Gothamist continues to lose readers, city public radio station guts it

 

NY Post

The lay offs were part of deeper cost-cutting at WNYC that impacted 14 positions or 4 percent of staff, across the organization as it copes with a dramatic fall off in contributions due to COVID-19, despite landing $8.9 million from the federal payroll protection program, the news organization said.

WNYC CEO Goli Skeikholeslami in a memo told to staffers that the station is entering fiscal year 2022 with “a sizeable deficit” as sponsorship funding plunged 27 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels. “And we cannot achieve our goals and meet our commitments while shouldering a fourth year of losses.” 

Skeikholeslami said the cuts affected four jobs in news and 10 in other departments. The company also implemented a series of other cutbacks, including the “freezing of pay hikes for employees making over $100,000, cutting retirement contributions to the 403(b) plan by 50 percent from July through year end and capping vacation carryover days at 10 this year and five next year.”

“In aggregate, the actions we are announcing today reduce our deficit by $3 million for FY22, enabling us to get on a path to financial sustainability.  Without taking the additional cost-saving measures, the number of staff cuts would have been far greater,” she said.    

Both Del Signore and Robbins were survivors of Gothamist’s near-death experience in 2017 when Joe Rickets, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, pulled the plug on it and sister website DNAinfo. 

Aw, I was looking forward to Robbins' follow up story of the big "open streets"mystery alleging the NYPD had something to do with throwing the barricades in Newtown Creek. Idiot.

Ridgewood's new demographics reduce school enrollment

From QNS:

Despite School District 24 being the most overcrowded district in Queens, a huge decline in enrollment at one elementary school in Ridgewood could be indicative of a shift in neighborhood demographics.

On June 27, Department of Education (DOE) spokesman Doug Cohen confirmed that P.S. 88 on Catalpa Avenue will have to fire nine teachers due to a decline in enrollment of 100 students for the 2018-19 school year. Cohen explained that while enrollment for the 2017-18 school year was 941 students, that number is projected to fall to 841 next year.

Since schools receive budget allocations based on the number and needs of their students, the resulting budget cuts for next year meant that teachers had to be let go, Cohen said.

Yet, according to the DOE’s Fair Student Funding records online, P.S. 88 is far from the only Ridgewood school to be hit with budget cuts.

Records show that P.S. 68 will lose $212,675; P.S. 71 will lose $396,403; P.S. 239 will lose $217,822; P.S. 81 will lose $435,371; P.S. 305 will lose $102,968; and I.S. 77 will lose $33,374. That list includes all but one of Ridgewood’s elementary schools.

According to Pat Grayson, chair of the Community Board 5 Education Committee, the declining enrollment and budget cuts at elementary schools is a direct reflection of the changing age demographic in Ridgewood.

“In actuality, people got up and moved away,” Grayson said. “Millennials are the people who have children when they’re 42 … people who are buying here don’t have a family yet. The point is, the neighborhood is no longer an old person’s neighborhood.”

As this is part of District 24, which is supposedly the most overcrowded school district in the city, it's hard to fathom that this is going on. A lot of new schools have opened in Ridgewood in the past decade or so, but why?

Minimum wage hike may cause layoffs

From the Observer:

Comptroller Scott Stringer wants the city’s minimum wage to soar more than $5, though he conceded yesterday businesses may struggle with the potential hike.

Mr. Stringer, appearing on NY1′s Inside City Hall, explained the rationale behind a report he released this week calling for a $13.13 city minimum wage, conceding that businesses would need to take time to adjust to the hefty boost.

“There’s no question that if you raise the minimum wage, it will be challenging for businesses to … adapt,” Mr. Stringer told host Errol Louis. “But they will adapt and when they do adapt you end up pumping money in this case potentially billions of dollars into local communities around New York City, though people who get a raise in salary go to local stores, they buy more at the local businesses so you’re really creating a trigger that will help our small businesses.”

Mr. Stringer unveiled a report on Monday that said boosting the minimum wage from $8–it will be $9 statewide by the end of 2015–will generate $115 million a week in new wages, increasing the spending power of New Yorkers. The analysis, however, did not examine how businesses would cope with the sudden hike and whether workers would have to be laid off to meet the new requirements.

You just can't grow your business here

From Crains:

One Queens-based e-commerce startup is poised to grow aggressively over the next few years, and they have found just the place to do it: Ohio.

Gwynnie Bee, a subscription service for the lease and sale of plus-size women's apparel, reportedly plans to add 400 new positions over the next few years at a new 100,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio. The company's executive and marketing operations will remain in New York City, where Gwynnie Bee will still be officially headquartered, but the 42 warehouse and distribution workers at the company's current Long Island City warehouse will be laid off in July.

"Labor is 30% cheaper there than here," [VP of Operations Robert Escobar] said. "In New York, you pay someone $15 an hour and they struggle to make ends meet. In Ohio, you pay someone $12 an hour and they can have a mortgage."

That dynamic was apparently such a concern for Gwynnie Bee that it never reached out to any city agency for a counter-offer on what Columbus 2020 was offering. To hear Mr. Escobar tell it, that would have been a waste of time for all involved as the idea of relocating its warehousing and distribution was necessary in order for the company to grow.

Gwynnie Bee is not closing the door on returning its logistics to the New York area, but Mr. Escobar said the company would be more likely to do so upstate or in New Jersey.

Casino that was supposed to provide jobs lays off 175

From the Queens Courier:

Resorts World Casino shut the doors to its Aqueduct Buffet on Monday, and in turn on about 175 employees.

“I thought it was a drastic move, certainly one that could be reconsidered down the line,” said State Senator Joseph Addabbo.

The buffet closed on Jan. 6 after “trying to make it work for two years, and just couldn’t,” said a spokesperson for the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council (HTC).

“We have made the difficult decision to close the Aqueduct Buffet, which never caught on with our customers and has consistently lost money,” said Ed Farrell, Resorts World president. “We sincerely regret the impact this closure has on the buffet’s employees and are working closely with the HTC to ease this transition.”

The HTC is in contract with Resorts World and has begun helping the laid-off employees find new work.

In the interim, the buffet workers will receive up to five weeks severance pay, depending on how long they were employed at the casino and what job they did. They will also get 120 days of extended family medical coverage and preferential hiring in other Resorts World departments, according to the spokesperson.

The employees did not receive notice the buffet was closing, but the spokesperson said the “federal WARN notice,” the worker adjustment and retraining notification act, does not apply in this situation. The buffet had to have more than a third of Resorts World employees to receive forewarning.

More hospital closings on the horizon?

From Crains:

Two events defined 2013 for New York City hospitals: the battle to keep two failing Brooklyn hospitals open, and Mount Sinai Medical Center's takeover of the former Continuum Health Partners. Closures and consolidations will again set the tone for hospitals in 2014. New York City hospitals need fewer beds—and fewer employees, too.

This isn't news to New Yorkers who have witnessed the death of St. Vincent's Hospital and other recent bankruptcies. Hospitals have been struggling with reimbursement cuts for years. But in 2014, a convergence of trends will accelerate consolidations and closings.

One trend is the way insurers are paring their network of hospitals and doctors under Obamacare. Low-priced health plans sold on the new insurance exchange are less costly because they offer a limited choice of providers, often only a quarter of the number in more traditional insurance policies. Some hospitals will find their patients steered elsewhere.

Insurers and companies that pay employee health care costs have -realized they "don't need a phone book of providers," said one hospital executive. "That is a revolution. Hospital utilization is dropping because the plan benefits are changing."

Another factor that will drive down hospitalization in 2014 is an ambitious new plan by New York state to cut the rate of avoidable hospitalizations by 25% over five years. That means shifting care from institutional settings to outpatient clinics and other alternatives.

The fall in hospital employment may begin in early 2014. Mayor Bill de Blasio may try to keep Brooklyn's money-losing Long Island College Hospital open, but the Cobble Hill facility filed a notice of mass layoffs with the state Department of Labor, specifying that 1,442 employees could lose their jobs between Jan. 21 and Feb. 3.

Likewise, bankrupt Interfaith Medical Center had been set to fire 1,545 workers late last month until the state promised funding to keep the hospital open through March 7.

Mount Sinai Health System cut 70 positions—a fraction of its 35,000 employees—shortly after its merger with Continuum, but the possibility remains that more consolidation could lie ahead.

220 more jobs to leave city

From the Daily News:

Edwin Mercado will still have his job at the Duane Reade warehouse in Maspeth, come this time next month.

His wife, Guadalupe, is not so lucky.

She is one of 120 unionized workers set to be laid off the first week of December, with another 100 pink slips looming next spring.

Walgreens, which bought Duane Reade in 2010, is moving some of its distribution operations to a larger, more modern facility in Connecticut.

At 470,000 feet, [their Maspeth] warehouse is too small to accommodate the volume of tractor trailers and trucks coming and going each day, the company says, noting it will keep 180 workers there.

“We cannot compete with New Jersey and Connecticut, where you have so much more space,” said Pedro Cardi, the business agent for Teamsters Local 210, which represents the workers. “The ergonomics of Maspeth don’t work.”

Companies drop off their goods at the warehouse on 55th Ave., where they are packed up and loaded into smaller trucks for distribution to individual stores.

But the volume of deliveries coming into — and going out of — the facility has become unmanageable.

Workers acknowledge the company has tried to help them find new jobs and sent them to job fairs. It’s been difficult to find replacements for the jobs, which pay roughly $12 to $13 an hour.

Company officials said they even allowed potential employers to visit the warehouse and interview employees who are losing their jobs.

Yet another Queens hospital closing, another on critical list

From the Queens Courier:

Health care in the borough continues to flatline one facility at a time, with Holliswood Hospital the latest to shutter its doors.

The 127-bed private psychiatric hospital in Jamaica closed on Monday, August 12 due to financial troubles, said a hospital official. Current patients will begin to be discharged, and after an estimated one to two weeks, the site will close permanently.

After Holliswood shuts off the lights, nearly 400 employees will have to look for work elsewhere, according to the borough president’s office. Some already have replacement jobs, but others do not, said hospital security guard Leroy Walker.

Walker, who has worked at the center for eight years, said the staff was informed on Friday, August 2 that the facility will close in less than two weeks.

Holliswood Hospital will let 376 employees go, including nurses, mental health technicians, nurse practitioners, occupational therapists, pharmacists, psychologists and more. The largest single group consists of 58 registered nurses, said the borough president’s office.

Starting in April, Holliswood began negotiating with PSCH, Inc., a local nonprofit provider, to receive interim financing for the facility. However, the parties were unable to resolve “certain substantive deal terms and terminated negotiations” in late July, according to hospital officials.

Without additional funds, the facility “did not have the financial resources to keep the hospital open.”

This is the sixth hospital to close in the borough in the last decade following Parkway, St. John’s Queens, Mary Immaculate, Peninsula and St. Joseph’s.

From the Daily News:

The only hospital on the Rockaway Peninsula is in critical condition after the closure of units and growing uncertainty surrounding the facility’s finances.

The 257-bed St. John’s Episcopal Hospital recently outsourced several of its clinics and closed its detox unit as cost-saving measure — and union and hospital officials will protest Wednesday outside the Far Rockaway medical center to slam the management’s “short-sided” approach to fixing its balance sheet.

“If you keep chopping away at services and staffing, quality is going to suffer,” said nurse Iona Folkes.

The hospital’s dialysis unit could also shutter, union officials said.

If the hospital closes, Rockaway residents would have to venture to Jamaica Hospital, Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, or South Shore Hospital in Long Island in an emergency.

They're also closing immunization clinics.

Half of Helen's staff in jeopardy

From the Queens Courier:

Half the staff at Borough Hall could get pink slips if cuts proposed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg go through.

Borough President Helen Marshall’s office is expected to receive about $3.14 million in funding for the 2014 fiscal year—nearly $1.8 million less than last year—officials announced at Marshall’s Borough Board meeting on Monday, May 13.

If the budget is approved, the cuts will result in half the staff’s dismissal, according to Chief of Staff Alexandra Rosa.

There were roughly 88 employees when Marshall was first elected in 2002, according to spokesperson Dan Andrews. If this year’s cuts go through, the current staff of 54 could be reduced to fewer than 30.

The question is, who will notice?

Bloomberg and Council really f'ed up budget

From NY1:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to expand taxi service to all five boroughs would not just have been a boon for riders. It also would have put an extra $1.4 billion in the city's coffers.

The money would have come from the sale of 2,000 taxi medallions, but that source dried up after a state judge's decision on Friday blocked the taxi plan.

"What it means is, since we really don't have the opportunity to raise taxes, it means cutting expenses and we will continue to do that," said the mayor.

The decision blows a $635 million hole in this year's $68.5 billion budget.

The city planned to collect another $365 million the following year from the medallion sales and another $460 million in fiscal year 2015.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and City Comptroller John Liu have both said it was risky for the city to bank on that money since it was tied up in a court case. The mayor, though, remained publicly confident that the city would prevail in court.

The city did not prevail. The judge found the city at fault because it did not get approval from the City Council to expand taxi service. Albany lawmakers signed off on the deal instead.

"We still think that we will win on appeal, but it's going to be a real challenge," said Bloomberg.

The city was already facing a $2.5 billion dollar budget deficit for next fiscal year.

As for the possibility of layoffs, the mayor said he had no idea at this point Monday. But he noted that if the city has less money, it will not be able to employ as many people, so it appears that some jobs will be lost, either through attrition or layoffs.

"Attrition doesn't work very well in a slow economy. You got any other questions?" said Bloomberg.

In a nutshell:

The 3rd term fiscal genius and his minions at the City Council that NYC just could not do without gambled on something that was not a sure bet and now we're all going to suffer for it.

Peninsula Hospital lays off employees

From the Daily News:

A troubled Far Rockaway hospital will be taking a scalpel to its staff roster amid ongoing restructuring plans, the Daily News has learned.

Peninsula Hospital sent out layoff notification letters to more than 50 employees on Monday as its new owner tries to stabilize its finances, several union delegates told The News.

Peninsula is currently going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings under the stewardship of Revival Home Health Care. Revival had taken over Peninsula from MediSys Health Network in September, after the hospital was struggling with more than $60 million in debt.