It's the Brian Ler Show on WNYC.

I'm Bridget Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, sitting in for Brian today.

Yesterday on the show, Brian spoke with Mayor Mammondani.

Now, let's hear from the other side of City Hall. Another citywide officeholder, the City Council

Speaker, Julie Menon, who represents Manhattan's District 5, where Mom Dani in Gracie Mansion is one of

her constituents. Speaker, welcome back to the show. You're in this new role, but not new to

public service, of course. So thank you so much for joining us this morning. Thank you so much for

having me. It's great to be back with you again. And speaker, you gave a speech this week at Abney,

the Association for Better New York, kind of New York City's version of a chamber of

commerce and highlighted some of the council's priorities. The big attention getter was

bringing back year-round outdoor dining. Why is that a priority? Well, I think, first of all,

it is incredibly important that we support our small

businesses in the city, and we certainly saw during COVID that outdoor dining was a lifeline

for these small businesses. I'm a former small business owner. I used to own a restaurant catering

business in Lower Manhattan called Vine, and I know firsthand how important it is to our small businesses to have robust outdoor dining.

The original bill that the council passed, I had real concerns about, which I had raised at the time.

And the concerns I had was that we need to make outdoor dining year-round because to ask these small businesses,

first of all, to put up the chairs and tables, then to store the chairs and tables, many of them

are smaller restaurants. They certainly don't have the space or the capacity to do so.

They were also, I strongly disagreed with giving the outdoor dining program to the Department

of Transportation.

I don't know why we'd give it to a transit agency as opposed to giving outdoor dining to an agency

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