Ask the Bronx Borough President: October 2025

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Ask Your Advocate Jumaane D. Williams: June 2025

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News 12 Staff

1016askyouradvocatebblock_2023-10-16-19-57-20

Welcome back, everyone to ask your advocate here on news 12 New York City Public Advocate, Juani Williams here with us and we've got a couple of callers on the line. So you ready? Let's do it. Let's get right to it. Let's see how many calls we can get to tonight. Let's start with Janelle in East Flatbush joining us tonight. Janelle, thank you for calling in and what's your question? Oh, so good night. And first, let me say thank you so much for hosting. Um, and having those issues discussed that are really relevant to, you know, the public on the whole today. Um I'm a veteran and I'm Muslim. So there's a lot of media coverage when it comes to all the things that are negative that are going on today in the world. There's not a lot of coverage when it comes to protecting the innocent. So I'd like to know what is being done today to protect the average Muslim today who's living amongst us, who um who is innocent and who's also been unfairly targeted, you know, um Just because of what we're seeing going on today. All right, Janelle, thank you there public advocate. What do you got on that? You know, thank you Janelle for that. And as I mentioned, uh what I've been trying to do and I'm hoping our leaders do a little bit better is really have a conversation about the shared humanity. Uh We have uh a lot of uh probably more uh uh uh is it people from Israel and, and, and, and Jewish in New York out than outside of Israel itself? Actually. Uh We have a lot of Palestinians and Muslims who live in the city. And what I saw uh in that synagogue and in that uh mosque were people who were afraid and looking for their leadership to help them get through this and feel like they are being protected. And I think as Janelle was saying, that message is not coming across sometimes for uh Muslim New Yorkers and we have to do a better job. But II, I honestly believe that when our leaders are speaking, they are trying their best to protect everyone here. Uh Jewish New Yorkers, Muslim, New Yorkers, we have had problems in the past uh with unfair Muslim surveillance that's well documented and other things that we have to think about. We did see a six year old boy killed in Chicago. And I think that's based on some of this rhetoric and what I'm really pushing is that to that shared humanity, peace is so important as a father. I, I shudder to think about what, what a father in Israel was thinking last weekend, if the kids were involved, their Children, their babies were. I, I shudder to think about that and I shudder to think about what's happening in Gaza tonight. A father who loves their Children the same trying to protect their babies, trying to protect their Children. I, you're not, I'm sure you're not the only parent alone like that. So, what I'm hoping our leaders do is remember what our job is here and it's to let people re give them space to grieve and mourn and we have to have a shared humanity. And I think what Janelle is saying is she may not be hearing that shared humanity uh from our uh leaders. And my hope is that happens because we had more clarity last week, we need to keep the same energy, have moral clarity now uh for what's happening tonight in, in places like Gaza so important in times like these, that's for sure. All right, Janelle, thank you so much for the question and for calling in tonight, I wanna head back to the phones right now and we have Jay waiting from Morris Heights with his question, Jay, thanks for calling in. What's your question tonight? It was going on uh uh respect to the brother and the work that he's been doing over the years. Uh You know, I acknowledge that you've been doing stuff uh uh prior to your position now currently, um my, you know, my question is, is a couple of things, but I'll just get to one of the main things. Uh uh the congestion pricing, New York City people commuting into the city. I know that there was some uh something passed in regards to that. What are the people doing or are elected officials doing to fight against that with so much going on in the city as far as prices going up on tolls already. Uh you know, um energy, um you know, different things uh from utilities to rent. What is gonna be done in regards to this price congestion? Uh push back because uh it looks like we're turning to like the UK. And um they said that it's worked out in the UK. I myself had the privilege of going out to London and people talking to regular people. They tell me a lot of that has not worked. There's still traffic going into the, the, the middle of London. Um There's still a lot of cars and especially the streets are small over there. So what are we gonna do in New York City to help these people uh push back on this price congestion. All Jay, thanks for the question there and public advocate. I know you have, you have your thoughts on congestion. II, I appreciate the, the kind words at the beginning. Hopefully he maintains them after my answer. Uh But thank you so much for this. I I, and I've been very clear that I actually support congestion pricing. Um It, it's always interesting when people know that we have to change things, but no one wants to change things. And so it's, it's really important to remember, uh, that congestion pricing is only gonna impact people who are driving into the city on a regular basis. That is not the vast majority of people. And I would, I would love to say, even if uh Jay himself goes into the city, I've heard people really complaining about it and actually I understand why because there's money involved, but a lot of people who are complaining actually not gonna be going into the city uh that often, particularly folks who are going in uh during rush hour on a regular basis, we have to find a way to stop some of that and a way to do that is congestion pricing and try to get that money back into mass transit. It's really, really important to do that. A mass transit ridership is going up. It has to continue to go up. I will say now, since I've been supportive of this for a very long time, I do have some concerns. One of the concerns from what I'm seeing in the plan that came out is one, they have this for 24 hours a day. I think that's wrong. We should not have for 24 hours a day and two, I have not seen enough mitigation discussion for the traffic that may go into places, uh like the Bronx. Uh and that those two things have given me some pause. And so I'm hoping between now and when it goes into effect, we've taken into consideration the things that people like Jay are bringing up, which are real, uh and uh the health of communities that may see increased traffic. But with uh climate change, with health, uh with mass transit, it's something that we have to try to move forward. Not even to mention the list of exemptions as they're trying to figure out that who doesn't have to pay or who will and that, that I'm sure will become a whole other issue as we move forward. But again, congestion pricing still working out the details before we actually put it into effect. So we'll see what the final plan ends up looking like. All right, we, we still got some time for a couple more questions. We're gonna get to those right after the break. More. Ask your advocate coming up right here on news 12. So don't go anywhere.

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1016askyouradvocatecblock_2023-10-16-19-58-32

Welcome back, everyone to ask your advocate here on News 12. We were talking a second ago about congestion pricing here with the public advocate and we were talking quickly about those exemptions that they're trying to put forward. It's, it's important that we do a couple, particularly people who may be low income and folks who are moving a lot of folks. But if you span that too much is gonna defeat the purpose. So we really have to do a scalpel. Not a good way to look at that. We'll keep everyone posted as they make those lists out. Wanna go back to the phones real quick. We've got Nelson joining us tonight from Throgs Neck and Nelson. We're running low on time, but I want to get your question and what do you got for us tonight? Thank you. Good evening, sir. Uh My question is in reference to uh my area, th Roste, particularly uh Leighton Avenue is eight blocks long is a uh 44 lane street. We don't have stop signs. We don't have anything here to impede the Speeders here. Daytime, night time is like 60 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour here is any way that your office can assist in uh in this area? I've been talking to Committee Bar number 10 with our success. Uh dot Keeps saying that we don't need cameras. Oh, we don't need stop on here. It's ridiculous. We need something here. I know two people that got hit here already by vehicle speeding in the area. What can be done by your office to help us out, Nelson? Thank you for that question tonight. Yeah, that's, thank you, Nelson. What I wanna just make sure we get Nelson's information to contact them with, uh, my office, we are a deputy public advocate infra Infrastructure. We're director of Constituent services also reach out to the council members see what work they've done. They usually do studies in these areas. And so I without knowing what studies have been done is hard to, uh, give a prescription right now, but I definitely wanna reach out and, and find out uh, what's going on, what's been done and what we can do is start slow down these drivers. Um, you know, particularly when it comes to cyclists. We're in one of our worst years when it comes to deaths. Uh, so we really have a lot of work to do and it sounds like we Nelson's living is, uh, a lot of calls come by very quickly. Yeah, absolutely. Nelson. We have your information there. We'll pass it along and be ready because ready for a phone call from the Public Advocate's office. They're gonna be in touch with you. So, thanks for calling in with that question. That problem tonight. Public a before I let you go, I just wanna ask one last thing of you here. We're talking tonight. Obviously, the migrant crisis is always a big issue here in the city, but right to shelter and the mayor and what the governor, I guess now backing that as well, trying to suspend right to shelter. What kind of impact would that have here on the city? It'll be disastrous. Uh The mayor and the governor are using the migrant crisis to do things they were trying to do long before the migrant crisis came. And that's really unfortunate. Uh I think they are right when they say that right to shelter can't house the entire world, but that's not what's happening here. Right to shelter is not failing. Our leaders are failing. And so what's happening is, uh unfortunately, the White House hasn't provided a decompression strategy to help the migrants go from, not just New York City but other places across the country. The governor has failed to realize, uh except that right to shelter is not a New York City thing. It's a state wide thing. And if she did that, it would open up the space that people can then go. But right to shelter is here for a reason. What we'll probably see is not just uh New New Yorkers but long time New Yorkers get affected, who really need that right to shelter. And it's an unfortunate scapegoating that's happening because I think the governor doesn't wanna stand up and be courageous and say that this is actually statewide thing that we need. And so keeping everything to New York City is what the problem is not right to shelter itself. Are you concerned that all the way through? Which is the little small piece is, the mayor has been kind of breaking off here, left and right. A little bit again. This is things that he wanted to do long before. Um, the, the migrants came. So I it is tough to watch happen and there's so many things that we need to be doing and I hope our leaders uh step up because this is a problem. I'm not gonna lie. This is a huge problem we're in right now, but this is not the way to address it. All right. Well, public advocate Janie Williams as always, thank you for being here with us tonight here on News 12 and thanks to all the callers. Great questions tonight. As always, we'll be back next month for more as advocate here on news 12. Have a good night, everyone.

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News 12 sits down with New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams for this month's edition of Ask Your Advocate.

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