Town Hall With Anthony Weiner

On Sunday we went to a Town Hall meeting with our Congressman, Anthony Weiner. We all sat in the library at Cunningham Intermediate School, and the Congressman fielded questions from the participants (about 35-40 of us).

He led into the meeting by stating that today there is more information, less compromise, and zero leadership at the top of our government.

He wants to make sure we have an educated workforce, and that we invest in our infrastructure and put people to work. We have ignored our infrastructure for so many years that it is suprising that in the whole U.S. only one bridge has collapsed. Our best tool is education, and it is time to get rid of the antiquated idea that the federal government should not be involved in public education. As a result of this thinking only 6% of our educational monies come from the federal government. But the states are no longer competing with each other; the U.S. is competing globally.

Congressman Weiner also stated that we need leadership on global climate change. We need to leave our world, country and community better than we found it. He wants to see us move toward a green economy.

We must end the war in Iraq and address the big challenges that we have not been able to look at because we are wasting our resources in Iraq. We also need our elected officials to think in the long term even though their term of office is short. The government must incentivize people to think long term, according to Weiner, and we must invest in education over the course of a generation.

I'm proud to say that our Congressman has a perfect 100% score on conservation issues. He says that our community is now overdeveloped. The zoning laws, last changed in 1961, are outdated, and the Board of Standards and Appeals doesn't set standards and doesn't listen to appeals. We need to grow as a city but we have to be sustainable too. He has proposed a full city reassessment of the zoning regulations, so we can decide what kind of a city we want to be. We need to set rules and then stick to those rules. Legal sanctions for violating zoning regulations are strong but they are not being enforced.

Congressman Weiner also discussed accessibility for the handicapped. Another question was whether any more affordable housing complexes will be build. He said, the Fed has stopped building subsidized housing but they need to do it again. However when the Mitchell-Lama buildings were built there was land available. He says now there is some polluted land that the city would clean if developers will build affordable housing. We need to be creative about bringing in affordable housing, perhaps develop air rights over other structures if the resulting units would be affordable. We have to stop thinking this is not the federal government's job.

We have to make alternative transportation possible: there is no more room for more cars in New York City. We have to make it possible by providing bike lockers and bike borrowing as in other places.

Our current model of using fossil fuels is not sustainable. The Congressman wants to offer incentives in the market for sustainable energy that works. Ethanol, he says, is a disaster because it drives up food prices and costs more to produce than the energy we get out of it. A national energy policy is needed.

The Congressman also stated that he is not pleased with the 311 "hotline" to NYC government agencies, because it creates a whole new layer of excuses between citizens and their government.

At the end of his talk he asked us to get in touch with his office (through his website) if we have an idea for a new law. I certainly will!