Health and Environment

Taking Attendance In Bloomberg Bid To Cut Truancy

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In the wake of Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement earlier this month that his office had launched a citywide campaign to combat chronic school absenteeism and truancy, some parents and education advocates are waiting to learn details of the city’s plan.The task force driving the initiative doesn’t contain parents, religious leaders or other grassroots community members, noted Victoria Bousquet, a parent leader with Coalition for Educational Justice.”At what point do you intend to involve the community?” she asked during an interview with City Limits. “Is it going to be once the horse is out of the barn? Are you going to have any town hall meetings? How are these decisions going to be made?”She and others said they fear the initiative might rely too heavily on interventions that are punitive, such as arresting students and launching child welfare investigations that could ultimately lead to the termination of parental rights.

Health and Environment

AIDS Activists Sue To Stop Budget Cuts

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The city budget fight is headed to a new venue: U.S. District Court. On Tuesday veteran AIDS activists at HousingWorks filed a motion for a restraining order to halt Mayor Bloomberg’s plans to slash funding for the city’s AIDS services agency. Justice Cheryl Pollak of the Eastern District will hear arguments in the case Thursday morning. Bloomberg’s budget – currently in the home stretch of negotiation with the City Council – calls for a $10 million cut to the HIV/AIDS Services Administration, which would translate to 248 fewer case workers for very poor, very sick people who get help with housing, food and medical care through HASA. “Those benefits save lives,” Leroy Rose, a HousingWorks client who has AIDS and receives HASA benefits said in a statement.

Bronx

Why Wait For The State? City Racing To Budget Deal

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Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council are aiming to strike a handshake agreement on a city budget by Friday, three days before the state’s self-imposed deadline to complete its long overdue spending plan, according to people with knowledge of the budget process.The rapidly approaching deadline had advocates crowding the steps of City Hall and lobbying councilmembers on Wednesday. At around noon, as the Council’s budget negotiating committee was set to meet, advocates for after-school programs sat on the sidelines as supporters of immigrant assistance programs packed the steps. A lobbyist for day care workers chatted with reporters. Said Greg Faulkner, chief of staff to freshman Bronx Councilman Fernando Cabrera, in a phone interview: “You can’t walk through the hallway without people pouncing, which is what they should do.”Click here for a list of Council members.Gov. Paterson has set a deadline of Monday, June 28 to complete the state budget that was supposed to be done by April 1. The lack of a firm state budget means the city must guess at how much state aid will come its way.

Bronx

Afraid of Crime Now? Join The Kids

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Times Square. In its colorful and danger-filled heyday of the 1970s and ’80s, porn shops, drug pushers, prostitutes and pistol-toting stickup men were the price of admission. But the venue has been a tourist-friendly commercial strip for some 15 years. In early April, for few minutes, that changed.On Easter night, a series of brawls and violent confrontations broke out in Times Square and nearby Herald Square among roaming bands of youths, reportedly resulting in the shooting of three women and one man, whose ages ranged from 18 to 21. A 20-year-old Bronx man was arrested in two of the shootings.

Bronx

No Entry: Why Is Teen Unemployment So High?

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The woman sweeping floors at the McDonald’s on 204th Street had gray hair tracing her temples, and her colleague at the register looked to be at least 50. Down at the Micky-Ds on Fordham Road, the woman making french fries could have been a grandmother, and she was not the oldest one behind the counter. At the restaurant on East 170th, the employee on break had a wrinkled face; those on duty were younger, but few could pass for 30. The man taking orders on East 167th Street looked to be pushing 50. On Jerome Avenue, the entire staff—at the registers and the grill—seemed to be beyond their 20s.If there’s a typical teenage job in America, its pushing Happy Meals and Big Macs under the golden arches.

Government

In This Fight, Public Advocate Is The Underdog

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When the New York Times delivered its all-important endorsement to then-City Councilman Bill de Blasio in last year’s race for public advocate, the paper noted that the winner’s chief task would be “demonstrating whether this position truly serves New Yorkers.” If the subtext wasn’t clear then, it was brought into sharp focus when the mayor’s charter revision commission announced that its agenda for this year would include the possible elimination of the public advocate position. A little-understood office that was itself created in a 1993 charter revision (out of the wreckage of the title of City Council president, which had been stripped of most of its power by a Supreme Court ruling), the public advocate is supposed to act as an independently elected “ombudsman” to keep watch over the mayor and City Council. That means the future of the office could rest in the hands of de Blasio, the former councilmember, federal housing official, and Hillary Clinton campaign manager who won the job after a tight four-way primary race and subsequent runoff against former public advocate Mark Green last fall. As chair of the Council’s General Welfare Committee, de Blasio had been a vocal critic of many of Mayor Bloomberg’s policies, particularly his refusal to allow able-bodied single adults to receive food stamps unless they’re working, and what de Blasio considered an insufficiently robust approach to reducing poverty.

Government

Government Integrity Is Charter Panel's Focus

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Mayor Bloomberg, at left, speaks in front of a giant Mayor Bloomberg, at right, during the 2009 campaign. Some public testimony to the Charter Revision Commission held that the mayor’s influence looms too large of the Conflict of Interest Board and other entities. Photo by: Jarrett Murphy

The charter commission hears from experts as it considers whether the city’s ethics monitors are sufficiently independent. By: Jarrett Murphy

During its first round of public hearings, the city’s Charter Revision Commission heard more than one speaker suggest that it was inappropriate for the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board—which largely regulates the mayor and his appointees—to be composed entirely of mayoral appointees. On Wednesday evening, the commission will take up that concern, and hear from experts.