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Council Member Restler's concerns about the financial impact of increased summons
2:07:26
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71 sec
Council Member Restler expresses his concerns about the financial impact of the dramatic increase in summons issuance on New Yorkers and questions the effectiveness of this approach in improving quality of life.
- Restler notes that summons have doubled from 500,000 to 1 million in three years
- He estimates that one out of eight New Yorkers now owes an additional $75 to the city annually
- Restler questions whether the increase in summons is improving quality of life
- He expresses frustration that no one is looking at the policy implications of encouraging agencies to issue as many summons as possible
Lincoln Restler
2:07:26
I appreciate that sanitation is one agency that's seen a significant increase in summons, but when the last time I looked through all of this data, a broad range of agencies had shifted policies in this administration and were dramatically increasing the number of summons issued.
2:07:42
Going from half a million to a million in three years, and that means that one out of eight New Yorkers has an additional $75 that they owe to the city every single year or whatever that average number is.
2:07:53
That is a big financial impact on New Yorkers.
2:07:56
And I'm not it's not clear to me that it's improving the quality of life in any way.
2:08:03
And so I get that you're just here to, you know, as Justice Roberts might say, judge the balls and the strikes or call the balls and the strikes.
2:08:12
But nobody is looking at the policy implications of encouraging every single agency to just issue as many summons as they possibly can and what that does to New York City.
2:08:21
So I wish that this was a place where you would take the data that you're seeing and highlight for your counterparts at City Hall that we have a problem and that, you know, we can't just summons our way out of the issues that we're facing in New York City.
2:08:36
Councilmember Brewer, you wanna jump in?