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Should the MTA Take Over The Private Buses?
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| Henry Stern
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By HENRY STERN
One problem in writing about public issues objectively is that situations are often more complicated than they appear. Today we look at the private bus lines that operate mostly in Queens. Although the trend today is to privatize the delivery of some public services, this proposal calls for government to assume management of a service currently provided by private operators of varying abilities and resources.
The mayor is currently embroiled in controversy with the MTA concerning the future of seven privately owned bus lines, five of which primarily serve Queens: Command Bus, Green Bus Lines, Jamaica Buses, Queens Surface and Triborough Coach. These lines have been privately operated since they were founded early in the Automotive Age, and for at least the last thirty years, there have been proposals for a public takeover. Their operations would be merged with the MTA, which also runs buses in Queens.
Normally, such a merger makes financial sense in reducing operating costs, allowing economies of scale, cutting overhead, eliminating duplication of routes and service, and all the other conventional reasons why transport companies merge.
This situation, however, is more difficult to resolve. For one thing, the city now subsidizes the operating cost of the seven private lines in the city at about $110 million (not counting capital expenditures for new buses), and the state provides $52 million a year. For another, only two of the five private companies own their own garages, the others rent. In addition, there are brownfields liabilities for old bus depots (imagine how much used oil has soaked into the soil of Queens over the generations). The private companies own 1,291 buses, with an average age of over 12 years, while MTA buses average six. Six hundred of these buses will soon have to be replaced, at a cost of about $400,000 each. This will cost $240 million. The salaries of bus drivers would have to be adjusted and seniority rights determined. When public salaries are equalized, the higher salary customarily prevails. The takeover of private bus lines would increase the number of MTA-operated buses by about 25 percent, which will raise expenses proportionately.
To help balance the city budget, the mayor proposes to end the existing subsidy to private bus lines. He is indignant that the MTA has just committed $231 million to buy brand new trains for Metro North, which serves the northern suburbs east of the Hudson. He wants the city to receive its fair share of local bridge and tunnel toll revenues, which now go disproportionately to suburban governments.
Of course, one cannot expect the MTA (a creature of the governor, who appoints most of its members) to assume new and expensive responsibilities for Queens bus service and lose its city subsidy at the same time. But the mayor is taking a bargaining posture in dealing with an overall situation in which the city has for a century been exploited by the state, with suburban legislators of both parties stepping on the city’s fingers when needed to protect their own interests.
In the legislative crime of the last century, on May 17, 1999, the city lost its commuter tax due in part to Governor Pataki and Senate Leader Bruno, from whom such an action could have been expected. But the Democratic Assembly joined in the repeal with the vigorous support, including arm-twisting, of Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was the Brutus in the adoption of a measure which in five years has cost Caesar’s city over $2,500,000,000 (that’s two and a half billion dollars). Why do I obsess over this? Every day the City loses another $1,500,000 as a result of this monumental misjudgment, for which there has been neither apology nor atonement.
It will be interesting to observe whether the Democrats, who ritually denounce the mayor for not standing up to state officials, will commend him now that he has done so.
Meanwhile, resolution of the Queens bus issue will probably have to be part of a larger financial settlement between the city and state. I remain skeptical whether, with four players involved, Pataki, Bruno, Silver and Bloomberg, such an agreement can be reached this year. But stranger things have happened, like last year’s legislative overrides of the governor’s budget vetoes. Will any of the four musketeers be odd man out in 2004? Or will they cling to their irreconcilable positions as if they were clutching chandeliers?
Henry Stern. former NYC Parks Commissioner, founder of NYCivic, can be reached at: starquest@nycivic.org
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Overdevelopment: The Queens Swing Issue
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| Joe Mercurio
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By
JOSEPH MERCURIO
Pollsters will tell you that in suburban communities throughout the country and even in some adjourning rural areas, overdevelopment shows up at the top of the list of local concerns.
This will be true if you are polling in a Democratic or a Republican district, in a predominantly white or largely black community, whether with luxury mansions or middle-class homes. What is a surprise to many is that this holds true in many districts inside New York City as well.
Most of the city is made up of desirable residential communities of homeowners who gravitated to a specific place because of the housing cost, the schools and more importantly because of the people who gave the community its character. In each of these distinctive neighborhoods you now find homeowners concerned with a serious erosion of their quality-of-life caused by overdevelopment and sprawl—not crime or taxes but zoning abuses.
Well-developed communities inside the city have remained intact in recent decades as new families looked farther out into the suburbs for housing and schools. Previously, high interest rates and crime-scared developers shied away from building on city sites where a large portion of the home development cost is land acquisition.
Today, the crime rate is as low or lower in the city than in the surrounding suburbs and many of the most desirable neighborhoods here have good local public schools. Granted city high schools do not have the amities that suburban schools offer, but graduates from better city school districts do get into excellent colleges and find high paying jobs. Add to that the increased distance and travel time to new suburban developments and the current low interest rates and a rush of new development has hit the city’s older communities.
Much of the new development is desirable. It will increase the tax base in the city, provide much needed new middle and working class housing and renew old communities with renovations and new construction. There are problems in the Wild West–style development that is occurring, which have made zoning come to the top of the list of concern for these communities. The city’s zoning law is largely a document developed in the 1960s, which does not cope adequately with the changes in lifestyle and building methods. The city’s Buildings Department is not adequately staffed to quickly monitor construction and the resulting self-certification is riffled with abuse. And, since the latest City Charter, the Board of Standards and Appeals operates out of the influence of and in contradiction to the recommendations of Community Boards, civic groups and local elected officials.
This is not a typical NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) problem.
Residents in each of the unique neighborhoods welcome change, which after all raises home values, but they want it to conform to the character of the existing community and not damage the quality-of-life that made the community desirable in the first place. Council Member Tony Avella, chair of the Zoning and Franchises Committee in the City Council, said, “Each and every day quiet residential neighborhoods are being destroyed by reckless construction and building that are out of context with the community.”
City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden seems to have also noticed the problem and is steering her agency out of some of its 1960s entrenched notions of planning and community development. The mayor, whose job approval rating took a serious hit in recent polls because of how his real estate tax increases have hit these same communities, is itching to respond.
One of the reforms Democratic Councilman Avella seeks is a charter amendment to give the City Council a review mechanism over the Bureau of Standards and Appeals that would return power to communities by “establishing a much-needed check on BSA.” Another reform pushed by the Committee Chair would change the zoning law to correct abuses and loopholes in the community facilities portion of the law. He also wants to protect historic buildings and districts, as well as the architectural style that makes these neighborhoods unique and beautiful by putting new community preservation teeth in the zoning law.
If the mayor tries to buy off these homeowner communities with a real estate tax rebate he will have a short-term gain. It will be small and prove to be insufficient to get him back up to the support level he needs to win a second term. If on the other hand the mayor could be seen as something other than the Eastside of Manhattan, society billionaire, who does not understand the diverse communities of the city, he might do better than expected. Real concern with people’s quality-of-life and protecting neighborhoods could prove to be a smart move for Bloomberg.
The mayor’s Democratic rivals are already talking about the middle class as the battleground in the next city elections. These outer-borough homeowners have been the swing vote in past citywide elections. When they voted in recent elections, they voted quality-of-life concerns. In the past that was education and crime rates. Today, the driving force in quality-of-life is sprawl and over development — community preservation. No matter what income, race, ethnic or religious group dominates an established community expect homeowner’s to rally to local and citywide candidates who understand their unique community and seek to genuinely preserve their neighborhood.
Joseph Mercurio teaches at New York University’s graduate Campaign Management Program, is a Mid-Atlantic Director of the American Association of Political Consultants, and president of National Political Services, Inc. |
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