure, and he has talked about the mental health outreach teams that he has deployed into the subway system as well as those two officers per train during the overnight hours. Have you seen the effects of either of those approaches play out here in Brooklyn yet? We have, uh, statistics that come to us from the MMR or the mayor's management report and reports that he does that are. Are are unimpressive, you know, for the amount of disruption that he does for those people's lives, the care that they get is is not is not comparable. I think it was two people found housing out of hundreds that of encampments that we got rid of. So what happened to the other 98 people, uh, that that we destroyed their encampments, uh, they're probably in the train station. They're probably in another location that is unsightly or that you don't want them to be because we're not providing true care. We're just putting on a show and it's performative. And performative stuff doesn't work. What we need is actual care and housing options for people and the same homeless people don't will not have a homeless shelter in Sheepshead Bay, and the same Sheepshead Bay is not creating new housing for people that have jobs in the homeless shelter that can move into their neighborhood. So it's all a cycle of wanting to keep people out and thinking that they're the bad guy versus providing care and being a, uh, a city that can actually make a difference for these people and we can do that. We were doing it at one point and I think after COVID. Uh, I, I say we've collectively lost our minds and we forgot who we were and how we're supposed to care for people and moved into like this enforcement and fear based attitude so we got you we're gonna do what we can talk to the MTA, talk to the mayor's office and see if we can get those people care, not arrest them, not put them in jail and not move them on to another station but get them care. And once we do that, they'll never, you know, those folks will never return to the train station, which is our goal. Hopefully that provides some reassurance for Natalie and those with her experience. that since we're talking about transit and transportation, I want to turn to a Facebook question that we got online from Kenya who resides here in Brooklyn. She says in her words, charging Brooklynites $9 to drive into Manhattan is discrimination by zip code. I believe here's a look at her question directly there. Why are you allowing the governor in Manhattan to penalize Brooklynites for accessing their own city? This is a reference to congestion pricing, something we've talked about time and time again here on the show. I would, I would say that, uh. Right now the majority of people that are poor. Move through the city through our public transit system and the discrimination is that the transit system is not a system that is reliable that is clean that is on time that is safe all those things don't exist because of there's a lack of funding or money into the MTA. So the people that are being hurt through this process are the general public or the millions of people that take the subway station every day versus the uh a smaller group of people that are probably have more cash on hand or um are uh in a in a more when it comes to car purchasing or car owning. Um, that they're in a better position, so I would argue that we're giving poor people more access in a safe, reliable, uh, way. They're gonna move about our city happy and it's been working so so far more people are taking the subway than ever because of congestion pricing. We just had a study today that showed that less crashes are happening in Manhattan. And that people are moving more efficiently through the city. Also, foot traffic is up and the businesses like Broadway and restaurants are thriving on the congestion pricing. By every measurable outcome we are hugely successful and now we have poorer people taking a cleaner, faster train. So, um, I would, I would argue that the opposite. I actually think that they're charging the $9. Um, has made it so that more poor people are moving through a better public transportation system. And then real quick because we have commercial break coming up, what do you think about this back and forth between the city and the Trump administration on the congestion pricing policy and where that ultimately lands? They're disorganized. We've noticed it that the administration is disorganized and we're gonna win. right, you heard it there from the BP. Stay with us here. We have more with him right after this quick break.

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ASKTHEBP55C

Welcome back to Ask the Borough President with Brooklyn BP Antonio Reynoso here on News Brooklyn, a little bit earlier in the program we were talking about how now is the time for lawmakers to have a lot of important conversations because it's budget season, which is where a lot of policies also get decided. What's important for you to make it into that final plan that's ultimately passed? Well, we have a lot of things we want to discuss and obviously Brook and has a lot of needs. Uh, most of them are gonna get taken care of by the city. Counselor and the mayor's office, one thing that we want to really focus on is the theft right now in portions of our borough, people are losing their deeds through unscrupulous ways, and we wanna make sure that we can protect them. There's almost no lawyers that you can get free of service or no, uh, legal advice and support that you can get free of service from the city of New York. So if you are what a lot of people call house rich and cash poor, so somebody that does own a house, but. Doesn't have the income to maintain it or income to pay for a $10,000 lawyer, um, you end up losing your house to folks that know how to move the system so I'm asking the city council and the speaker and the mayor's office to add an initiative specifically for uh deep debt so that it doesn't happen in Brooklyn. That's gonna speak to so many Brooklynites, especially those who are a little bit elderly. I know that they have been specifically targeted by a lot of those deeds. Thefts specifically, before we get to budget season tomorrow we have a charter revision commission hearing where there are a couple of things under consideration that you've been vocal about and the charter is like the city's penal code essentially right? it's like constitution essentially yeah so yeah so we have our constitution that we have to abide by and we have to follow those rules and every once in a while we can change them the mayor or the city council can change them and. The city council has theirs coming up and we're gonna do two things is what we're requesting to happen. One is community boards, which we all love, don't have enough resources. They struggle so much to get anything done because they have one staff member, uh, or 2 staff members, and there's so much that they need to get done. So we're looking to have a central community board office that can help them with all that, including land use. Uh, it's one of the things that we think is deeply important and then the second thing is comprehensive planning. If we just plan in this city we could solve for so many problems. Can you imagine trying to tell your kid to build a Lego house without the instructions? Well, we run the city of New York without instructions, and I wanna give it instructions, and that's what we're trying to do with comprehensive planning and those are two things that we're gonna be pushing in tomorrow for the charter revision commission. OK, so a lot. Consideration now and looking ahead to with budget season and we'll continue to talk all about it here on Ask the BP and if you have a question for the BP tonight, a reminder that 718-861-6800 is the number to dial. We're taking a quick break and we're getting back to those questions right after this. Stay with us.

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ASKTHEBP55D_2025-05-05-20-16-04

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ASKTHEBP55E

Thanks so much for staying with us here on News called Brooklyn for this edition of Ask the Borough President. Time to get to more callers that we've got on the line. Let's kick things off with Alison, who is also dialed in from Bed Stuy. A lot of BSuy representation on this program this evening. Alison, thanks so much for the call. What's your question for the borough president? Yes, hi, pleasant good evening. Um, I'm actually calling from Heights. I was calling regarding my health center that's in Brownsville, um, the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Um, I work for the BMS Family Health Center on Rockaway and Blake, and I'm calling with a question. Given the recent federal funding cuts and reimbursement gap. Impacting federally qualified health centers, which is where I work, what specific action can you take, borough president, at the borough level to advocate for increased support and ensure these vital community health providers continue to serve our underserved population? Great question from Alison. Something that is top of mind for so many right now as we deal with the unknown in the federal government, yeah, we just had a conversation, so Alison is absolutely right. It's, it's, we don't know enough right now. The cuts are coming not at the pace that really speaks to our budget, right? So what we have is the budget is coming by June 30th. The city council and the mayor are gonna lock in the budget. The president could cut something on July 1st that we were never planning for or prepared for, but also the amount of federal funding we get for these sites are something that even if we wanted to, the the ability to compensate for the cuts by the federal government just can't be had by a city. Um, it's the same issue that we had when the migrants were coming in and there was no federal support. We had a cough up like 5 to $6 billion to solve for that issue. It would be the exact same thing. Another thing is that it's not just the FHVs, these, uh, federally these centers are so important. Uh, I, I think I got that wrong. I apologize, but they're so important. They're sliding scale or free cost for health care in our neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods like Brownsville where Alison works or is talking about. So this is absolutely essential. We've had early conversations with the mayor and with the governor about having, uh, like a rainy day fund or having money set aside to be able to close the gaps on emergency case. on things that are gonna be cut from the federal government, but that money is not allocated to anything because we don't know where the cuts are coming from, uh, but another thing we're doing is enhancing the services to our Gotham health centers and our public hospitals that are controlled by the state of New York so it it's not a solution and I don't want people to think that we're running away from one, but our. A health centers are supposed to be a, a backup I guess to uh uh a federally subsidized site. You can come to a city subsidized site, um, and it's uh it's, it's the best we can do to transition if they were ever to be cut permanently but these are the consequences of these type of elections. We elect someone that doesn't think taking care of the needy or the poor is of value and we end. Consequences come to where where are these people gonna go for health care? They're gonna die younger. They're not gonna get the same services that they had before. It's a it's, it's a sad day for this country when we're talking about these federally subsidized centers that help that assist with health care that we're not gonna have that anymore, especially in the. Communities that need them the most, so at least hopefully a little bit reassuring to Alison to hear that those conversations are happening. Let's see them cross the finish line hopefully let's get to another call we've got Judith dialed in from East New York this evening. Judith, thank you so much for calling and what's your question? My question for the borough president. With marijuana being, with, with marijuana being legal within um the US, why are so many people still in prison who are not being released for the same after 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you're just still in jail. How are you communicating with the Um, for the, um, With the, the, um, the borrowed, um, the, the attorney, the attorney general, the um borrow um person to help resolve that issue. So, so, yeah, so we have several states now that have made marijuana legal and uh this is one of those states and I think what I'm hearing from Judith is that why are there people still in jail for marijuana, uh, crimes when it's legal in the city of New York so what that would be mostly, um, so the city jails. Don't have anybody with marijuana crimes that are not doing illegal distribution of marijuana still exists even as it is legal you're only allowed to buy marijuana from a state uh licensed site if somebody's selling it or distributing it outside of those sites they can go to jail. It's like you shouldn't buy alcohol from. Somebody in the street you should go into a liquor store where you know there's certain standards and regulations that have been set forth. So if you do sell liquor outside of a liquor store without a license, you will be arrested and you will go to jail. So that is still happening in the city so no one should be selling marijuana outside of these these sites. Another thing is that if people have been in jail before and they're they're doing federal crimes, so they are, it's a federal crime. Uh, for the distribution of marijuana, maybe they crossed state lines or something happened. Those folks are dealing with federal federal laws, um, and regulations that don't necessarily conform to the state laws and city laws. So what we are doing, what we can do is we we sign uh letters of clemency and make requests. From the federal government and the mayor and the president to release these folks with pardons and so forth, uh, we're very successful in the state and city level but at the federal level it's a little more challenging uh but I agree 100% if we're having all these states eventually what we should be doing is a federal, um, legalization of marijuana would make it so that. Uh, we, we won't need to do this at a local level, uh, but it's complex. It's a complex issue. if not done right, it can be very problematic. It comes down to jurisdiction and the differences in policies and laws between different places. We have seen the crackdown on the illegal smoke shops continue. I think as recently as last week we saw one spot with. More than 1000 illegal flavored vapes get shut down by the sheriff's office. What do you think about the ongoing work to shutter those spaces and where it stands right now? I know we were talking about it a lot last summer. What about now? Yeah, I think we should absolutely we should be working harder to shut them down. We have a legal process that has some level of social justice or social responsibility to it. We're giving people that have been arrested for marijuana in the past an opportunity to open small businesses and thrive, and it's a it's a system that should work so we we implemented that so we did all the care that we needed to do to make that happen. So these illegal shops are hurting them we should shut them down. All right, all right, the con the conversation continues right after this. Stay with us.

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ASKTHEBP55F_2025-05-05-20-16-59

Thanks for being with us here once again for another edition of Ask the borough president with Brooklyn BP Antonio Reno, so it's been great to cover such a wide range of topics tonight. Time for some fun though, because a first for Brooklyn was just announced not too long ago an art ambassadors talk to me about this. So Brooklyn is the center of arts in all of this city, and, and we are going to have uh arts ambassador who is Colm Delane who is also known as Kid Super, very popular. With the young people, um, and what he's gonna do is he's gonna help us uh make sure that we can help young up and coming artists learn more, do more, and he redesigned the pin that was made famous by Marty Markowitz, right? and he redesigned it and now we have new Brooklyn pins that are designed by him and I have one here for you so this is an exclusive pin you can only get that pin for me or Colm. No one else can give you that pin and our state of the borough, we designed this, uh, this. Flyer, you won't be able to see it maybe on the TV, but it has a picture of you right here because you have been a part of my growth here and my journey as borough president. So it was a great state of the borough. It talked about my upbringing and uh all the opportunities I got for government and introduced the arts ambassador Colin Delane. So much fun. A lot of, uh, plans that were announced at that state of the borough address and then also taking us into the future as well with the arts ambassador. Amazing arts arts folks in Brooklyn and finally we have somebody that's gonna push him. Out and we have more news for you coming in the future about the arts world, but Brooklyn is at the center of it, and we're gonna help highlight that. I love that we're gonna foster that growth right here at home real quick speaking of growth and taking things in a new direction, there is an opportunity for Brooklynites to get involved in the planning process for uh reimagining, if you will, of Park. Yes, Columbus Park, it's a, it's a drag. It's a, it's a place where you go and it's just a bunch of limestone. It's not a lot of fun and not a lot of energy. and also downtown Brooklyn has grown a ton. It had a rezoning, so we have all these people and we don't have the park space. So we're gonna do a reenvisioning session, uh, May 15th at 6 p.m. at Borough Hall. So come out, come hang with us, give us some ideas. No roller coasters, those are the only ideas we don't take outside of that, you let us know and we'll try to make it happen. That's Coney Island zone. We'll get the roller coaster fun, but great to see that some of our green spaces here in the borough are gonna be getting some love and just another opportunity. For Brooklynites to get out and enjoy not just the concrete jungle but some greenery as well yeah, we need a little space of of joy and greenery and we can do that in this space and we're gonna invest a lot of money and invest a lot of time and I'm excited for it, especially as we head into the warmer months. Thank you so much for another great conversation and for covering so much ground with me tonight. I cannot wait to rock my Brooklyn pin no matter where I'm going, so thank you BP and thank all of you for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Bye.

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News 12's Amanda Bossard sits down with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to answer YOUR pressing questions in this month's edition of Ask the Borough President.

Ask the Brooklyn Borough President: May 2025

News 12's Amanda Bossard sits down with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to answer YOUR pressing questions in this month's edition of Ask the Borough President.

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