November 20, 2019Mayor Bill de Blasio: This is a very powerful day. For a lot of us though, I think there""s a bittersweet element to it to say the least. Being here in El Puente reminds me of the day back in 1989 when I first met Luis Garden Acosta. And from that day to the last day I saw him, he remained a young idealist. He remained a believer that we could all make change. He believed in the power of community. And I say he remained a young idealist not because he didn""t grow chronologically, but because he always kept that fire, believing that if the community was truly empowered and organized and energized that all things were possible. So, today, it""s to say the least, Francis, it""s very, very strange and poignant to be here without him. I know you feel that so deeply. I know so many people do. But I think we can say one thing, we know where Luis is, you can look up, he is presente. Let""s say it right. Luis Garden Acosta – Audience: Presente! Mayor: And this is exactly what he would want us to be doing right now. So, let’s give him a thanks and applause he can hear way up there.[Applause]Francis, thank you for your extraordinary work. El Puente means so much to the community, it means so much to the city. Thank you for carrying it on with such energy. And we were talking outside in the park – part of this is also bringing up a whole new generation of activists who are going to make a difference, who are going to carry on this fight because this is a huge victory, but there""s a lot more to do after this. So, I want to say to the community activists, to the folks who""ve worked for a greener society, to our brothers and sisters and labor, everyone just look around, everyone here who has been a part of this fight, winning this fight. Give your neighbor a round of applause, please.[Applause]So, we""re here today to celebrate fixing something that was profoundly broken. And I want to thank everyone. You""re going to hear from a couple of folks in a moment who played such a central role in this, and I want to thank them, but give credit to some other folks who really cared, really got involved deeply. Our Business Integrity Commissioner Noah Genel – thank you, Noah, so much; Community Affairs Commissioner Marco Carrion, thank you; I know this was a labor of love and he put a ton of time and energy into it – my Deputy Chief of Staff Lincoln Restler – thank you, Lincoln; and someone who could not be with us today, but when we met to talk about this as City Hall, he really believed we could do something different in his leadership was crucial – the President of Teamsters Joint Council 16 George Miranda.[Applause]The – all of – and it takes always so many people be involved, advocates, community leaders, elected officials – assembly member is that you? Assembly Member Maritza Davila, thank you.[Applause]And a coalition that came together so powerfully, and I love the name – Transform Don""t Trash NYC, thank you.[Applause]So, let me say it very quick, very simply – for years and years, we accept a status quo, it made no sense. A private carting industry that was legendarily dangerous, that was out of control, that was harming our neighborhoods, harming our environment, killing pedestrians and bicyclists. This somehow was accepted for a long time as normal. Lot of times we talk about one piece of this equation, of course, is the impact on people walking, biking, on Vision Zero. We talk about Vision Zero – I remind people, for decades in New York City, we used to talk about the Boulevard of Death – Queens Boulevard – and, whether we wanted to admit it or not, we thought that was a normal phrase. Right? Just like if you go back some decades, we used to go through the South Bronx and see buildings that were burned out or decals in the windows pretending to be flowerpots, pretending that the destruction wasn""t there. And anyone who saw that realized we were living with an unacceptable status quo and somehow trying to look the other way as a city, as a society. And the good news is we""re not doing that anymore. So, here was this private industry that was causing a lot of harm – not everybody in it, but too many people in it, too many companies, and something very different had to change, something very different had to be achieved. And when you try and do things very differently, it""s not easy. So many folks here worked a long time because it was not easy to figure out how to totally break down a broken reality. But here""s what we know – lives were lost, workers were cheated, communities were polluted, and ultimately our earth was endangered. When this fight started, we were talking about children on the playground being exposed to too much pollution and what that would do to them and that was horrible unto itself. We now know we""re talking about an earth, an entire earth in danger because of global warming, and that we can""t accept business as usual. And when you think of really jolting things, when you think of doing things in a way that people will tell you is too ambitious, too difficult, whatever, think about the Green New Deal. This is why I talk about the Green New Deal – it’s really, really hard to do. It""s absolutely necessary. This change was really hard to do, but absolutely necessary, because we are living something that no community should have to live through. And I want to thank El Puente for leading the way, because you put it in the most human terms. Why should a child – that’s the only park they have – why they should possibly have to breathe bad air? They don""t have to. And what today is about is proving that they never had to, there was a different way, and there is a different way, and now it""s going to become the law of New York City. That""s what we""re doing here today. There""ll be a lot less these heavy polluting trucks on the streets of this community. There""ll be a lot more children who can breathe better air. So, to everyone who fought for this, I know it was a long fight. I know it was a frustrating fight. I know it didn""t come easy, but boy was it worth it, because this is going to prove that these big changes can be made. We do not need to leave a status quo that""s broken. We can do something very different. I""m going to turn to some of the heroes, but I want to remind you that any time we confront businesses that tell us to accept the unacceptable, don""t take it. Any time we deal with the private sector does not think about the public interest, don’t accept it. We got used to thinking we didn""t have choices, it turns out we have a whole lot of choices. It turns out there was a way to making things work that was a lot better, and today proves it""s about believing in that better opportunity and fighting for it. A few words in Spanish – [Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]With that, I can say that I""ve never seen someone more obsessed with the details of how to change something incredibly difficult than our Sanitation Commissioner. She believed it was going to be incredibly challenging. She would have to have thousands of conversations, bring everyone to the table, but she knew we could get there, and that energy and that spirit helped us get to this moment. Commissioner Kathryn Garcia –[Applause]Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, Department of Sanitation: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for your leadership on this. This is an historic day and I know that most people in the world don""t think about the fact that the waste sector is a contributor to the climate crisis, that there are things that we need to do to make it more efficient, and also that we are all touched by it. You may think, I have nothing to do with private carting, I don""t own a business, but everybody who shops at a store or goes to a local restaurant is involved in this sector. And so, today, I think that this is unbelievably historic legislation and I am thrilled to be a part of it.It is really comprehensive. I mean, we are taking on and changing everything about how this industry will function. The new zones are going to create a safe and efficient collection system that will provide high-quality, low-cost service to New York City businesses and advance our zero-waste goals. We""re talking about a 50 percent reduction in truck traffic and heavy duty diesel traffic – that is really unbelievable. When I first started this and the advocates came to me, I was like, I don""t know about the commercial waste sector. And then we started doing the analysis and I was like, wow, we have some problems to fix here – and we really did it and did it and did it together. All across the city we will see change, but just the act of putting carters into zones is the big factor that makes the difference. But this legislation goes far beyond that. This is about ensuring that the public has safer, quieter nights. This is about ensuring that the people who work in the sector are protected and given fair wages. You""re talking about an industry that oftentimes would hire people for the night for $80 for a 16-hour shift – that is not even minimum wage, that is not even federal minimum wage. So, we are talking about that, and we are talking about really requiring businesses to ensure that they are doing the right thing to incentivize their recycling. And as I""ve said to some of them, you all have sustainability goals, we need to help you meet them, and we can be part of your success story. It also was an incredibly integrated process. As the Mayor said, I have had a lot of meetings about this. This was really around also doing the analytics that were required, really studying the industry, understanding what the implications would be of all of the changes that we were going to make.
I want to thank a few people, because this is actually a really important day for me. I want to thank El Puente for hosting us and for all of the work that you""ve done. I want to thank Transform Don""t Trash for being partners and definitely holding my feet to the fire. The Teamsters Local 813, and the joint council, Sean Campbell and George Miranda, ALIGN, the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, the New York City Environmental Justice Council, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Transportation Alternatives, and other advocates and supporters, the New York League of Conservation Voters, the Citizens Budget Commission, the New York City Partnership, Brooklyn ROT – this is a very interesting group of advocates. I just want to say that – Mayor: We’ve got range there.Commissioner Garcia: We got range. I also want to thank the sister agency, BIC and DOT, but also the Council staff, the Mayor""s Office staff, and then particularly, Greg Anderson, Christine, Billy and Justin Bland on my staff who did a lot of the writing and arguing about where every comma was going to go. So, I appreciate all the work that everyone has done to get us here, but it definitely took a village. Thank you.[…]Mayor: If you want to change the world, proceed over there to that desk so we can sign this bill into law. Come on over, everybody.[Mayor de Blasio signs the bills into law]Mayor: Okay. We are organized. Okay. First I want to see if there are questions on the legislation that was signed here today. Any questions about the commercial waste zones? Media, going once –Question: [Inaudible] but will you walk us through the RFP process again and how that is going to put – is that going to be like a City record thing? How will carters compete for every –Commissioner Garcia: Absolutely. So, for everyone in this room, you are hitting one of the end – the milestone. But for the Department of Sanitation the work has just begun. We will do a round of rule makings and then we anticipate putting out an RFP in the standard way we do a procurement in May. So, yes, in the City record. We also intend to do outreach to all types of carters to make sure they understand how to respond to a City RFP.Question: And then you make – the Department of Sanitation will be the ultimate, will make the ultimate decision on who gets what contract?Commissioner Garcia: Right, we will go through the regular procurement process about how RFPs are scored. And then we will do contracts with those who are selected to work in the individual zone.Question: Commissioner, [inaudible] first of all congratulations on just wide sweeping, broad legislation that impacts millions of people throughout the city. The customers of private contractors largely want one thing, pick up my garbage, pick it up it reliably, pick it up efficiently. What assurances can you give to those many customers that under this new system and this new plan that that will actually happen?Commissioner Garcia: So one of the things is we really listened to businesses both small and large businesses, and you are absolutely right. Service is the highest priority for them and it’s also the highest priority for me because I know that if they are not getting great service that I will be the one who has to pick them up. But, several ways that we have done that is one it’s not a monopoly. You can fire your carter if you are not getting good service. In addition within the contracts, we will have the ability to hold them accountable to the City for failing to meet their customer service requirements.Question: And secondly because I think you pointed this out earlier which [inaudible] safer streets as a result of this because of fewer trucks. The statistic that you threw out earlier, 28 deaths because of private contractors since 2010 – can you address that a little bit?Commissioner Garcia: Certainly. So, one of the things when you start to really dive into this industry – and as Sean said, not all of them are bad – but many of the routes are so incredibly long that there is no way to do it well without cutting corners. And so when you put them into a geographic area, they don’t have to go as far to fill the truck up. So you don’t have to cut any corners. We want to make sure that they are always following all of the safety rules that are required.Mayor: Okay, other questions on the commercial waste zone legislation? Let’s see if there are any other media questions on this going once, twice. Okay, other topics, other topics, yes?Question: Mr. Mayor your MTA appointee, Veronica Vanterpool, is stepping down. I’m looking for your comment on that and wondering what you are planning to do to fill the two vacancies on the MTA board once she departs because the spending on the $51 billion construction modernization budget will start to happen.Mayor: Yeah, first of all she did an outstanding job. I’m very proud of the work she did and I think she represented this city really, really well and was a great advocate. And she’s going on to do important work in another part of the country. So we will move immediately to have the Legislature fill the two vacancies. I’d love to see that happen as early as January. Other questions?Question: A follow up on that. Do you anticipate then kind of taking a while to approve your nomination? I know that that has happened in the past.Mayor: I don’t anticipate it. It’s a good question, I don’t anticipate it. I would hope under the circumstances that the Legislature and the Governor would share our commitment to have all seats filled. So we will have nominees for them shortly.Question: A second New York State resident, I believe someone who lived in Manhattan, died from a vaping-related illness. That was confirmed today. I’m wondering if there is any more you can share, your thoughts on this person?Mayor: Yeah we are – the Health Department is right away investigating to understand exactly what happened but you know, based on what we know now, it’s another really horrible example of a problem that’s growing and you know, a tragic reality that has to be addressed in every way. We want to do everything we can using the power of New York City. I think – but knowing it’s a health issue, it requires federal actions and State actions as well. But you know, I think we now have constantly horrible, painful evidence that vaping is dangerous and it needs to be quickly and aggressively limited.Question: Mr. Mayor, since the start of the year my outlet Streetsblog has been documenting reckless driving by police officers in their private vehicles and found that officers get multiple moving violations at a rate of twice the general public’s rate. In April you said that you would look at that and possibly discipline drivers, police drivers such as Garman Chen who had 22 moving violations on his record before his fatal crash on Saturday. We’ve asked your office – repeatedly we’ve asked the NYPD to document whether officers have been disciplined for this type of reckless driver and I have not gotten an answer. So have you –Mayor: Well I will get you an answer. They should be. The bottom line is they should be. We will find out and we will get you a clear answer and if there’s not enough being done more will be done. This is very serious stuff.Question: A bit of a follow up. I mean, Officer Chen, could – preemptive effort on that could have prevented him from being in that car that night. Do you feel some responsibility for that death?Mayor: No. I think we have to address this issue at its core which is continuing to educate people that if they get behind the wheel of a car they are taking their lives and everyone else’s lives in their hands. And they have to drive responsibly. And I think that’s what Vision Zero has been about from day one. And we have seen a huge amount of behavior change because of that. But you know I also believe, in addition to education and the carrot, I believe in the stick. And I have been calling for, and I think you agree with this notion, stronger penalties for reckless driving and we need some of that at the city level and we certainly need some of that at the State level. So I think we need all the above honestly. City agencies need to discipline their own, but we also need more stringent laws with greater consequences for reckless driving. Who has not gone? Rich.Question: So, Mr. Mayor, back to the vaping for a second. So I guess, you know the President has said at one point that he wanted to raise the age and now he has apparently backed off because they are saying the lobbyists have gotten to him again. When cigarette taxes kept being edged up, the usage went down. Do you think maybe the same thing ought to happen with vaping materials?Mayor: Yes. I think we have a great example from Tobacco – look we still have a long way to go. But we certainly learned from the example of Tobacco the things that did work, making it harder and harder to hook young children, making it more expensive which literally led, especially to a lot of young people never getting the habit to begin with because they couldn’t afford it. And I think we have to throw the book at the vaping industry. It’s dangerous. And we need every tool we’ve got. You know, again I don’t understand how we could see a health crisis before our eyes and not decide it’s better to put a freeze on things and protect lives and then we can work out what’s fair going forward. But right now this thing came along and you know, people thought this must be something good because it helps people get off smoking. It’s turned out to be you know, a horrible Pandora’s Box. It gets worse and worse it seems every day. So I want to see the most aggressive effort against it. Marcia?Question: Mr. Mayor, this week you signed into law that street redesign bill but it does not deal with the problem of deliveries in New York City. 1.5 million packages are delivered every single day and the trucks to do it are causing a lot of congestion. So I wonder what you think the solution is if you support the idea of limiting deliveries to at night, or maybe there should be a surcharge for people who want to deliver during the day.Mayor: I do. Marcia, I think you were with us the day we announced a pilot program that from what I understand today came back with imperfect results but at least showed us a beginning of both incentivizing and pushing industries to make their deliveries at night or at least off hours. I think that is the way of the future to get more and more deliveries away from particularly rush hour, but as much as possible away from daytime hours.
And I think there are rules we can use, there are some incentives we can use and some penalties we can use to get there. But I think we have to now take a next big step on that and we will have more to say on that soon.Question: If I could just follow up, with congestion pricing coming in in about a year. Would you support charging trucks to come into to deliver more money to come in at prime time and less money at night as an incentive to making the deliveries?Mayor: Yeah so long as it doesn’t contradict the basic concept of congestion pricing. In other words I wouldn’t want to, by mistake, do something that encouraged more truck traffic than we would have had otherwise. I think you are right if you say can we use this as a tool to channel trucks away from the most busy hours, yeah, that could absolutely be a part of the solution.Question: What is your time table for a solution to the delivery issue?Mayor: I want us to do more this year. Again, we have piloted somethings. The results have not been as consistent as we want. But we still have to keep moving forward. So in – when I say this year, going into the beginning of 2020, I want us to come up with the next step.Question: Following up on that, I know particularly with Amazon Prime, and now that they have push to have one-day delivery you see a lot more third party, little vans or even people in private vehicles making deliveries. It’s probably harder to regulate because it’s not a big delivery truck but do you have a plan to look at that too? I mean sometimes people’s packages get delivered from the back of someone’s minivan. I don’t know what your plan is for that?Mayor: Look we have to look at everything. I think the bigger delivery trucks are our biggest problem right now in terms of the amount of disruption they cause. The amount of congestion they cause, particularly, you know, they can double park and just mess up a whole block. But yeah I want to look at the whole picture. The goal is to get less and less traffic during the busiest hours so that means every kind of vehicle, obviously. But the first thing I think we have to deal with is the big delivery trucks from the big companies. Yeah?Question: There’s been an idea floated by a community board of eliminating free on street parking all together [inaudible] delivery issue as well, together with many others. Is that something that you would ever consider?Mayor: I would look at anything but you know I also want to say, we got to be honest about the fact that we have to have deliveries to our stores and until we end up in a very different reality those are going to by trucks. I’m more interested in changing the how and the when. But I would look at any solution.Question: I want to get your take on a story I did yesterday about the gender pay gap in your administration. One of – your spokesperson told me that the pay gap that I found with your top officials is partially caused by two men who make over $400,000 a year and that the City would commit to closing the gap of three cents if those men were not included. So, I just wanted to know is that basically an admission that those two jobs could only be held by men?Mayor: Of course not and look, I’m glad that your paper did the analysis. I think there was an element of that, that really gave the wrong impression and I think it’s really important to be accurate. And so the accurate truth is there’s a handful of jobs and they happen to be jobs that are paid more than the mayor, that it doesn’t matter what gender the person is, that’s the pay level that those jobs will be set at and that will be continuing. And those are roles that have been held by men and women but for very specific reasons those pay levels have developed recently. They don’t reflect on the vast majority of commissioner jobs. If you look at the commissioner jobs, we’re very close to where we want to be which is 100 percent parity amongst comparable jobs. And we will take the next step to get to that parity. So the bottom line is we will have – if you’re talking about two commissioners with very similar jobs and one happens to be male and one happens to be female, they will be making the same amount of money.Question: Mayor, sorry, Veronica Vanterpool, when she resigned she made some comments saying that you were not proactive enough, City Hall was not proactive enough in advocating for transit riders. Could you give a response to that?Mayor: I haven’t seen her comments so I’m not going to respond to just to a characterization. Again, we’ve –Question: [Inaudible]Mayor: Huh?Question: I can read it to you if you want.Mayor: I’m just going to say that the – where we got after a lot of tough work was to finally get to something that’s never been achieved in the history of our city which is a full funding plan for the MTA. And I would have loved it if we all could have gotten to that agreement earlier but I think it took a lot of work and it took squarely putting responsibility where it belonged in the hands of the State, which as you know for a long time the State tried to deny. So, sometimes there’s a reason you go through a certain set of developments to get to a particular end point. We got to the end point we needed to get to which is now we have consistent funding for the MTA so we can make the big changes ahead. And everyone knows the State runs it which was something necessary to all our changes. So, I think those actions are foundational to change.Question: Yesterday another murder conviction on a case that Detective Louis Scarcella worked in was overturned. I know Derrick Hamilton also came to a $7 million settlement with the City – another Scarcella exoneree. Is there a need for a citywide investigation [inaudible] cases. I think some of the [inaudible] been handled by the Brooklyn DA’s Office who was involved in the cases initially when it first happened [inaudible] –Mayor: I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a prosecutor but it is a shocking series of horrible revelations and I think obviously we need to get down to the bottom if there’s anything else out there. I assume that requires the five DAs to work together and we’ll support them in that in any way they want.Question: There’s recently been some officers who either cite cyclists or vehicle or traffic law that doesn’t exist, like having a camera on their head or said they can’t write a ticket to a driver who broke the law for [inaudible]. Do you think that your rank-and-file officers are adequately trained in vehicle and traffic –Mayor: I’m not going to – I appreciate the question – I’m not going to assume that those facts are accurate because I haven’t any evidence of that. But I will say to the bigger question – I think there’s been a lot of effort to educate officers on Vision Zero and if you look at the numbers of the increase in enforcement on speeding, on failure to yield in intersections, I mean it’s obviously been a huge uptick. Does that mean we don’t need it [inaudible]? Of course not. We always have to keep retraining. We also do keep retraining. So, I want all officers to fully understand their ability to give tickets for those offenses and there are also things – and I never shy from this and I don’t care if people like it or not because I hear from my constituents all the time that they care about this and I care about it – if a cyclist also does something that endangers themselves or others, that also should be enforced and it will be enforced. So, we’ll keep educating officers for sure.Question: So, Mr. Mayor, just back to the private carters for a second – just wondering whether you’ve ever had a, as a driver and maybe even now as Mayor – have you ever had a close encounter with a private carter truck –Mayor: Close encounter of a carting kind? Yes. I imagine a whole lot of people have. Who – I’m going to take a, since we have a knowledgeable – who has seen a reckless carting truck drive by on the street? Anyone ever seen that? I’ve seen it dozens and dozens of times. I mean, I’ve just seen – it’s ridiculous – everything that was described here. Going the wrong way, cutting across lanes, backing in out of nowhere. You know people are walking on the sidewalk and suddenly there’s a truck bearing down on them. I mean it’s absolutely ridiculous and that’s why this law is so important.Question: Quick follow-up – not on that but how do you feel about other people being paid more than you are when you’re the boss and you hired them?Mayor: This is America, baby. Everyone can get ahead. No, I mean, you know, I think we can safely say that you don’t go into public service for the salary, right. But no, those jobs are gargantuan jobs – you know, the head of NYCHA, the head of Health + Hospital, Schools Chancellor – I mean, these are some of the toughest public service jobs in America and they deserve to be well compensated. And when you look around the rest of the country, similar jobs pay proportionally more than they do in New York, and that’s something we’ve had to deal with.Question: Follow-up on that – the Chancellor makes, I think it’s about, $120,000 more than Carmen Farina did –Mayor: Yeah.Question: Part of that is from pension payouts –Mayor: She got her pension simultaneously, which was a very substantial benefit for her but that’s not the point. The point again is we looked around the country, we saw that school superintendents were being paid proportionally more than they were in New York City to run systems that were much smaller and that if we were going to compete going forward, we had to make an adjustment. It has nothing to do with gender because we’ve had male and female chancellors and we will continue to in the future. It was about resetting that salary level to the reality of our country.Question: Mayor [inaudible] State Assembly –Mayor: God help us all.Question: Can you elaborate at all on your [inaudible] –Mayor: It’s like, what is it? The vampire that keeps coming back. We have to – no, we’re not allowed to put a stake through someone’s heart. That’s wrong.[Laughter]It’s horrible. I mean first of all he’s running against – he says he wants to run against Jeff Aubry, who is one of the, I think, most important voices of conscious in Albany and I think just an exemplary public servant. So, that’s wrong right there. But no, Hiram continues to be absolutely unrepentant and you know doesn’t learn the lesson that sometimes it’s best to just get out of the way.Question: Following up on the question about the officers who don’t know how to write right of way tickets which is actually a very serious issue. My website runs a story pretty much every day about a cyclist or pedestrian complaining about an officer who showed up on the scene and literally did not know that it was right of way violation that had led to a crash. How is it possible in this day in age in Vision Zero that rank-and-file officers –Mayor: Again, I’m just – I respect you are doing advocacy journalism. God bless you. I don’t accept your facts. You’ve said too many things that suggest that you are coming at it from a particular worldview. I’m not saying your facts are necessarily wrong, I just can’t take them from someone who says, ‘I have only one worldview.’ What I will say is if someone provides us that information I want those officers trained. If it ever happens, it’s not acceptable and we would deal with it. But I also remind you, there has been a steady uptick in enforcement and there will be more. Okay a few more. Go ahead.Question: I wanted to see – staffers at the City Council announced this week that they are going to unionize, there are efforts to unionize. I want to get your take on it and I know there could be some staffers at the Mayor’s Office that are not unionized, would you support if they wanted to unionize [inaudible]?Mayor: Look, I think the – there’s a big difference obviously from executive managerial agency versus legislative. I believe in unionization. I also think there’s an obvious point where people have managerial responsibilities and it has to be understood to be managerial and it doesn’t fit unionization so well. So, you know, we would have to look at that case by case but in the case of the Council, you know, if that’s something they want to do, I think we’ll all work together.Question: The City Council voted to improve access to Hart Island last week. A missing component in that, though, is getting ferry service to the island so people can actually go visit the graves. Where is the City on that and will NYC Ferry be involved?Mayor: I don’t think NYC Ferry will be involved necessarily but we want to work with the Council, it’s a very real issue, and I appreciate the Council not only recognizing that change was needed but coming forward with ideas on how to do it. So, we’ll work with them to figure out a solution. Gloria?Question: Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to go back to the parking question because when Erin asked, you were talking about deliveries and I believe the story is about a specific community board that is considering getting rid of on street – free, available on street parking. So, wondering what your reaction would be to that and if you would be supportive of a community board just saying –Mayor: Again, community boards, they play a really important role. They don’t make the final decisions on a lot of things as you know. But if you’re saying on a residential street not allowing people to park on their own street – is that what you’re saying?Question: Yeah.Mayor: That one – I’m sorry I did misunderstand. I appreciate you clarifying –Question: [Inaudible]Mayor: Thank you for raising it. Please in the future, Erin, if I don’t understand a question and it’s evident say, ‘I don’t think you understood the question.’ That would be helpful and I’d appreciate it. No, I thought we were still talking about trucks and deliveries and all. No, on first blush if you said we’re going to tell people they can’t park on their street, no, that does not ring true to me. I think we need to keep finding every solution to reduce the use of motor vehicles in New York City and I’ll look at a whole range of things but if you said on first blush [inaudible] go so far as telling people they can’t park on their street, no I’m not there. Last call?Question: I’m wondering with Thanksgiving being next week if you have an update on Fifth Avenue –Mayor: We will soon. Okay, thank you, everybody.