51 Council Members in 52 Weeks: District 23, Linda Lee

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue our series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks, as we're welcoming every member of the New York City Council, all 51, touching every neighborhood, and this year when most of the Council is new because of term limits, and the Council is majority female for the first time ever.

Today's guest is one of those new woman members, Linda Lee, from District 23 in Eastern Queens, the first Korean American ever elected to City Council, which is actually incredible to me considering how long the City has had a sizable Korean American population.

As it happens, Council Member Lee's appearance comes at a historic moment as City Council has just approved the first annual budget of the Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams era, a budget that's drawing dissent from some progressives for the way it funds police and jails similarly to the past and cuts education funding a half a percent or so based on declining enrollment. They criticize it as an austerity budget, but Speaker Adams celebrated the budget like this.

Adrienne Adams: These investments will benefit New Yorkers by supporting health and safety, parks and sanitation services, protections for tenants and homeowners, and expanded opportunities for services for our young people and seniors.

Brian Lehrer: Speaker Adrienne Adams. There's also some criticism, we should say, from Republicans who think the City is taxing and spending too much. The $101 billion budget for the City is about equal to the entire budget of Florida as a state. Florida has 20 million people, New York City has about 9 million. We'll get into the budget and learn about District 23.

With the Supreme Court ruling in the Mississippi abortion case expected to bring big changes to this country, we'll touch on that too. Linda Lee is in the City Council's Women's Caucus.

Wikipedia describes District 23 as based in the pseudo suburbs of far Eastern Queens, covering some or all of Glen Oaks, Bellerose, Fresh Meadows, Oakland Gardens, and Floral Park, and parts of Douglaston, Little Neck, Bayside, Hollis, and Queens Village. It's border with Nassau County. It's the easternmost point in New York City. Did you know that?

Linda Lee's Twitter bio says she's an advocate for community-informed change. Also, a mom and a Mets and Led Zeppelin fan. Council member Lee, thanks so much for joining 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. Welcome to WNYC.

Linda Lee: Thank you so much, Brian. I'm super excited to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Since Wikipedia is right most of the time, but not all of the time, did they get the neighborhoods right?

Linda Lee: Yes, for the most part. We have quite a few neighborhoods.

Brian Lehrer: Also, your office told us, off the air, if you walk around your district, you'd think you're on Long Island. Can you paint that picture for our listeners?

Linda Lee: Sure. I think we have one of the most unique districts in the City. It is very residential with tons of parks. We have garden apartments, one of the highest rates of homeownership in the City. I think it's one of the few places still left in New York City where working-class families can actually afford to own their own homes. We have actually one of the highest number of units of co-ops and condos.

We have a lot of folks that are young families, folks in the labor unions, as well as teachers that live in the district. One thing that I don't think people realize as well is that it actually is one of the most diverse districts. We have about 45% Asian Americans that live in District 23, and it's a very, very diverse district, and it's majority-minority. Of course, that means we have some of the best food. We also are a transit desert, though.

I believe I'm one of the only City Council districts that actually has no railway that runs through my district. There's no Long Island Railroad, there's no subways, and so we rely very heavily on cars and buses to get around. My predecessor basically used to joke about how if you look at the subway map of New York City, the key or the legend to the map, that's where my district is because you won't find any railways going out there.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, they put the insignia like the MTA insignia, because there are no actual train stations there.

Linda Lee: Yes. There's no train stations. It's always interesting when people who have never been out here and I'm trying to give them directions on how to get there. They're like, "What subway?" I'm like, "Well, you could take subways and then probably two or three buses."

Of course, education is one of the top priorities here because-- I also think I have one of the highest numbers of public schools in the City. I have 35 public schools plus also 14 private schools. It's also the second most overcrowded. A lot of families move out here because of the schools, but the reality is, and this is something I wanted to point out, is that I've been listening to your show and listening to my colleagues, and all of our districts in the City are so unique and diverse.

I think that's one thing that we have to remember is that people may think of New York City as Manhattan, but it is not a monolith, I have to say, and all the districts do have different needs. There is no one-size-fits-all, which I think is important to remember as we go into our work in the Council when we're thinking through policies and what the best approach is to addressing a lot of the issues in the City.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, definitely. To that point, how is it that you are the first Korean American Council member? The community has been sizable, really since the 1970s when so many came here and opened neighborhood markets that came to be known as Korean grocery stores or Korean produce stores. How is it that you're the first Korean American Council member and it's 2022?

Linda Lee: Yes, it's kind of crazy to think about, and I have to say, I got to give my fellow Korean Julie Won a shout-out, which I know she's going to be coming up because she's the 26th District. She and I are the first Korean Americans. I love the fact that we both happen to be women, just to put that in there, but it's insane to me, as well, to think that we're actually the first Korean Americans.

I think it shows how the City is changing. We do have more engagement from different communities, and I think we're finally saying, as a City, we're ready to elect people that reflect the communities that they serve, that represent different voices. It's pretty exciting to me.

Brian Lehrer: The Council is majority female for the first time ever. You're in the Women's Caucus. Do you see it making a difference to policy yet?

Linda Lee: I do in the sense that when it comes to, especially, some of the childcare issues that we've been talking about because I myself go through this on a daily basis, because when I had my second child, I was looking for daycares that took children at three months, and they're very few and far between. At that time, I was still running my nonprofit organization.

It's something important to think through in terms of how do we elevate women to be able to free them up and do the things that they're passionate about, that they love, and pursue their careers? I think that does have an influence in terms of how we're looking at policies, especially on education, women's issues, childcare issues. I know that we've been passing and thinking through quite a few bills at the City Council that would actually help women to be able to do the work that they love to do.

Brian Lehrer: Assuming the Supreme Court is coming down on abortion, as reported, is there a City Council response, anything at the City level that City Council might take up to protect access for women who live here or women who come here for abortion services?

Linda Lee: Yes. That's a good question. I think we're going to have to see that unfold. One thing I do know is that as a majority lead women Council, that is something that we definitely value, it's a health care right, it's women's right. We want to make sure that that is protected. Thankfully, as New York State, I think we will be okay on that front. However, I think what we are going to see, as you alluded to, is that there are going to be a lot of folks in different states, neighboring states, perhaps, that may end up going to other places like New York State to receive safe care, because I think what we may see in some of these other states is people not receiving the best care because they're going to do things illegally, and that's not what we want.

We want women to be healthy. We want women to have options. We want women to be taken care of, and also to make sure that they have the insurance and the finances to cover that. This is something that I think we'll continue to follow and unfold. I'm pretty sure that given we have such strong women that want to protect these rights, I'm sure that if we need to, we'll figure out a way in terms of how to respond to that.

Brian Lehrer: City Council member Linda Lee from Eastern Queens District 23, our guest today in our ongoing series 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks in which we're interviewing all 51 New York City Council members in this year when it is majority female for the first time ever and most of the Council is new because of term limits.

One could guess, Council Member Lee, that a district like yours would trend conservative these days. Homeowners, to begin with, as you mentioned, relatively well off and upwardly mobile, I would imagine, car owners, as you mentioned, and facing inflation pressures like everybody. I know the district just north of yours also along the Nassau border is represented by a Republican who flipped that seat in last year's election. Is your district kind of conservative?

Linda Lee: I would say it probably leans more moderate. I have to say, I was joking with one of my colleagues, because I feel like last year was very interesting on the campaign trail, because I've always thought myself as a progressive in terms of-- or liberal in terms of wanting to fight for health care rights, and immigration rights and all of these other things.

It's interesting because, in New York, I'm like, "Okay, I'm considered a moderate, I guess," but anywhere outside of New York, maybe not so much. I do think that people here, they care about public safety. They want to be safe. They care about their schools. Unfortunately, we've also been seeing a lot of hate crimes in my district and increase in that across the City, of course, but we have a large Sikh community, we have a large Asian and Jewish community. Across the board, unfortunately, we've been seeing a lot of these incidences happening.

In that sense, I'm glad that the City and the Council has invested more money towards protecting folks from hate crimes, but this is something that we've been seeing. I do think that they care about a lot of the things that other folks in the City care about, which is good schools, good quality of life. One thing I will say, though, to that point, is that after having worked so many years in the community, on the nonprofit side, what I realized and will say is that there's also a lot of hidden poverty and a lot of stigma in a lot of the immigrant communities that live here.

For example, yes, we have some of the best schools, and people may think, "Oh, there's lots of wealth," but what you don't see is that people are pooling their wealth because we have multi-generations of immigrant families that are living together. It's not that one single-family is at a certain wealth level, but we see a lot of the households living together. I think there is-- if you peel back the layers, there is a lot more to that as well.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Well, let's get into the budget conversation through the fact that you're a member of the Education Committee. There's this controversy about the budget cutting education to some degree, it's less than 1%, but it's $215 million on a 31 billion education budget. The cut is because the system lost students this year. The mayor says it's the same amount per pupil just that there are fewer pupils, so it's not really a cut, but the dissenters, or progressive members of City Council, say the schools need more funding per pupil to recover from the pandemic stresses on everybody. Where are you on that issue?

Linda Lee: Sure. I want to just correct the narrative a little bit because, I agree, I don't necessarily think this is a cut per se. In fact, I think the City Council, we've taken upon it ourselves to increase the City's commitment to investing into the schools by $700 million, which the Council has never done before. I think what has happened is that the City--

Brian Lehrer: Let me clarify what I think that is. The City lost a billion dollars in federal funding that had been pandemic-specific aid, that went away. The City made up three-quarters of that with the $750 million additional funding, but it's after that, that gap of 200 million-plus, that's considered a cut from last year's budget, correct?

Linda Lee: Well, so I think, like you said, the federal funding stimulus money is drying up. These were conversations that we're having across the board, even when I was at my human service agencies that we all knew that this federal funding was going to dry up one day soon. It's not going to last forever. I think what is happening right now is do we spend down everything now and have an even worse fall off next year, or do we phase that in so that we can absorb some of those hits that we may take?

I think one thing everyone can agree on is yes, we would love to obviously invest more in the schools, and we want to make sure of that, but what's happened in the City is that, as you mentioned, the school budget is usually based on enrollment, and over the past five years, it has decreased by 120,000, both before and during the pandemic but because of the federal stimulus money, we were able to hold the budget despite that enrollment.

Now what the City is faced with is that because the federal funds are drying up, we have to switch back to-- We're switching back to the normal way of doing things but still investing a lot more than we used to. I still think of this as a big win in the sense that we want to make sure that the students are not negatively impacted and that teachers are not going to be let go of because DOE is going to be eliminating vacant spots, not filled ones.

That's one of the things that we're really focusing on. I will tell you this, is that I've had conversations with colleagues and one thing that we're definitely, definitely committed to is we want to have these oversight hearings. As Speaker Adams and Gale Brewer and Rita Joseph mentioned in their statement, is that we want to follow this issue closely because we have to fix this issue as a Council. I think all of us agree that we do not want our students to be suffering negatively because of this budget issue.

Hopefully, this will actually buy us and give us time to make adjustments so that we can actually have the students and the education system that we want to see. One thing I see is that this allows us to almost course-correct and actually figure out, coming out of this pandemic and going into the recovery stage, how we're going to best address this issue for the students.

Brian Lehrer: I'm curious too since you said education is so important to the people in your district. Of course, it's important to people in every district, but the Council members who voted no say this will hurt low-income districts the most, this resetting of the funding formula for schools based on declining enrollment. I'm just curious if you have declining enrollment in your district?

Linda Lee: We do. We do have declining enrollment in our district. I think that's an issue that we're seeing across the board in the City.

Brian Lehrer: What do you attribute it to?

Linda Lee: I think there were just a lot-- I don't think the pandemic helped, that's for sure. I think a lot of folks, perhaps, with the-- I would say I think it's a combination of different things. I think that it's the pandemic, it was parents not being sure of if they were going to-- This is back when-- because my son is in school as well. I think this was back when we were trying to figure out, is it hybrid? Is it in person? What are the policies? What are the rules?

I think some families, we saw they either chose to put their kids into private schools or move out of the City because I think they valued wanting to have that in-person learning. A lot of the families-- it depends on which family but a lot of them had to make that decision on their own about what they wanted to do for their children.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a position on the bill passed by the state legislature to mandate substantial reductions in class size, like at the elementary level from 25 students down to 20 students, in high school from I think it's 33 down to 25? Big cut in class size, big expense, and since the state won't fully fund it, the mayor says adding all those classrooms and teachers will force cuts to almost everything else, mental health and dyslexia services in the schools, the arts, after-school programs. Where are you on that? Should Governor Hochul sign that bill because she still has to make that decision?

Linda Lee: I know that that's a topic of conversation that's happening right now. I know that all of the folks at the table, the UFT, the mayor, the DOE, they're all having these conversations. It's a balancing act, because, yes, I think that students definitely benefit from smaller class sizes, but, again, every school is different and I think that has to be evaluated and looked at. Is there enough space? Do principals have enough support? Is there enough funding? Do we have enough teachers to accommodate that? Because that will take a big shift in resources.

I think that, yes, overall, ideally, it's good, but at the same time, I think what we need to really look at is how that implementation is going to happen. Looking at the budget, do we have enough finances and resources to support this? If we don't, and this is something that we value, and that does pass, then how are we going to make sure that we actually have the funding in place to do it? Those are the things that I think we're committed to doing.

Brian Lehrer: Sounds like you're torn on that.

Linda Lee: Yes. You know what it is? It's not that because I think it's good or bad, it's just that this happened a lot when I was running my nonprofit organization, is that I think you can have a good idea, but it's the implementation on the ground that really makes it a success or not. Oftentimes, as folks that had to provide these essential services, we would be scratching our heads sometimes saying, "Why did they decide to mandate this or put this into law or put this into place?" Because even if it was something that was good in nature and it makes sense in theory, we have to make sure that-- For example, my son's school at PS 203, how would that work there versus Cardozo High School, which is also in my district? Because that would look different for each school. I think that's where I feel like we need to really think through because the devil's in the detail, so to speak.

Brian Lehrer: You're also chair in City Council of the Mental Health, Disabilities and Aging Committee. Mental health, of course, is so much in the public conversation these days between COVID era stresses, gun and other violence, and homelessness. According to a report in Gothamist, Council Member Kristin Richardson Jordan of Manhattan, one of the progressives who voted no on the budget, said one of her reasons was cuts to mental health services. Do you agree there were cuts and did you debate these in the Mental Health Committee that you chair?

Linda Lee: Yes. One of the things that was mentioned was cuts in geriatric mental health, for example, but that actually has increased. I think we need to be careful when we're looking at the budget. I think we actually have made a lot of investments into mental health services, and this is, of course, an issue that I feel very passionate about as someone who started up in outpatient mental health clinic, as well as having family members, friends that have severe mental illness, but yet no one talks about it.

I understand a lot of the stigmas, I understand a lot of the challenges and barriers, which is why I think it's important that we're investing in these services and a few of the things. For example, aside from the direct mental health services that we are investing in is we have OCMH at the mayor's office, which has a budget of about $325 million.

Brian Lehrer: Those letters stand for Office of Community Mental Health, right?

Linda Lee: Yes, the Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health. I think what we need to do is work with OCMH as well as H&H, DOHMH, Homeless Services, because each of those City agencies has pieces of the mental health continuum. I think, for me, what my goal is, yes, it's both, we need both more resources, but also we need to make sure that things are being coordinated because what I've experienced on the provider side is that things tend to be very siloed.

The services that we provide have different reporting mechanisms, different regulations. It makes it challenging for folks on the ground who are trying to deliver the services and you have like five different emergency response teams. My goal and my hope is that what we can do is also streamline and better utilize the current resources we have in addition to investing more.

On top of that, we have this $256 million opioid settlement money, thanks to Attorney General Letitia James, that's coming to New York City. I think we have to-- That's going to be a lot of funds that we can use for opioid prevention services as well as treatment. I think that's going to be an important piece to this as well.

I know that some of the folks who either voted down the budget or are on Twitter, online are criticizing about why we voted for a budget if we didn't think it was perfect, because a lot of the comments that we heard on the floor during the vote is that we know that this is not a perfect budget, but something that I thought about as I was listening to people vote was what does that perfect budget look like?

I think, to me, it's very clear, a perfect budget looks different to each and every person. You have one mayor, 51 City Council members, and more than 8 million residents in the City. I'm pretty sure that all of us have different ideas of what a perfect budget would look like. However, one thing that I just really want to emphasize is that I think this budget does represent the best version of what we as a Council collectively can agree on.

I think a lot of times we talk about things we disagree on and issues that are not in alignment, but I think this budget is a huge win because we actually got 90% of what we asked for, which has never really happened before. In that sense, I don't want to dilute the wins and the successes that we do have in this budget, because there are a lot of good things in here.

Brian Lehrer: We're almost out of time with New York City Council member Linda Lee from Eastern Queens in our series 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. We're interviewing all 51 Council members from New York City Council this year in the year that most of the Council is new because of term limits and it's majority female for the first time ever.

Two final questions. One, I'm asking all the new Council members in this series, what's the most common reason since you took office in January that constituents contact your office?

Linda Lee: Ooh. Definitely, I would say around quality of life issues. The things that we actually get a lot of phone calls on is cost of living. I worry that we don't focus enough on affordable home ownership when we're talking about affordable housing in the City because I think that's an important piece because a lot of the working-class families in my district may get priced out as we see cost of living continue to rise.

Truck parking is something I never thought that I would become a pseudo expert on, but the illegal commercial truck parking issue is something that we're also seeing in our district in terms of-- not just our district, but across the City, I would say.

Brian Lehrer: Where is that? Is that along the residential streets that you described, a lot of private homes and garden apartments in your district, or is that along more the business district within the district?

Linda Lee: It's everywhere. It's in residential areas, it's along major thoroughfares like Hillside Avenue, Union Turnpike, under bridges, and with that, comes a lot of other things like illegal dumping and other issues, and so this has become an issue, not just across my district, but across the City, so in the Bronx, Staten Island.

We've been trying to figure out what a good way is to both protect the drivers and understand that they need to make their stops. We've been talking to the union on that issue, as well as where can we find more places to park, and let's think outside the box. Can we use City field? Can we use Target? Can we use a lot of these big box store parking lots and incentivize them to have these companies pay fees so that their drivers can park there and not on the streets?

We're trying to think of this in a very holistic way because we know that the state bill that's being proposed, which is to increase the fines, that may help disincentivize them from parking on the streets, but it's not going to solve the entire issue. That's definitely an issue that people call about as well.

Brian Lehrer: Last question on a lighter note. As you know, we're inviting all the Council members to bring a show and tell item from your district. Let's end with that. What did you bring?

Linda Lee: Sure. I have, in my district, a 47-acre farm, and I don't know if people realize that there's a farm out here in Eastern Queens. It's the Queens County Farm and they do-- not only do they do a ton of activities for the community, educational programs, they have the cutest sheep and llamas and cows ever that you'll see, but the are corn maize that they have every fall, all the events that they throw are just such an incredible resource for the entire City, I would say. We have folks coming to the farm from all parts of the City, as well as Long Island. It's such a treasure and it actually has a farmhouse on the property that is older than the United States itself.

Brian Lehrer: It's like a farm museum, really, right in New York City, right?

Linda Lee: Yes, definitely.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it. Something for you to do this weekend, folks, that you might not have thought about without leaving the City limits from Council member Linda Lee from District 23 in Eastern Queens. Thank you for being part of 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. We look forward to speaking with you more as your term continues.

Linda Lee: Thank you so much.

 

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