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News » Full Text of Bill’s Speech on Jobs and the Economy
Good afternoon.
Thank you so much for that wonderful welcome.
Before I begin, let me first thank Linda for those kind words of introduction, for the invitation to speak here today and most importantly, for her dedicated leadership as President and CEO of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce.
Throughout the years, it's been a pleasure and a privilege to work with Linda-and all of you who help shape and support the Chamber-to build a stronger Staten Island.
I've always viewed this work as essential to our future prosperity and growth. After all-as our history has shown-we are a City of unlimited potential. We always reinvent ourselves to adapt to changing times.
From our early days as the nation's primary port, to our emergence as a textile powerhouse, to our most recent identity as the financial capital of the world, New York City has continually prospered from the passion and energy of its residents.
In recent years, however, this economic tradition and promise has been put in jeopardy. Mike Bloomberg has made our City a wonderland for Wall Street and a dreamland for developers-while the middle class, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and working families have been shut out and weighed down by the burdens of his misguided policies.
As a result, New York City is facing its greatest economic challenges in decades. The unemployment rate hit 10.3 percent in August. That's higher than the national rate and significantly higher than New York State as a whole. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have had work hours cut or have stopped looking for work altogether. Wages for working families have fallen. From 2002 to 2007, even as those at the top of the income ladder prospered, the real median hourly wage in the City declined. And in 2008, it plummeted.
New York City has become ever more dependent on the financial services sector to drive its economy and generate tax revenue. The securities industry alone accounted for 25% of City wages in 2007, up from 17% in 2003. While financial services will continue to play a central role in the City's economy, recent developments make it clearer than ever that we must diversify.
Over the last eight years, our City has moved toward what might be characterized as a "barbell economy"-one that creates low-paying jobs with no benefits on one end ... high-paying jobs mostly in finance and business services on the other ... and very few jobs in between.
We can do better and when I am Mayor we will do better by building on that great New York tradition of reinventing our economy to change with the times.
As Mayor, I will build an economy that creates good living-wage jobs. This will be a top priority. We must restore hope and real opportunity for our middle class, our working families, and our future generations.
I will revive our City's entrepreneurial spirit, and better support our struggling small businesses.
I will restructure our workforce development system, and give people the skills they need to get long-term, good-paying jobs.
And I will build partnerships with communities to create an economic agenda that benefits our entire City.
We must harness New York City's unparalleled competitive advantages-an unrivaled concentration of intellectual capital, great cultural institutions, the best hospitals and medical research centers. We must remain a world financial capital but now we must implement a comprehensive, strategic and collaborative economic program that utilizes these unique advantages to restore opportunity and prosperity across the City.
Today, I am releasing my economic plan: A New Direction for a New Economy, and I'd like to share some of the highlights with you. In a nutshell, my plan will restructure and reorient City economic development efforts to:
One, establish New York City as a true center of entrepreneurial, small business growth.
Two, provide New Yorkers the skills required to hold jobs that pay good wages; and
Three, create a comprehensive, and real economic opportunity plan that includes the entire City and all economic groups
First, it is time to remake New York into a City that helps, not hinders, entrepreneurs and small businesses-the heart of our City's economy.
Roughly 98 percent of New York City firms have fewer than 100 employees. These businesses account for almost half the City's private sector payroll. Yet instead of embracing our City's small businesses, the Mayor's policies too often stunt their growth.
For example, the Mayor has done very little to address the urgent need for more affordable space. Mike Bloomberg's policies have pushed our industrial vacancy rates close to zero, and as a result, the cost of our City's manufacturing space has soared due to speculative pressures.
Since 2002, nearly 2,000 acres of manufacturing zones have been rezoned for other uses. To make matters worse, the City now wants to rezone another 1,800 acres-a combined 20 percent of our manufacturing acreage and 40 percent of already built industrial space-despite the fact that many of our 7,000 manufacturers are looking to expand.
I will enforce existing zoning regulations that were established to protect manufacturers from real estate speculators who offer only short-term leases-a practice that has discouraged many manufacturers from locating in New York City. I will also place a moratorium on the proposed rezoning of an additional 1,800 acres in manufacturing zones.
The Bloomberg administration's failure to enforce zoning rules in the Garment Center now threatens the City's fashion industry. The Garment Industry Development Corporation reports that the illegal conversion of hundreds of thousands of square feet of manufacturing space to offices, condos and stores in recent years is a major reason the number of garment workers in the Garment Center has contracted sharply.
Top fashion designers say they depend on nearby manufacturers to fill their orders and that if there is further contraction they will leave the City -- along with the fashion shows and hundreds of millions of dollars a year in economic activity.
As Mayor, I will work with manufacturers, the fashion industry and labor unions to arrange for up to one million square feet of dedicated garment manufacturing space in nonprofit buildings, the amount of space the industry says it requires to thrive and to expand.
With help from low-cost financing and grants, I will also replicate programs like the highly successful Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center which helps non-profits acquire, rehabilitate, and renovate rundown industrial properties. These new centers will be designed for occupancy at affordable rents by small manufacturers and creative firms in fields such as architecture, design, and high-tech.
Imagine if we had used the millions of dollars we spent on Yankees Stadium on efforts like this. Instead of creating part-time jobs like ushers and concession workers, we would have created many more full-time, good-paying jobs.
Creating more affordable space is an essential step to creating jobs and supporting the middle class ... but it's not the only solution.
Too many small business owners just need a break from all the tickets, fines, and taxes. And too many small business owners are being fined when a piece of litter blows in front of their store, or ticketed when a legally parked truck is making a delivery.
And here on Staten Island, the Mayor changed the parking rules. As many of you know all too well, you now have to feed the meter until 10 p.m. I know of one local restaurant owner who keeps a roll of quarters to feed customers' meters so he will not lose business.
Since 2002, the Mayor has hired nearly 800 more traffic enforcement agents. He's doubled some parking penalties and he's hitting New Yorkers with almost 10 million tickets every year.
As Mayor, I will stop the ticketing harassment and stop the excessive fines and fees. Before new regulations are adopted under my administration, we will prepare a small business impact statement so that we know how the proposed measures will affect you-allowing us to modify the proposed regulation if necessary.
I will also build on my past work to relieve your unnecessary tax burdens. As Comptroller, I backed the recently enacted Unincorporated Business Tax exemption for sole proprietors earning less than $100,000-a necessary measure to prevent these business owners from being taxed twice. But we must still go further, and I will work with the State legislature to index for inflation the $100,000 exemption threshold.
We should also revise the City's existing business tax incentive programs to better target small business needs.
I will appoint a task force of small business owners and City officials to review how City tax and financing incentive programs can be made more effective for small business. We must give small business owners a voice at the table.
I'm sure one of the issues we'll discuss is the difficulty many of you have affording health insurance for yourselves or your employees. Unless and until we have a federal healthcare reform bill that addresses your needs, I will work to expand innovative programs like Brooklyn Health Works to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses in all boroughs. It's time to remove these unnecessary barriers to growth.
It's also simply too hard for the average person to start a business.
Unnecessary delays and hurdles plague the process. New York City requires a wide array of permits that can take months to obtain-a costly effort that delays new businesses from opening.
I will streamline the permitting process for new businesses, and I will expand the new City Council program which coordinates the inspection of restaurants by various departments.
The enormous economic pressures facing small stores under Mike Bloomberg are simply unacceptable. Rents for small stores on commercial strips have skyrocketed, forcing many small independent neighborhood retailers to close or relocate to smaller or less desirable spaces.
At the same time, deep-pocketed national chain stores-who are able to pay higher rents-are driving up costs and driving out the businesses that make our neighborhoods unique, diverse, and attractive to people looking to live here.
That is why, as Mayor, I will develop a centralized, online, searchable database of all available commercial space under 5,000 square feet. This will be a great boon to small business tenants looking for open, small commercial space.
I will also establish Retail Retention Zones, and offer incentives to property owners so that independent retailers can compete for rental space with deep-pocketed retail chains and banks.
By leveling the playing field, we will give small businesses a better opportunity to grow and to prosper. But this is just the first step.
Second, to better support our City's small businesses and our long-term economic health, we must also help New Yorkers acquire the skills they need to compete for the jobs created by these newly-empowered businesses. This will require more training and education than ever before. As the economy evolves, so too will the need for a skilled workforce.
Central to this effort will be strengthening our workforce development system. Under Mayor Bloomberg, the current $925 million dollar City-administered system is uncoordinated and often at odds with itself. As a result, our workforce development dollars are not being spent effectively or efficiently.
A recent study by my office found that the system lacks a unifying mission, and that its 33 different programs are uncoordinated and redundant, reporting to three different deputy Mayors. The agencies pursue their own programs and priorities with no reference to a Citywide economic development strategy.
It's incredible that the Department of Education's Career and Technical Education programs-which train thousands of high school students in everything from aircraft mechanics to computer technology-are entirely separate from the rest of the workforce development system, and that no one is in charge of coordinating the whole effort.
It's also wrong that the administration has for years short-changed CTE itself. If we want to prepare workers for the future economy, we'll need to take CTE much more seriously. And when I am Mayor, we will take it more seriously.
When I am Mayor, I will end the lack of coordination in our workforce development system by establishing a Mayor's Office of Skills Development. This Office will ensure that our City's workforce development efforts are comprehensive, coordinated, and focused on sectors where our City seeks a competitive advantage.
That's what my economic plan is about-creating good jobs, supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses, creating a skilled workforce, rewarding hard work, and fostering opportunities for all New Yorkers to go as far as their guts, work ethic, and talent will take them. And yet more must be done.
Third, for too long, our City has operated without a comprehensive economic plan. As the Center for an Urban Future has noted in recent reports, much more can and should be done to diversify our City's economy.
The Bloomberg administration's top-down approach to economic development has disproportionately relied on ill-conceived mega-projects and re-zonings that produced wealth for developers but few living wage jobs. The Mayor's so-called Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan is merely a list of actions the administration says it is taking or proposes that have something to do with the economy. A list is not a plan or strategy.
When I'm in City Hall, I will initiate a Citywide economic opportunity plan in partnership with community and business leaders. I will ensure that communities are consulted when projects are planned, because government should never plan for a community. It should plan with a community. And nobody knows a neighborhood's needs better than our City's local groups.
I will also diversify our economy by pursuing an economic agenda guided by an ongoing review and analysis of trends and labor market data. Central to this effort are advisory councils that I will establish in each industry. These councils will help us advance individual sectors and identify new industries ripe for growth. City Hall must do much more to comprehensively and strategically plan for progress.
I will work with New Yorkers to ensure that infrastructure projects keep pace with local development. Mayor Bloomberg has too often sacrificed our communities and their needs for the sake of a grandiose development.
For example, in downtown Brooklyn, recent up-zoning has resulted in the construction of more than 3,000 apartments, while no new schools have been planned to serve the increasing number of students.
Sadly, this is an eight-year story of mismanagement. Mike Bloomberg's ad hoc economic program has over-relied on ill-conceived development projects that cost taxpayers a lot, but deliver little.
Enormous staff resources and time were wasted planning a West Side Jets Stadium that was never built. Huge subsidies went to the New York Yankees for a stadium project with little local economic impact.
As Mayor, I will require that decisions to invest taxpayer dollars in major development projects undergo rigorous cost, jobs, and community-benefit analyses. In this new chapter for New York City's economy, we will ensure that no neighborhoods are left behind. I will also deny public financing to developments unless a firm commitment is made to creating jobs that pay living wages.
Michael Bloomberg says he is running for a third term because his unique skills are needed to guide the City in difficult economic times. But after nearly eight years in office, more New Yorkers are struggling to just to get by. And with much of the rest of the country showing signs that it is coming out of the recession, economists say New York City is heading in deeper.
We can continue on this path downward or we can embrace a new direction for a new economy.
It will be an economy that empowers-not excludes-our small businesses.
It will be an economy that develops a highly-skilled workforce.
It will be an economy that builds healthy and sustainable local communities.
And it will be an economy that creates a lasting and widespread prosperity for our entire City.
New Yorkers are ready for a new direction. As Mayor, I will chart a new course-one that is based on my faith in New Yorkers and on their talents and their ingenuity.
Together, we can invest in our communities, establish partnerships for progress, and usher in a new era full of promise and prosperity for all New Yorkers.
Once again, thank you to the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce for inviting me here today and I look forward to returning next year as your Mayor.
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