Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Holds Public Hearings for Intros. 65-A, 128, and 609

December 23, 2015

Video available at: http://youtu.be/jhcaCOoeII0

Mayor Bill de Blasio: We’re going to be talking about three bills today, all of which I’ll be signing at a later date.

First, Intro. 609-A, which makes it easier for homeowners and businesses to determine whether geothermal energy is cost-effective.  The sponsor is Council Member Costa Constantinides, Chair of our Committee on Environmental Protection.

Now, right now, nearly three-quarters of our city’s emissions of greenhouse gases come from buildings. A way to drive that number down is by using geothermal energy as a renewable source for cooling and heating, another step away from fossil-fueled – fossil-fuel-powered burners and cooling towers. And that is very consistent with our overall commitment to reduce total emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050.

This legislation will certainly help us to achieve that goal. The bill requires the city to develop and make publicly available a tool that helps building owners understand how cost effective a geothermal system would be for their particular building. And it marks the first time that city policy will factor in the social cost of carbon – the long term impact of its emissions into that cost-efficiency analysis.

The bill also requires the city to report on the number of city-owned buildings in which geothermal energy is determined to be cost-effective, and develop standards for installing and maintaining geothermal systems.

I want to thank Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. I want to thank the Director of our Office of Sustainability, Nilda Mesa; our Commissioner for Design and Construction, Feniosky Peña-Mora; and, of course, Chair Constantinides, who, both, is the bill’s sponsor and the chair of the appropriate committee.

So, with that, do we have any testimony? Yes, we do. First of all, I’ll call them both up. I’d call up Billy Roberti of NY-Geo and Bob Wyman.

Right there. There you go.

[…]

Mayor: Amen. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Alright. So I will be signing that bill in the near term. Let me now move to Intro. 65-A. Intro. 65-A allows me to authorize a program to reimburse non-public schools, including private and religious schools, for the cost of security guard services. The sponsor is Council Member David Greenfield.

Non-public schools with 300 or more students will qualify for the reimbursement program. The spending cap will be $19.8 million dollars in the first full year of implementation. The bill requires schools that take part in this program to report criminal and other significant public safety related incidents to the NYPD.

Additional security guards will, of course, enhance school safety and community safety, and will put more eyes and ears on the ground, which will be closely coordinated with the NYPD, and will improve the ability of the NYPD and other public safety agencies to keep New York safe.

I want to thank Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito; Council Member Vanessa Gibson, the Chair of our Public Safety Committee; and Council Member David Greenfield, the bill’s sponsor.

And I’d like to welcome public testimony. I’ll call up a few people at a time – first, Avi Spitzer, of the Sephardic Community Federation, and Joe Rosenberg, of the Catholic Community Relations Council.

[…]

Mayor: I’d like to call up now three more speakers – David Tanenbaum of Agudath Israel; Jake Adler of the Orthodox Union; and Sasha Kesler of UJA Federation of New York.

[…]

Mayor: Thank you, very much. Alright, thank you everyone and, again, I’ll be looking forward to signing that bill at a later date.

We have one more piece of legislation and that is Intro. 128. Intro. 128 requires the city’s Economic Development Corporation to share annual job creation reports with all of the city’s community boards. The sponsor is Councilmember Fernando Cabrera. These reports include information on projected and actual jobs created by EDC’s many projects and initiatives. This way community boards can understand how EDC’s projects are performing – whether or not they’re delivering the jobs they were planned to create.

Currently, these reports are distributed to the Mayor’s Office, the Council, the comptroller, the public advocate, and the borough presidents, and made available online. We’ll be glad to add community boards, which are such an important source of information to the neighborhoods they represent, to that list. And as agreed upon with the Council, we will electronically distribute the report to all 59 community boards in order to be environmentally friendly.

I want to thank Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito; the President and CEO of EDC, Maria Torres-Springer; Chair of the Economic Committee in the Council, Dan Garodnick; and the bill’s sponsor, Councilman Fernando Cabrera. I don’t think anyone’s here to comment on that, so, I’m just going to summarize, again, that bill will also be signed at a later date – summarize these three pieces of legislation very briefly in Spanish.

[Mayor speaks in Spanish]

That is all of the legislation we’re covering today.

I want to again wish everyone a very, very happy holiday season and a happy and healthy new year as well and this hearing is now adjourned. Thank you everyone.

[Applause]