Former Councilmember Freed testifies supporting ban after 35 years of reform attempts

Okay.

Hi.

Thank you.

My name is Catherine Freed.

I live in Lower Manhattan.

I'm actually a former city council member from Council District 1, same as Chris Marte.

And I wanted to thank Speaker Menon for calendaring this.

Just Mr.

Chair Shulman, and of course, Christopher Marte, who sponsored the bill, and the rest of the council members, and everyone here today.

I'm speaking in favor of the bill.

I felt I had to come today because I sponsored the original horse carriage bill, and that's almost 35 years ago.

And everything I've heard so far here today is very similar to the problems we had then.

At that time, there was a push also to ban horses from the horse carriages periodically from the city.

And at that time, however, it was legal for horse carriages to go throughout the city.

So we had horse carriages.

in the theater district, you know, the tourist district, Upper West Side, even sometimes in the Lower East Side.

And a lot of the arguments we heard today were the same arguments.

As I said, it's been 35 years.

What we did is we limited horse carriages to the park, and we really thought that we would give the industry, the industry said we will clean up our act, we will take care of the horses, we won't have the problem with carriage

accidents and horses running and people being injured or drivers being injured.

And here we are 35 years later.

And the same problem.

I think 35 years is long enough for the industry to get it right if it's going to get it right.

And the problem is it hasn't.

And just what's happened in the last several weeks with Denise dying, with Ramash Mahan, Mahaj, Mahajan, Mahajan, sorry,

dying because the driver did not take proper care of the horse so that the horse would not run.

The nature of horses hasn't changed in 30 years or 3,000 years.

They spook, they run.

They're not good in a cosmopolitan city like New York that has all kinds of noises and things that will always scare them.

So, and quite frankly, you also heard when Christopher-Marte was speaking initially that the industry has not a

allowed the veterinarians in.

We know the stalls are too small.

We know they don't have enough pasture.

But the fact that they don't let the vets in to check the horses and make sure they're okay, not all those horses out there in the street are okay.

And I am a horse person.

I was riding horses when I was eight years old.

I've ridden in Central Park or Prospect Park.

I've ridden

actually in Africa and South America and Central America.

I mean, I used to take people out on trail rides in Pennsylvania where I grew up.

So I know about horses.

I love horses.

We tried.

35 years is enough.

If the industry can't get it together or isn't interested enough to get it together in that amount of time, they're not going to get it together in another 100 years, and it's not going to be just hitching posts.

It's just that in a cosmopolitan city like New York, it just doesn't work.

It's not good for the horses.

It's not good for the city.

And quite frankly, they're here for the tourism industry.

What does it look like when people are traumatized and crying because they see a horse die in the street?

For that matter, the family, the tears from the family for Ramage when he died.

This is not a good look.

Can you please wrap up, Councilmember?

Thank you.

Sure.

So I would urge you.

You know, again, 35 years is enough.

I would urge you to pass this bill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if you all could identify yourself.

Just so that we can mark it off.

Thank you.