De Blasio Outlines Vision For ‘Fair’ Recovery After Coronavirus Pandemic, Announces Advisory Councils To Help

De Blasio Outlines Vision For ‘Fair’ Recovery After Coronavirus Pandemic, Announces Advisory Councils To Help

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Mayor Bill de Blasio Sunday outlined what and how reopening of the city would look like, announcing the creation of several advisory councils, including one on racial inclusion co-chaired by his wife Chirlane McCray.

“We’re going to build something new and we’re going to build something better, and not just better because it’s more modern. We’re going to build something more fair. We’re going to build something for everyone,”  De Blasio said. “We need to build a better and more just society than the one we left behind.”

The mayor said the coronavirus pandemic has “laid bare” disparities that must not be allowed to continue.

“The economic and racial disparities that have been made so clear by this crisis. We knew about them before, they’ve been, just a powerful, painful exclamation point has been put on them by this crisis. It is a clarion call to us to start right now fighting back against those disparities and to build a deeper plan to fight them on a more permanent basis,” the mayor said.

De Blasio said a reopened New York City will be a “reimagination of what this city could be.”

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He again said that any restart will not happen all at once but will rather take place in phases.

As to when a restart would commence, De Blasio said any reopening decision will be fact-driven, based on leading indicators of the spread of COVID-19. Also required would be a massive increase in testing capacity.

“We restart when we have evidence,” he said.

WEB EXTRA: See de Blasio’s presentation (.pdf)

He criticized other states and cities that are rushing to reopen.

“Anybody, any state, any city, that doesn’t pay attention to those factual health care indicators, that evidence, is running a risk, is endangering their own people. Their whole idea of wanting to rush a restart so we can have an economy and recover, it could all backfire, because if the disease reasserts, you’re delaying potentially by a long time when you can have that kind of recovery. We won’t let that happen here,” de Blasio said.

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De Blasio said the questions of how to restart are numerous, and remain unanswered at this time.

“How do you reopen a restaurant and still do it in a way that protects the customers and protects the people that work there? How do you do that right? What kind of protection will people need? What kind of PPEs will people need to wear in a lot of different parts of the city, a lot of different work  that they do to make sure that they’re safe?” de Blasio said. “We’ve got to start to fill in those blanks. How much will we be doing temperature checks or symptom checks on a regular basis? Where? How?”

To help answer some of those questions, de Blasio announced the creation of sector-by-sector advisory councils that will start meeting in May. The advisory councils include:

• Small business
• Large business
• Public health and health care
• Arts, culture, tourism
• Labor
• Nonprofits and social services
• Faith-based organizations
• Educational and vocational training

De Blasio also announced the creation of a task force on racial inclusion and equity, which will be co-chaired by first lady Chirlane McCray and Deputy Mayor Phil Thompson.

“This will be made up of leaders of the city government, focusing on the disparities we’re seeing already. Making sure that we are addressing structural racism that that is obviously present in the realities that we’re facing with this disease,” de Blasio said.

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April 26, 2020 at 08:00PM