The local paper for the Upper East Side
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
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 multi-person 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.
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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 will reap tax dollars in their districts. 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.
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There are 13 Upper East Side projects on ballot as PB Week kicks off. Photo: City Council Member Ben Kallos
“It puts the dollars back into the hands of the voters.” Ben Kallos, East Side City Council member
Typically, the top two or three votegetters tapped by members of the community in a given district are awarded the funds, depending on the price tag of those winning projects, until the allotted money runs out. Providing tax dollars from Council members’ discretionary funds meets four good-government aims: Constituent priorities are addressed. Citizens gain direct control over where their money goes. Power passes into the grip of those who’ve long been outside the power structure. And corruption itself is disincentivized.
“All too often, there has been a strong correlation between people who give political contributions and groups that receive, or lose, millions in taxpayer funds,” said East Side Council Member Ben Kallos. Historically, he noted, it wasn’t uncommon for some elected officials to use public money to “reward friends and punish enemies.” Now, PB walls off $1 million per district from being any part of that vicious cycle: “It puts those dollars back into the hands of the voters,” he said. There are other benefits of the citizen-driven, decision-making process, said Kallos, who has utilized it since
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat and the Holiday candles. Thursday, April 5 - 7:07 pm Friday, April 6 – 7:08 pm from a pre-existing flame End of Passover, Saturday, April 7 – 8:09 pm For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com
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