Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hypothetically speaking, if you campaigned for mayor what would be the issues at the top of your agenda to help make New York City a better place.
Here's my rant:
1. Fix the city's existing infrastructure. Put aside all the new glossy plans for a while and just fix/paint/repair our EXISTING crumbling subway system, bridges, roads, sidewalks, and parks.
2. Demolish all public housing. They don't seem to help many people within them and are a scourge to the neighborhoods around them. How many people have been murdered or shot in these complexes? No one should have to live in or around that kind of hopeless environment.
Sell the properties to developers, build affordable housing where occupants can live at subsidized rents for 10 or so years unless they are elderly or disabled. No one has the right to live in NYC, especially on someone else's dime.
3. Enforce littering laws and put adequate wastebaskets on the corners. Why not mandate ashtrays outside of large office buildings as well
4. Congestion pricing charges for anyone driving into Midtown and Downtown. Nuff said.
5. Get the mentally ill and homeless off our streets and into some kind of care.
6. Though they're not as bad as state workers, let's get rid of some of the beureacracy, and lazy and often useless civil servants sitting around waiting for a pension. Also, get rid of the city council. Useless idiots.
Other ideas, that are even more fiscally impossible:
1. All banks, drug stores, and big box retailers can only have limited footprints at street level. They kill streetlife, take that corporate crap to basements or a second story.
2. Green roofs. We have a great skyline but limited green space. Wouldn't it be nice if all our multifamily buddings had accessible planted rooftop decks.
3 Mandatory 20% affordable housing in each new development. Maybe zoning should be relaxed a bit in some areas near mass transit to allow larger buildings. And once again, someone should not be able to live in subsidized housing for the rest of their lives unless they are disabled or elderly.
4 Any able-bodied person in subsidized housing must commit to a few hours of community service.
5 Make the MTA a city agency.
6 Widen sidewalks on all avenues.
7 Get rid of half the bus stops. There's no reason why a bus should have to stop every other block. People need to walk more anyway.
8 Extend our subways and improve service so we can continue building up the ultimate urban metropolis.
10 Landmark all our beautiful pre-war buildings, they should never be torn down and replaced by the basura we typically throw up nowadays.
11 Send all city kids to boarding schools. Yes I know, fiscally impossible...
I will raise all middle and low class workers their minimum wage to $20.00
I will cut off all ridicules taxes From the supermarkets .
I will put NYPD to concentrate on all neighborhoods except the city .
I will make the city a tourist zone, move everyone out of Manhathan and leave only the hotels and temporary apartments for students .
I will make the All boroughs safety and clean.
And I will take all homeless people to a mandatory shelter , mental health peolple to hospitals , and drug addicts to long term programs at least for minimum 2years inpatient programs.
All sex offenders , homicides offenders , all gangs banned out of NY.
Make more strick the schools even is public or private the same education, and make all drops out from ages 18 and under go to school. And much more!!!
Secede and model it after Singapore. Also, take over the reservoir we get our water from upstate. That way, the hicks upstate don't have a trump card over us.
Persuade the NFL teams Giants and Jets to move back to NYC. Turn central park into an massive apt complex which woukd solve manhattans housing shortage.
Cut all the ridiculous idiotic beautification projects costing the city millions of dollars to re-invest in things that matter like education, police force, firefighters, etc. (amazingly, this city doesn't have the money for "trivial" things like these" but has money for just about everything else...
Retool the way the educational system is run and let teachers teach as opposed to teaching the limited amount of information thats considered "important" by today's standards... (Hence, the reason why kids do not retain the information the way they did previously)...
Work on eliminating state tests or at least making them less important in order for students to truly learn and not simply cram for the exam at the end.
Invest in neighborhoods that need help regardless of their white/hipster/transplant/yuppy population or proximity to Manhattan to show that one race or group of people is not worth more than any other...
Work on re-establishing the blue collar working middle class worker back into NYC to help create a healthy balance as opposed to an ever-growing disparity between rich and poor...
Make english the official language
Invite ChikFilA to open more stores
Allow Walmart to open
Make it illegal to wear pants hanging below your butt
Forbid anyone from using the subway who doesnt bathe
Require all city workers to take courtesy classes
Allow staten island to seceede
Rescind all Bloomitlers health edicts
Allow smoking in bars
Make it illegal for a gang of tourists to stop walking at the bottom of subway staircases at rush hour
End rent control
Increase property taxes in manhattan and lower them in the outer boros
Allow mcdonalds to run the school lunch programs
Make teachers dress professionally again instead of like slobs
Persuade the NFL teams Giants and Jets to move back to NYC. Turn central park into an massive apt complex which woukd solve manhattans housing shortage.
I don't think there's a housing shortage in Manhattan. I think that rent control/stabilization and avaricious landlords have upped the greed factor and just made it really hard to rent in the city.
Close Fifth Avenue to traffic other than truck delivery and emergency vehicles and convert it to bike use.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.