Ask Your Advocate Jumaane D. Williams: May 2025

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Ask the Brooklyn Borough President: April 2025

Ask the Brooklyn Borough President: May 2025

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Ask the Brooklyn Borough President: March 2025

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0708askthebkbpbblock_2024-07-08-19-35-10

Welcome back to ask the borough president with Brooklyn BP. Antonio Reynoso. A reminder to call in with your question. 7188616800 is the number to dial if you have a question for the BP. But I did want to follow up on an announcement that you made last week on two new all electric garbage trucks here in the city. This is a realization of something that you worked on as a council member. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? So it, it, it speaks uh that some change is good. Uh We set out to really transform the private sanitation industry. The private sanitation industry is still using trucks that have like faulty brakes, broken lights, trucks from the 19 seventies still in operation. And what they would do is mostly just spray, paint them and then have them run around our and we were allowed to have a truck pick up trash from northern Bronx all the way to Coney Island in Brooklyn and it was just inefficient and didn't make any sense. So I wanted to change that system and I spent five years trying to pass legislation. So many people are against it. So many people were fighting and what we saw this day was a combination of all that effort and all that work. What we really want to get to. We have two, the first two all electric, private garbage trucks in the city of New York, run by this great organization company that is not gonna be able to do this work in a meaningful way. And it, it's all that I wanted was we can do better, we can have a better standard, we can expect more from our people in New York. And I'm just so happy to have seen it. And in Central Queens, they're gonna be seeing them in a couple of months. All right. So keep an eye out if you're in Central Queens for that. But it's great to see 21st century standards um being, you know, brought to the table here and seeing the application of something you spent. It's extraordinary how many people fight they fight change because they wanna keep everything the same. And then waste connections is a, a company that wasn't necessarily supportive originally and now is over the moon, they've invested millions of dollars, they got a bunch of new trucks, they get their supervisors on electric vehicles and they just love this whole, like the, the move to innovation and to growth in the future. I think it's something that really cherish. So I'm happy I'm very happy about it. And the long term effects too is something to look forward to. BP. I think we have our first caller of the evening on the line. Joe from Bensonhurst. Thanks so much for calling in Joe. What's your question? Hello? Hi, it's Joe Bensonhurst. I'm just calling about what you must have heard plenty of times with the cycles on the sidewalk. The scooter, no light, no plates, no helmets, no, nothing. They, honest job, no horn, no belt. Why don't we do something about that? Could something be done instead of just people there yelling, which I hear because I walk up a senior and I hear it. So I always, you know, get, you can't hear the, the very, very quiet. So that's what I like to know. It's been when things could be done. So I have two things here. First. It's Bensonhurst has almost no cycle infrastructure, no bicycle infrastructure. So these folks are either, they're sharing the road with vehicles which can and tends to be dangerous. And some people use the sidewalk as an alternative to protect themselves and for safety on occasion. Then there's just folks that are just never gonna get it right. We should be enforced. Enforcement should be higher on those type of situations. We should be stopping bicycles from being on the sidewalk that is for pedestrians. And the last part is the, the scooters. It, it is, it is out of control. There's too many scooters. Without license plates. There are folks not wearing helmets when they're supposed to. And right now there is legislation and effort at, I believe the state level to make it so that when you purchase a scooter, it needs to come with a license the same way with a vehicle, you can't buy a vehicle off the lot without a license plate. Now, at the point of sale, you will see that these scooters will have license plates. It'll allow us to know they have insurance and hold them accountable. And we're talking about the scooters, not the bikes, the electric bikes. Um, and no one should be riding on the sidewalk, vehicle, cycling or scooters. But we have a solution for the scooters coming, which is the license at point of sale. We have to do better with infrastructure in Bensonhurst. A bike lane would make it so that people can travel north to south east, to west, um, in a, in a safe way and the, and then the sidewalk would never be an al alternative. So I said a little bit of both enforcement new laws, uh, a little bit of the three and then the other one is just infrastructure. Yeah, the licensing component of that would be a big game changer. A lot of people have been talking about that pushing for that as part of the conversation we have to, there's a distinction here. There are people talking about licensing bicycles that is, should never happen. It's a terrible idea. It would discourage cycling in the, of New York across the board. And what we wanna do is encourage more of it. Now, electric scooters and scooters or gas scooters that should be licensed off the bat. It should have never been, they shouldn't even be riding on the bike lanes. Those electric scooters are not the way to go, but cy bicycles or electric bikes should not be, uh, licensed. Can you imagine city bike will no longer be operable? They never be able to do any of that work. Could you imagine having to apply for that? I mean, I'm thinking toys R Us because I'm dating myself here as you're buying a bike for your kid. It would be quite a complicated process on the topic of the e scooter and the Moet. So specifically, I know the NYPD started the summer doing some sweeps and trying to crack down on that. Have we felt the effects of that here in Brooklyn? I personally don't think that they're doing the right, the right work on this. It's like find good policy. So you don't need enforcement and then we have terrible policy. We let people buy these bikes or these scooters. Uh, and then we just take them away from people and have them crushed. It's just not good policy. The good policy would be stop it at the point of sale. Uh, and what we're seeing is that they're mostly targeting immigrant communities, uh, the shelters that use these scooters as a means to pay for delivery services and so forth. They go, there's the least informed population. They don't know that they're supposed to get licenses on these. Now, I think there's been a, uh, through the enforcement, uh, education campaign independent of the city to really figure this stuff out. But I, I, all, you see, you see 400 vehicles getting crushed. Those are all poor immigrants that are losing and then maybe 5% of them are like, just people not behaving. Um, so I don't think it's a good tactic and I don't necessarily see the difference. So I think we can do better with policy and less with enforcement. All right, still a lot more to look ahead to here on. Ask the VP with Brooklyn VP, Antonio Reyno. So 7188616800 is the number to dial if you have a question for the VP. The conversation continues right after this here on news 12 Brooklyn stay with us.

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0708askthebkbpcblock_2024-07-08-19-35-13

Welcome back to ask the borough president with Brooklyn BP Antonio Reynoso, coming off a busy Jew for you and your team. You had some special visitors stationed at the Sunset Park Library, the Mexican Consulate providing mobile services that just wrapped up last week, I believe. Can you talk a little bit about what they were able to provide and why this was so important to bring to Brooklyn specifically? Absolutely. First, uh Sunset Park has the largest Mexican population in uh Brooklyn. So we wanna make sure that we can give people services where they are. And that's something we've been trying to do in Borough Hall across the board. Leave Borough Hall. Go out into the community. This is an example and opportunity to do that. The Mexican consulate was amazing. It's one of the consulates where you can get your ID or your passport the same day. You just sit there, wait an hour or two and you got everything and then you go home for us here in the US. Right? Unbelievable. So we did it, it was, it was a great experience and when we talk about undo individuals, when we talk about the need for residency or for citizenship. All these documents are important and the Mexican consulate did an amazing job. Uh And we just like happy to provide a service in a library, a public library and still be able to do the same work they do in the consulate. So a shout out and thank you to the Mexican consulate and uh all the people that showed up and we're doing it, we did it for four days, so four individual days. So it was, it was amazing. That's great. And please let us know if you happen to host any of those events in the future. We love to spread them. We're not allowed to the word for them because then the line would be around the block. So by appointment, I was gonna say, remember the pre registration was needed. Exactly. So, but we will tell you right when it happens, I guess you guys can at least get the story. Speaking of other good news happening here in Brooklyn, we had what I thought was the cutest story of last week, the skate park that has now opened in Cobble Hill. What does it mean to be able to bring this to the neighborhood and give kids a safe space to enjoy? We talk about this so often all the time and it's just like I am, I'm so committed to every time a mother or grandmother or auntie asked me, what do the kids have to do that. I always have an answer and these skate parks are an answer. These things are packed. We didn't even open this. So we opened it officially when we did the ribbon cutting. But before that, it was open for a couple of weeks and you, it's amazing. It's packed. There's so many kids in there. It's unbelievable. And I'm just so grateful to the parks department, uh, to the city of New York and to all these kids that were hanging out. It was a, it was a lot of fun. I, I can't get on a skateboard but it was a lot of fun. But the kids, the kids showed up and showed out that day for sure. They were doing all the tricks. Look at that. I'm just impressed with all this kick flips and things and, and it's in a place where it was uh an abandoned location and it was just gates that were protecting uh, like a, uh uh a telephone situation. Now they have state of the art equipment. We love to see it more. Ask the BP continues right after this. 7188616800 is the number to dial. Stay with us here on news. 12 Brooklyn.

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0708askthebkbpdblock_2024-07-08-19-54-19

Thanks for staying with us here on ask the borough president with Brooklynn BP, Antonio Reno. So a big topic that we're always talking about here when we have you in studio is housing and especially the lack of it right now and the expense of it right now, the mayor has his proposal, which is a housing rezoning proposal he's calling city of Yes, you have had time to review it and you say that your support is contingent on a few factors. Can you break those for us? So first the city of yes is a text amendment to change the way we do basic things in zoning right now. A lot of people think the city of Yes is gonna be revolutionary. It absolutely isn't. This is going to be um one new apartment for every like 200 acres or something like that. It's just gonna be so minimal in the changes that we're gonna make. But it does something that's important. It does a city wide text amendment. Usually when we see zoning, we see a neighborhood by neighborhood, one neighborhood fighting against the mayor's office and so forth. There's gonna be an opportunity for us to spread the love. Everybody does a little bit and we got a lot. So the example is during town centers where we have uh an example of a street with just uh a bunch of commercial on the first floor, maybe we could build 23 or four stories on top of that commercial lot um to, to bring more apartments in ad us, which is what the contingency is about. I will not support this if the accessory dwelling units are not a part of the plan, which means you're allowed to take a garage, let's say, and convert it into a studio for grandma or for your son, that's there a little longer than you want him to be. It's an example of a AD U effort or you take your attic and turn it into a room or in some cases a basement and convert it into an apartment. These are small things that make a big difference. So we're not adding any height to anywhere in your single family home structure, but we could take that garage and turn it into a unit can help us instead of grandma having to find a house outside or your son can actually stay in indoors or your your your child. So I guess the small things that we're doing is everyone contributes, which is another problem. Usually you see black and brown neighborhoods do all of the housing development over the last uh 20 years in the city of New York. It's been outside of goans. It's been in only exclusively black and brown neighborhoods. So we're saying is in areas that are mostly affluent uh in the city of New York that are one family homes, give us the ad us, give us that one unit, make a difference. Be a part of the team that's gonna get us out of this housing home. So we're excited about it again. This is not a drastic change you're not gonna see in 10 years that this has completely transformed the way we do business in the city of New York, but it helps every little bit helps. And during this crisis, we need everybody to step up. So we are supporting it and we don't want it modified in any way. If anything we want it increased, we wanna see more housing. So we're asking the mayor to stick to his guns. Don't fold, don't water anything down, move forward, barrel forward and make sure that we get this done something we're gonna continue to keep tabs on as this unfolds because like you said, people calling it revolutionary, we have to see how it's actually implemented. I do want to get to a caller that we have on the line. Michelle joining us from East Flatbush, Michelle. Thanks so much for taking the time to be with us here on. Ask the BP. What's your question tonight? Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I have a, um, a large tree that's, um, right in front of my house where the limbs are hanging over the driveway. Now, I'm so concerned about it because I was watching the news, I think a week or two ago where the weather was so bad that the limb fell down and end up, um, crushing, um, someone's car. So, how do I go about getting the limb like, um, spoon or trim? How do I go about that? Do I need a permit? So, the first thing is we're not allowed to trim New York City trees that the Parks department does. That the forestry department and they have a schedule that they abide by and they trim the trees every once in a while. Uh and they should pass by, you should be able to see them and know when it's happening. Uh But in emergency cases, if a tree branch looks like it's dangerous, it might fall, it might hit vehicles or your home or your property or people that you call in 311 when you say you have a dangerous, a dangerous branch or limb on a tree that needs to be removed and they will send for you over to make sure that they take care of that. But we are not allowed to go in there and cut any, any of the trees. We could harm them. We could make damage long term damage to the tree and that's the last thing we wanna do so as homeowners, we're not responsible for that. I have a tree not in front of my house, in front of the house that I rent an apartment in, there's a tree and we're dying for forestry to come in. It is not dangerous right now and actually provide shade. So we're ok with it. But yeah, we don't want anyone doing it. Call 211 if it's dangerous. If not, there is a schedule and they will get to your tree here in Brooklyn to elaborate on a point that Michelle made though. We're now in the summer months, we're seeing more of these strong storms and I feel like Brooklyn is really bearing the brunt of the storm damage. I know exactly what she's referencing with the the tree that fell down. We're even seeing it affect subway service at times. What's your message for Brooklynites as we kind of continue to weather the storm literally and figuratively now in the summer months here. So one climate change is real and global warming is happening and we see what's happening in Texas and Houston and in the Caribbean Islands, it's just this is gonna happen more frequently and I hope folks really start advocating and being a part of the movement to really start addressing our issues of, of climate change. Uh But the other one is, uh there was, there were cuts made in this administration for Forestry. So we were cutting, we're gonna cut trees down at a slower rate than we were before. So the cycle slows down and these are changes that are happening. Um I think unnecessarily but are happening because of our budget. But ultimately, the most important thing is remember if it's uber dangerous is super dangerous. Please call 311. If not, we're gonna have to bear the brunt of uh having to wait for tree pruning. But you're talking about flooding change, train services, we just have aging and instructure that's falling apart and there's no uh no safety or no assistance or help in the near future, especially after what happened with congestion pricing. Oh, we'll talk about that. Actually. Let's talk about it right now. Your thought, because last time you were here, we were prepping for it to go into effect. We thought you'd be back with us in July and it would have taken effect and then suddenly the governor announces that there's an indefinite pause on the program. I know you're a supporter of the program. You've expressed that here many times. Your thoughts on the fact that she made this reversal somewhat suddenly. And what do you think will ultimately come to fruition when it comes to congestion pricing? This is a difficult one when I think is just bad timing. If you knew you weren't going to support it, do it three months ago where we could have not have the infrastructure implemented. There's a bunch of money that was put into the infrastructure to have the toll cameras up and have everything running all this. Uh Wait until the last minute to say no, I just think it's not good leadership. I think it's a lack of leadership and uh she's presented us with AAA terrible decision now because there's no money for the MT A. So all these folks that are driving that are in Karsi and the outer portions of the outer boroughs that say they need their vehicles to get to where they need to get to. They're gonna be absolutely right because there is no uh no new help coming for the train stations, which means that it's gonna be less reliable and less safe and less clean. And that's not what people want and less affordable. We're gonna be paying more to get in through toll. So I just think it's a big disaster. I think the governor did a terrible job and the timing of it and, and just pushing it back in general and I think she did it for political points, which is the biggest problem. I don't like policy that is, that is determined solely on politics. Politics is always gonna be a part of the game, but it doesn't need to be everything and this decision is a political decision, not a policy one and we're gonna suffer for it. Do you know of any MT A projects that have been affected or perhaps put on pause as a result of this pause on congestion price, specifically the, the Second Avenue subway will no longer be moving forward. It's stuck where it is. There's no progress that's gonna be made on it. And also all the AD U work. So you've been seeing a lot of new elevators going up. We wanna make it as accessible as possible for people that are moly impaired in wheelchairs, for strollers for the elderly. We wanna help all that. Those are also gonna be stuck. So you won't be seeing any more ad a work. Uh And again, the, the, the trains that we have are on old time, school signals will take a long time. The L train, for example, is on new signals and we see that one turning out every three minutes, a new train that can't happen anywhere else because we have old signals uh in our system that's not gonna change either. Uh And then you see the security, you see the cleanliness of it are all things that we won't be able to afford anymore. So uh a lot of people that the 140,000 people that go into the central business district believe they gotta win. Uh the, the 3 million people more or less that take the train every day I think are the biggest losers here. What do you think is the ultimate fate of this program? Is it dead in the water at this point? Do you think Brooklynite should prepare to see a toll implemented at some point? If so, will it be the $15 that was initially planned? So right now, there's no alternative and by law, the governor has to come up with an alternative for the $15 billion that we will not get because this program is shut down. And I just don't see where she's gonna find that money. She's gonna have to steal from Peter to pay Paul. And you're gonna start asking ourselves, do we wanna take it from education? Do we wanna take it from our libraries? Do we wanna take it from, from other things? And, and no one's gonna wanna trade a billion dollars for this program. So she's gonna have to figure out an alternative and I just don't see it. They've been, it's been almost a month and there's still no solutions. No one has found out exactly uh where they're gonna find this money. So I really don't see uh a timeline where she doesn't have to do this. Um And I'm thinking it'll happen right after the election because that's when it's uh when there's less worry about us losing Congress or the presidency over congestion pricing in the city of New York. It will be interesting to see what the ultimate fate ends up being real quick because we are up against a commercial break. But city budget passed libraries back to seven day service. Your reaction to at least that win. What I imagine you can consider a win. We're very happy and I do want to be clear though all these victories that we're seeing from the budget, we all necessary victories to be had. We never needed to cut the budget this much. The mayor was being overly conservative and now we're fighting for things that we shouldn't have fought for. So I feel like they built the crisis. Uh they, they put the fire in and then they put the fire out and now they want us to celebrate with them. I'm not a big fan of how the process worked out, but I'm happy the libraries are saved. You and I'm sure a lot of Brooklynites as well. The conversation continues after this. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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0708askthebkbpeblock_2024-07-08-19-54-22

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0708askthebkbpfblock_2024-07-08-20-00-01

Welcome back to ask the borough president with Brooklyn BP, Antonio Reno. So it's been so good to have you back with us and cover so much ground and answer so many questions. I do want to end on a fun note because your office has been hosting the series of summer time, lunch time jazz concerts right outside of Borough Hall. This is awesome. Can you explain a little bit about what's going on and how people can come out and enjoy? Absolutely. Come out. They're supporting local artists. Uh and we were able to contract with a jazz uh partner. Um and they put this out and every single day for lunch time from like 12 to 1, 30 people come out and it's free jazz. And we had like funk jazz last week. We're doing tomorrow and Tuesday, we're doing uh salsa jazz and it's just a, a new type of jazz every single week. And we have three Tuesdays left. So come out in joy. Bring a hat or something. It's hot, but it's a, it's a ton of fun and it's, it's packed out there, everyone's out there enjoying it. We have tables and chairs. We have the steps of Borough Hall in the background. It's a gorgeous and fun event and it's just like, it's summer, you know, summer is here when jazz is in, uh Columbus Park behind Borough Hall and it forces people to take the lunch break, take a break and enjoy some jazz. I, every time it's warm, I, everybody go outside, do some work. Get on your phone and roam around Borough Hall, outside of Borough Hall. Get outside. I hope they're doing that all over, all over downtown Brook. I would love to see it and an invitation to you at home to go and check it out. We still got some time to, to make the most of it your office also hosting a Disability Pride Month event coming up. What's that about? So la we did this, I believe it was the first time we did. It was last year. Um And what this is, is just recognizing, uh you know, folks that are disabled that are, are moly impaired or uh you know, can't hear or just any, any ad a accessibility issues just do the best we can to have them be seen and it is a struggle for them. We're talking about ad a accessibility on trains. We're talking about all these things they advocate for that they don't get um or that they don't have partners with them. They're on their own when they're having with these conversations and they're always uh and they just didn't, don't feel hurt. So I'm here for them. We're doing a Disability Pride month. We're recognizing their work. We're having a panel that's gonna inform us on more work that we need to do to support them. It's a lot of fun. It is a celebration. We're doing celebration through service in Borough Hall. So this is not necessarily just the party. It is really getting to the nitty gritty about what we need to do for the disabled community here in Brooklyn. And we're making it happen uh through disability pride. But those are important conversations to be having that lead ultimately to celebrations too real quick. Before we go, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Favorite thing to do in Brooklyn during the summer months. So, the, my favorite thing to do is play soccer in Lindsay Park and go to the aquarium in Coney Island. All right. So you heard it here, maybe some inspiration for you. Shark week too. Thanks so much for being back with us. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

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

Brooklyn Ask The Borough President: July 2024 Edition

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

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