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WEEK OF APRIL PASSING THE BATON ◄ P.16
5-11 2018
MISSION: SPEND A MILLION DOLLARS ENGAGEMENT A grassroots democratic process that empowers citizens to determine how a windfall in tax monies will be allocated kicks off this weekend — and for the first time, preteens can weigh in BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN AND MICHAEL GAROFALO
NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue Rehabilitation Department and the Auxiliary to Bellevue Hospital unveiled a newly renovated Rehabilitation Medicine kitchen. Photo: NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue
COOKING UP A CURE HEALTH For patients who have broken bones, torn muscles or suffered a stroke, Bellevue’s crown jewel is its newly renovated rehab kitchen BY CAROL ANN RINZLER
As anyone who’s been there knows, rehab, short for rehabilitation, is no walk in the park. Restoring power to torn muscles, broken bones, or neurological wiring frazzled by a stroke is serious work. Actually, it’s serious team work between the patient and her multiperson rehab specialists. For more than 30,000 New Yorkers a year, that team is the Rehabilitation Service at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue. Several H + H hospitals have inpatient rehab units, but Bellevue’s is
the largest with 46 beds that tucked in more than 400 patients last year, one at a time to each bed, of course. Thousands more checked in for therapy during the day and then went home to sleep in their own beds at night, waking up the next morning to make breakfast in their own kitchens thanks to skills perfected in the hospital’s rehab suite whose rooms resemble a regular NYC apartment. As expected, there’s a bedroom, a bathroom, and a dressing area where working out means making beds (no extra neat “hospital corners” required), learning to maneuver through a bath or shower and the like and slipping in and out of clothes with buttons, zippers, hooks and ties. But the current crown jewel of the “apartment” is a fourth room: The kitchen.
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Eleven-year-olds get the vote. A few taps on a smartphone is all it takes to cast a ballot. There is no pay to play. Or give to get. And the people — not the politicians — decide how a chunk of their public funds are spent. Sound like a phantasmagorical course in Civics 101? Actually, it’s a real-world experience, courtesy of the City Council, that gives New Yorkers a say in which brick-and-mortar projects in their districts reap tax dollars. Its name may be one of the wonkiest in city government: Participatory Budgeting, or PB. But few initiatives do more to enshrine people power, make budget decisions clear and accessible — and open up the often-opaque process of funding capital projects to a citizenry seeking real and lasting change. Starting on Saturday, April 7 and continuing through Sunday, April 15, a period called PB Week, residents in 31 of the Council’s 51 districts will vote to directly allocate $1 million in physical infrastructure work per district, selecting from around a dozen proposals that meet local needs. Improvements to schools, parks, libraries, public housing and public safety are on the ballot in Council District 5, which takes in the Upper East Side, District 6, which covers the Upper West Side, and District 3, in Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and Greenwich Village. Typically, the top two or three votegetters tapped by members of the
Improvements to public schools, parks, libraries and public housing are on the Participatory Budgeting ballot in City Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s West Side district, which includes Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and Greenwich Village. Photo: William Alatriste/NYC Council
This is what democracy looks like.” Council Speaker Corey Johnson
community in a given district are awarded the funds, depending on the price tag of those winning projects, until the allotted money runs out. “This is what democracy looks like,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said in a message announcing the kickoff Downtowner
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SPRING ARTS PREVIEW < CITYARTS, P.12
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
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of this year’s program. “This is what civic engagement looks like.” “In my own district we have done participatory budgeting for four years, and one of the big projects that came out of it was a brand new park on West 20th Street in Chelsea,” Johnson said. “It got its initial boost from Participatory Budgeting.” Last year, constituents in Johnson’s third council district voted to dedicate funding to new bus countdown clocks, new air conditioning for the library at P.S. 111, renovations to the grounds at NYCHA Elliott-Chelsea Houses and a new park in Hell’s Kitchen.
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