Sign up now to subscribe!
Q&A with Jessica Lappin
Council Member Jessica Lappin (D-Manhattan) gave birth to a baby boy March 4. A couple of weeks before that happy occasion, she had an interview at her downtown office to address issues, political and personal.
Our Town: Do you still talk to Gifford Miller?
Jessica Lappin: Yeah, I do.
OT: What do you guys talk about?
JL: These days I’ve been asking him for suggestions on how I find a nanny. Honestly, most recently what I’ve been talking to him about most is navigating the childcare system… There’s this whole parent network that I’m not involved in that he’s much more aware of.
OT: Have you thought consciously about balancing motherhood with your job?
JL: I can’t imagine that anybody who’s about to become a parent doesn’t think about how they’re going to balance—if they’re planning to continuing to work—how they’re going to balance everything. Because there’s a re-shifting of priorities and there are sacrifices that I’m going to have to make in my professional life and in my personal life… But my mother always worked, my mother-in-law always worked, it’s something that I’m—it doesn’t seem strange to me. It’s just, millions of women work a lot harder than I’m going to have to—working two jobs or more. But I have been amazed I have difficulties trying to sort out childcare in Manhattan.
OT: What are you going to do?
JL: You have to hire a nanny. You don’t have a choice. So that’s been kind of interesting to me because we would prefer to have our kid in a daycare setting, sort of philosophically, that would be great… This has also taught me that I guess by the time he’s 2 or 3, like, I gotta get him on lists the minute he’s born! Just for that next phase. And you hear sort of the horror stories about nursery school, or private school—I didn’t realize it started at age zero.
OT: You do a lot. What are your time management tips?
JL: It’s so funny you ask that. My mom is like obsessed with my time management skills. Because she thinks I do it well. She says it’s because—you know, I was a competitive figure skater when I was growing up and I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning and be on the ice at 5:15, and kind of manage my schoolwork and I always wanted to have a social life. So she says I learned it because I would, at a young age, do that.
OT: Do you have a date night with your husband?
JL: We have dinner together every night.
OT: Even if it’s 10:30 at night?
JL: Sometimes.
OT: You’ve talked about repealing some of the “silly” laws, like the requirement that store owners get a permit to hose down their sidewalk. What do you think of banning the N-word, or regulating model weights on the runway?
JL: I tend to focus my time and energy on issues where the Council can have a real, greater impact.
OT: Does that mean that you won’t spend a lot of time on a model bill, for example, or that you would actually vote against it? You’re not going to go out of your way to tick off a colleague.
JL: Right. I try not to spend a lot of time on, for example, Council resolutions that are advisory. As policy rule, I won’t co-sponsor any resolution that deals with foreign policy. Just because, it’s not that I don’t have strong opinions on the issues—I do—but the City Council doesn’t have any role in United States foreign policy. I would rather not spend my time debating those issues.
OT: Is Hunter College’s proposal to relocate the Julia Richman Education Complex in a new facility downtown and build a new science tower for itself a good idea?
JL: I’m not philosophically opposed to relocating schools that are in the building. The issue for me is, there’s a population boom happening in District 2 and I don’t see a plan from the Department of Education to deal with it… Here is this building in a part of Manhattan where acquiring new land is impossible. And this proposal would sort of preclude from any point down the road having local schools on that site.
OT: What’s your favorite TV show?
JL: ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ I’m like totally addicted to ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’
OT: Have you had any weird cravings?
JL: Rice Krispies treats. I was never a sweets person. I’m not generally a chocolate lover, so I hadn’t eaten Rice Krispies treats since I was 13, probably. And I went through a big phase.
OT: What are some of your priorities for this year?
JL: One is parks. I feel like we have a few really historic opportunities to create new park space on the East Side. And one is on Roosevelt Island, South Point Park, which is 14 acres… The outer-detour roadway is sort of a similar kind of thing in that it’s this rare opportunity to take advantage of the roadway that was put in to do the FDR Drive reconstruction to build a waterfront park… On 60th Street, there’s this heliport park site that I’m working with the Borough President on that’s also come up because of the FDR Drive reconstruction… And the other thing, which is on the transportation front, is ferry service. There’s been renewed interest from the administration to pursue ferry service on the East River.
OT: Have you endorsed Hillary Clinton for president?
JL: I haven’t. She hasn’t asked me to.
OT: Will you say yes?
JL: She hasn’t asked me yet.
—Charlotte Eichna and Christopher Moore