FAQ Re: State of the City

Speaker Christine C. Quinn - We are so excited here at the City Council to have the opportunity to offer this .nyc domain to New York City businesses. Later this year, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will release their Applicant Guidebook. ICANN regulates the general level domains online (i.e. .com, .org, .nyc). After ICANN releases the .nyc general level domain to New York City, we will start the process to begin distributing URLs to businesses. The revenues for these site sales will bring New York City between $6 million to $18 million. If you need more information about ICANN you can visit their website at http://www.icann.org/.
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Speaker Quinn - Our affordable middle income housing proposal will allow many long time residents that were once being priced out of their communities to purchase a stake in buildings that were built in their own backyards.  Details on participation in the program will come out in the next few weeks.  This program will give many working families the opportunity to become homeowners, all while stabilizing neighborhoods for years to come.
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Speaker Quinn - What we are trying to do is make the city’s personal income tax more fair. Right now, anybody in the city who is making $90,000 or more is in the same tax bracket - a multimillionaire living on Park Ave is taxed at the same rate as a public school principal. It just doesn’t really make any sense.

What we’re proposing are progressive changes that make the city’s personal income taxes fairer. Under our plan, 96% of New York City taxpayers wouldn’t pay an extra penny in personal income taxes. But because we’re asking those who are fortunate to make more to help out a little more, the 4% of New Yorkers who make $300,000 or more would see an increase. Those who make over a million dollars would see more of an increase.

We’re coupling this with another piece of tax fairness. Right now in New York City there are almost a quarter of a million low income families that make less that $45,000 a year and make so little as families they don’t pay New York state or federal income taxes. The city, however, still taxes these families and we want that stopped. What this means is for those working families, they’ll get an average $300 a year back that they can use to help buy food, to pay the rent and otherwise care for their families.
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Speaker Quinn - In my State of the City, I introduced a proposal called ‘Open for Business’ which has a couple of different components.

One of them is to help and encourage new businesses to open despite the current economic crisis. We’ve proposed streamlining the often complicated process of opening a new business by calling for one common application, coordinated inspections and waived licensing fees. The easier we can make it for New York’s entrepreneurs, the quicker they can get their doors open and our economy going. 

Another part of ‘Open for Business’ is to increase existing business at establishments that are already open. We want to help drive people to our small businesses, as well as support them by increasing city contracts with local businesses. 

The Council and the Administration are still meeting to discuss further details of some of our small business proposals. As more information becomes available, it will be posted on the Council’s website.
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Nursing:
Is NYC in a nursing shortage?
~Elena

Speaker Quinn - Yes Elena, New York City currently has a nursing shortage.  In fact, the entire country is in a nursing shortage.  In the five boroughs, there are nearly 63,000 nurses; 17% of them are 55 years old or older.  Due to population increase, an aging population and retirement, New York City will need 7000 more nurses by 2020 than we are projected to have.  Not only do we already have a nursing shortage, but if the current trajectory continues, our nursing shortage will only continue to get worse.

However, you should know that the nursing shortage is not due to lack of interest in the profession.  Every year 1,600 nurses graduate form CUNY nursing schools throughout the City, and most of them remain within the five boroughs to practice.  However, last year there were an additional 575 qualified applicants who were turned away due to lack of capacity at our City’s schools to teach them.  These 575 people represent jobs that are lying vacant – not because they aren’t needed – but because the City doesn’t have the proper resources to train them.

That is why I announced in my State of the City an initiative that will help to address the nursing shortage and get more New Yorkers to work.  Working with CUNY, I proposed a five-year partnership between CUNY nursing schools and New York City hospitals to increase the faculty at City nursing school programs.  Through this initiative, CUNY will work with hospitals to identify ten experienced nurses who will become guest faculty for one year at their nursing schools.  This will allow nurses to make a short term commitment to teaching, without losing their benefits or seniority.  These ten additional faculty members will allow CUNY to admit an additional 100 nursing students to their programs each year, thereby creating 500 extra nurses in the next five years.

This simple partnership between CUNY nursing schools and our hospital’s nurses, will not only create jobs when our residents need them the most, but will help our health system and hospitals that are already working with a shortage of nurses.
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