Mamdani Touts a Stunning View of the City, but Struggles to Clear the Sidewalks

The metal detector at the entrance to the north tower of 1 Center Street — the 40-story Beaux Arts building known officially as the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building — was not working Monday, meaning reporters arriving at Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s news conference had to submit to a hand search. But the view that greeted us upon arriving at the 25th-floor rooftop was worth the wait and the bitter cold: a spectacular view of lower Manhattan from river to river, used as the backdrop for an announcement from the mayor—flanked by the Comptroller, Public Advocate, and Manhattan Borough President—that, beginning in June, the roof and majestic dome of the building’s 36th floor would be open to the public free of charge.

“In many ways, Mayor Dinkins was ahead of his time,” Mamdani said, citing his predecessor’s frequent references to “the ‘magnificent mosaic’ that is New York.”

“Mayor Dinkins paved the way for so many who followed,” Mamdani continued. “He was not only the first black mayor, [but] he was also the first member of the Democratic Socialists of America and his politics of compassion, kindness and generosity remain a guide to me and so many others as we lead from City Hall.

Having covered the Dinkins administration at the time, I can attest that he was a thoroughly honest, and at times even morally courageous, man whose record is likely to be more generously assessed by historians than his actions were by the press of his day. But he also served as mayor for a term whose failures – not only in public safety but also in the effective and efficient delivery of municipal services – opened the door to Rudy Giuliani and the politics of resentment that still infects our public life.

Although it would have been unwise to say it while celebrating his legacy, Dinkins offers a cautionary tale about both the lingering racial biases that hold nonwhite politicians to higher standards and the dangers of neglecting the details of everyday governance for the distractions of ambitious vision and lofty rhetoric. As a spectacle, the mayor’s rooftop extravaganza was top-notch; he even promised, before the Super Bowl: “We will never light this building on the Patriots.” But at the end of his first month on the job, during which he was repeatedly asked — and refused — to grade his own performance, it would be difficult to justify anything higher than an A-.

The Mamdani administration has been admirably efficient in accomplishing the primary task of clearing the streets from the monster snowstorm of late January – a forbidding and sometimes fatal obstacle for some new mayors. But the city’s bus stops, crosswalks and sidewalks were a different story. None of this was the mayor’s fault. Property owners, not the city, are responsible for maintaining safe sidewalks; bus stops with shelters are supposed to be demolished by shovels by JC Decaux (the advertising agency); Pedestrian crossings near municipal parks are the responsibility of the parks department.

Nor was it the mayor’s or the city’s fault that some New Yorkers froze to death. In 2022, the latest year for which figures are available on the city’s data portal, 54 residents died from the cold, a sharp increase from 34 the year before, and at a time when the Adams administration was aggressively clearing homeless encampments from city streets.

But a mayor must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Given the extensive advance warnings, not only of the historic scale of the snowstorm, but also of the likely duration of the ensuing cold snap, and the sharp increase in the number of reported deaths, from seven just after the January 25 storm to 17 today, media coverage of this issue – including a Daily News first page – seems about right.

Likewise, although the mayor has expressed unreserved appreciation for the Department of Sanitation’s efforts to keep the streets passable, the department’s assertion that they are “currently about 24 hours behind in trash collection,” which the mayor repeated Monday, is simply not credible to anyone walking the streets outside of Manhattan. On my street in Cobble Hill – well inside the “Commie Corridor” that propelled Mamdani to Gracie Mansion – the mountains of uncollected trash have been there for more than a week.