A proposal to standardize the phrase draws surprisingly passionate testimony
MANHATTAN – A city council committee hearing intended to address unrelated consumer protection language spent nearly two hours this week on an unplanned tangent after one council member suggested, seemingly offhand, that the city formally define the phrase “New York minute” for use in future municipal communications, prompting a debate that organizers later admitted “got away from us completely.”
The suggestion came during discussion of a proposed ordinance requiring businesses to disclose wait times more clearly to customers, when Councilmember Rosa Delgado noted that several draft documents used the phrase “New York minute” without any standardized definition, an observation she intended as a minor drafting note that instead opened what committee staff later called “the single longest unplanned discussion this committee has held in years.”
A Debate Nobody Saw Coming
“I said it as a throwaway comment,” Delgado admitted afterward. “I genuinely did not expect three of my colleagues to have strong, conflicting opinions about how many actual seconds constitute a New York minute. But apparently everyone has a personal definition, and apparently everyone was ready to defend it at length.” Testimony ranged from a strict definition of under thirty seconds, offered by a councilmember representing a fast-paced Midtown district, to a looser interpretation of “however long it takes to lose patience,” offered by a colleague representing a slower-paced outer borough.
Public testimony, opened briefly and unexpectedly after committee chair Marcus Feldstein decided the room “clearly needed to get this out of its system,” drew several residents who showed up for the original consumer protection item but stayed specifically to weigh in on the tangent. One retired subway conductor testified that a New York minute is “exactly as long as it takes the doors to close on someone who’s already run for the train,” a definition that drew scattered applause from the gallery.
Staff Weigh In, Reluctantly
Committee staffers, normally silent observers during hearings, found themselves fielding an unusual number of follow-up questions from reporters after the session, several of whom had shown up expecting routine coverage of consumer protection legislation and instead found themselves filing stories about time perception among elected officials. One staffer, asked to summarize the debate for an official hearing digest, reportedly spent longer drafting that single paragraph than she had on the actual ordinance summary, joking afterward that “some topics resist brevity, apparently even ones about brevity itself.”
Council communications staff have since fielded at least a dozen media inquiries asking whether the debate reflects any genuine legislative intent, to which the office’s official response has remained consistently the same: “There is no active proposal to define New York minute in municipal code. The committee discussion was informal and non-binding.” Reporters have continued asking anyway, several apparently unable to resist the story’s inherent charm. One local radio host has since invited Delgado on air specifically to defend her original definition of thirty seconds, an invitation her office is reportedly still deciding whether to accept. Feldstein, for his part, says he’s declined all similar interview requests, telling one persistent reporter that “I’ve said everything I need to say about this on the public record, and frankly some of it I regret saying at all.”
The Case Against Formalizing Slang
Not everyone supported the idea of a legal definition. Councilmember Feldstein himself argued against the proposal, noting that codifying informal slang into municipal language “sets a strange precedent” and could open the door to residents demanding formal definitions for other regional phrases, a slippery slope he illustrated by asking, rhetorically, whether the council was also prepared to legally define “fuhgeddaboudit” or “the city that never sleeps.”
Delgado, somewhat sheepishly, agreed the idea had likely run its course as anything more than an amusing detour, though she noted the exercise had at least clarified, informally, that her colleagues held remarkably strong and specific opinions about time perception that she “genuinely never expected to learn about them this way.”
Where the Actual Ordinance Stands
The original consumer protection ordinance, largely overshadowed by the tangent, remains under review and is expected to move forward in a future session without any formal reference to New York minutes, a detail Feldstein confirmed with visible relief. “We got what we needed from today’s hearing,” he said. “We just also got quite a bit we didn’t need, and I think everyone in that room learned something about their colleagues they’ll be thinking about for a while.”
Coverage of city council proceedings, including more conventional legislative business, is tracked by outlets including THE CITY, which covers municipal governance across the five boroughs in detail.
An Unofficial Definition, For Now
Despite the lack of formal action, several committee staffers say the phrase “New York minute” has since become a running joke in internal memos, with staff now informally timing how long tangential discussions run during meetings and jokingly logging them “in official New York minutes,” a practice Delgado says she finds “simultaneously ridiculous and completely accurate to how this city actually operates.”
Continuing coverage of the council’s more unusual proceedings is tracked at bohiney.com.
Further dispatches from the humor desk: The Onion.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com