Evening Roundup: Turkish Consulate Lacks Safety Approvals, NYC Board of Elections Director Keeps Job After Investigation, Congestion Pricing Check-in and a C...

Janae Pierre. Welcome to NYC NOW, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. The criminal case against Mayor Eric Adams hinges on allegations he pressured fire officials to approve the opening of a Turkish Consulate building in spite of safety concerns in 2021. A new report from the city comptroller finds that same building is still missing safety approvals more than three years later. Comptroller Brad Lander says the building doesn't have a certificate of occupancy and received initial permission to open without a valid fire safety plan.

Brad Lander: We thought it was critical to understand, all right, what happened here? Was the building safe? Wasn't it safe? What did the Fire Department do? What did the Buildings Department do? And what's going on now?

Janae Pierre: Lander says his office didn't get clear answers to those questions. He's running to unseat Adams in the Democratic primary. A Buildings Department spokesperson says the building is safe for occupants.

The head of New York City Board of Elections is facing scrutiny after city investigators found he created a hostile work environment for two women who reported to him. The Department of Investigation found Mike Ryan made repeated unwanted comments about the women's gender and ethnicity. Former associate general counsel Stephanie Jaquez quit because of Ryan's alleged conduct. She says she plans to sue the agency.

Stephanie Jaquez: I think especially within the BOE, it's a frightening place and people tend to not want to speak up because they feel like their careers depend on it.

Janae Pierre: The DOI took the unusual step of recommending that the BOE fire Ryan, but the Board of Elections Commissioners refused. They opted to suspend him for three weeks without pay, send him to sensitivity training and put him on a year's probation. Ryan is disputing the allegations and apologizing to anyone he unintentionally offended. It's been less than a week since the start of New York City's congestion pricing program. After the break, we check in to see how it's going so far. Stay close.

New York City's congestion pricing tolls began this past Sunday, tolling drivers $9 to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street weekdays from 5:00 AM to 9:00 at night. The main goal is to reduce gridlock, considered among the worst in the world. So are the tolls accomplishing that goal? My colleague Michael Hill posed that question and more to WNYC's Liam Quigley, who stepped in this week as our congestion correspondent.

Michael Hill: Liam, what do we know so far about the tolls actually reducing traffic?

Liam Quigley: So the data we have right now, it jumps around day to day, but there are some early signs of progress. INRIX, which is a traffic analysis firm has data that shows compared to this time last year, average vehicle travel speeds in Manhattan dropped a little bit, but that comes after Tuesday's data, which shows there were speed increases on the FDR. This is still really early data, and remember, it's still really cold, and it's still after the holidays.

But also, what people are saying in the streets is interesting because these are people who spend a big portion of their lives downtown. My colleague Steven Nessen went down to talk to Shirley Matthews, and her literal job is to deal with drivers trying to get in the Holland Tunnel. That's a lot of work to corral these drivers. You can just hear what she said.

Shirley Matthews: We were shocked. I never expected to see this, and I've been in New York for almost 45 years. I've never seen it like this.

Liam Quigley: The car horns that usually just start climbing up the walls of the building around rush hour and the chaos and the drivers just creeping through crosswalks, that just didn't show up. But again, that's early data, it's one anecdote, so that's what we're poking around the city to look at.

Michael Hill: You're right. That's one anecdote among others there. What are the experts saying, Liam?

Liam Quigley: People who know traffic and they know how congestion pricing works say they're not going to jump at one data point and say this is working or this is not working. This is about looking at the cumulative data that we're going to get over the next few weeks, the next few months. Bruce Schaller is a traffic analyst who worked on the congestion plan under Bloomberg. He was pointing out that since the pandemic, so much has changed. There's less reliable ebbs and flows of stuff like congestion, so it's tough to look at one moment and then just make an evaluation based on that.

Bruce Schaller: You're never there at the average moment, right? So to sense that, yeah, something has really changed would be a matter of some weeks or possibly months.

Liam Quigley: So you listen there, he's saying average moment. What is an average moment on Canal Street? What's an average moment on Broadway? What's an average moment on 60th Street where drivers are crossing this threshold and getting charged the $9? I'm looking at social media and I see dozens of videos of people saying, "Oh, my God, this is the best commute ever," and then you see someone on going over the Manhattan Bridge and saying, "I'm stuck in traffic. What is the point of this toll?"

Michael Hill: What about subway and bus ridership, Liam? Has there been any change with how many people are taking public transit, which is really one of the goals of this?

Liam Quigley: The MTA said that there was a slight uptick in ridership. This is typically a slower time of year for subway ridership as well. We're going to want more data. We're going to want to see more information on the ridership before we say this worked or this didn't work.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's Liam Quigley talking with my colleague Michael Hill. Across New York City, everyday people are making impactful differences in their communities. We're calling them community champions. Allow me to introduce you to Walter Perez. He's a New York based artist and dancer from Argentina. Walter is the founder and executive director of Friends of Argentine Tango, a nonprofit established in 2013 that provides the benefits of dancing tango to communities that often lack access to it.

Walter Perez: Friends of Argentine Tango was a project that started with my husband, Leonardo Sardella, also a tango dancer from Argentina. We started a program in the Bronx and right now we have 14 locations in four neighborhoods, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. I started with dancing in Argentina in 1993 when I was 21 years old of salsa and later tango, and I started as a therapy. My mother passed away that year and I was feeling that I need embrace and I need to do an activity for myself to take me out of the sorrow and the moaning, and dancing was a perfect match.

In 2000, I moved to New York and I have the chance to teach for many dance studios, but I find out that I want to get more into underserved communities, not only to people who have the privilege to take a dance lesson, and pay for classes, and create a completely diverse community, and teach them how to socialize, and how to dance, and to listen music, and use this as a therapeutic tool, and a way to connect with others.

We create programs for people with dementia and Alzheimer's, or people who have different abilities. And being gay with a partner, I want to also get this idea to have an inclusive set up where everybody could decide who to dance with and a safe space for people beyond their sexuality or their abilities. I don't know if I could get the title of community champion. I just know that I'm passionate and I love what I do. So I think everybody could find a way to get community together, to get people together and to bring joy.

Janae Pierre: Walter Perez is the founder and executive director of Friends of Argentine Tango. Thanks for listening to NYC NOW from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Janae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.

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