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WEEK OF DECEMBER - JANUARY
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RODIN IN THE ROUND ◄P.12
2017
DE BLASIO DOES DES MOINES POLITICS Mayor blitzes the Hawkeye State, tells of his Iowa roots, auctions off his tie, schmoozes local pols – and faces protests by city cops BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
It doesn’t happen every day. Or even every four years. But every once in a while, political lightning strikes in Iowa. Could such a bolt hit Mayor Bill de Blasio? And might he make good presidential timber? T. M. Franklin (Frank) Cownie ponders the question. The $52,000-a-year mayor of Des Moines, a folksy and popular Democrat in a nonpartisan post, has seen a lot of contenders come and go in 14 years in office. de Blasio is a tad different. Cownie has known him since 2014, and as co-trustees of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, they’ve worked on “parks, potholes, curbs, gutters, street lights and public safety,” he says. Yes, but this is a political question. There’s a brief pause. Cownie, who lists his home number on the city’s website and runs his family’s fur business on breaks from running Des Moines, finally answers: “Heck, if a TV game show host can become president, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility for a mayor of the largest mega-city in the country to start thinking about it,” he says in a phone interview. New York’s mayor vows, unconvincingly and ad infinitum, that he’s not thinking about it. Yet there he was — fresh off a landslide reelection, two weeks before his second-term swearing-in — blitzing the Hawkeye State, glad-handing small-town mayors, quaffing beer with local pols, revving up his national profile. “No, I’m not running for president,”
Public art installations in the new subway became attractions unto themselves. Photo: Steven Strasser
Mayor Bill de Blasio addresses 150-plus supporters of the liberal advocacy group Progress Iowa at the Temple for Performing Arts in downtown Des Moines on December 19th. A speech to the group in 2014 helped launch Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Photo: Eric Phillips / Mayoral press secretary he said. For good measure, he repeated, “No, friends, I’m not running for president. I’ve got four years and 13 days left to serve as mayor.” He used the line at least four times. Now, it may have been factually true when he uttered it on December 19th at the Temple for Performing Arts, a former Masonic lodge built in 1913. But equally true is that he said it moments before headlining the fifth annual holiday party for liberal advocacy group Progress Iowa — the same crowd Bernie Sanders wooed in 2014 as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign in 2016. No one expects it to be his last trip. “Our folks are already saying they want to see more of him,” said Polk
County Democratic Party Chair Sean Bagniewski, a powerbroker in Iowa’s most populous county, which is home to 430,000 people, including 215,000 Des Moines residents. Adds Cownie, “I don’t know what his ongoing political aspirations might be, but I always tell him, ‘Any time you’re traveling from coast to coast, if you have time, stop by.’ He knows the invitation is always open.” De Blasio’s speech was a stew of “prairie populism,” an old-fashioned agrarian radicalism once common in the Midwest, and new-fangled political pandering so epic it could inspire a textbook on the topic.
SECOND AVENUE SUBWAY REPORT CARD TRANSPORTATION A look at the numbers on the line’s first anniversary BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
Last year, the city’s most exclusive New Year’s Eve party took place in a most unlikely location: 100 feet below 72nd Street in a spotless subway station on the newly completed Second Avenue line. Dignitaries clad in evening wear toasted with sparkling wine, snacked on locally sourced charcuterie and swayed to live music
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from a jazz band at the subterranean gala, brushing shoulders with MTA brass, Governor Andrew Cuomo and other elected officials (including, briefly, Mayor Bill de Blasio, with whom Cuomo would go on to feud throughout the year over responsibility for the subway system’s overall decline). Revelers packed onto a train car for a maiden trip up Second Avenue to ring in 2017 and celebrate the city’s first major subway expansion in 50 years. If such a glitzy affair seemed out of place on a station platform, well, as Cuomo said, “This isn’t your grandfather’s subway.”
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WEEK OF APRIL
SPRING ARTS PREVIEW < CITYARTS, P.12
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
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for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
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