The city is chipping away funding from Rikers Island closing.

 

THE CITY

 The city’s latest funding plan strips more than $500 million from construction of four new jails — with a building timeline that could extend two years past Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pledge to shut Rikers Island by 2026.

The capital budget commitment plan, published by the Office of Management and Budget last month, outlines $8.16 billion over 10 years for the “Borough-Based Jail” plan, which seeks to build new state-of-the-art correctional facilities in every borough except Staten Island.

That figure is down by about $520 million from $8.68 billion allocated in April.

“The city should be speeding up, not slowing down, the closure of the dysfunctional jails on Rikers,” said former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, who led a panel that called for the closing of Rikers.

He argued that the need to close the jailsT complex by the East River “has only grown more urgent” during the pandemic, which has “sharpened focus on racial equity.”

The city’s latest financial documents detail a timeline that wraps up two years after the original 2026 target end date.

The budget’s final construction is slated for completion in June of 2028.

That 2028 fiscal year also encompasses the previous end date of August 2027 that surfaced with a revised City Hall timeline. But the new timeline now would allow construction to carry into the 2028 calendar year.

City will probably never see money from parking garage

From Crains:

The embattled Bronx Parking Development Co., which has defaulted on its bonds and owes millions of dollars to the city, is trying to raise money by selling development rights to two street-level parking lots it owns near Yankee Stadium-area, but the outcome is unclear.

In April, the BPDC issued a request for proposals to develop two lots on city-owned land under a sublease from the parking company, which holds the lease. The request for proposals, which was posted on the website of the city's Economic Development Corp., specified that the development be built to sustainable standards and include a rent schedule for the entire term for the sublease, which would run through 2106.

Responses were due back in June. Edward Moran, who was brought in as BPDC's chief restructuring officer in March after the company, which owns a total of five garages and nine street-level lots, defaulted on its bonds, could not be reached for comment on Friday.

The BPDC has been losing money since last year, driven by lower-than-expected demand for parking at its 9,294 parking spaces, which remain half-empty on some game days. The company missed its last payment to bondholders, due April 1, after dipping into its reserve fund to make the previous payment.

The city is not on the hook for the bonds, but as of last October, the BPDC owed $25.5 million to the city in rent and payments in lieu of taxes. The Mayor's Office of Management and Budget did not respond to questions of how much is currently owed the city.

But unless the BPDC can dramatically turn around its fortunes the city is unlikely to see the monies it is owed anytime soon, said Doug Turetsky, chief of staff at the Independent Budget Office.

Gennaro may actually put money toward Brinckerhoff this time

From the Times Ledger:

A committee formed to preserve Brinckerhoff Cemetery, a colonial cemetery in Fresh Meadows that was recently named a landmark by the city, is hoping the City Council will buy the burial ground from its private owner.

“The city made an error when it sold the land several decades ago,” said James Trent, member of the Brinckerhoff Memorial Committee, referring to when the city sold Brinckerhoff in a series of moves starting with a public auction in the 1950s to pay off tax debts. “The city should reverse the wrong decision it made.”

Trent is also the president of the Queens County Farm Museum, an organization that has been on the forefront of advocating for Brinckerhoff’s designation as a landmark.

City Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows) said he would be willing to use his discretionary funds in order to buy the cemetery.

“My role is to put up the money and hope that City Hall can talk to various parties and make this happen,” he said.

But he said there are potentially many roadblocks to making the plan a reality. The city Office of Management and Budget would have to approve using Gennero’s descretionary funds to buy the cemetery, and even if approval is granted, it is not clear whether the cemetery’s owner, Linda’s Cai Trading, will want to part with it.

So then the City can condemn it the way they did back in the 1950s. Problem solved.