Brooklyn Borough President Reynoso on 'Everything Brooklyn, All the Time'

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Eric Adams just went from Brooklyn Borough President to Mayor. Borough president must be an important job of some kind, but what does the borough president actually do? It's a job that used to have a lot more power than it does today. Can a borough president help with affordable housing or inflation, crime control and criminal justice, education, the asylum seekers, the BQE, or the BQA? Let's find out.

With us now is the new Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. He was elected last year and began his term in Eric Adams's previous post at the beginning of this year. Reynoso was formerly a city council member for District 34, which included portions of Williamsburg and Bushwick in Brooklyn and Ridgewood in Queens. President Reynoso, can I call you that? Welcome back to WNYC.

President Antonio Reynoso: Thank you, Brian. Antonio, we'll be fine, Brian. Antonio, it's fine.

Brian Lehrer: You're the President of Brooklyn.

President Antonio Reynoso: I am.

Brian Lehrer: Having made the jump from city council member to Brooklyn Borough President, tell everybody what, in your view, is a borough president for?

President Antonio Reynoso: I think the first foundational job that's not charter-mandated is to be the chief promoter of Brooklyn. Everything Brooklyn all the time, we want tourism to increase here, we want to promote that we'd have the best bagels in the pizza, Brooklyn bridges hours. The most diverse borough in the city of New York, the largest, the best music, culture. Just promoting Brooklyn at all times, I think is the bar most important thing we can be doing as borough president.

Then there's other things that are charter-mandated like we get to make recommendations on land use, when there's any rezoning is happening in the city of New York. We appoint the members of the community board in the city, which is also something that is significant. All of the borough presidents we get 5% of the city's capital budget split among us, related to land size, population, and poverty. Those are three charter mandates and responsibilities you have, and then, of course, the one that I think is most important is the chief promoter of the borough.

Brian Lehrer: Besides chief promoter of the borough, cheerleader for Kings County, aka Brooklyn. I know when you were in city council, you represented parts of Williamsburg and Bushwick, and parts of Ridgewood, all neighborhoods where housing and gentrification were and remain crucial and central issues. I think this is a crucial and central issue for you as borough president, and you're going to use what levers of power you have in that position on that topic, correct?

President Antonio Reynoso: Yes, we're doing something called comprehensive planning, Brian, it's remarkable that the city doesn't do this yet. It's looking at the city in its entirety over a 10, 15, or 20-year period, and just asking, where do we want to go, and where do we want to grow? We're going to be doing that in Brooklyn, I've started comprehensive planning alongside a great task force and some great allies.

What I want to do is start looking about-- We're looking to note where housing is happening and where housing is not happening. I think the big NIMBY-YIMBY fight that we have now comes from the fact that there's a small group or a small geographical area that's building all the affordable housing in the city of New York. That burden has led to significant amounts of gentrification.

Should we spread the love of development to the entire world, especially places that are trying to get rich, I think that this NIMBY-YIMBY fight will lessen because there's a feeling that we're all contributing to the greater good. My report should be coming out in March or April, and we're happy to present it to you but it's going to start talking about what our borough can look like in 10 years and not just do this, like spot zoning and very narrow approach to development.

Brian Lehrer: I saw an article about you on the web, with the headline Brooklyn Beep, that's beep for borough president. Brooklyn Beep: Down With ULURP, and ULURP is the Universal Land Use Review Process in New York City, which sounds really wonky, but that has a lot to say about what you were just describing. What can be built where if you're in a NIMBY camp not in my backyard or a YIMBY camp yes in my backyard. How does the ULURP-- That's another thing besides what does the Borough president do?

Another thing that you can describe to our listeners, and then they'll always know it. They won't be able to unknow what ULURP is, and that's probably good for everybody. What is ULURP, and why do you say down with ULURP?

President Antonio Reynoso: ULURP is a process that exists right now in the city of New York that allows for anyone that wants to change the zoning within their lots, and the zoning would allow you to go up or go down, build more stories or build less stories, more apartments or less apartments. You could rezone for an upzoning or a downzoning, and sometimes, in some cases, contextual zoning, which is keeping everything the same.

The city of New York go through that process, a developer goes to DCP, or the Department of City Planning registers their project. Then it goes to the community board, where the first folks that vote on whether or not they want to see development happen, not happen, or stay the same. Then it comes to the Borough president who makes another recommendation as to whether they want to go up, down or stay the same. Then, ultimately, the decision maker falls on the city council, who, through the charter, is responsible for all rezonings, so that's the process of ULURP.

In that entire process, there is limited to no community input, and the onus of getting to the finish line here falls almost exclusively on the city council member. The problem with ULURP is that we have members that are willing to build some affordable housing understanding the need and the fact that we have almost 70,000 people living in homeless shelters. Then there are the areas that don't want to change one bit. When we allow for individual members to dictate the outcomes of our entire Borough or entire city, then what we end up doing, again, is having this narrow view of how we all participate in ensuring a good future for the city of New York.

I think ULURP, because of something called member deference, is something we have to re-review and consider whether or not that's the path we want to take moving forward. This city has built less housing over the last decade, and we did during the Great Depression, Brian. I think that that's a fact that we should be looking towards. It's like we weren't going through a recession or depression. We shouldn't have not built more housing, but because of this, not in my backyard sentiment in the city, we're now in a housing crisis, and we have a long way to go before we can get out of it.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, this is the first appearance on the show of the new Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Residents of the County of Kings, if you have a question for the president of Brooklyn, 212-433-WNYC, we have a few minutes for a few phone calls. 212-433-9692, or you can tweet a question @BrianLehrer.

Borough President, what do you see as your responsibility with respect to public safety, crime, and criminal justice? There have been some very high-profile Brooklyn shootings and other things in the news just in the last few days. Your successor as Borough president obviously was a cop, and you've sometimes been critical of his policing strategy as mayor. What do you see your role in this as?

President Antonio Reynoso: Yes, I come from a different mindset. I think what I like to look at is the safest neighborhoods in this city and look at those as models as to what we want to replicate in an effort to bring down crime. The safest neighborhoods in our city, don't have the most cops, they actually have the least amount of cops. What they do have is secure housing, high-quality education, great jobs, transit-rich, they have parks, so I see those as the symptoms of low crime areas in safe neighborhoods. What I'm trying to do is make sure that I go to these neighborhoods that don't have any of that, and do have high crime.

What I think we can do to solve for the problem of safety is not necessarily insert tons of police officers, but instead, resources so that it can match, again, the symptoms of safe neighborhoods. I don't think we do that, I think what we do is we end up just over-criminalizing or having to over-policing these neighborhoods, and I don't think that's a solution that is going to solve for the problem long term.

Again, I don't think that not having cops, be very clear that this is not about having zero cops, it's just about talking about where our resources go. When I was a council member, there was almost never any cuts to the police, but we significantly cut other agencies consistently. I just thought, we have to have a conversation, we're cutting budgets in the department of education this year, for example. A low-quality education or not having a good education has a direct correlation to crime rates. joblessness has a direct correlation to crime rates.

I'm trying to do this, I guess it's upstream work or downstream work, I don't know what the mayor calls it, but really start addressing the root causes of crime which, ultimately, is poverty, and not do this enforcement work that everybody feels good about. You see, oh, we send more cops, It must make us safer. It is just a culture, I believe, a cultural issue versus data and facts. Again, the safest neighborhoods in our city have the least amount of cops, not the most. I want to start working off for that premise.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call for you. Here's Andrea in Red Hook. You're on WNYC with the new Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Hi, Andrea.

Andrea: Hi, you guys. Thanks for taking my call. My question is regarding e-commerce last-mile distribution centers. There's a disproportionate proliferation of them in Red Hook and Sunset Park. I'd like to know your position on them. Especially in terms of the zoning. These are As of Right. We don't have any regulatory mechanism. There's a zoning text amendment that's been proposed, so I'd like to know your position. Thank you. I'll take my answer off the air.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that question. Just so everybody knows what she's talking about, when she says e-commerce last mile distribution centers, does that mean the places where Amazon keeps a lot of stuff so when you order, they can get it to your home quickly?

President Antonio Reynoso: Yes, and that's like pretty much just transportation depots. Everyone goes there, picks up their stuff, and then heads out to their local routes. What ends up happening in these places is there are high pollution, a lot of truck traffic and usually happens in neighborhoods that have historically been environmental justice communities. The highest asthma rates, the lowest amount of park space or green space in the neighborhoods. Right now we have no plan, which is why we're talking about this comprehensive planning. This city doesn't do comprehensive planning. What will end up happening is one neighborhood can take on, let's say, 10 of these sites.

These are enormous sites and hundreds of thousands of square feet. What you end up doing is further harming these local communities that are environmental justice communities. What we're trying to do in the conversation we're trying to have is talking to the city about regulating it. We understand the need for them as e-commerce has grown, but we should have a different conversation when it comes to planning. This administration has not been open to planning. We've been pushing it. We've been asking for tax amendments so that we could spread the love. These distribution sensors should be all over the city, not just in a couple of places.

Brian Lehrer: How could the city regulate that? Because the caller said that they are As of Right, which is a real estate legal term, which means since they're not asking for zoning variances they just have a right to put them up on the land that they own or that they rent. What can the government do about that?

President Antonio Reynoso: We could make it so that this distribution centers, that's what we could call them, mass distribution centers. First, name them something that is unique, and after you do that in its uniqueness, you can regulate it, and we can say something like, within a community board, you can't have more than four distribution centers. Then in doing so, would force them to have to look in other areas outside of just one neighborhood, which is Red Hook right now, which I believe has four or five.

It's getting more because these are industrial areas in this city. The thing is, this is good for Amazon, this is good for the city, this is good for the community if we plan. This is the future, e-commerce is real, and we're not asking to stop it from happening. What we're asking is let's plan for what an e-commerce-friendly city looks like long term.

Then a lot of that could be barging through water and using our waterways. A lot of it could be using trains and our rail system. Starting to have a conversation about electrifying whatever fleet is being used that is moving through these communities that have suffered greatly with environmental injustice. We could have all those conversations in a productive way, but so far the city has turned the deaf ear to that argument and that conversation. Because this is not a city that plans, this is a city that zones. Those are two different things.

Brian Lehrer: Nasio in Park Slope. You're on WNYC with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Hi, Nasio.

Nasio: Hello. I'd like to know, since we have several moving parts in traffic cars, people and two-wheel vehicles like bicycles. Can we get to Vision Zero by regulating cars only or do we have to regulate the others, and how would we do it?

President Antonio Reynoso: Yes. I think, first, if you want to get to Vision Zero, you have to target the largest culprit, I guess. How are people dying in our streets when it comes to Vision Zero? The majority of not all of those are happening with vehicle crashes. Vehicles are killing people so we have to focus on vehicles. We have to be very careful about putting the owners on keeping yourself alive on pedestrians and cyclists.

I believe cyclists are more kin to pedestrians than they are to vehicles, which I think some people disagree with. Again, the problem are the vehicles, those are the ones killing people. We should be regulating those. I want to be very careful about doing anything else because what are we going to start asking? Pedestrians to wear helmets, pedestrians to wear armor suits, to protect themselves and start regulating how they walk through our streets?

We're a large city, a very, very large city, and the amount of vehicles that have we've gotten and the amount of vehicles that we're going to continue to get unless we regulate, will make this untenable. We don't have more streets, we don't have more physical space for them to park, and in doing so, we're going to get into crisis mode here. We have to start encouraging people to use public transportation, cycling, and walking.

The way we do that is by building infrastructure for that, which means we have to take infrastructure away from somewhere else. Again, because the crashes and the deaths of people in the city related to the transportation happen almost exclusively by vehicles, then we should be focused on vehicles.

Brian Lehrer: I heard there was just a cyclist death of someone hit by a truck in near the Parade Ground there in Brooklyn. By the same token, protected bike lane open just now in Brooklyn. Things are moving in both directions. I know you got to go in a minute. Two health things that I know you're involved in, take your pick of which one you want to talk about briefly. One priority of yours is curbing the maternal mortality rates of Black people in Brooklyn who give birth. Those rates are disparate by race, and also, you have mental health task force, so give us a last shot.

President Antonio Reynoso: Yes. I want to take on both of those. I got a lot of love for you, Brian, so I'm more than happy to take a couple extra minutes and stay on with you. Maternal mortality, so Black birthing people die at 9.5 times the rate as their white counterparts during childbirth. That is arguably one of the grossest inequities that exist in our entire society, but Brooklyn, unfortunately, is the most dangerous place for Black people to have babies. I want to change that.

I want to make Brooklyn the safest place for any pregnant person to have a baby in four years. Then, if I get the opportunity and the privilege to continue to be Borough president for eight, make it the safest place in the entire country to have babies. The way we're going to do that is, first, I've given all my funding brand, not just 10%, not $2 million, I've given $45 million, which is my entire capital budget to the outfitting of three public hospitals. Woodhull Hospital, Coney Island, and Kings County.

They will be having state-of-the-art birthing sensors. We're not talking about just paint jobs and new beds, we're talking about state-of-the-art. We want it so that people come from all over the world to see what we're going to be doing in our public hospitals. Marketing campaign, in which we've put in significant amounts of resources that'll start coming out in bus shelters and train stations and booklets and work we're doing with other not-for-profit organizations. That is just going to let people know that there are resources out there to help them.

We've also have been able to work with Met Council to have 500 baby bags with supplies, months worth of supplies that we're going to give to the first 500 babies in Coney Island.

We're going to start in Coney Island. What we want to do is have these mothers not worry about the monetary needs of the child for a first couple of months. Don't worry about your diapers and your wipes and all these other essential items. We're going to take care of that.

This is the first time any Borough president has given his entire capital funding to one issue. I don't want incremental progress to be made on this. I want to really slash these numbers and get to a place where no one's dying in our Borough. I believe through the work that I'm doing, I will be able to achieve that, hopefully, within eight years. Again, make Brooklyn the place where everyone should have their babies, but specifically our public hospitals. Mental health work is part of this issue, Brian, that I think is related to perception versus reality.

I think a lot of people believe that the homelessness issue and the mental health issues that we're having on our streets, that is a lot more visible now than it was before, they relate that to crime but homeless people roaming the streets maybe, or someone mental health that you see publicly, they're not committing any crimes. They're being, because the general population sees that and relates that to crime, I want to start one breaking that down, breaking that culture and having us understand that those are not criminals and there's no crimes being committed so that there's some level of social responsibility on us to know that.

I want to deal with the crisis that I think is at hand, which is mental health and the lack of resources that exist in that department. Our office is starting a new initiative that doesn't have a cool name yet, but we're going to be focusing on supporting anyone with mental health issues in an effort, again, to start ensuring that people are taking care of themselves and breaking down stigmas. Those are two issues that we're working on right now, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it for today with the president of Brooklyn, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, his first appearance on the show since taking office. We look forward to talking to you many more times during your four-year term.

President Antonio Reynoso: Thank you, Brian. Don't forget one of the greatest poets in all of the United States history is Christopher Wallace or The Notorious B.I.G, and he said, "Don't forget to spread love, it's the Brooklyn way." Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

 

 

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