Riis Park Beach Bazaar is getting cancelled

Rockaway Times

 

Riis Park Beach Bazaar (RPBB) immediately helped revitalize Riis Park when it secured a lease to run the concessions at the park that offered little to visitors for decades. That was five years ago. Since then, the group has offered a wide variety or food vendors, beach rental equipment, live entertainment and even year round indoor dining (in pre-Covid times). Many locals have found employment with the company as well.

And now the lease is up. The five-year lease is due to expire November 1, just a couple of months from now. The lease does not have a renewal clause and NPS says the “park plans to release a competitive solicitation in early Fall 2020, to lease facilities at Riis for similar purposes.”

Chalk up another bust for this hipster culture entrepreneurial collective. Thanks for the memories

Slow down, ZWEET, your neighbors

 
I hope the attached video comes through to you. Here in Flushing and Bayside this guy speeds through the streets like our neighborhood is his own personal speedway. His car is LOUD. He's a menace to our quiet neighborhoods. It's a growing trend. 
 

Duh

QNS

After suffering $300,000 of damages in the subways from more than 400 cases of vandals smashing windows, the MTA says it is considering teaming up with NYPD to implement a “broken windows strategy” in order to bring the situation under control.

MTA Chief Safety Officer Pat Warren said on Saturday that a tough-on-crime approach will be needed, in a supplement to their effort of increased surveillance, to end the repeated attacks on their infrastructure and their already enfeebled pocketbook from COVID-19.

“Let me tell you, if there’s any time that we think about maybe a broken windows strategy, this may be that moment in time and we certainly would like to continue and work with the NYPD on that strategy if they choose to take them,” Warren said. “We have to take a train out of service when we find broken windows in it because it’s a safety hazard. So for that period of time whether takes is a couple hours or three hours, whatever it takes us to repair those windows, that train’s out of service, which means at that point in time our customers are inconvenienced with long wait times and or potentially more crowding on the platform.”

This recent vexation, Warren said, takes the wind out of the MTA’s attempts to keep their systems running at full service at just a fraction of their operating budget and only about a quarter of their pre-pandemic ridership.

Not only that, but the MTA is running low on their stockpile of replacement windows.

#CancelLien

QNS
 

Two Queens lawmakers introduced legislation that would postpone the New York City tax lien sale by one year following the expiration of the COVID-19 state of emergency order.

State Senator Leroy Comrie and Assemblyman David Weprin said the annual lien sale in which debt on tax-delinquent properties is auctioned to private collectors was scheduled for May 15 but was delayed due to the ongoing pandemic.

As of now, the sale is scheduled to occur on September 4. The owners of properties eligible for the tax lien have until September 3 to pay their debt or enter into a payment agreement with the Department of Finance. Once a lien is sold, the property owner must arrange a payment agreement with the lien servicing company or risk legal seizure of their properties.

Liens are sold to private servicing companies with special operating authorization from the city and currently, these include Tower Capital Management, LLC and MTAG Services, LLC

In Comrie’s southeast Queens district, a residential community that is still recovering from the subprime mortgage crisis, as many as 600 properties are eligible for the 2020 lien sale. In past years, 

Comrie’s office has worked closely with the Department of Finance to identify and assist property owners ahead of the annual lien sale, but COVID-19 has presented unprecedented challenges to doing community outreach.

“Homeowners facing the lien sale need ample time to consult with attorneys, enter into payment agreements, and learn about exemption programs ahead of the sale,” Comrie said. “COVID-19 has made this all impossible to do on a scale that we need it to happen. The tax lien sale can’t happen this year, and I’m going to raise hell between now and September 4 to see that it doesn’t happen.”

With thousands of city homeowners impacted by the economic effects of the pandemic, Weprin says holding the lien sale this year would be unconscionable.

BLM tried to drown out Sunnyside pro-cop rally...and failed.

Regarding the 108th Precinct Community Council's support rally this past Saturday.

From Sunnyside Post:

The opposing rally will meet at John Vincent Daniels Jr. Square in Woodside at 10 a.m. and walk towards 39th Street and Greenpoint Avenue.

The group expects to arrive just before a scheduled pro-police march kicks off from the spot at 11 a.m.

The counter-protesters said they will form a single-file line in front of the pro-police marchers but will step aside once their march starts, according to organizer Grace Frutos.

“They think that we are against police and that we want to hurt them and that’s just not the case,” Frutos said.

No? Here's a sign she showed off:

I can't see how this could possibly be misinterpreted!

“We do not intend to engage with them and the majority of our protest will be done in silence,” she said.

Now, here's what they actually did:

UPDATE:
The counter protestors WILL NOT march to pro-police rally starting point.
They will now meet them at their END POINT at Sabba Park at 49-12 Queens Blvd.
I spoke to counter-protest organizer Grace Frutos @queenspost @sunnysidepost pic.twitter.com/rtrzZoAIK3

— Michael Dorgan (@MDorganNYC) August 22, 2020

If you have a great position, you shouldn't have to drown out the other side when it's their turn to speak. But you tried to.

Notice they were silent when the 9/11 hero's brother spoke... I guess they thought trying to interrupt him might make them look bad. (too late)

This behavior was so disturbing to the Sunnyside Post that they wrote an editorial about it.

You all live in America where our mantra is, "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." No one bothers BLM when they hold an event. They could at least show the people they disagree with the same courtesy.

It seems the real fascists have revealed themselves.

Update:

 QNS' report vs. Sunnyside Post's report on the rallies.

Faculty and students are guinea pigs for the city's indoor dining policy

Eater

 Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed Thursday what some NYC restaurant owners have suspected all along: A return to indoor dining is contingent on how the city’s schools perform when they reopen on September 10.

When a reporter pointed out to the mayor again Thursday that a return to indoor dining had been postponed indefinitely, de Blasio was more measured in his response than earlier in the week when he indicated that indoor dining might not return until next year.

“As more and more people come back to work, as schools begin, you know, we’ll get to see a lot about what our long-term health picture looks like, and that’s going to help inform our decisions going forward,” said de Blasio referring to the administration’s wait and watch approach on making a decision on indoor dining.

While the rest of the state has allowed indoor dining to proceed at half capacity for the last two months, New York City restauranteurs have been waiting indefinitely, despite the fact that the city has largely brought the spread of the COVID-19 largely under control. Still, New York leaders like de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have expressed concern due to the city’s density and population. 

The Blaz is a sick mofo. 

Subway in vain: Austerity cuts and fare increases coming without Fed aid

Gothamist

The MTA called an emergency board meeting on Wednesday to outline the most draconian cuts it would make if the federal government doesn’t deliver on its request for $12 billion before the end of the year.

The agency says it needs the funds to balance the budget and get through 2021. In November, they will present next year’s budget options to the board, which it must vote on by December 31st. (Last year’s operating budget came in at $16 billion.) If the $12 billion doesn’t come through, the MTA is considering slashing subway and bus service by 40 percent, and commuter rail service by 50 percent. 

Layoffs and fare and additional toll hikes other than the planned ones are also on the table. Nearly all capital projects would be put on hold under this plan.

In July, the agency estimated that it was losing $200 million a week from a combination of the dramatic drop in ridership and tax revenue and the increased cost of cleaning buses and trains to lower the risk of coronavirus infection. Subway service is down 75 percent from pre-pandemic levels, and buses are down 45 percent. Foye says if service levels continue at this rate the financial shortfall will be far worse than the Great Depression.

The MTA exhausted its first round of $3.9 billion in federal relief funding at the end of July. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate went on recess without passing a second relief bill.

“The future of the MTA and the future of the New York region rests squarely in the hands of the federal government, the U.S. Senate specifically,” Foye said. “If they fail to do so, horrendous choices lay ahead.”

The MTA estimates that cutting subway and bus service by 40 percent, and laying off 7,200 transit workers would save the agency $880 million a year.

But the president of the Transit Workers Union Local 100 and board member John Samulsen said there’s no way the union would accept these cuts. “We’ve paid with blood,” he said, “That you’d come to ask the workers that just put their necks on the line by being on the frontline of this fight against Covid-19 is ridiculous.” The union says nearly 100 transit workers suffered COVID-related deaths.

The MTA’s CFO Bob Foran also predicted the agency would need to cut 50 percent of commuter railroad service to balance the budget, leading to 850 Long Island Railroad job cuts.

Speaking Wednesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo added the state doesn’t have enough money to prevent these types of cuts. “It’s not mathematically possible,” he said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said they’ll fight to secure the funding.

A month after de Blasio and Carranza roll out school re-opening plan, they then unroll the toilet paper to guage the air from the school vents

 

NY Post

Mayor Bill de Blasio officially presented his school reopening plan Friday — calling for a weekly “blended approach’’ of in-class and online learning for “a vast majority of kids.”

Most students will physically be in class two to three days a week, the mayor said.

“You can certainly say, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna be tough, it’s gonna take a lot of work,’ ’’ Hizzoner told reporters in a conference call.

He said the city’s daily positive-test rate for the coronavirus must remain below 3 percent for the plan to work. He said Friday’s figures show it remains steady at 1 percent.

The discovery of a vaccine for the deadly contagion would help bring schools “back to full strength,’’ de Blasio said, referring to all in-school learning.

He said it was “conceivable’’ that schools could fully reopen for on-site instruction without a vaccine if the number of virus cases in the city becomes virtually nonexistent but added that the scenario would be “difficult.’’

Each school’s plan will vary between one to three days of in-student learning, with the rest of the school week remote, depending on such things as its enrollment and layout, city officials said.

NY Post

 The city is going to extremes to make sure this school year doesn’t get flushed.

Department of Education workers have been spotted using pieces of toilet paper stuck to the ends of sticks to gauge the airflow inside classrooms as kids return in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One stunned city councilman exposed the bizarre testing method in all its low-tech glory by posting a tweet Wednesday showing a worker poking at a ceiling vent with bathroom tissue affixed to a flimsy piece of wood using a binder clip.

“The official and comprehensive NYC inter-agency classroom ventilation inspection process,”
Mark Treyger zinged in the post.

When quizzed about the tissue rig, Mayor Bill de Blasio conceded that he wasn’t qualified to issue a “a great technical answer” — but insisted that folks shouldn’t not to diss the Charmin.

“That’s actually the way the CDC recommends you test these things,” he explained.

De Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced this week that the DOE would vet all city school buildings for adequate ventilation to guard against coronavirus transmission.

The pair said that DOE engineers would spearhead the sweep and that the vast majority of schools would be cleared for operation by September 1.

Trash still accumulates on Addabbo Bridge

Queens Chronicle

 Despite recent efforts of Howard Beach residents to draw the city’s attention to trash-strewn Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge, government officials have not followed up.

After a group of local women cleaned the bridge on July 16, they left around 60 garbage bags out for the Department of Sanitation to pick up, which had not come to pass as of Tuesday afternoon.

One of the organizers, Gina Barillaro, said that she had coordinated with state Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach) before the event, who assured her that he would get sanitation workers to clean up the bags. Addabbo instructed her to leave the bags along each opening in the chain link fence running along the walkway, she said.

“It was so bad. There was like a bag or two by each opening,” Barillaro said.

She was dismayed to find them there — many ripped open and scattered by vermin — several days later, and did not hear back from Addabbo’s office when she followed up. Another organizer, Vincenza Connors, went back Tuesday only to find the trash bags still there nearly a month later.

Addabbo said that the lack of response is a result of the city’s recent budget cuts to the Sanitation Department. He said that he called Garage 10, the sanitation unit in charge of the bridge, but that it could not follow through on his request due to a loss of manpower.

“What we’re finding out is that due to budget cuts, these local garages, Garage 10 being one of them, got deep cuts into their operation,” Addabbo said.

Sidewalk homeless shelter has been in Elmhurst since April

1010 WINS

 A homeless encampment in Queens that has garnered dozens of 311 complaints since April is still set up — and causing myriad problems for nearby businesses.

Since April 1, neighbors have filed 49 complaints about the encampment at Whitney Avenue and Broadway in Elmhurst, which usually comprises between 10 and 20 homeless people.

The encampment is still there, however, and the 311 complaints filed about it have been resolved with phrases including "closed," "non-crime corrected," and "refused assistance."

William Zheng, whose cousin runs a restaurant across the street from the setup, told 1010 WINS homeless people who live at and frequent the encampment scare off patrons and leave garbage behind.

Nearby businesses end up getting fined for the trash, he said.

Asked about the encampment, NYPD Sergeant Jessica McRorie said police haven’t been able to respond to it because budget cuts eliminated the department’s homeless outreach unit. 

 

Manufacturing consent of "cancel rent"

 New York Gentrication Watch

Meet Donnette Letford, a victim of COVID-19 and needing rent relief. If you learn of her plight, you will understand why this unfortunate victim of COVID-19 has become the focus of so many pro-cancel rent articles, and why it’s imperative that we cancel rent for everyone–not only just here in the United States but around the world!
Now, before you roll your eyes in disgust at the very mention of “cancel rent”, listen to Letford’s story of tale and woe and see if it won’t change your mind. Here goes:
Donnette Letford is a single mother of three from Flatbush, Brooklyn–and an American–who can’t pay rent because her small business folded due to COVID-19. At least that’s what Annie Lowrey of The Atlantic wrote in The Cancel-Rent Movement:

 

Oh, wait…did Annie Lowrey of The Atlantic say she lived in Flatbush? Because according to Shannon Ferry of NY 1 in City Tenants Advocate for a Rent Freeze, Weigh Possibility of a Rent Strike, she lives in Canarsie–

 

The new depression manifests itself in Flushing

NY Post

The line stretched a quarter-mile before the sun was barely up Saturday, snaking around corners like bread lines in the 1930s. But the hungry in Queens are today’s New Yorkers, left jobless by the coronavirus.

Until the pandemic struck the city, La Jornada food pantry used to hand out groceries to roughly 1,000 families a week. Now, the number tops 10,000. And volunteers serve lunch every day to 1,000 — many of them kids with growling stomachs. Across the five boroughs, the hungry is in the hundreds of thousands, the Food Bank of New York estimates.


“It reminds me of the picture from the Great Depression where a man in a suit and tie is giving another man in a suit and tie an apple. That’s all he had,” La Jornada’s Pedro Rodriguez told The Post. “We give all we have, but that’s not enough.”
 
Seniors, moms and kids, singles — many immigrants from China and Mexico — wait for hours. They turn out in droves wherever, and whenever, the food pantry’s truck shows up.


“We feel like we are underwater, drowning in a tsunami of people,” Rodriguez, a volunteer who acts as the food pantry’s executive director, told The Post. “This isn’t like a little rain coming down. The numbers are unbelievable.”

Cuomo's Lethal Ill-Logistics

Impunity City

Where does one begin to discuss the current global pandemic induced phenomenon and cult of personality that is the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo? Since he locked down the state back in mid-March as coronavirus cases grew by thousands and thousands and thousands, Mario’s son had become the chosen one; elder statesman of all things COVID-19 and the default rebuttal warrior against Donald Trump’s consistent, insistently brazen and meta-comical errors of the novel disease and how to fight it. (Bleach and sun anyone?)

Like the spiky red-pockmarked handball looking pathogen, Andrew has become quite the pop culture icon himself with his daily afternoon government issue polo shirt press briefings on the outbreak. It’s become as much national institution as the Price is Right used to be at 12 p.m. every day as snippets of his videos and images have gone viral; thoroughly giving his constituents and viewers across the country and the globe essential information about the contagion’s spread and the status of his state.

His briefings have managed to even produce a spin off show via Fredo’s Chris Cuomo’s prime time “news” hour program on CNN. It’s quite a big ratings grabber despite the huge ass conflict this comes with as his kid brother “interviews” him about his brah governing the response and recovery while gushing about him in dreams and blatantly egging him to run for President.

 About that. Because of all this attention, social media had dubbed and trended Andrew as #PresidentCuomo and corporate news grabbed onto to that to fill their webpages and hyperlinks with blanket speculation and suggestions about the COVID19 superstar to run for the white house too. Not to mention dozens of articles proclaiming how the suddenly hunky Cuomo is the boyfriend of America, but that’s just icky and gross so I’ll end it there.

Since this is supposed to be a devastatingly serious column,(note the header photo) but all that shit had to be prefaced to illustrate and elaborate how the goddamn Governor Cuomo does not deserve all these adulation and accolades or should still have a job right now regarding the consequences of his inaction and very suspect actions to stem the spread of the novel virus in his state besides lamely ostracizing people to wear masks.

As the days counted down to the cruelest April of our lifetime and humankind, Cuomo continued his daily briefings as a salve to his constituents and a reassurance to the nation following them as an alternative to Trump’s alternative facts.

Immediately at the start of the month the plague really came in. Yet here was the resilient and virile leader on the dais every afternoon in front of the camera, an exhibition of transparency reading out the morbid death tolls while quite oddly talking about flattening the curves as casualties started to mount. Yet the veneration levied to him by social and news media continued to shower on him…

…until he weaponized that veneration and adulation to shield himself

Caption Cuomo

The dilapidation of Crocheron Park.

Hello Queens Crap, I Hope you're safe and well. 

I am a resident of the beautiful Bayside Flushing area. 

Crocheron Park is one of my favorite parks. I go there frequently to run, bike, and walk. It's a big gorgeous park. I love walking over the pedestrian bridge above the Cross Island Parkway to the path that's along the parkway and Little Neck Bay.  To me it's just one of the best parts of being a Queens resident. 

But the decay and neglect can no longer be ignored. It's in stark contrast to other parks that I've been to. Hook Creek Park in Rosedale is immaculate and well kept. There's no comparison. Why has such a gem in Bayside been left to rot? This is not just recent, I've contacted 311 for years, it's all been disregarded. 

Lighting has been broken and left dangling by wires, a danger to curious kids. The broken lights also leave the park pitch black, so anyone wise wouldn't consider the park at dusk. The park has become a haven for pot smokers, and God knows who else. 

The benches perched above the Cross Island were once intended to be a regal and elegant view of beautiful Little Neck Bay and the cars below on the Cross Island are now staring at decades of an accumulated neglected mass of weeds and trees which were never supposed to be there. It's a catastrophic NYC Parks disaster. I cannot fathom that we continue to turn a blind eye. 

Why has this gorgeous park fallen into such neglect? Hook Creek Park is like a shimmering paradise in contrast. I just don't get it. This is not recent covid19 nonsense. Look at my pictures, this is years of neglect. 

Thank, Queens Crap

Chirlane McCray's ThriveNYC program and personal media entourage has to be funded somehow...

NY Post

“People will die” if City Hall follows through with a plan to lay off nearly 400 EMTs and paramedics, the head of the union representing those workers told The Post.

Oren Barzilay, head of EMS Local 2507, said FDNY brass told him that 10 percent of the city’s 3,700 EMTs and paramedics will be cut under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to slash 22,000 municipal workers.

“The response times will go through the roof. That would put people at risk. People will die,” Barzilay warned.

De Blasio has said the reductions will come in October if the city doesn’t get state or federal aid to fill a major budget deficit caused by the coronavirus. Earlier this month he ordered agencies to come up with lists of cuts, according to Politico.

The number of EMTs and paramedics has already dropped from 4,100 before the pandemic. Four of his members died from the virus and three others committed suicide, Barzilay said. They were on the frontline of the crisis, rushing patients to hospitals around the five boroughs.

During the pandemic, his members responded to 7,000 emergency 911 calls, nearly double the normal amount.

“We were the only ones going into homes to save lives. That’s what we did. This is the thanks the men and women from EMS are now getting,” Barzilay fumed.

“COVID is not over. What happens if there is a surge?” he asked.
Reps for FDNY and City Hall did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Another union source said the cuts are nearly inconceivable.

“I don’t know where they would trim EMS, we are understaffed,” said Anthony Almojera, vice president of EMS Local 3621.

BLM's hilarious lack of historical knowledge

Bayside BLM protest:

an organizer speaks about the PBA, whiteness, and Blue Lives Matter. pic.twitter.com/FZ09F20UuL

— Angélica M. Acevedo (@angacevedo15) August 20, 2020

History 101:
Columbus was, indeed, Italian.
Hitler poisoned and shot himself.

Also, while it may make you feel good to scream ethnic epithets about Italians and Irish in a white neighborhood, it's not really a good look for an "anti-racist" group.

Contractor Gadget buys a seat on the EDC board

THE CITY

 

A major donor to Bill de Blasio’s aborted presidential campaign and seller of COVID-related gear to New York has scored a seat on a powerful board controlled by the mayor.

Charlie Tebele, whose business has hawked hoverboards out of a New Jersey warehouse, joined the board of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, with his first appearance on May 6, meeting minutes indicate.

A spokesperson for de Blasio said the mayor made the appointment on March 18 — one week before Tebele and the city signed the first of nearly $119 million in no-bid contracts for masks and ventilators.

The nonprofit is the city’s chief vehicle for steering subsidies and real estate to private businesses, including the failed 2018 proposal to usher Amazon to Long Island City. Last year, EDC received more than $2 billion via exclusive contracts from the city Department of Small Business Services, making it City Hall’s single largest contractor, according to city comptroller records.

As THE CITY has previously reported, Tebele’s firm Digital Gadgets LLC secured three emergency contracts in late March to sell masks and ventilators to the de Blasio administration as the coronavirus crisis surged and the city scrambled to secure gear.

The administration later canceled the largest of those contracts, for $91 million in ventilators and breathing kits, after the life-saving ventilators did not arrive — but not until after advancing $9.1 million to Digital Gadgets.

The firm has continued to be a major supplier of N95 and other masks to city government, with payments totaling more than $25 million since March 30 registered in the comptroller’s Checkbook NYC system.

Federal records show that Digital Gadgets received Paycheck Protection Program aid of between $150,000 and $350,000, covering a dozen workers in New Jersey — even as the firm and a new Manhattan-registered company associated with Tebele called Digital Gadgets Medical LLC scored tens of millions of dollars in COVID-related business from New York, followed by Cook County, Ill., and other local governments across the U.S.

Kew Gardens hotel is a den of crime and iniquity

Queens Eagle

 The bullet holes in the front door were the last straw. 

Five Central Queens elected officials have urged Mayor Bill de Blasio to convene various city agencies and address a spike in gun violence and drug sales at the Umbrella Hotel, located across from Queens Borough Hall and the Queens Criminal Courthouse. 

“The events we have witnessed over the last several months at this location have crossed the line from quality of life issues into safety concerns for the people we have the privilege of representing,” the elected officials wrote in a letter to City Hall. “Simply put, we need your administration to coordinate a multi-agency response to the problems at this location.”

The hotel has been the scene of two shootings over the past six weeks, prompting U.S. Rep. Grace Meng, State Sen. Leroy Comrie, Assemblymembers Daniel Rosenthal and Andrew Hevesi and Councilmember Karen Koslowitz to send the letter to de Blasio. 

The shootings, first reported by the Eagle, took place July 3 and Aug. 9. The victims survived both attacks, but gunfire from the most recent incident punctured the revolving door of the once-quiet hotel. 

“The situation is extremely dangerous,” Assemblymember Daniel Rosenthal told the Eagle after a meeting at Queens Borough Hall Aug. 13. Representatives from the NYPD’s 102nd Precinct and Queens Community 9 showed up, but several other agencies blew off the meeting, Rosenthal said. 

“There have already been two shootings and the fact that we had a meeting and that most city agencies decided not to show is reckless and unacceptable,” Rosenthal said.

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…

How to disappear the Steinway Mansion completely

 George the Atheist

 As predicted nine months ago - HERE, the view of the Steinway Mansion is slowly being obliterated for warehouse construction along 41st Street.   Looking north.  Catch it while you can.

 

 

Beware of Cojo

NY Daily News

NYC Council members who voted against this year’s budget — which activists decried as failing to go far enough on police reform — got the short end of the stick on funding for their districts from Council Speaker Corey Johnson, the Daily News has found.

The 17 “no” votes each received an average of seven times less discretionary and capital funding from Johnson than 30 “yes” votes.

The more than $300 million in cash, which is buried in budget documents, goes to everything from local nonprofits to school auditoriums and is seen as a way for the speaker to reward allies and punish foes.

As the controversial budget passed at the end of June, Johnson took an apologetic tone. He noted shortcomings in answering demands that arose from recent anti-police-brutality protests sparked by the May 25 death of Black Minneapolis man George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

“To everyone who is disappointed that we did not go farther ... I am disappointed, as well,” he said. 

“But this budget process involves the mayor, who was not budging more than what we got, and 49 other Council members currently, many of whom were not open or supportive to the kind of cuts that I was pushing for.”

However, members who voted in favor of the budget received the biggest allocations from Johnson.

Councilwoman Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) got $21,697,000; Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn), $18,395,000; and Council Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo (D-Brooklyn), $16,025,000.

The rebels, many of whose stances were known as Johnson’s office finalized the budget in the days before the vote, received far less. Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens) got $736,000; Councilwomen Carlina Rivera (D-Manhattan) and Helen Rosenthal (D-Manhattan), $225,000 each; and Councilman Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn), $125,000. Councilman Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn) got a big fat zero from Johnson, though his name was on one line item shared with Councilman Antonio Reynoso (D-Brooklyn).