A week after Mayor de Blasio used his State of the City address to focus on affordable housing, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito used her address Wednesday to talk about everything else.
She kicked off the wide-ranging speech with a nod to her love of social media, tweeting a photo from the podium.
Yup, tweeting from #SOC speech #everyvoicenyc #cadavoznyc. Look at all these beautiful peeps! Go ahead now, retweet! pic.twitter.com/QrCRvvygAV
— Melissa MarkViverito (@MMViverito) February 11, 2015
Speaking from the Johnson Community Center in a New York City Housing Authority development in her East Harlem/El Barrio district, she took on issues noticeably absent from de Blasio’s speech last week.
She addressed education, announcing a partnership between the city and Microsoft to provide all public school students and faculty with free software.
“Thanks to this nearly half-billion dollar benefit, we will close the software gap and put them on the pathway to success in the 21st Century,” said Mark-Viverito
She proposed creating an Office of the Civil Justice Coordinator to ensure legal representation to the more than a million low-income New Yorkers she said battle evictions, debt collectors and struggle to receive government benefits they’re entitled to all without a lawyer.
She's also asking for an increase in funding for legal and social services to families facing eviction, in neighborhoods where large numbers of people enter the homeless shelter system.
She also acknowledged the deaths of two New York Police Department officers — Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos — and the two men who recently died at NYPD hands – Eric Garner and Akai Gurley.
“There is no denying that we’ve faced challenging times these past few months,” said Mark-Viverito.
To help the whole city heal, she proposed a series of criminal justice reforms, including “expanding the use of summonses and desk appearance tickets for minor charges instead of locking kids up."
It's a policy change that would require buy-in from the mayor's office and the NYPD.
Roy Richter, head of the NYPD captains union, offered measured skepticism after the speech.
“To the extent a summons is appropriate, I'm all in favor of that,” Richter said, adding, “But we need to make sure that person we stop is identified and if they are not properly identified they need to be taken into custody to be checked out.”
When she talked about affordable housing, she focused on the New York City Housing Authority, calling it the “cornerstone of affordable housing.”
She cited the city’s $225 million commitment of capital funds to NYCHA and said the Council had penned a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Majority Leader Skelos, challenging them to use some of the money the state recovered from bank settlements to match the city’s commitment. NYCHA faces an $18 billion deficit. She also pledged the Council would provide $25 million to make immediate repairs.
In a statement, de Blasio spokesman Philip Walzak said the mayor congratulated the speaker on her first State of the City Address, noting that, “The Speaker and City Council have been tremendous partners in combating income inequality and making New York City more inclusive, and many of today’s proposals – from tackling homelessness to providing more support for our city’s public schools – demonstrate that commitment.The mayor looks forward to reviewing the proposals raised in the Speaker’s address.”
The budget is due by July 1.