The whispers and rumors turn out to be true.

The City of New York have been secretly negotiating a deal for months now over the fate of the New York Carriage Horses.  The New York Daily News reports tonight that the city is very close to a deal with the Teamsters and the carriage trade that would permanently move the carriage horse stables inside of Central Park and decimate the carriage industry as it now exists, removing more than 150 horses from the city and scores of full and part-time drivers.

The bill could be introduced to the City Council as early as this Friday.

The new bill, says the Daily News, calls for the licensing of only 68 carriages and 75-77 horses. Last night, I received a copy of Proposed Int. No. 573-A, it says 95 licenses will be granted by the city, the discrepancy isn’t clear. It is believed the new stables the city wants to build would actually hold only 77 horses, no more would be allowed, even at peak times, and even if brought into the park in trailers.

There are now about 220 horses living and working in the city. It is not clear where the remaining horses will go, the language of the bill prohibits any of them from being sold for slaughter.

If the bill passes, it would mark the end of a 150-year old iconic industry, of horses being on any city streets outside of the park. It would also mean the certain sale of the three existing stables to real estate developers, who are now spending billions to develop the West Side neighborhood where all of the stables have been for more than a century.

For some, some new kind of arrangement has been considered inevitable for some time.

Sources in the city also told me that part of the deal requires the city to ban pedicabs below 86th Street in Central Park. The pedicabs take customers away from the carriage trade and crowd the lower streets of the park. I am told the Teamsters are fighting to raise the horse and driver limits and offer buyouts and compensation for the drivers who would lose their jobs. They are still negotiating  with the city over those points.

The Teamsters initially hoped they could save all of the driver’s jobs – they handily beat back the ban. But increasingly,  they have come to see the mayor as completely unyielding. Their strategy now seems to be to save what they can of that historic industry. They see the deal as a total defeat of the effort to ban the horses, and way of keeping horses in Central Park forever. The carriage trade is a diverse, even tribal collection of interests. There is no one leader, rarely any kind of consensus.

I am also told that the animal rights groups fighting to ban the horses from the city, are in absolute meltdown about they deal, they say they will accept nothing less than a total ban of the horse carriage industry and the removal of the horses from the city. They consider anything less a betrayal of the mayor’s promise to ban the horses “from day one.”  It seems unlikely they will ever accept any deal that keeps the horses working in the park, they consider work for animals to be a form of abuse.

The evolution of the deal is fascinating. Initially the mayor and the animal rights groups said the horses should be banned because they were being mistreated and abused. That claim was soundly disproven and rejected by almost every element in the usually fractious city, so the argument shifted to the idea that it was unsafe for the horses to be in the city and on its congested streets. That doesn’t seem to be true either,  the horses are by far the safest form of transportation anywhere in New York.

But the mayor, who received enormous amounts of money from animal rights organizations during his campaign, is unrelenting in his effort to remove the horses and give some kind of victory to his supporters in the animal rights movement. He has a lot of power.

The Teamsters seem  resigned to the need for some sort of new agreement end the years-long controversy and protect the future of the trade. Some of the more established drivers and medallion owners seem to agree, they have known about the negotiations for some time. Obviously, the people who will lose their livelihood and jobs and horses may feel differently.

“If you’re on the list, it’s a good deal,” one medallion owner told me tonight. “If  you’re not, it’s a sellout.”

The Teamsters and the people in the carriage industry are also keenly aware of the elephant in the room – the real estate market in New York. Real estate developers are likely to destroy the carriage long before the bumbling hysterics of the animal rights groups do them in.

The idea of a stable in Central Park is appealing and makes sense in some ways.

It is unclear why the city would arbitrarily limit the number of horses to 77, as reported. It is not clear to me why so many people and horses have to lose their jobs and leave the trade. It is unclear where the nearly 150 discarded carriage horses will go, why the trade couldn’t bring in additional horses at peak times, or why so many drivers have to lost their work and way of life.

His behavior just smells, he knows nothing about the horses and makes no sense when he talks about them.

The pedicab industry is a disaster. There are epidemic reports of price-gouging, abuse and mistreatment of young drivers, and harassment of tourists. it would obviously be a great boon to the surviving members of the carriage industry if they were banned below 86th street. I hope the Teamsters get the city to raise the limits on drivers and horses.

I guess I share the sense of resignation about the fact that keeping the horses in the park forever is better in every way than losing them altogether. For me, there is no reason for any of the horses to be banned from the city, but there is also the reality of an implacable mayor and voracious real estate environment. Without some sort of a deal, the horses ultimately would be lost, especially with a city government committed to seeing them leave. An enlightened and truly progressive mayor would seek more horses in New York, not fewer horses.

So that’s what I know. Both the mayor and the Teamsters like secrecy, and they did a good job keeping this out of the media and a way from the public. It could come up for a vote as early as next week.

I found the mayor’s behavior throughout to be arrogant and an overreach of power. His actions smell. The carriage trade was functioning legally and prosperously and in good order. I am sorry to see it broken up in a way that seems to diminish it so  radically, even while preserving it in some measure. Sometimes the best one can do is the best one can do. We’ll see what happens. I wanted you to know what I know.