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Thread: De Blasio’s newest city agency: Office of Nightlife

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    De Blasio’s newest city agency: Office of Nightlife

    The City That Never Sleeps meets the Government That Always Grows.

    Mayor de Blasio went to a funky Brooklyn nightclub Tuesday night to sign a bill creating a new city agency — the Office of Nightlife, which is supposed to oversee clubs and cabarets.

    Despite the presence of community boards and the city’s own Department of Small Business Services, the mayor believes another layer of government is needed to deal with quality-of-life issues and to help keep struggling clubs from going under.

    “It’s pretty shocking — one in five small businesses have been lost in the last couple of decades in New York City,” said de Blasio during a festive bill signing event at the House of YES in Bushwick featuring legendary punk rock drummer Marky Ramone of The Ramones.

    “And one of the big reasons was it was hard to navigate the rules and restrictions that in so many cases went too far.”

    The bill, which de Blasio signed at the House of Yes in Bushwick, will add two new staffers to a municipal workforce that already tops a record 322,000.

    The Office of Nightlife will have an annual budget of $407,000 — including $370,000 to pay a yet-to-be-named director and deputy.

    They will work with a 12-person Nightlife Advisory Board to help clubs navigate the approval process for licenses and permits, review neighborhood complaints, make policy recommendations, and advise City Hall on trends impacting the industry.

    Eight of those board members will be appointed by the City Council speaker and four by the mayor. They will each serve a two-year term.

    Councilman Rafael Espinal, the bill’s lead sponsor, said he pushed for the legislation because some community boards are too quick to take steps to put nightclubs out of business after receiving complaints.

    “If we’re going to remain the City That Never Sleeps, we need this,” Espinal told The Post. “The new office is a going to serve as a bridge between the nightlife establishments, residents and government.”

    “We’re talking about a $10 billion industry in New York with 100,000 employees, so a few hundred thousand dollars is a drop in the bucket. The funding for the new office will easily pay for itself.”

    He said the office is modeled after a similar program in Amsterdam, Holland, that helped reduce quality-of-life complaints and crime by nearly 30 percent.

    But members of Manhattan Community Board 3, which represents the nightlife hotbed of the East Village, say they’re concerned the new office and advisory board will cater to the club industry.

    The board passed a resolution in July ripping the bill, saying, “Community boards are generally the front line in receiving complaints resulting from nightlife establishments and work with city agencies” to address them.

    More than 20 percent of the city’s smaller music venues have closed in the past 15 years amid noise complaints, skyrocketing real-estate prices and licensing issues, according to the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.
    http://nypost.com/2017/09/19/de-blas...-of-nightlife/

    Also...

    Out of more than 20,000 bars and restaurants in the city, fewer than 100 actually have the license. Everywhere else, it’s illegal to dance.

    Councilman Rafael Espinal, D-Brooklyn, introduced the bill to repeal the law, saying dancing doesn’t need to be licensed.

    “The bill that I have right now is pretty much clearly going to be a full repeal of the Cabaret Law, so that means all of the language has been in place for almost a hundred years now will be removed, completely removed off our books,” Espinal said in a video by the Dance Liberation Network, a grassroots group that calls the law outdated and racist.

    Many believe the law was originally written as a way to prevent interracial dancing in the city’s clubs.

    “It is time we right this historical wrong and remove New York City’s inappropriate, arbitrarily enforced dancing license,” Espinal said.

    The last time the cabaret laws were used to crack down on bars and restaurants was during the Giuliani era.


    The de Blasio administration said it strongly supports a repeal.

    The repeal follows the creation of New York City’s first-ever Office of Nightlife.


    http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/10/...s_local-newser
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  3. #2
    If they are paying the director that much, it doesn't leave much for the actual oversight.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi



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