Menin Plans New School, Open Spaces & More As UES Council Member

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The new year has brought with it a brand-new slate of City Council members — including on the Upper East Side, where Julie Menin has taken over the District 5 seat that had been held for eight years by Ben Kallos.

Kallos bade the district farewell on Dec. 31 — but not before releasing a 175-page report detailing his accomplishments since 2014, from adding Pre-K seats to installing trash cans to spending millions to renovate local parks.

Menin, 54, formerly led two city agencies, a Lower Manhattan community board and the city's 2020 Census outreach before winning last year's City Council race. She spoke to Upper East Side Patch on Tuesday about her first days in office and plans for her first two-year term, from parks to schools to pest control.

How have your first couple of days been? What have you been hearing from constituents?

We hit the ground running — I’ve been working on a bunch of constituent issues since before I started. Front and center on everyone’s mind is obviously COVID.

I worked starting in early December at getting a mobile testing van on Roosevelt Island for several weeks in December that did both testing and some vaccination. I’m now working on mask distribution — tomorrow, we’re going to be distributing over 2,000 masks to several sites in the district.

We’re working on this community garden [proposal on East 78th Street and First Avenue]. We’re happy that we got the landlord to commit to cleaning the property, which they did, and to rat mitigation. If you walk by the lot today you’ll see signs that talk about the rat mitigation, they have rat poison up there — that was a big complaint we heard from the community so I’m really happy about that.

Now I’m working on the community garden piece. What I said to the [owners] Chou family is, we’d very much like them to voluntarily work with us to create a temporary community garden. If they won’t agree to do that, and they have not so far agreed, I have made very clear that I will explore legislation in the Council to look at this issue of: can we create temporary community gardens on lots that have been left vacant for numerous years and have many city violations, as this lot does.

I’m also compiling a list of every city-owned property in the district to see if there are other sites that might be suitable for community gardens. I’m working with the Parks Department on that.

[Third,] I heard from residents who live close to the Chapin School [on East End Avenue] — there’s been ongoing construction for many, many years. Residents reached out to me to say they were very upset that Chapin was going to be doing construction on Dec. 24 and Dec. 31 because residents felt that these are holidays. I reached out to the school and got them to not do construction on Dec. 24 and Dec. 31. That was a good win for the community.

[Finally,] I’m working on a big sanitation issue and I’ll have news to report next week on it.

How was the transition process from Ben Kallos's office to yours? Are you looking at his record over the past eight years to inform your approach?

We had a very smooth transition with Ben. Ben and I have known each other for many years and have a very good relationship. Ben did a terrific job. We each have our different styles, and my focus right now is on COVID recovery.

What I bring to the table is a very deep-level understanding of city agency-level operations. In my opinion, that is going to really help the district because, at the end of the day, so many constituent issues have to do with a government agency not performing the function that that constituent wants them to do. How do you break that logjam? How do you cut through bureaucratic red tape? How do you perform the City Council’s oversight function?

Kallos has said that he hoped his successor would continue his "First Fridays" program in which he met with constituents each month. Are you planning to do something similar?

Absolutely, we are going to continue along that vein. We’ll obviously put our own stamp on it in terms of how we’re going to do this, but I will be announcing in the coming weeks, all of that.

In all the years I served as commissioner, I was always available 24/7. I’m also a big believer in rapid-fire response. When I ran my city agencies I always required that we respond immediately. That doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to solve everyone’s problems within 24 hours, but it means you will always hear from my team immediately.

Will you continue participatory budgeting in District 5?

Yes, I absolutely plan on continuing participatory budgeting. I used to be on the board of Citizens Union and it’s something that we championed at the time when it was first rolled out. At the end of the day, what we fund should be the will of the community.

You were a vocal opponent of the Blood Center rezoning, which ultimately passed the City Council over Ben Kallos's objections. Will that result inform how you approach future development fights in the neighborhood?

What happened in the Blood Center was a very unusual situation. Anyone who’s followed land use in the Council knows that the Council has almost uniformly followed member deference. This was obviously an outlier.

What I’m very concerned about, and what I plan on doing, is making sure that the Blood Center honors the commitments that were made as part of the negotiation. What I feel was really missing from the negotiation that hasn’t happened is mitigation.

What I mean by that is there needs to be real air-quality monitoring that is happening around the clock that is available for the public to inspect. We have students and residents across the street, they deserve to know what is happening in terms of air quality.

Secondly, jackhammering. We need to ensure that there is minimal amounts of noise. When I chaired Community Board 1, we had close to 90 construction projects that were happening at Ground Zero and throughout Lower Manhattan during my time. One of the things I worked on was 24-hour air-quality monitoring that was public; I worked on enclosing jackhammers with sound mitigation.

We also want to work on other noise mitigation, soundproofing windows— there’s so many things that, frankly, I thought should’ve gone into that deal that I plan on raising and fighting for.

The new Council is very ideologically diverse: there are socialists, Republicans, and more mainstream Democrats like yourself. How do you anticipate working with all these new colleagues?

I think we have a phenomenal group that is coming in. There is definitely a wide ideological spectrum, but at the end of the day, we all ran because we want to see the city recover. I’m so excited about this group of women in particular that we have comping in, many of whom are mothers.

I think you’re going to see that we have so much more in common than we have disagreements from a policy perspective. The city’s in crisis. I don’t think people are looking for ideological disagreements right now. People want to see the Council, the city government and the mayor get things done.

Have you had any dealings with Mayor Eric Adams?

I have had an over decade-[long] working relationship with our new mayor. I worked very closely with him when I was commissioner of consumer affairs, when I was commissioner of media and entertainment, when I worked on the census. We have a great working relationship and I think that is going to be very important for delivering for our district.

Can you point to two or three concrete things that you hope to achieve during your first year in office?

Absolutely. Building a new school is at the top of the list. We have to build a new school in [District] 5. I’ve already begun those conversations with the School Construction Authority.

Secondly, small businesses. When I ran Consumer Affairs, we cut fines by one-third [for] small businesses; I would like to see other agencies do the same. So I want to see if there’s something legislatively that we could look at to make sure that we’re reforming the way that city agencies are assessing fines on small businesses so we’re not crushing them.

Three is open space. The funding that went to the [East River] Esplanade … we’ve got to make sure that that money is allocated and is allocated expeditiously. The Esplanade still has sinkholes and is in need of repair.

Lastly, I am scouring [District] 5 for spaces to build community gardens and to try to increase the amount of open space we have in our neighborhood. That includes the Esplanade, but it also includes other spaces that we might be able to find. Those are a few of the many issues I want to focus on immediately.

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