Council Mulls Bill To Boost Produce Carts
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The City Council today will discuss legislation requested by Mayor Bloomberg to add 1,500 fruit and vegetable carts to poor neighborhoods across the city.
Unions and small business groups have expressed concerns that the added competition could hurt supermarkets. Council Member Leroy Comrie, a sponsor of the proposal, said yesterday he expects the council to modify the bill to address some of these issues, but that the bill’s core goal of providing greater access to healthy food should remain. “I think all of this is something that clearly is workable,” he said.
Yesterday, the council passed a resolution condemning a longstanding Madison Square Garden tax exemption, a plan to reduce storm water overflow, and a bill prohibiting landlords from turning away tenants who pay rent with government aid.
Madison Square Garden’s $12 million-a-year tax exemption has come under attack from public officials who say it has long outlived its original purpose: keeping city sports teams from leaving town. Yesterday’s resolution calls on the state government to repeal the perk, which was enacted in 1982. “Madison Square Garden has gotten a free ride for long enough,” Speaker Christine Quinn said.
“The City Council’s decision to single out Madison Square Garden, an engine of economic activity that provides jobs for New Yorkers, when more than a billion dollars in benefits have been given to the other pro sports teams in New York City is obviously based on politics, not sound public policy,” a spokesman for MSG said in a statement yesterday.
The city would have to craft a new plan to reduce the billions of gallons of untreated sewage flowing into its waters from storm overflow under legislation passed yesterday. The bill requires the city to consider ways to reduce the amount of rainwater that enters sewage treatment plants, such as using new methods to absorb it before it reaches the sewers. Legislation also passed that would prevent tenants from being turned down by landlords based on their source of income, such as government aid.
