Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
REMARKS
Speaker Menin outlines legislative priorities for affordable housing and healthcare accountability
1:35:44
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3 min
Speaker Julie Menin detailed a proactive legislative agenda focused on addressing the city's most pressing affordability and infrastructure challenges.
- Proposed a new affordable housing plan utilizing 215 public library branches and over 1,000 underutilized city-owned assets
- Pledged to use the Healthcare Accountability Office to address price disparities and lower medical debt for New Yorkers
- Called for procurement reform to eliminate no-bid contracts and reduce the excessive costs and timelines of public works projects
- Emphasized the need to fill agency staff vacancies and invest in baby bonds and college savings accounts to combat income inequality
Julie Menin
1:35:44
And for the past four years in the city council, it's been an honor striving to do that with all of you in so many different ways.
1:35:53
For the past four years, we've worked to build more affordable housing in every single borough.
1:35:59
We've worked to combat anti semitism through education, launching a program to bring every eighth grade public school student to the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
1:36:07
We've worked to address issues around health disparities and maternal mortality.
1:36:13
And yes, we have taken the first steps to enact universal childcare, and by working with the mayor and the governor, we can truly make it a reality.
1:36:23
But now we all have an exceptional opportunity, and I would argue an attendant obligation to take the council into a new era, a proactive era, an era of initiative and ingenuity.
1:36:37
Rather than simply wait for ULUPs to come to us, we as a council will release our own affordable housing plan by looking at the 215 public library branches to see where we can build affordable housing.
1:36:53
And we're gonna study the over 1,000 d cast underutilized and city owned assets that we can convert into thank you.
1:37:02
That we can convert into affordable housing for New Yorkers who need them.
1:37:07
As a council, we must make it easier for our small businesses to operate by slashing fines and cutting bureaucratic red tape, and we must we must tackle skyrocketing health care costs because medical debt is the leading cause of debt for New Yorkers.
1:37:27
Why should a woman who's giving birth by c section be charged $55,000 at one New York City hospital and then another woman who's giving birth by c section is charged $17,000 at another hospital just blocks away.
1:37:42
It shouldn't.
1:37:43
And we will use the new health care accountability office that we created to lower exorbitant health care costs once and for all.
1:37:53
Yes.
1:37:53
As a council, we must confront the culture of fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption that has plagued city hall and enact procurement reform to end no bid contracts that have cost our city billions of dollars.
1:38:13
And we need procurement reform because why should it cost the parks department $4,000,000 to build a bathroom or take ten years to renovate a park?
1:38:27
And we have to ensure that city services are functioning at the very highest levels and restore the enormous staff vacancies with agencies being gutted in the last administration.
1:38:40
We must counter income inequality with historic investments in baby bonds and universal college savings accounts because ongoing education, whether it be vocational school or community college, can lead to double the wages earned in one's lifetime.
1:38:58
And in certain parts of the city, we know our immigrant communities are facing an increasingly hostile environment.
1:39:06
As a council, we must work to ensure that every single family feels safe enough to put down roots in their neighborhoods.
1:39:17
Roots which strengthen the structure, shape the culture, and provide the vibrancy of our five great boroughs.