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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue our series 51 Council Members In 52 Weeks. We're doing this because it's a new era in the New York City Council. Mostly new members this year because of term limits and mostly women for the first time ever. We are inviting all the council members, one per week for the whole year, neighborhood by neighborhood. Here on Week 5, it's Julie Menin, the new member from District 5, roughly the Upper East Side of Manhattan and Roosevelt Island. Now if that name Julie Menin is familiar to you, she may be new to city council, but she headed Mayor de Blasio's push to get counted for the census in 2020.

Quite successful by most accounts. Was previously Mayor de Blasio's Consumer Affairs commissioner and commissioner of Media and Entertainment. She came to prominence as chair of Community Board 1 in lower Manhattan focused on the area's recovery after 9/11. Her bio page note she is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and now lives in the Yorkville section of Manhattan with her husband and children. You've been on this show in every one of the roles I've listed. I've called you Julie in the early days, I've called you commissioner, and now I say, Councilmember Menin, congratulations on your election, and welcome back to WNYC.

Julie Menin: Thanks, Brian. It's so great to be back with you in this new role.

Brian Lehrer: With all your experience in public service, this is the first time you have had to run to be elected by the general public. What was that like for you?

Julie Menin: It was an incredible experience, Brian. I loved running for office and I loved running in this district. This is a district that my mother grew up in. She and my grandmother came to Yorkville as Holocaust survivors, so I have a personal connection to this district. My father still lives in the district. It's a district I'm raising my children in and certainly running for office. It's an incredible experience speaking to voters about their concerns and it was a wonderful process and I'm thrilled to now be in the city council.

Brian Lehrer: Is anybody asking, "Wait, you came to fame by representing Lower Manhattan, now you live on the Upper East Side," why did you move?

Julie Menin: I moved in 2014 and we moved actually when my mother, who was alive at the time, was diagnosed with a very rare cancer and I wanted to be close to her when she was battling that. She, unfortunately, passed away, but we moved in 2014 and we've remained in this district. Again, it's the area that my mom grew up in, so I did feel a very strong personal connection to it and I think the work, quite frankly, that I did in Lower Manhattan as a seven-year chair of Community Board 1 after 9/11 only helps to benefit the work I'm doing here in this community and across New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Being Consumer Affairs commissioner, census leader, and Office of Media and Entertainment commissioner focused on the development of the media industries here, as well as a community board chair, which one of those do you think most prepared you to be a city council member?

Julie Menin: That is a great question and I have to say I've loved every single role that I've had in city government. I certainly think being commissioner of Consumer Affairs is a role that is absolutely critical to the city council. When you think about Consumer Affairs, everyone has a Consumer Affairs issue because people buy products all the time. In fact, recently in this district, we went through a real Consumer Affairs issue on COVID testing. Right now, people are going out every single day to get COVID testing and there are a lot of COVID testing pop-up sites that are making false claims.

I've been sending cease and desist letters to companies that I feel are engaging in false and deceptive practices. Using that knowledge I have of the city's consumer protection law, it comes into use every single day in the role that I have now.

Brian Lehrer: When you were a Consumer Affairs commissioner, looking back on those years, what would you say were the main issues that you had to deal with?

Julie Menin: Certainly paid sick leave law. I'm really proud of the fact that we implemented and launched the paid sick leave law. We also launched the living wage law. We were very focused on expanding the Department of Consumer Protection into worker protection. One of the real issues that exist right now in the city is there is obviously a State Department of Labor, but because of preemption, there is no city department of labor. I think we were very creative in how we were able to expand the purview of the Department of Consumer Protection to then go into workers' rights.

We passed the carwash workers bill, we passed the Freelance Isn't Free Act which protects freelancers so we were able to implement and launch that law. I really look forward to focusing in the city council on an expansion of that. I am the chair of the Small Business Committee, so I'm extremely focused on how we can help our small businesses, but I'm also sitting on a Consumer Affairs Committee as well.

Brian Lehrer: Can you represent both labor and the owners of small businesses well at the same time?

Julie Menin: Absolutely. I don't believe they're mutually exclusive at all. In fact, when we implemented and launched the paid sick leave law, we really worked with the small business community to say this is a win-win. There's a way to implement that law where, first of all, if the worker shows up sick, that's not helpful to the small business. It means that basically, you can infect other workers, customers, so it doesn't enter to the benefit of the small business owner. I think the way that we were able to educate both workers and small businesses with paid sick leave law was extremely beneficial.

I also, as the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs, lowered fines by one-third on small businesses. In other words, we instituted 25 reforms to lower fines where there was no consumer harm. We now need to take that approach across all city agencies whether it's the FDNY, the Department of Buildings, whether it's sanitation. Mayor Adams launched an executive order a couple of weeks ago that says just that, and I look forward as a small business chair to seeing how we can codify some of those initiatives.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls for our brand new city council member Julie Menin in our series 51 Council Members In 52 Weeks, as we're going through the whole of New York City Council this year to speak to a council member from every neighborhood in the city this year and most of them are new, and of course, we have a new mayor. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 from her East Side and Roosevelt Island District or outside of it, 212-433-9692 or tweet a question @BrianLehrer. How would you describe this district that you represent? The map makes it look like a fair concentration of some of the wealthiest New Yorkers and some other New Yorkers who are not so much.

Julie Menin: The district spans in the southern part of East Harlem, El Barrio, to Midtown and includes Roosevelt Island. This is the east side of the East Side.

Brian Lehrer: That's 90th Street at the top, is that right?

Julie Menin: It's 100th Street at the top.

Brian Lehrer: 100th Street.

Julie Menin: It covers the southern part of East Harlem, encompasses Roosevelt Island. In Community Board 8, which is the eastside of Manhattan, we have 20,000 rent-stabilized apartments. We have studies that show that 36% of Community Board 8 residents have an undue rent burden because of a lack of affordable housing. This is one of the densest council districts in the city, and so we are going to really need to push hard to build more affordable housing.

We also have real constraints in terms of a lack of open space. If you look at the East Harlem part of the district, it has one of the highest asthma rates. I'm incredibly focused on how we can increase open space in this district.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think so far of Mayor Adams or Governor Hochul's housing affordability plans?

Julie Menin: We need to really push to build more affordable housing. It's been one of the key challenges, not only, of course, in this council district, but across the City of New York. I think as a council, we are going to be really looking at how do we push the envelope. One of the ways you can do that that I've always believed is by actually reforming our land use process, ULURP. Right now, when projects are going through the land use process, it's a negotiated settlement each and every step of the way with a different result every single time. That's really not comprehensive planning.

I think this city council we have an incredible opportunity to once and for all reform our land use process to, not only build more affordable housing but also make sure we're building more schools, more hospitals, all the different facilities that the city urgently needs.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, you may or may not know in our 51 Council Members In 52 Weeks series, we're inviting each council member to bring a Show and Tell item, a person, place, or a thing from their district that they want to describe as representative of something or just interesting. Councilmember Julie Menin, what have you brought for Show and Tell.

Julie Menin: Brian, I brought an object and what I brought is called Palacsinta. It's a Hungarian crepe. It's very famous in the Hungarian community. I purchased it at the Budapest Cafe, which is an institution in our neighborhood and really one of the last remnants of the community that was known as Little Hungary. It's significant to me because my mother and grandmother came here from Hungary as Holocaust survivors, settled in what was then Little Hungary. Little Hungary was a neighborhood where Hungarians started coming in droves in the late 19th century and then through the Holocaust.

There were many tenements there, there was the old elevated Third Avenue train, and so it's personally significant to me and it's also significant to me as a City Council Small Business chair because this is an immigrant-owned small business and we need to do everything we can to be protecting these immigrant-owned small businesses throughout the city.

Brian Lehrer: Good pick with a food. You want to just go back to that dish for a second for people who have never had it?

Julie Menin: Palacsinta is a crepe. This particular crepe has apricot, jam, and nuts. It's the one that my grandmother always used to make for me, but the Palacsinta can be made in many different ways. You can have the sweet one, which I'm actually having right now and it's delicious, you can have a savory one with mushrooms or something else, and you can get them at many different Hungarian places throughout the city.

I purchase this one at the Budapest Café on 84th and 2nd, which has been around in this community for many, many years. It's really one of the last remnants of Hungarian places in this neighborhood. To me, it really embodies what the community,y Little Hungary, was all about.

Brian Lehrer: You're eating during our conversation?

Julie Menin: [laughs] I do admit I took a bite.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] I can't do that while I'm doing the show. [mimics mumbles] How's the restaurant industry in your district doing generally and with Omicron now receding so quickly, according to government figures? Yay, at least for the moment. What do you see for the coming period of time?

Julie Menin: We're in a real crisis in terms of our restaurant industry. The pandemic obviously hit all the city's small businesses very hard. Over a third of our 200,000 small businesses across the city have closed because of the pandemic. Certainly, for restaurants, we need to do everything possible. Obviously, making outdoor dining permanent is going to be something that's very important to do. We also need to lower fines where there's no health or safety violation. I personally believe that those kinds of fines have a real onerous burden on restaurants in particular, and we need to change that.

I believe that restaurants and other businesses should be given 30 days to cure violations before going straight to a fine. A lot of restaurants complain because when the health department comes to inspect them, it's oftentimes done during service time, which really, again, puts an additional strain on the restaurant industry. That's something, as a small business chair, that I want to look at as well. Then lastly, I would just say we need a one-stop-shop portal for all applications, permits, licenses. Everything needs to be in a single, easily accessible portal on one website rather than forcing whether it's a restaurant owner or other small business to deal with an alphabet soup of different city agencies.

Brian Lehrer: Do you support permanent outdoor dining, and if so, how do you blend that with another interest of yours that you mentioned to my producer, Rafael, sanitation? We certainly have gotten calls from your district complaining of rats and garbage and also nighttime noise for the people living upstairs in those buildings.

Julie Menin: Absolutely, I do support permanent outdoor dining. With that said, obviously, we need to deal with the sanitation issues. In the first couple of weeks as councilmember, I've allocated $120,000 to increase trash pickup in this district to four times a day during the week. I also was able to get eight midblock litter baskets on East 86th Street, which had been a retail corridor that had particularly bad sanitation issues. We need to double down on sanitation and that's what I'm really focused on doing in this district because it is one of the top quality of life complaints that I hear all the time from residents.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, it's our 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks segment for this week, Week 5, with the council member from District 5, Julie Menin, former leader of the census push in 2020 for the de Blasio administration, former Consumer Affairs commissioner, among other things from the district that's parts of the East Side plus Roosevelt Island. Here's a caller from the district. Diana, in Yorkville, you're on WNYC. Hi, Diana.

Diana: Hi, love your show. I'm transgender. I live in New York and I'd love to know where you stand on the LGBTQ community.

Julie Menin: Oh, well, thank you, Diana, so much for asking that. I'm obviously very supportive of the LGBTQ community and making sure that we are always expanding those rights to the fullest extent possible. One of the things that I think is going to be really interesting for this new city council is, with the Human Rights Commission, I'm interested in how we can push the envelope to make sure we're doing everything possible to protect all LGBTQ rights and seeing if we can do any kinds of expansion of additional city laws in that regard.

Brian Lehrer: Diana, is there any particular piece of legislation or anything you're interested in with respect to LGBTQ?

Diana: No, but Ben Kallos and Jessica Lappin and Gifford Miller, they were all very positive regarding the LGBTQ community, and I'm hoping that Julie will be as well.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much.

Julie Menin: Oh, absolutely. I'm absolutely 100% committed to that and absolutely agree with you on that.

Brian Lehrer: City council is majority female for the first time ever. As part of that majority, is there anything you would say you think will be different on a policy level as a result?

Julie Menin: It's a great question. Look, so many studies, and I used to be on the Women's Campaign Finance Board, it's an organization that was really focused on expanding women elected officials across the country, a lot of those studies show that women elected officials, in general, are focused on inclusion, focused on getting to the finish line, focused on making sure that we're result-driven.

It's not to say that male elected officials are not, but I think with 31 women in the council, we have a unique opportunity to focus on making sure, for example, universal childcare is focused on, making sure that whether, we already did paid sick leave, can we look at an expansion of paid sick leave, can we look at expansion of family benefits. There's so many different things that we can do to support working families and I think with this particular composition of the city council, we have so many mothers on the council. I'm a mother, there are many other mothers on the council as well and I think, Brian, what you will see is a real focus on issues that affect working parents.

Brian Lehrer: You have a particular piece of legislation along those lines in mind yet or not yet?

Julie Menin: I think universal childcare is one absolutely that both myself and my colleagues have spoken about. So many times we find that when people want to go, whether it's to a community board meeting, to a city council hearing, a lot of times when you have childcare responsibilities, it can be difficult to do. If we had city-sponsored universal childcare, it would really pave the way, not only to greater civic engagement but to better working opportunities for women in general. We can never have a situation where a lack of childcare is a barrier to entry to economic opportunity for women.

I think this is a real area of opportunity that the council can focus on. It's something that I've spoken at length with my colleagues, so I'm very excited to tackle issues like that moving forward.

Brian Lehrer: I think the mayor's for that too. Hasn't he said that?

Julie Menin: He has said that. Absolutely, he's said that. Look, at the end of the day, you can't have this barrier that exists. Childcare and eldercare, I might add as well, still disproportionately fall on women in our society, and so we need to double down and do everything possible to open up those avenues to economic opportunity for women.

Brian Lehrer: Deborah on Roosevelt Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Deborah.

Deborah: Hello. I met Ms. Menin when she came to Roosevelt Island and discussed with her about the road surface on Roosevelt Island. We still are driving on the road that was built in the '70s. Parts of the roads, here, of course, there's just one single road on Roosevelt Island, parts of the road have been repaired or resurfaced, but there's a major part of Main Street which has not ever, and I've lived here for over 30 years, has never been repaired. She and I discussed the notion of chatting with RIOC, Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, about repairing the road and I'm hoping she will do that.

Julie Menin: Thank you so much for raising this issue. This is a very important issue. For those listeners that are not familiar with RIOC, RIOC is a state entity that basically controls and runs Roosevelt Island. One of the challenges with Roosevelt Island, again, is you're dealing with a state entity, and so oftentimes, I found that there is a passing of the buck, and so we need to make sure that RIOC does repave this road. Main Street runs through Roosevelt Island.

It's the main street literally and figuratively within Roosevelt Island and I completely agree with this issue that it needs to be repaved. It hasn't been repaved in many, many years. I have raised this with RIOC and I have pushed very hard to make sure that that happens.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, Deborah, can I ask?

Deborah: That would be great.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you because people in our area who maybe have never been on Roosevelt Island have never taken the tram, it's the F train, right, that stops there? Have I got that right?

Deborah: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe never gone in. What's it like living on Roosevelt Island? Is it like a small town in the middle of a big city or how would you describe it with with one road?

Deborah: It's like a small town, people know each other. It's certainly a lot quieter than Manhattan and it's easy access to Manhattan if that's what you choose to do. My children went to school in Manhattan and had an easy commute. I think people work in Manhattan and can commute, but they can also come home to a quieter environment.

Brian Lehrer: Deborah, thank you so much for your call. Councilmember, how would you describe the crime situation in your district? That's been one of the, if not the headline story citywide recently. Do you support the changes being implemented by the new Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, and to a councilmember from Manhattan who wants to pass this consolation?

Julie Menin: Sure, happy to answer that. If you look at crime this year versus last year, Brian, crime in the 19th Precinct is actually down 11% last year versus the year before. However, in the beginning of January, just in this past couple of weeks, so it's not a lot of data, crime is actually up in terms of burglaries in grand larceny. In terms of DA Bragg, one of the things and I've heard, particularly from small business owners who are very concerned about shoplifting. I have now been appointed to DA Bragg's small business task force.

It's really going to be taking a look at the impact on small businesses because we're hearing from so many small businesses, not only in my district, but around Manhattan that have real concerns about shoplifting. DA Bragg had asked me to be on this along with as many big entities and small business owners. We'll be taking a really close look at this and making sure that the view of small business owners is being heard loud and clear.

Brian Lehrer: You think he's getting a bad rap?

Julie Menin: I think the memo, and I think Alvin Bragg was the first to say this, the memo how it was released was problematic. It wasn't very clear as to what some of these changes will be. Now, he has gone around and met with small business groups, larger business groups, community boards, and he's clarifying where he stands on this, and I have found him to be someone who really listens to community input.

He has been in numerous meetings just in the past few weeks alone that he's presented at and answered questions. I think from my perspective as a council small business chair, I want to make sure that the small business voice is being involved in those decisions, and through this task force, I plan on making sure that it is.

Brian Lehrer: A short lightning round to finish up. You ready? Some of these are policies, some of these are let the public know you better questions. What's the most common reason during your first month in office that constituents have contacted your office?

Julie Menin: Sanitation.

Brian Lehrer: What's one area of policy where you've seen actual progress during your lifetime in this city?

Julie Menin: Education.

Brian Lehrer: What's one area you've expected more progress in but it's been maddeningly slow?

Julie Menin: Addressing the homelessness crisis.

Brian Lehrer: Did you have any political heroes growing up?

Julie Menin: I did. I don't know that it was a political hero, but my mother was my hero. I really can't say this enough. My mother is no longer alive, but I think what she went through as a Holocaust survivor, dealing with that moment in history and the atrocities that she went through, she really was my hero across the board.

Brian Lehrer: What's your favorite thing and least favorite thing about living in New York City?

Julie Menin: My favorite thing is parks. I love to walk on the East River Esplanade. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old, and so that's something that I absolutely love to do. I think one of the least favorite things to me, one of the things that's most frustrating is people are being priced out of the city. People like teachers, firefighters, people who have been in these communities for years and years and years are now being priced out of, not only the district that I represent but New York City as a whole, and that is incredibly upsetting and frustrating to see.

Brian Lehrer: Do you own a pet?

Julie Menin: No, I don't. Unfortunately, my daughter is allergic to dogs. I would love to, but we've tried, but every time she's around dogs, she, unfortunately, breaks out in hives.

Brian Lehrer: What's the last arts organization that you partook of in any way in New York City?

Julie Menin: I was on the board of the World Trade Center Performing Arts Center. I was one of the founding members and I was on that board until a little time ago when I became a council member and then had to step off that board. I've been involved in arts organizations since the beginning, my mother was an artist. It's something that's very important to me.

Brian Lehrer: What's one book or movie that you would recommend to the listeners to read or to see?

Julie Menin: I love the Unbearable Lightness of Being. I'm a big Milan Kundera fan, and so I've read all of his books, but that to me is one that is a favorite.

Brian Lehrer: Julie Menin now representing District 5 on the East Side and Roosevelt Island in New York City Council after her previous roles as leading the census count in New York City in 2020, being New York City's Consumer Affairs commissioner, Media and Entertainment commissioner, chair of Community Board 12, now in elected office representing City Council District 5. We look forward to having you back many times in that role.

Julie Menin: Thanks so much, Brian. Great to be with you again.

 

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