The mayor, set to go away workplace subsequent 12 months, routinely tapped Garcia to pinch hit in occasions of disaster. She has been lauded for h
The mayor, set to go away workplace subsequent 12 months, routinely tapped Garcia to pinch hit in occasions of disaster. She has been lauded for her competence — incomes her the coveted Occasions endorsement and one other from the Each day Information. However the lackluster elements of her report are actually being known as into query.
“Many individuals have been despondent for months and know that we’d like one thing totally different. We want somebody very totally different than Mayor de Blasio,” Yang, the previous presidential candidate, mentioned lately on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Present. “And Kathryn, regardless of her service to town, is a part of an administration that a number of New Yorkers know has not labored.”
An annual report of metropolis company efficiency discovered streets and sidewalks have been rated “acceptably clear” greater than 95 p.c of the time over the previous two fiscal years. However an out of doors evaluation performed by the state comptroller arrived at a far much less flattering conclusion.
The 37-page report launched final September — simply as Garcia was resigning her metropolis job to enter the race — concluded that underneath her purview, the sanitation company didn’t hold streets sufficiently clear and used outdated record-keeping methods.
“DSNY wants to enhance its communication, coordination and report maintaining processes to effectively and successfully tackle persistent cleanliness issues on NYC streets and sidewalks,” Comptroller Tom DiNapoli wrote. His workers sampled 271 metropolis blocks and located 189 streets and 159 sidewalks have been soiled primarily based on metropolis metrics.
Garcia disputed the findings. She wrote in a letter to DiNapoli that property house owners, not her division, are chargeable for sidewalk cleanliness and identified that authorities companies typically fail to maintain up their properties.
“We acknowledge that there’s at all times extra to do and alternative for enchancment. However on the time this audit was performed, New York Metropolis was cleaner than ever earlier than,” she wrote. “This was true regardless of report excessive inhabitants, employment, tourism and financial exercise.”
The Division of Sanitation isn’t chargeable for gathering industrial waste and doesn’t containerize its trash, each of which additionally affect the notion of unkempt streets.
When Garcia introduced her resignation, she mentioned she was leaving in protest over funds cuts that price her greater than 400 employees. A number of weeks later, she launched her bid for mayor.
On the path, the first-time candidate has sought to tell apart herself from others within the eight-person Democratic subject by leaning into her managerial credentials.
As head of sanitation, she was tasked with implementing de Blasio’s Zero Waste initiatives to nearly get rid of the quantity of rubbish despatched to landfills, whereas offering nuts-and-bolts providers like snow removing and trash pick-up. She was named lead czar throughout an publicity disaster and served as interim chair of town’s embattled public housing authority when it was positioned underneath a federal monitor. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit town, de Blasio instructed Garcia to arrange a meals supply program for residents in want — taking the job away from the Division for the Ageing.
Previous to the de Blasio period, she labored within the Division of Environmental Safety within the Bloomberg administration, finally changing into its chief working officer.
Her lengthy tenure in metropolis authorities has given rival candidates one thing to grab on. Along with avenue cleanliness, some contend she may have improved New York’s tepid recycling price, which falls behind most different main U.S. cities. Preliminary issues with the standard of meals within the pandemic supply system and protracted lead paint points on the housing authority additionally stand to return underneath fireplace from her rivals.
Metropolis officers and consultants POLITICO interviewed mentioned there’s benefit to among the criticisms, regardless of many praising the majority of Garcia’s report.
Lindsey Inexperienced, her marketing campaign spokesperson, mentioned the assaults are unwarranted.
“Kathryn has a report of taking up robust jobs and delivering for New Yorkers that’s unmatched on this race,” she mentioned. “A lot of the candidates who’re attacking Kathryn’s report have mentioned they wish to rent her to run town due to her report. The one factor that’s modified is now she’s profitable.”
The town has made little progress towards its aim of slashing 90 p.c of the waste it sends to metropolis landfills — actually, it has exported extra waste to landfills since committing to the Zero Waste program. The residential recycling price stands at 18 p.c — a shortcoming owed to a public housing system that mixes nearly all its rubbish, a stalled program to get better meals scraps and a personal waste system that’s largely unregulated, POLITICO beforehand reported in its “Wasted Potential” collection.
Most environmental advocates commend Garcia’s tenure as sanitation commissioner, saying she made sustainability a focus of the division’s agenda.
Environmental advocates broadly praised her for implementing a industrial waste zone system, which is designed to higher regulate a personal carting business with a spotty recycling and security report, when absolutely carried out. She additionally helped usher by way of a waste fairness invoice, which reduces how a lot trash might be processed in overburdened communities. And Garcia gained a multiyear battle to largely ban non-recyclable, polystyrene foam from town.
“There’s no contest — her tenure as sanitation commissioner was a paradigm shift,” mentioned Eddie Bautista, government director of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance.
However most of her key coverage wins have since been stripped down or lower completely.
The division took a $100 million funds hit within the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, a transfer Garcia has faulted for dirtier streets. Metropolis Corridor additionally repeatedly declined to fund her efforts to develop composting, which is broadly thought of key to reaching town’s waste discount objectives. Garcia has pledged to convey again composting and mandate it if elected mayor.
Nonetheless, some have argued she ought to shoulder among the blame for failed initiatives.
With out naming her, rival candidate Scott Stringer final 12 months mentioned funds cuts have been a weak excuse for litter-strewn streets in the course of the pandemic.
“I lived by way of a fiscal disaster — and soiled streets and lack of administration by Metropolis Corridor alerts to folks that this metropolis won’t come again,” Stringer mentioned on the time. “Cease throwing your fingers up since you needed to make a small funds lower to the sanitation division.”
Bautista additionally faulted Garcia for making compromises he mentioned blunted the influence of her largest coverage wins.
After going through vehement opposition from business leaders, the waste fairness invoice was rewritten to exempt many switch stations and doesn’t make the deep reductions advocates had wished. The waste zone laws was additionally altered on the request of enterprise teams and actual property business to permit extra non-public haulers to function within the metropolis. Garcia has defended modifications to each payments, arguing they continue to be efficient at reaching the objectives set out by town.
“Everytime you’re leaving greenhouse fuel emissions on the desk, it’s not a very good day,” Bautista mentioned. “It’s like all the things else — it’s compromise and this was the perfect I believe they might get by way of. On the finish of the day, will probably be a marked enchancment over the present system.”
Others have been harsher of their characterization of Garcia’s tenure.
Brigitte Vicenty, a New York Metropolis Housing Authority resident, has labored with Garcia since 2017 after securing funding to pilot a door-to-door recycling program for a Brownsville NYCHA growth. She faulted Garcia for not renewing funding for this system, after recycling charges greater than tripled among the many 130 or so taking part households, and usually not doing extra to enhance recycling in public housing.
“Combative, oppressive, non-receptive are the phrases that come to my thoughts,” mentioned Vicenty, who’s voting for Adams within the June 22 major. “At each flip once we took a step ahead, she pushed us two steps again.”
Garcia mentioned throughout a Council listening to final 12 months that Vicenty’s pilot program “wasn’t scalable” and that the division was doing outreach at greater than 11 totally different public housing developments.
Throughout her six-month stint on the helm of NYCHA in 2019, Garcia got here underneath fireplace from a federal monitor who mentioned she delivered a “deceptive impression” at a Metropolis Council listening to targeted on lead paint removing in residences with youngsters.
Bart Schwartz, who had lately been appointed to supervise the company as a part of a federal settlement with town, criticized Garcia and the company for failing to trace down items with lead paint the place youngsters reside.
“Your resolution to eschew the protocols out there to you underneath our settlement in favor of an surprising and unwarranted public expression of frustration is unlucky and misguided,” Garcia shot again on the time.
Inexperienced known as her a “bridge at a time of instability at NYCHA” and former NYCHA spokesperson Jasmine Blake, who’s volunteering for Garcia’s marketing campaign, defended her.
“When it got here to guide particularly, NYCHA’s largest drawback was we couldn’t get our numbers appropriate. She wouldn’t let numbers go throughout the road to Metropolis Corridor until she signed off on them,” mentioned Blake, now a guide at public relations agency BerlinRosen. “She cared extra about being trustworthy and truthful than maintaining the mayor joyful.”