Hospitality is just one of many industries that could make New York less reliant on Wall Street tax dollars, says Speaker Quinn.

Question: How does New York City balance its need for Wall Street tax dollars with its left-leaning, working class citizens?

Christine Quinn:  Well, you know, the truth is, we are very reliant on Wall Street.  About 25% of our tax revenues come from Wall Street, which is far too high a percentage for any one industry—nonetheless an industry that’s as volatile as Wall Street.  So we’ve tried to focus in the Council on the issue of diversifying the city’s economy because we don’t want to be overly reliant on any one part of the economic world at all. 

So we’ve tried to focus on ways where we could create jobs in other sectors of New York City.  How do we look at the assets and resources that New York has and turn those into job engines.  So for example, what’s one thing that New York City is totally known for?  Food.  Every other person you meet has a dream of creating a restaurant, a catering company, the next great cupcake.  So we are right now taking an old warehouse in East Harlem and converting it to an industrial kitchen, a place that will help and allow probably 40 or 50 start up food companies a year to be born, put people to work and get out there and support themselves.  That will help diversify our economic basis.  So from a political or any context, we’re not going to be so reliant on Wall Street and no one particular sector. 

We’ve also tried to diversify by helping the biotech sector grow in New York City and actually passed a biotech tax credit a couple of years ago to try to draw those companies here.

Recorded on October 28, 2010

Interviewed by Andrew Dermont

Directed & Produced by Jonathan Fowler