Bills Mafia's goumada

 

 Times Union

Gov. Kathy Hochul and western Democratic lawmakers on Monday announced a plan to publicly finance about $850 million of a new $1.4 billion stadium in Orchard Park for the Buffalo Bills.

The plan, which includes $600 million from the state and $250 million from Erie County, came out in the final days of state budget negotiations and rankled progressive advocates and left-leaning economists who view it as a poor use of taxpayer dollars at a time when the state is flush with cash from federal aid and there are competing interests for how to spend that money.

The deal would target opening the stadium in 2026 and keep the professional football team there for at least 30 years; if the team received court authorization to leave that location, it would have to pay back all of its public subsidy, according to the governor's office.

Further, the Bills are required to pay any cost overruns during construction, a provision that was not included in the development of other facilities in the state, including Yankees Stadium, which ran at least 30 percent over its budget.

The $850 million public subsidy would be the largest for any NFL facility on record, according to the Associated Press, but the state and Erie County would be paying a smaller share of the construction costs than other taxpayer-funded stadiums. The current facility, Highmark Stadium — which was previously known as Rich Stadium and Ralph Wilson Stadium — opened in 1973 and was buoyed by taxpayers footing nearly three-quarters of the construction costs.

 

OMNY still sucks

 

NY Post

A plan to allow back-door entry on some city buses using the MTA’s OMNY “tap-and-go” fare payment system has failed to materialize nearly six months after being announced, transit officials conceded Monday.

MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said the agency is still “working on determining routes that could be a part of the pilot” originally announced last August.

The MTA in August said its “all-door boarding” test run would consist of 10 local routes, even though back-door fare readers have been installed on every bus for over a year.

All-door bus boarding has been shown to improve bus speeds where it exists, including on New York City’s “Select Bus Service” express routes. Transit officials first committed to extend the practice to local buses in 2018 as part of the multi-year OMNY.

Advocates who have pushed for back-door bus entry are growing impatient.

“Something’s not right. They should have chosen the routes months ago,” said Ben Fried of the Manhattan-based think tank TransitCenter. “Whatever is jamming this up, MTA leadership needs to unjam it because we’re talking about a change that could improve service for riders across the whole city.”

The Blaz allocates 40 million dollars for his backyard park

 

Gothamist 

The Prospect Park Alliance and Mayor Bill de Blasio are announcing today that the city will allocate $40 million in the city budget to Prospect Park. This is the largest single allocation of funding from the city in the park's history and will be used to make much-needed upgrades and restorations in its northeast corner, known as the Vale. 

“Prospect Park is Brooklyn’s backyard,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement to Gothamist. “It’s where I got married and raised my family, and where New Yorkers of all backgrounds come to spend time in nature. This historic $40 million in funding will ensure the Vale is restored to its full glory.”

The Vale covers 27-acres and is located in the park’s northeastern edge bordering on Flatbush Avenue. Once construction begins, the hope is they won't have to close off the entire area. And while the work will not be completed until 2025 at the earliest, the planning has already begun.

There will be a restoration of the Children's Pool in the Lower Vale, a landmarked landscape built in the 1890s that has since fallen into a state of disrepair. And the Upper Vale (which was formerly the Rose Garden) will include three major new landscapes: a sensory garden/rustic arbor, a nature play area, and a combined amphitheater and community building.

 

THRIVE for party people and nite club owners

de Blasio's EDC splurges 64 million dollars to keep zombie ferry service running

  

THE CITY

The city’s Economic Development Corporation agreed to increase its financial support to operate NYC Ferry by up to $64 million as the pandemic batters ridership on the heavily subsidized system.

Documents provided to the EDC board’s executive committee for a meeting Wednesday show the mayorally appointed body unanimously approved a resolution at a December session to modify its operating agreement with Hornblower Cruises, the San Francisco-based company that runs NYC Ferry.

“Since the launch of service, the city has chosen to increase the number and size of vessels operated and the frequency of service, and to add new routes serving additional parts of New York City,” reads a short memo accompanying the proposal. “These are the main drivers for increased funding needs.”

EDC’s budget will provide the additional money, the document said.

A spokesperson for EDC pointed to service expansions planned to roll out this year and beyond.

“NYC Ferry will keep providing New Yorkers with an affordable and safe transportation option as we continue our long recovery from the pandemic,” said the spokesperson, Shavone Williams. “We have made numerous route and service choices to reduce costs while maintaining our commitment to serve more New Yorkers as we expand service to Coney Island, Staten Island and the Bronx.”

Hornblower’s figures show substantial COVID-tied drops in ridership continuing into last summer, the most recent figures available, with just 11,599 fares on the system on an average weekday in July, August and September 2020. That’s less than half the ridership than during the same period a year earlier.

The funding move comes as ferry revenue is in decline, a fiscal crisis confronts the city and EDC contributions to the city budget are trending downward. Last year, EDC put $28 million in city coffers from real estate rentals and other activities — down from $125 million in 2014 and $103 million in 2016.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who attempted to cancel a $82 million contract to buy ferry boats in 2019 and has since raised red flags about escalating EDC spending on ferries, told THE CITY that the latest hike in spending commitments demands scrutiny.

“Time and again, I have called for EDC to be transparent and accountable around NYC Ferry, and time and again EDC fails,” Stringer, who is running for mayor, said in a statement.

“New Yorkers deserve a range of transportation options to safely travel throughout our city, but they also deserve fiscal responsibility. EDC must explain the justification for such a sizable expenditure at this time,” he added.

EDC isn’t subject to city budgeting procedures and operates outside of the comptroller’s purview. 

 What pandemic? What fiscal crisis?

NYC's First Lady is a tax boondoggle.

Impunity City

Mayor de Blasio is in quite a pickle. He hasn’t been able to get aid from the state and because congress couldn’t agree to a goddamn stimulus, the Blaz can’t get federal funding despite all his pathetic begging and pleading and probably compounded by his asinine decision to paint Black Lives Matter in front of the President’s luxury tower. So the city’s budget ax is going to come down on a lot of administration departments and city services.

Except for one…

The gentrification trolley that refuses to die

Gothamist

 In 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city would begin working on the Brooklyn Queens Connector, a $2.5 billion streetcar that would trace the waterfronts of the two boroughs from Astoria to Sunset Park. The mayor's announcement came after a group of real estate developers somehow had the same idea, and donated nearly $250,000 to de Blasio's nonprofit, but the mayor assured everyone that the BQX would pay for itself, thanks to rising property values.

A year and many "visioning sessions" later, Sunset Park residents fought to take their neighborhood off the BQX's map, leaked documents and independent reports showed the city's funding scheme to be extremely dubious, the streetcar route was found to be susceptible to serious flooding, and the BQX looked to go the way of the carriage horse ban: a full-throated promise backed by stacks of cash that turned into a whisper in the wind.

But the BQX wasn't dead, just dormant. The de Blasio administration released a new plan for the streetcar in 2018 with a shorter, 11-mile route from Astoria to Red Hook and a bigger price tag, $2.7 billion.

This week the city's Economic Development Corporation and Department of Transportation pledged to start presenting their case to the public early next month, with the goal of coming up with a final design by 2023, and finishing construction in 2029—eight years after Mayor de Blasio leaves office.
In the short-term, the city is aiming to get a draft Environmental Impact Statement done by 2021, de Blasio's final year in office.

“From community board presentations and on-the-ground outreach to briefings with elected officials and public workshops, NYCEDC and NYC Department of Transportation are moving forward with a far-reaching process that provides multiple opportunities for feedback prior to the environmental review phase," the city said in a statement.

Hate to say that I told you so, but I told you so.

Update:

Thought this interview with the dope from park slope needed to be included, as the Blaz tells Errol Louis (who hilariously presumed that this was dead) that even though the city is earmarking another 2 billion to get the BQX started, it's going to need federal funding. Surely because everyone in the towns that it will traverse and the district council members are all dead set against it. Just quit it, Bill.

The Hunters Point Library is a $41,000,000 shithole

NY Post


A long-awaited $41-million Queens library that opened last month is plagued with an encyclopedia’s worth of issues — including leaky ceilings and a not-so-soundproof quiet room, The Post has learned.

Long Island City’s decade-in-the-making Hunters Point Library is already showing signs of wear, with a Post reporter recently eyeing large cracks on multiple floors — including one that stretched about 10 feet — and water damage in some areas.

“When it rains, we have leaks,” a librarian said, blaming the problem on an as-yet-un-opened rooftop “reading garden” with panoramic views of the city.

The new building’s sorry state is the culmination of nearly 10 years of design and construction. Plans for the branch were completed in 2010, but the ground-breaking did not come until 2015. The book-lender finally opened Sept. 24.

The lit house, designed by Steven Holl Architects, came under fire earlier this month because a fiction section could only be reached by a steep staircase — in violation of federal accessibility requirements.

Staffers have since moved the tomes, but that area is now just dead space. A frustrated librarian said she didn’t know if it would be remodeled “but we won’t be putting any books there again.”
“We might turn [it] into sitting areas, but no one knows yet,” she said.

Queens Library spokeswoman Elisabeth de Bourbon said the branch is assessing the situation with the architects and the city’s Department of Design and Construction, which oversaw and managed the project.

But that’s not the only design flaw librarians have had to deal with.

A curved wall in the children’s section resembling a quarter-pipe skateboard ramp had to be blocked off by rolling bookshelves to make sure kids didn’t hurt themselves climbing it.

NYC Ferry so white

Gothamist


Riders of Mayor Bill de Blasio's subsidy-soaked ferry system are significantly richer and whiter than their mass transit counterparts, according to new data reluctantly released by the city.

The long-sought figures reveal that 64 percent of ferry riders are white, with a median income ranging between $75,000 and $100,000. By comparison, studies have shown that two-thirds of subway riders and three-quarters of bus riders are people of color, with median incomes at around $40,000 and $29,000, respectively.

The disparities are likely to intensify criticism of the troubled transit project, which will cost New York City taxpayers more than $600 million over the next three years. In order to keep the price of a trip equal to a subway swipe, the system currently benefits from a per-rider subsidy of about $10, set to jump to nearly $25 on some newly-expanded routes, according to an analysis from the Citizen Budget Commission.

Faced with questions over the ballooning price-tag, de Blasio has repeatedly championed the service as an antidote to transit inequality, part of his broader agenda to make New York the "fairest big city." A spokesperson for the Mayor's Office did not respond to inquiries about whether this new breakdown in ridership would force him to reevaluate that position.

 The Economic Development Corporation, the quasi-public agency that operates the system, previously declined to provide data to back up that claim. The results of three previous rider surveys were not made public, and the agency has ignored multiple freedom of information requests sent by 
Gothamist and other media outlets.

 The new demographics were shared with the media in a slideshow marked "not for distribution," which has not yet been posted online. An EDC spokesperson would not say why the slideshow was being withheld from the public.

Is anybody going to factor the $10 subsidy per rider with the free shuttle buses the NYC Ferry provides?

 

 Update:

NY Post


Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to run the most transparent administration in Big Apple history, but City Hall appears to have violated the state’s open records law by withholding key data about the East River ferry, experts said Wednesday.

In April, The Post demanded the statistics compiled by the Economic Development Corporation about the $637 million NYC Ferry system’s ridership under the state’s Freedom of Information Law — only to be repeatedly rebuffed and told the search for the records was still ongoing.
However, EDC revealed the existence of the data by leaking a presentation summarizing its findings to another newspaper Monday night.

“It violates the Freedom of Information Law,” said John Kaehny, an open-records expert who runs the good-government group Reinvent Albany. “It’s really unacceptable — and particularly lame.”
The Post filed the FOIL request on April 15 asking for “the results of the demographic survey of boat riders, by line and by stop, if available,” as well as for contracts and other related documents.

The agency confirmed it received the records request on April 22 and later released the contract and some supporting paperwork, but never provided the crucial ridership data.
Instead, it claimed in letters dated May 20, July 5, Aug. 2 and Sept. 6 that agency officials were “continuing to search for additional documents.”

However, EDC’s 13-page presentation summary reveals that as it stonewalled The Post and others, it had already conducted at least three surveys of its ridership.

“This is the 4th onboard survey conducted in NYC Ferry’s 2 years of service,” it disclosed on the second page of the presentation.

The document shows that the previous surveys covered summer 2017, winter 2018 and summer 2018. The most recent survey covered in the memo examined ridership from this summer.

“This is really not acceptable conduct by any government agency,” said Susan Lerner, the head of watchdog group Common Cause New York. “The data is subject to FOIL, there is no excuse for playing games.”

 “Certainly the spirit of the law has been violated,” she added. “This sort of game-playing should not be countenanced.”

Recall that Mayor de Blasio broke the "spirit of the law" with his illicit pay to play Campaign For New York PAC he ran in City Hall and still avoided indictments from Attorney General Cy Vance and acting Southern District Attorney that replaced Preet Bharara. So whatever the spirit of the law entails is pretty much dead.

The borough tower jails approval is nigh and all it took was to knock off a few stories

Queens Eagle

 Negotiations around the city’s initiative to build new jails in four boroughs have determined that all of the facilities will be smaller than currently proposed, though talks continue around the specific heights, sources close to the deal-making told the Eagle.

The plan to close Rikers Island by replacing the isolated jail complex with four new borough-based detention towers is heading toward a City Council vote next month — and it’s on its way to passing the 26-vote threshold necessary to set the plan in motion, according to City Hall and City Council sources.

A critical issue in rallying support for the plan is reducing the jails’ heights, which vary borough to borough. The Mayor’s Office has already conceded reductions, resulting in more council support, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations. 

“Council leadership, members and the administration have invested many hours working on a plan that the majority of the council could get behind,” a City Hall source told the Eagle. “Talks absolutely continue, but the fruitful efforts up to this point are leaving those involved feeling very good about the project.”

With just weeks left until the full-council vote on the unprecedented four-site land-use measure, the Brooklyn Eagle reached out to all 51 councilmembers to get their preliminary stances on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan.

Already, 18 councilmembers have told the Eagle that they plan on voting yes, or that they are leaning toward voting yes. Nine councilmembers said they are leaning toward or have decided on a “no” vote, while 16 said they remain undecided. The remaining 11 members of the council did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Three former councilmembers told the Eagle that the jail plan will likely pass, though it may take some back-room deal-making. The former councilmembers requested anonymity so as to not alienate former colleagues. 

“It’s going to happen. They’re going to posture and do things and maybe some will vote no,” said one. “It doesn’t get this far and not go through.”

“It will get done, but there will be a lot of tweaks,” said political consultant George Arzt. He believes a compromise between City Hall and the council on the height of the proposed facilities will enable councilmembers to save face with constituents opposed to the plan. 

“The administration has enough of an opening with the reduced jail population to cut the height of the buildings, and I think that is the most significant factor in getting this done,” Arzt said. “That allows councilmembers to say, ‘They wanted X, but we did Y, and we got this done for our constituents.’”

Council Speaker Corey Johnson has not explicitly stated how he will vote on the final proposal, but he lent his support to the plan when it was announced last summer by the de Blasio administration. He also co-wrote an op-ed in April with former Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals Jonathan Lippman outlining why he believes the borough-based jails land-use proposal — called ULURP — is essential to closing Rikers. In the op-ed, Johnson and Lippman list changes they would like to see, “such as finding non-jail, hospital-based alternatives for people with serious mental health diagnoses,” as well as investment in communities “hit hard by the inequities of the criminal justice system.”

The speaker’s support of the plan is pivotal when it comes to a full-council vote.

Queens Eagle

Yesterday, the Queens Daily Eagle generated some conversations in City Hall after contacting all 51 city councilmembers — in conjunction with sibling publication, the Brooklyn Eagle —  to find out where the legislators stand on the controversial land use application for building four new jails, one in each borough except Staten Island.

The Queens jail, part of a stated proposal for closing the detention centers on Rikers Island, would rise 270-feet and house a maximum of 1,150 detainees behind the Queens Criminal Courthouse in Kew Gardens. Queens’ 15 councilmembers differ on the proposal.

Three Queens councilmembers flat-out say they will vote against the plan. Democrat Paul Vallone, nominal Democrat Robert Holden (he won his seat on the GOP line) and Republican Eric Ulrich all told the Eagle they will vote no on the plan to create four “borough-based” jails. 

Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer leans toward opposing the jail for different reasons than his conservative colleagues. Van Bramer has aligned himself with the progressive wing of the party and the No New Jails coalition, which calls on the city to divest from jails and invest in social services, housing and education for low-income people of color disproportionately affected by the criminal justice system.

Of the 11 remaining Queens councilmembers (including Antonio Reynoso, whose district is mostly in Brooklyn), six say they are firm yes votes. The six supporters are Councilmembers Karen Koslowitz, Daniel Dromm, Rory Lancman, Francisco Moya, Adrienne Adams and Reynoso.

Meanwhile, Councilmembers Donovan Richards and Costa Constantinides say they are leaning yes, but have not decided yet. 

Councilmembers Barry Grodenchik and I. Daneek Miller say they are undecided. Councilmember 

 Peter Koo has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Each of the supporters premised their vote on changes ultimately being made to the height and scope of the project.

Koslowitz, for example, said she supports the plan — so long as the city reduces the height. Several councilmembers signalled that they would vote in lockstep with Koslowitz, who is taking a stand in favor of a politically unpopular project.

 Councilmember Daniel Dromm told the Eagle he is “definitely supporting [Koslowitz’s] principled, moral stance" to support the Kew Gardens jail, despite "NIMBY pushback in her district.”

"I really admire her” for standing up, even though the plan is unpopular among her constituents, he added.

To cap this shitshow off, a few words from Speaker Cojo the dancing clown:

Gotham Gazette 

  The plan that the mayor has put forward is an essential step in the path to close the Rikers jail complex. Conversations with communities have already led to initial reductions in the height and density of the planned facilities and more thoughtful plans regarding the treatment of incarcerated women. Moving forward, we expect to see more work from the administration to improve the plan—such as finding non-jail, hospital-based alternatives for people with serious mental health diagnoses—and to address neighborhood concerns.

"Non-jail hospital based alternatives" In other words, a hospital.

Skipper de Blasio drops anchor on Stringer and spends 43 million for five more ferries

NY Post

The de Blasio administration plans to ram through another $43 million in ferry purchases for its money-pit fleet — in the face of objections from the city’s fiscal watchdog, The Post has learned.

The push comes just months after City Hall forged full speed ahead with another $84.5 million purchase over the worries of City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

It swells the total amount sunk into the program to $637 million.

The decision “to deem another City tax-payer funded vessel purchase registered without providing exhaustive data, metrics, reports, etc. to demonstrate the success of the citywide ferry program and justify the ballooning costs of this initiative is disappointing,” Stringer wrote in a letter Friday to the Economic Development Corp., a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

The $43 million covers the purchase of five new boats, according to purchase documents submitted to the Comptroller’s Office.

It marks the second time this year that City Hall has exercised veto power to torpedo Stringer’s attempts at oversight of the ferry system.

The East River system is among Mayor de Blasio’s biggest transit initiatives, despite carrying only a fraction of the New Yorkers who use the subways, buses or CitiBike.

Just 18,000 people rode the ferries on an average weekday during the spring, with those trips subsidized at a rate of $10.73 per ticket.

Here's an obnoxious example of those people who use the gilded commute.

NY Post


On Friday nights, revelers are turning a commuter ferry into a DJ-helmed dance party.
Helicopters buzz overhead as the East River churn bumps riders — businessmen and women just off work and metallic jacket-clad partiers alike — while beats blast from the boat’s stern.

“You see guys with suits on, chugging a beer and just dancing,” says NYC Ferry captain Ben Nedrick, as he steers the boat along the Lower East Side route.
From his booth on the boat’s upper deck, he watches as DJ Sheri Barclay mixes music for the weekly Rooftop Sounds Pop-Up.

The other week, Nedrick, 23, handed the wheel to his co-captain so he could join in the fun, breakdancing in his uniform as a soca jam played, to his passengers’ delight. There’s an almost palpable sense of cutting loose, especially on a hot summer night.

“It’s got that kind of lawlessness to it,” concedes Barclay, 36, the manager of online radio station KPISS.FM, which streams from an RV in Bushwick.

The dance parties did, in fact, begin illicitly.

“Last year, I threw my birthday on the ferry without their permission,” says creative director Franz Aliquo, 43. He and his guests rode for one round and finished all the booze on the boat before getting kicked off. This spring, he says, the ferry company reached out to him.

“They hit me up to be like, ‘You did it last year, and it was pretty dope,’ ” says Franz, who picks the DJs, and organized the events as a labor of love.
Now, the happy hours have the blessing of the ferry — and that of its concession stand, which sells a rotating variety of beer ($7), wine ($8) and snacks on-board all boats. (Passengers aren’t allowed to BYOB.)

“It gives a good vibe,” marketing coordinator Tiffani Samaroo tells The Post. She says the transit service is planning a host of other events it hopes will increase ridership, though only the Friday night 6:30 to 8 p.m. “happy hour” will have a DJ.

There’s no cover charge, just the price of passage: $2.75, the same as a subway ride — but you can’t use a MetroCard. NYC Ferry currently operates six routes and a summer shuttle to Governors Island.

 Remember, the city and you the taxpayer do not get a dime from the booze sold on these ferries. All monies go to the contractor, Hornblower.

Governor Cuomo gifting Belmont Park developers with a train station

NY Post


A controversial plan to bring a new $1.2 billion arena and entertainment venue to state-owned Belmont Park will now include a $105 million full-service stop on the Long Island Railroad, Gov. Cuomo announced Monday.

The station serving Belmont, NY, is a huge score for the New York Islanders arena project and will be situated between the Queens Village and Bellerose stations on the LIRR’s Main Line, just east of the Cross Island Parkway.

A press release put out by the governor’s office claimed it will the cost the arena developers – a partnership that includes the owners of both the Islanders and New York Mets — $97 million of the estimated $105 million price-tag.

However, state officials later clarified that the developers are only paying $30 million up front with the remaining $67 million to be covered by a no-interest, multi-decade state loan. The state will pick up the remaining $8 million.

The news didn’t sit well with project opponents.

“Obviously the State of New York wants to play hide the puck, and pretend that arena developers are paying for a massive transportation project instead of the taxpayers and commuters, and they buried that actual fact in the fine print. That is a disrespect, and cardinal breach of public trust,”said Tammie S. Williams of the Belmont Park Community Coalition.

Governor Cuomo's LaGuardia choo choo is getting expensive and ultimately useless.

NY Post


It’s off the rails.

The cost of the controversial LaGuardia Airport AirTrain project — which was originally priced at $450 million, then at $1.5 billion — is now estimated to be roughly $2 billion, Port Authority officials revealed Tuesday.
Officials insisted the 1.5-mile-long project will pay for itself — even as they simultaneously announced plans to increase fees on bridges, tunnels, railways and airport facilities.
But critics have panned the proposed service for its bizarre route, which goes past Citi Field instead of into Manhattan. And many travelers say they have no plans to use it.
“People like the privacy, the independence of being in their own cars,” said one commuter at the airport Tuesday.
“I’ll stick with my SUV. It’s worth it.”
In 2015, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo first proposed the route, his office said the AirTrain would cost just $450 million, but the authority said in 2017 that it would actually be $1.5 billion.
The latest estimate of $2.05 billion — which officials say reflects the going rate for new AirTrains — comes out to nearly $800,000 per yard.
The governor argues the AirTrain will provide traffic relief at the Queens airport, which is currently only accessibly by car, bus or foot.
Nearly 90% of travelers currently arrive by car compared to just 6% by public transit, according to Port Authority data.

But while half of LaGuardia travelers are Manhattan-bound, the train’s proposed route will carry travelers east to Willets Point — away from Manhattan — from where they will need to take the Long Island Rail Road or subway into the city.

Chirlane McCray's mental health program is a billion dollar flop

NY Post


The $560 million in taxpayer money spent on First Lady Chirlane McCray’s ThriveNYC program hasn’t adequately addressed the need for mental-health services in the city — which actually “worsened” over the past year, The Post has learned.

The bombshell finding by the city Health Department was revealed in a draft report that was reviewed last week during a meeting of the department’s advisory Community Service Board.

“We are seeing consistently high demand for high needs services including rates of suicide,” the report says.

“We need to engage in a process with state partners to expand our portfolio of services and better address the needs of New Yorkers.”

Despite McCray’s claims of transparency regarding her embattled mental-health program, City Hall refused to release a copy of the Health Department report.

But a source provided The Post with details, including the report’s conclusion that during the past year, “Mental health service needs have worsened, as have substance use disorder needs, and developmentally disabled needs.”

The report blames the situation for a long-term increase in emergency room visits by mentally ill people who face “barriers to appropriate and relevant community care.”

ThriveNYC has spent $2 million on a program called NYC Safe, which is supposed to pair cops with health-care workers to help steer homeless and mentally ill people into treatment so they don’t wind up in the hospital.

But the program has only aided 1,000 people over the past 2¹/₂ years, according to figures released in March.

City wireless network went haywire and was inoperable for a week

NY Post


City Hall’ s tech czar ignored a federal warning about a looming, Y2K-like software bug last year — allowing a crash of the city’s official wireless network that has been down since the weekend, sources told The Post.

As a result, transit officials can’t remotely control the Big Apple’s 12,000-plus traffic lights, and many of the city’s traffic cameras and NYPD license-plate readers are down, sources said.

“This is a big screw-up, even for the de Blasio administration,” said a source familiar with the matter.

The New York City Wireless Network, known as “NYCWiN,” crashed on Saturday, affecting the operations of city agencies that rely on it to transmit high-speed voice, video and data communications.

Workers have been scrambling around the clock to fix the entirely preventable problem, but the network remained down Wednesday — five days into the outage.

NYCWiN is overseen by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, whose commissioner, Samir Saini, was appointed by Mayor de Blasio in January 2018.

DoITT pays the Northrop Grumman Corp. about $40 million a year to run the network, which cost $500 million to build and went into service citywide in 2009.

It was unclear when it would be back up and running. But what is reasonably certain is that the technology snafu could have been prevented.

Exactly one year ago Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning that GPS-enabled devices could be affected by a time counter “rollover event” set to occur this past Saturday.
DHS noted that testing showed some devices could not “correctly handle” the rollover and urged “federal, state, local, and private sector organizations” to take preventive measures.

Sources said the biggest impact has been on the Department of Transportation, which lost its digital connection to the traffic lights at intersections across the city — leaving officials unable to know if a signal stops working unless someone reports it.

In addition, the clocks that time the lights are subject to going out of sync, which could wreck the carefully timed patterns that keep traffic flowing, sources said.

“I don’t know how the city could become more congested, but that would be a concern,” one law enforcement source said.

 This doesn't bode well for the coming congestion pricing tolling system the city is going to implement next year.

Yankee Stadium parking lot boondoggle keeps growing

From the NY Post:

The city is owed more than $100 million in unpaid rent, taxes and interest on parking lots at Yankee Stadium constructed nearly a decade ago — with no payment in sight, documents show.

Bronx Parking Development Corp., which runs the facilities, has lost at least $28 million a year in each of the past three years because not enough Yankee fans are willing to pay as much as $45 to park there for a single game.

The firm owed the city’s Economic Development Corp. $45.2 million in unpaid rent and interest as of March 31, and $56 million in unpaid taxes and interest, records show.

“It was definitely a boondoggle from a former administration, but what now?” said Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates, who has been monitoring the deal because it displaced acres of Bronx parkland. “At some point, the city needs to take responsibility for this horrible deal because the bill keeps going up.”

The Yankees insisted they needed thousands of additional parking spots for fans when the new stadium was built, so about 9,100 spaces were created or preserved in 2010.

Taxpayers responsible for Willets Point property owners' legal fees

From Gideon's Trumpet:

What is clear is that in New York, as elsewhere, an abandonment of a condemnation action requires the condemnor to reimburse the property owners for their litigation expenses, including attorneys, appraisers and other expert fees. The prevailing owners’ counsel is Michael Rikon, who is without a doubt New York’s best eminent domain lawyer, and we wish him well on this singular accomplishment.

So taxpayers are being forced to not only pay for a boondoggle project that's not going to happen but also for the legal costs of the landowners that fought against it. Great job by NYC's fiscal watchdog, Mike Bloomberg! Remember, this is the financial genius we were told the City just couldn't do without, so the City Council extended term limits to keep him.

How many schools, parks, road repairs, police officers, teachers, etc. could we have put that money toward instead?

Another Jamaica joke project

From the NY Post:

Two years after it opened as an “incubator” for small businesses, the $2.5 million Jamaica Export Centre — built with mostly taxpayer cash — is virtually deserted.

The dusty reception desk, which was supposed to serve up to eight businesses, is unoccupied. Downstairs, a meeting room is empty, and a sign out front says it is available for baby showers and birthday parties.

The 8,000-square-foot building near Kennedy Airport opened with great fanfare in 2010. Its mission was to help freight-forwarding and export companies owned by minorities and women. The businesses would get subsidized rent and shared services, such as a receptionist and meeting room.

Among the pols who showed up for the ribbon cutting were Rep. Gregory Meeks, state Assemblywoman Michele Titus and City Councilman Leroy Comrie, Democrats who each secured cash for the project.

About $1.7 million in taxpayer funds went into buying an old tire shop on Rockaway Boulevard and replacing it with the gleaming new two-story building. The state Dormitory Authority kicked in another $450,000 to buy a ramshackle house behind the property, which was torn down to create an ample parking lot.

The pols ponied up the money to the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, which spearheaded the project, even though its president, Robert Richards, readily admitted that the group had never run a business incubator.

Today, just two businesses and a nonprofit have rented space at the center, and have done so only in the last five months. Richards refused to name the firms, but said they were not freight forwarders.