Howie Hawkins for 4th District Councilior

Howie Hawkins for 4th District Councilor
A Community Activist for the 4th District

PLATFORM
COMMUNITY SERVICE and POSITIVE CHANGE

COMMUNITY SERVICE:

  • Prompt Response to Constituent Calls
  • Regular Hours at the South Salina Street Office
  • Neighborhood Assemblies – Regular Meetings to Discuss Issues and Organize to Realize Community Goals

POSITIVE CHANGE:

  • Fully Funded Public Schools
  • Crime Prevention through Youth Jobs & Recreation
  • A Stronger Living Wage Law
  • A Community Hiring Hall to Increase Jobs for Inner City Residents
  • A Municipal Bank to Create Community-Owned Businesses
  • Neighborhood Grocery Stores
  • Municipal Broadband (Cable TV, Internet, Phone) for More Channels and Better Technology at Lower Rates
  • Public Power for Affordable, Green Energy

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Prompt Response to Constituent Calls
If elected as 4th District Councilor, Howie Hawkins pledges to respond to constituent calls within 24 hours to find out what the concern is and see what he can do to help. Whether it is a pothole, a drug house down the street, the promised bike lane that didn’t happen, a problem with codes or DPW, or a pending vote before the Common Council, the first responsibility of a District Councilor is to be responsive to the district’s residents and their concerns.

Office Hours in the Neighborhood
If elected, Howie Hawkins will keep his campaign office at 2617 South Salina Street open and schedule regular office hours where district residents can come in and talk to their District Councilor about neighborhood or citywide issues and concerns.

Neighborhood Assemblies
If elected, Howie Hawkins will organize regular meetings in each of the eight or so neighborhoods of the 4th District where neighborhood residents can discuss issues and organize to realize community goals.

LIVING WAGE JOBS TO END POVERTY
Syracuse has the 3rd highest poverty rate – and the highest black poverty rate – of the 100 largest US cities. (US Census, 2005)

A Stronger Living Wage Law
Enforce the existing Living Wage Ordinance. Expand it to cover all workers with the city and its contractors. Seek to cover all workers in the city through a citywide minimum wage, as Santa Fe, New Mexico has done. Attach to the new Living Wage Ordinance minority and city resident hiring goals for all jobs with the city and city contractors and a Community Hiring Hall to help reach those goals.

Employment Goals for City Residents
People of color and city residents don’t get their fair share of jobs with the city and city contractors. The city has no program to increase city resident and minority employment in city departments and with city contractors, except for the police and fire departments where the goal has been 8 percent since the 1970s due to court orders. The city’s minority population is approaching 50 percent. The strengthened Living Wage Ordinance should include a positive program of affirmative action to increase city residents and people of color in jobs with the city and its contractors.

Community Hiring Hall
The strengthened Living Wage Law should require city departments and contractors to hire qualified workers from a Community Hiring Hall if they cannot meet minority and city resident employment goals. The Community Hiring Hall will provide job counseling, placement, training, and support services to help people qualify, get into, and stay in training programs and jobs.

Green Job Corps and Green Tech Training Center
The Community Hiring Hall should be a the center of building a partnership among unions, community organizations, contractors, manufacturers, educational institutions, and the city to provide a skilled workforce for green tech sectors. The overall goal is to create unionized green jobs in both the private sector and in public works to restore Onondaga Creek and retrofit our energy, transportation, housing, water, sewage, and waste-recycling infrastructure for economic and ecological sustainability in an era of rising energy costs and global warming. A Green Tech Training Center and Green Job Corps coordinated through the Community Hiring Hall should be developed with programs aimed at recruiting especially at-risk youth and ex-offenders who have few other job prospects.

Crime Prevention through Youth Jobs and Recreation
Open and staff schools and parks nights, weekends, and summers.

Stop the "War on Drugs" and Mass Incarceration
Redirect the money the city spends on enforcing drug laws to harm reduction and prevention efforts. Treat drug abuse as a health problem, not a criminal problem.

Strengthen the Citizen Review Board
Strengthen the power and independence of the Citizen Review Board by giving it subpoena powers and the right to initiate legal action without the approval of the city’s lawyers. Put police cooperation with Citizen Review Board hearings into the next police union contract.

COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE

What a city requires is slow, patient work by excellent government and many small investors.
~ Andres Duany, "new urbanism" city planner

If we are going to have meaningful economic development, we are going to have to do it ourselves. The Big Boss is not coming back. No big corporation or developer is going to rescue Syracuse no matter how many tax breaks we give them. The Enterprise Zones, Empowerment Zones, and Empire Zones have been tried for decades and failed to halt the exodus of jobs, industries, and people. Destiny USA looks bust.

Nor is Uncle Sam going to save us. He is squandering resources on wars and bank bailouts, not rebuilding our cities.

If Syracuse is going to develop the businesses it needs, it needs a much more direct, pro-active way of developing them than trying to lure businesses here with tax breaks, which cost Syracuse $2 billion over a recent five-year period, according to Forbes magazine. The people of Syracuse are ready to invest their money and labor in this community. What’s missing is "excellent government."

The city of Syracuse needs institutions that promote community ownership in order to raise up the whole community, not absentee ownership that siphons profits out of our community to distant corporate headquarters. That means public ownership of the power and broadband utilities and a Municipal Development Bank with a business planning department to help city residents, old and new, build the community-owned businesses the city needs.

A Municipal Development Bank for Community-Owned Businesses
Redirect corporate welfare (tax breaks, grants, etc.) for absentee owners into public investment in community-owned enterprises:

  • worker and consumer cooperatives
  • resident owner-operated businesses
  • corporations where voting shares are restricted to city residents (like the Green Bay Packers).

A Municipal Development Bank should be established to help plan, finance, develop, and advise community-owned enterprises.

Neighborhood Grocery Stores
A high early priority for the Municipal Development Bank should be the development of co-op grocery stores. For decades, the city has tried to attract one downtown. Meanwhile, the South Side, Southwest, and other neighborhoods have lost their last groceries. It’s time to develop a network of community-owned groceries in our neighborhoods.

Public Power for Affordable, Green Energy
Syracusans pay four times more for electricity to National Grid than the people in Solvay and Skaneatales pay to their city-owned power companies. Replace National Grid with a public power utility to cut energy costs, restore responsive customer service, and build city-owned clean, renewable energy sources. (For more information, see www.cnypublicpower.net)

Municipal Broadband (Cable TV, Internet, Phone)
Hundreds of US cities have municipal ownership of their broadband utilities and their customers pay 30% less on average for cable TV, internet, and phone. Time Warner’s cable franchise is up for renewal. Now is the time to municipalize our broadband utility for (1) lower fees, (2) community control of available channels (from Democracy Now to the NFL Network), (3) quality Public Access, Education, and Government (PEG) programming, (4) universal access to high-speed internet, and (5) up-to-date public access video and web-based media creation centers. Every Syracuse should have first-class, affordable access to internet, cable, and phone communications. The Syracuse economy needs first-rate affordable broadband to progress. The profits now exported to Time-Warner can stay in the community for our own benefit through municipal cable. (For more information, see http://syracusebroadband.org.)

Urban Renewal, Not Urban Removal:
Development Without Displacement and Gentrification
Development should raise up low-income people, not remove them through rising property values that price people with limited incomes out of their neighborhoods. Protect existing residents through Inclusionary Zoning and Community Benefit Agreements that require developers to build affordable housing and through Community Land Trusts that enable neighborhoods as a whole to benefit from rising land values.

These policies are particularly needed in the 4th District in the Downtown, Gateway, and Old 15th Ward neighborhoods, where low and moderate income housing in these neighborhoods is disappearing with the closure or conversion of the Kennedy Square apartment complex and the Presidential Plaza towers. The only exception to this trend is the new Justice Center jail, the only low-income public housing built in Syracuse in decades, where hundreds of mostly low-income people fill the jail to capacity. We must fight to insure low-to-moderate income people help shape redevelopment in these neighborhoods that is coming with Syracuse University’s Connective Corridor and the take down of the elevated sections of Interstates 81 and 690.

A GREEN ECONOMY for a SUSTAINABLE SYRACUSE

Sustainable Syracuse
Everybody is a "green" now. Every politician and every party in Syracuse now pays homage to "sustainable development" and a "green economy."

  • The Green Party welcomes this development. But there is more to greening Syracuse than relying renewable energy and green buildings.
  • There is also the question, not yet answered by the establishment parties, of empowering people so they can choose sustainability against the vested interests that benefit from unsustainable practices that enhance to profit of big business and the patronage power of government bureaucracies. We need new government and business structures of political and economic democracy that empower people to institute sustainable practices.
  • Between catastrophic climate change and the peaking of oil production, we can no longer take our supplies of food and energy for granted. We should no longer plan on securing food from the other side of the continent and fuel from the other side of the world. Global transportation networks and supply and production chains will become more and more expensive due to climate change and rising oil prices in the coming years.
  • We need to start now to develop regional food and energy self-reliance, as well as a sustainable base of ecologically sustainable and diverse manufacturing. When Syracuse was more of a manufacturing center, Syracuse was at its peak of prosperity. The high value-added nature of manufacturing creates wealth and serves as the foundation for the service, retail, and government sectors. We need to produce much of our material wealth in our city and region in sustainable agriculture and industry, with sustainable agricultural feedstocks supplying the raw materials for ecological manufacturing.
  • As the Green Party’s mayoral candidate in 2005, I presented the Greens’ a vision for a Sustainable Syracuse (see www.syracusegreens.org/election2005/sustainablecuse.html). The Greens have proposed many ideas for discussion for a Sustainable Syracuse, which they are updating on links at www.syracusegreens.org. These include:
  • A Garden City urban agricultural corridor north-south along that Onondaga Creek corridor on the South Side and Valley.
  • An eco-industrial corridor east-west along the old Erie Canal route for clean manufacturing that builds upon the region’s existing strengths in processing agricultural products and environmental services.
  • Redig the Erie Canal from the Inner Harbor through downtown and the city to the East to bring an east-west water corridor to be enjoyed across the city.
  • Greenways for bikes and pedestrians networking the city, free from auto traffic.
  • Pedestrian walkways in downtown and neighborhood business districts.
  • Rebuilding a light rail system for Syracuse, perhaps an overhead, on-demand Personal Rapid Transit on elevated rails above the streets and greenways.
  • A central park for the city at the core of mixed-use development when the elevated portions of Interstates 81 and 690 are taken down.
  • If the Carousel Mall/Destiny USA project goes bankrupt, consider conversion by the city or a cooperative private developer to a mixed-use community, with apartments for seniors and families in the vacant mall expansion, a community center, a grocery store, a mass transit link to downtown, etc.

Take the time to develop the Inner Harbor the right way, as a mixed-use "new urbanism" sustainable community according to the original Andres Duany proposal still displayed in a conceptual drawing at the Inner Harbor.

These are ideas for discussion. The most important component of the Sustainable Syracuse vision is a democratic process that empowers the people of Syracuse to choose sustainability. Ecological and economic sustainability obviously requires renewable sources of energy and materials and viable businesses that can meet their expenses over the long term. Sustainability principles often also call for social equity or environmental justice so that everyone enjoys the fruits of a new green economy. But what is often missed is the democracy that gives us the power to choose sustainability over the profit and power interests of the powerful outside forces of big business and central government bureaucracies.

That is why we call for Neighborhood Planning and a City Planning Department, as well as the democratic Community Enterprises already discussed, so we can make our own decisions about sustainable development.

Neighborhood Planning
The most important feature of the Sustainable Syracuse vision is not the particular projects we suggest, but empowering the people of Syracuse to make the decisions on the particulars. Empowering the people to make these decisions requires Neighborhood Assemblies in each of the city's real neighborhoods where residents can debate, decide, and instruct representatives on reviewing and updating the citywide Comprehensive Plan and determining their own Neighborhood Plans.

City Planning Department
The city needs its own planning capacity if it going to do more than just react to developers’ proposals. It needs to re-establish a City Planning Department to do real urban and community design, not just administer zoning rules. It should be staffed with urban and community designers, architects, engineers, and artists who can put design ideas in graphic form for the Neighborhood Assemblies and city officials to evaluate. The department should also recruit and facilitate the involvement of professors and students from area’s universities in providing this expertise. The City Planning Department would not make planning decisions. Its role would be to provide expert consultation to the democratic planning process based in the Neighborhood Assemblies and to the evaluation of developers' proposals by the assemblies and city officials.

FAIR TAXES TO FUND THE CITY, SCHOOLS, & YOUTH PROGRAMS

The poorest 20% pay 14% of their income in sales and property taxes while the wealthiest 20% pay only 7% in New York State (Fiscal Policy Institute, 2003). Meanwhile, the city of Syracuse faces a recurring $25 million annual structural deficit. We need a more progressive local tax structure to make taxes fair and sufficient to fund city services and the schools.

Fully Funded Public Schools
Fight for a fair statewide school funding formula. Commit to a regular annual increase in the city contribution to the school budget.

City Income and Commuter Tax
Establish a progressively graduated city income tax, including a tax on the incomes earned in the city by 40,000+ commuters. Commuters use city services (police, fire, roads, infrastructure) but make no contribution to pay for them.

Progressive Property Taxes through Land Value Taxation
Cut the property tax, make it progressive, and stimulate inner-city development by taxing land values more and improvements to homes and businesses less.

Service Fees for Non-Profits
Over half of city property is tax exempt. The city should review what it is costing to provide fire, police, roads, water, sewers, and other infrastructure services to non-profits in the city and consider instituting or changing service fees so those institutions that are using these services help pay for their costs.

NEIGHBORHOOD ASSEMBLIES and FAIR ELECTIONS

Neighborhood Assemblies
We need to reform city government to create institutions for grassroots, participatory, direct democracy where every citizen has a voice and a vote, like New England Town Meetings. That means neighborhood governments: Neighborhood Assemblies in the 25 or so real city neighborhoods where each resident has a voice and vote in planning neighborhood development, guiding the local delivery of city services, developing participatory budgets, and electing neighborhood representatives to Common Council, the school board, and other city boards and commissions.

As a step toward Neighborhood Assemblies, if elected I intend to organize unofficial Neighborhood Assemblies and organize regular meetings with them, perhaps four to six times a year, in each of eight neighborhoods of the 4th District:

(1) Downtown/15th Ward
On the South Side:
(2) Southwest
(3) Gateway
(4) Brighton
On the Eastside:
(5) Outer Comstock
(6) University Hill
(7) University Neighborhood
(8) Westcott

The neighborhoods themselves can decide whether this breakdown makes sense. But the point is to create an institution where neighborhood residents can discuss their views on issues and proposals before the city and Common Council, take up any neighborhood issues or problems they choose, and get organized to fulfill their neighborhood’s needs and goals.

Fair Elections: Instant Runoff Voting and Proportional Representation

Instant Runoff Voting for Mayor: Elect single seats like Mayor, Auditor, and District Councilors by Instant Runoff Voting. Voters rank their choices in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, and so on. If no candidate receives a majority in the first round, the last place candidate is eliminated and the ballots for that candidate are districted according to their second choice. This process continues until a candidate receives a majority of votes.

This election system allows voters to support their first choice, rather than voting for a "lesser evil" in order to stop their "greater evil." It eliminates the "spoiler" problem and promotes multi-candidate elections. (For more explanation of instant runoff voting, see www.fairvote.org/?page=20.)

Proportional Representation in Common Council: Proportional representation would replace the current winner-take-all system, which under-represents or excludes minority views. Proportional representation gives full representation to all views in proportion to their support among the voters. It gives voters more voices and more choices.

We propose a mixed-member proportional system for Syracuse that elects district councilors from neighborhood districts and an equal number of at-large councilors by party vote so that the overall composition of the council is proportional to each party’s vote. This system of mixed-member proportional representation gives each district their own neighborhood representative and gives each party representation on Common Council in proportion to their support among the voters.

Today’s 10-member Common Council (5 district, 5 at-large) creates districts too large for neighborhood accountability. We suggest returning to the 20-member Common Council that the city had before the city charter changes of 1936, only this time it would be elected by proportional representation, so there would be a Common Council of 10 District Councilors representing their neighborhoods and 10 At-Large Councilors representing their parties. (For more explanation of mixed-member proportional representation, see www.fairvote.org/?page=2046).

Public Campaign Finance
City elections should not be for sale. Elections are public functions. The campaigns should be funded by the public, not private special interests, so the voters, not the moneyed interests, own and control the process.

Establish a system of public funding of city election campaigns that provides sufficient resources to a candidate to reach their district’s voters. All ballot-qualified candidates who refuse to accept private money would qualify for public funding.

The cost should be in the range of $10 to $20 per year per voter. Syracuse currently has 72,322 registered voters. The $10 assumes two parties with full slates and budgets of $10,000 for district councilors, $50,000 for at-large councilors, and $500,000 for mayoral candidates, for a total budget of $1.3 million. All four-party races would cost about $2.6 million and four party races for all seats would come to about $20 per year per voter. Those are small prices to pay for real democracy.

Post-Census Redistricting and City Charter Reform
The most opportune time to institutionalize to Neighborhood Assemblies, Instant Runoff Voting, and Proportional Representation will be writing them into the City Charter after the 2010 census when Common Council will be required to redraw district lines. The time to start discussing and educating on the need for these changes is now.

SYRACUSE FOR PEACE, FREEDOM, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The federal government is wasting our tax money on war and militarism, bailouts for rich bankers, and restrictions on our rights and freedoms. Meanwhile, it is failing to address people’s basic needs, the global climate crisis, and the energy crisis due to the peaking of oil production. It is time for the Common Council to join many other cities in resolutions calling on our federal representatives to stop the wars, cut the military budget, fund our domestic needs, restore our constitutional rights and civil liberties, and guarantee universal health care.

Stop the Wars and Bring the Troops Home
The US military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are wars for oil and gas pipelines (Jason Leopold, "Eager to Tap Iraq's Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion," July 3, 2009, http://www.truthout.org/070309J?n; Pepe Escobar, "Pipelineistan Goes Af-Pak," May 12, 2009, www.tomdispatch.com/post/175071).

These wars are undermining, not protecting, the security of the American people. Impoverished villagers in these countries pose no threat to the US as long as we leave them alone in their own countries. We should buy their oil and gas on the world market, not try to steal it from them at much greater expense.

Police work, not wars of occupation, is how to catch and bring terrorists to justice, as the military think tanks know full well (Rand Corporation, "How Terrorist Groups End: Implications for Countering al Qa'ida," July 28, 2008, http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9351/index1.html)

Cut the Military Budget and Invest the Peace Dividend
in Schools, Jobs, Housing, Green Energy, & Ending Poverty
Since 2001, Syracuse taxpayers have paid over $364 million in income taxes for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and over $2.2 billion for US military spending to operate a global military empire of over 250,000 troops in over 700 overseas military bases. Those federal income taxes paid by Syracusans averaged for the last 8 years about $45 million per year for the wars and about $275 million per year for total US military spending. Compare that to the city budget for FY 2009/2010: $281 million for city operations and $352 million for the city schools.

The military budgets planned for the next eight years amount to more than $5 trillion, a higher level of military spending than any time since World War II – higher than any year of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, or the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (see Winslow Wheeler, "How Obama Will Outspend Reagan on Defense," June 17, 2009, www.counterpunch.org/wheeler06172009.html).

Restore Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties
The regime changed in Washington, but the violations of our constitutional rights and civil liberties continue. We are seeing more secrecy, less transparency and an expansion of "state secrets" privileges. It is becoming obvious that the Obama administration is using secrecy to hide the war crimes and civil rights crimes of Bush administration officials, including some current Bush administration carryovers to the Obama administration. The cover-up makes the current administration complicit in the crimes of the previous administration.

The Secret Evidence Act (1996), the Patriot Acts (2001, 2006), the Homeland Security Act (2002), and the Military Commissions Act (2006) are all still in force. The violations of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and international war crime treaties continue: warrantless email and phone surveillance, secret detention, indefinite detention, arrests without charges and no access to lawyers or habeas corpus, secret "evidence," torture, military tribunals for civilians, and "extraordinary rendition" to the CIA’s global network of secret torture centers.

A Single-Payer, Community-Based Universal Health Service
We need a Universal Health Service funded by progressive taxes and paying the salaries and operating budgets of health care providers to deliver all medically necessary services to every US resident. Progressive taxes can fund a Universal Health Service at significantly less cost than what both families and businesses now pay in taxes, insurance premiums, and out-of-pocket expenses. This reform would also provide huge relief to municipal, county, and state budgets by eliminating their health care costs.

The predatory economic dynamic of our profit-oriented health care system is cannibalizing the rest of the economy. Health care spending now accounts for 17 percent of GDP and has grown at three times the rate of inflation for the last decade. Since 1999, employment-based health insurance premiums have increased 120 percent, compared to cumulative inflation of 44 percent and cumulative wage growth of 29 percent during the same period. Administrative overhead and profits account for 31 percent of spending in private health insurance sector, compared to the 3.6 percent overhead for Medicare.

The US spends twice as much per person on health care as any other country in the world, but ranks 37th in health care outcomes, according to the World Health Organization.

47 million people are now uninsured and tens of millions more are underinsured. 62 percent of personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills and 68 percent of these people had health insurance.

The health care system is not delivering the medical care it should and it is bankrupting our country. We need to make health care a public service, not a profit-maximizing business. We need fundamental reform of both the payment system and the delivery system.

On the payment side, we need a single public payer through a Universal Health Service. The administrative efficiencies of such a system would save $400 billion a year, enabling the system to insure every US resident with a comprehensive set of benefits covering all medically necessary services, including:

  • Primary care
  • Inpatient care
  • Outpatient care
  • Emergency care
  • Prescription drugs
  • Durable medical equipment
  • Long term care
  • Mental health services
  • Dentistry
  • Eye care
  • Chiropractic
  • Substance abuse treatment

Patients would have their choice of physicians, providers, hospitals, clinics, and practices. Patients would pay no co-pays or deductibles. The Universal Health Service would pay health care providers’ salaries and operating budgets. The $400 billion savings from reduced administration, bulk purchasing, and coordination among providers will allow coverage for all Americans.

On the delivery side, we need to replace the fee-for-service system with salaried staff. The piecework system of fee-for-service builds in incentives for providers to maximize patients and procedures in order to maximize income under any system, single payer or multi payer, non-profit or especially for-profit. Without replacing fee-for-service with salaries, we will not contain costs in the long run. That is why we need a Universal Health Service (not just universal health insurance) where physicians and other staff work for a salary. Under the fees-for-service system, specialties and volume bring in the most income, while primary care and time with patients are neglected.

The Universal Health Service would do more than provide universal "coverage," an insurance term meaning simply that health care costs would be "covered" for every U.S. resident. It goes beyond this by ensuring that not only that health services would be paid for, but also that they would be available where and when users need them. Through funding of community and regional health services in all parts of the country, on a per capita basis, it would ensure that services were available to every resident.

Salaried physicians and other staff would work in non-profit, multi-specialty group practices. The Universal Health Service would only fund services provided by publicly owned salaried group practices, on the model of the British Universal Health Service, or by non-profit organizations with salaried staff like the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

A decentralized federation of local health boards elected by health care consumers and workers would govern the Universal Health Service. The local boards would send representatives to state and national boards where state and national budgets and policies would be developed. This structure provides a community-based system – controlled from the bottom up by those who use the system and those who work in it. The system has a budget, not an open-ended fee-for-service guarantee. The Universal Health Service would get a certain amount of money each year for each community in the country on per capita basis, plus some special needs funding. But the decisions on what services to provide and who should provide them are made locally by the people who live in the localities and by the people who work in the system, by the providers.

Legislation embodying these principles has been introduced in Congress every year since 1973. The current bill is HR 3000, the United States Universal Health Service Act.

 


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