Billions of dollars to subsidize film and television projects in New
York hasn't had a statistically significant impact on employment in the
entertainment industry, according to a new study.
University of Southern California associate professor
Michael Thom conducted a peer-reviewed analysis of a handful of state's
that offer the bulk of motion picture incentives in the country and
found that — when controlled for economic factors such as the growth in
the labor market — there is "not much" of a link between job creation
and the lucrative credit offered in New York, which was created in 2004. The study represents a continuation of scholarly analyses
questioning whether the refundable tax credit, which was recently
extended by state lawmakers and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, is a prudent
investment.
Thom determined that employment in the entertainment
industry, which increased in New York by more than 60 percent from 2004
to 2017, based on federal jobs numbers, was largely the product of
trends in the overall economy and national growth in the industry. He
also found a low correlation between the credit and wages paid in the
below-the-line jobs that benefit from the credit. “It’s not the incentives, its simply the normal ebb and flow of the labor market," Thom said.
This conclusion is vociferously disputed by organized
labor groups working in film and television, who point to their own
studies and anecdotal evidence that the credits have led to a
flourishing sector with wide ripple effects.
Horse-trading is in full swing as the City Council readies to vote on Mayor de Blasio’s controversial plan to close the notorious jail complex on Rikers Island and replace it with four new facilities.
The
plan calls for jails to be built in Downtown Manhattan, the South
Bronx, central Queens and Downtown Brooklyn by 2026, at an estimated
cost of $8.7 billion.
That’s
a bitter pill to swallow for some residents of those nabes. So the de
Blasio administration is offering a proverbial spoonful of sugar to
Council members rep’ing the areas.
The
city is committing to building up to 233 units of affordable housing
next to a new jail sited at 320 Concord Ave. in the Bronx nabe of Mott
Haven, according to Councilwoman Diana Ayala.
She
hopes new housing might mollify residents in the area, where the
community board unanimously rejected the mayor’s plan in May.
“I’m
sure that they’re not going to be excited about this, either,” Ayala
said of the new jail’s opponents. “In an effort to try to do the best
thing by both the community and shutting Rikers, this is the best place I
can get to.”
In
spite of pockets of opposition from pols like Councilman Jimmy Van
Bramer — who’s been tormented by socialist activists as he seeks the
Queens borough president’s seat — the Council is expected to pass the
mayor’s plan. The Land Use Committee will conclude a review process
known as ULURP on Wednesday, followed by a full Council vote Thursday.
Council members in districts where the new jails were sited were likely “yes” votes from the start of the debate.
But
an insider noted the ULURP process, in which the Council tends to defer
to the votes of colleagues rep’ing areas where projects are proposed,
gives members in Ayala’s shoes lots of leverage.
“If
you’re a member who’s going to vote yes, then why not secure benefits?”
the Council insider remarked. “The ULURP provides a rare occasion to
provide community benefits. Why not?”
City officials covered up nearly 120 “serious incidents”
at homeless shelters by downgrading their severity so they wouldn’t
have to be disclosed to state regulators, according to the city
Department of Investigation. The DOI conducted a yearlong probe into allegations that the
Department of Homeless Services wasn’t “adequately” reporting arrests
and other problems to the state Office of Temporary and Disability
Assistance, which is responsible for ensuring that shelters are safe. The investigation revealed that DHS created its own “priority codes”
that minimized “life-threatening injuries,” mental-health emergencies
and some arrests of residents, visitors or staffers, according to an
April 8 DOI memo obtained by The Post. There were “approximately 117 internal reports” from January through
June 2017 that contained information that should have been reported, the
memo said. City Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-The Bronx), who tipped off DOI to
the situation, told The Post,
“There’s only one word for the conduct of
DHS: inexcusable.”
“DHS adopted a dubious definition of serious incidents that it knew
would lead to the under-reporting of incidents consisting of serious
injuries, mental health emergencies, arrests and situations affecting
the safety of its own residents and staff,” Torres said.
Security at the city’s homeless shelters is so shoddy that
one Harlem facility had its own in-house heroin dealer, according to
records and fed-up workers.
Parkview Inn resident Alice Cuesta, 52, was finally busted
last month with 60 glassines of heroin after clumsily dropping them
right in front of an NYPD sergeant inside the elevator at the West 110th
Street shelter, prosecutors said court papers.
Before her fateful fumble, Cuesta had held free rein at the
shelter “for a long time,” law-enforcement and DHS sources told The
Post — adding that the situation is similar at shelters across the city.
Security gaps, as well as overworked DHS officers who simply don’t
have the time, training or help to conduct thorough investigations, have
left some residents wondering if they wouldn’t be better off taking
their chances on the street.
Can ferry boats be the way to stop a bruising battle over New York City’s jail problem?
A group of
designers and engineers who live and work in Downtown Manhattan unveiled
a plan last week that outlines in detail how to rebuild Rikers Island
and use secure buses aboard ferries to transport prisoners to and from
court.
It is one of the first specific, workable
alternatives put forward by opponents to Mayor de Blasio’s sweeping plan
to replace Rikers with four borough-based jails, including one in Kew
Gardens behind the Queens Criminal Court building. The City Council has scheduled a crucial vote on the mayor’s jail plan for next Thursday. At bottom, the 49-page ferry proposal was drawn
to upend the mayor’s $11-billion plan — $9 billion for the jails, plus
$2 billion to repurpose Rikers as a multiuse city facility — that would
take a decade to complete. Local groups are bitterly opposed to the proposal
that calls for the new jails in largely residential neighborhoods, as
are criminal-justice reformers who want to see Rikers closed but oppose
constructing new lockups. The reimagining of Rikers calls for the city to
demolish “every building” on the island and build a series of smaller,
low-rise jails — each with a different level of security. Renderings for a reconfigured Rikers include open spaces, sports facilities, a family center and a small farm. Connecting a rebuilt island jail system with the
boroughs by ferry “liberates Rikers” from the necessity of moving
hundreds of prisoners being held on charges before conviction each day
on long bus rides through city streets to the courts, said architect
Bill Bialosky, a spokesman for the group. A group of about a dozen volunteer architects and
engineers has been working on the plan for about a month, meeting
regularly at the Lin Sing Association, the century-old Chinese-American
organization on Mott Street, with community leaders.
Ferries, said Bialosky, are “the answer to the problem.”
Ferries would also be a good commuting alternative for the families and friends of prisoners.
Why didn't de Blasio and his bullshit city Economic Development Conspirators provide a ferry pier at Rikers in the first place? Well now you know.
In a private meeting this spring with Kew Gardens residents to
discuss hotly-contested plans for a new jail in their neighborhood,
Mayor Bill de Blasio promised they would be compensated for the jail's
incursion, but he didn't provide specifics.
Now, a tentative list of those specifics has come to light.
Koslowitz has also pressed city officials to reduce the size of the Kew Gardens jail, which current plans say would be 27 stories tall and have a capacity of 1,150 detainees.
The
proposed jail — one of four new jails the city wants to build to
replace detention facilities on Rikers Island — is expected to be
smaller than that by the time the City Council votes on the plan next
week, according to Koslowitz's spokesperson, Michael Cohen.
Cohen
pushed back on using the word "exchange" to describe the list of items
City Hall is promising Koslowitz, who represents Kew Gardens, to secure
her vote in favor of the jail plan. He declined to specify other items being negotiated because he said the list hasn't yet been finalized.
Asked
how he would describe the deal, he said, "I would describe it as the
Mayor making good on his word that he understands that the community is
sacrificing something here and his administration would like to do
something for the community."
Koslowitz's vote is critical to the
passage of the city's controversial jail plan, which calls for building
a new lockup in every borough but Staten Island by 2026.
That's because members of the City Council, whose binding vote on the jails is scheduled for Oct. 17, tend to vote in lockstep with the council members whose districts are affected by a given land-use plan.
Koslowitz has already pushed de Blasio's office to nix plans for an infirmary in the Kew Gardens jail that would serve all four new detention centers.
In the private meeting earlier this year, de Blasio indicated he would go even further.
"When
we ask a community to do something for the whole city, which is what
we're doing here, then the community has a right to say, here are things
that would help our community, including things we've been trying to
get for a long time and haven't gotten," de Blasio said, according to a recording of the March 27 meeting reviewed by Patch.
"How
can we say to the community, we're asking you to shoulder a burden but
we want to do something back that's really going to make a difference?"
de Blasio added.
Still, the jail proposal is intensely controversial among Koslowitz's constituents as well as advocates for No New Jails NYC, who say the city should close Rikers but not build any new jails. Koslowitz's response? "Whether I supported it or not, that jail was happening."
The elected in NYC do not represent the people anymore. What the mayor wants, the mayor gets it. Got it.
The
city will prohibit construction of new jails on Rikers Island under a
proposal approved by the Council’s land use committee on Thursday.
The
resolution allows the Council to submit an application to the
Department of City Planning to remap the island so that the land can’t
house inmates after 2026, when the troubled complex is expected to
close.
Mayor
de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the map change, which
must go through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, ensures
the island will cease as a correctional facility after the new jails are
built even after they leave office.
“We’re
making our commitment ironclad and ensuring no future administration
can reverse all the progress we’ve made,” de Blasio said in a statement.
“Mass incarceration did not begin in New York City, but it will end
here.”
The
17-member Council land use committee passed the resolution 11 to 2,
with two other lawmakers abstaining and two absent from the vote.
Councilman Bob Holden, who is not on the land use committee, said the
vote “sets an extremely dangerous precedent in New York City, with the
Council essentially turning the ULURP process on its head and neglecting
the voices of our citizens.”
A homeless man with a history of mental illness randomly attacked a
6-year-old boy in front of his grandparent’s house in Queens on Thursday
afternoon, seriously injuring the boy, police and sources said. The child was sitting on the steps of his grandparent’s house on
Metropolitan Avenue near 123rd Street in Kew Gardens at about 5 p.m.
when the vagrant walked into their driveway, said Rabbi Naftali Portnoy,
the boy’s grandfather. The 35-year-old vagrant then grabbed the child, picked him up and
threw him to the concrete, slamming his face on the ground, police said. His brother rushed into the house and told his grandfather about the attack. Portnoy called 911 and tailed the vagrant, who was shirtless, while he walked away from the scene down Metropolitan Avenue. Cops arrived soon after and arrested the suspect, who sat down on the street and said, “I’m bipolar,” the grandfather explained. The kid was rushed to Cohen Children’s Medical Center and treated for
hemorrhaging to the brain and facial contusions, a source said.
Quick First Lady McCray, send some simps to hand out Thrive pamphlets on Metropolitan Ave.
A Queens lawmaker accused the head of first lady Chirlane McCray’s
embattled “ThriveNYC” mental health initiative of refusing to explain
why the city ignored so many warning signs surrounding the vagrant who bludgeoned four homeless men to death in Chinatown last weekend – because she has no answers. Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) initially called out ThriveNYC
Director Susan Herman and other city officials during a council hearing
Tuesday. He was asking them how Randy Santos, 24, went under the city’s
radar despite having a history of unprovoked violence – including a November arrest for allegedly biting a man on the chest. “There were certainly a number of red flags over the years,” Holden
said. “There was a trail of violence all involving random people.” “These signs were here with this individual for years, and he was in
and out of the system,” added Holden. “This is again happening all over
the city – random attacks. Does this kind of thing red flag your
agencies at all to say ‘we should step in’?” Neither Herman nor Myla Harrison, assistant commissioner for the
Department of Health, directly answered his questions during the hearing
on mental health services for immigrants.
Instead, they tried to shift focus by insisting most homeless New
Yorkers don’t suffer from mental illness and that they’re limited from
discussing Santos’ treatment history. “We were all horrified by what happened, and we are all looking at
it, and we will learn from this incident, “ Herman said. “[But] I think
you are aware of the fact that we can’t talk about specific services
this particular individual accessed [by law].” Holden tried to ask follow-up questions but was cut off by Councilman
Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn), chairman of the immigration committee,
who claimed he wanted to give other legislators the chance ask
questions. Holden left the hearing fuming and later accused Herman of “dodging”
his questions, adding McCray’s $250 million Thrive initiative “lacks a
real plan to deal” with emotionally disturbed persons like Santos.
“[Herman] could have said, ‘I can’t speak about this case, but
hypothetically we do this when this happens,’” Holden said. “But she
didn’t want to because she couldn’t — and that’s the whole thing.” “They are not helping the seriously mentally ill,” he added. “The
city is not doing its job with all the money they are putting towards
ThriveNYC.”
But let's focus on a few citizens saying inappropriate things about homeless people and not on what officials who are supposed to help them are not saying and are blatantly avoiding addressing the issue.
A homeless shelter on West 107th Street in Manhattan Valley, currently housing women, is expected to transition to single adult men in October.
And much of the neighborhood is not happy.
"Once men are involved here, the landscape could potentially change and everybody is concerned," neighbor Ali Jafry said.He lives next door to the shelter and said in recent years the women have been good neighbors.
The New York City Department of Homeless Services recently announced the change and Manhattan's Community Board 7 held a meeting Tuesday night to address it. But a DHS representative didn't come.
"Up until 4 o'clock they were coming. At 4 o'clock they called the office to say they can't come," CB 7 Chair Roberta Semer told PIX11 News.
This did not sit well with the shelter's neighbors.
One man at the open meeting said, "Why are they not here? Why are they hiding from us?"
The current shelter houses 120 women and most have jobs. Tari Wheeler said this shelter helped her get her life together.
The Department of Homeless Services said it will move the women to permanent housing or another shelter.
While Wheeler doesn't know where she will be sent, she is also worried about the kids in the neighborhood.
"No offense on the men, but there are small children around here. We have to look out for the small children besides ourselves," Wheeler said.
Two days after four homeless men were brutally beaten and killed on the streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown, hundreds of central Queens residents packed a high school auditorium in Middle Village to condemn a planned homeless men’s shelter — and to demonize the New Yorkers who would live there.
There are legitimate critiques of large-scale homeless shelters and the multi-million dollar city contracts awarded to shelter providers as the city contendswith a record-high homeless population and a widening income inequality chasm.
But complex issues and possible solutions went unexamined Monday night at Christ the King High School — in part because speakers who attempted to address them were immediately booed and cursed at. The public hearing was the latest phase in the saga over a proposed 200-bed men’s shelter that the city plans to build inside a vacant warehouse at 78-16 Cooper Ave. in Glendale.
At the beginning of the event, hecklers interrupted a moment of silence for the four men killed while sleeping on the sidewalk early Saturday morning.
From there, the dialogue devolved into discriminatory denunciations of people, particularly men, who experience homelessness. Roughly 60,000 people, including 21,694 children, slept in a New York City municipal shelter on Oct. 6, according to the Department of Homeless Services’ most recent daily census.
”These homeless men are ‘tranks, lobos and zipheads’ … They’re drug addicts and sexual offenders,” said one woman who quoted a line from “Back to the Future.” “Put them in a separate area away from society. They should be locked away forever and out of sight permanently.”
Another woman went even further.
“I hope someone is going to burn the place down,” she shouted into the microphone.
Mike Papa of the anti-shelter group Glendale Middle Village Coalition criticized the nonprofit organization Westhab, which will receive a lucrative city contract to operate the shelter on Cooper Avenue. He then turned his attention to shelter residents, implying that they are criminals.
“Homelessness is their business and thanks to Mayor de Blasio, the Department of Correction will supply all the customers that companies like Westhab want,” said Papa, garnering applause from the crowd.
Moments later, the same attendees screamed at a Crystal Wolfe, a local resident who runs a nonprofit providing food for the homeless, when she said that “homelessness is a complex issue that is the result of problems that have been ignored for decades.”
Tousif Ahsan, a member of the Ridgewood Tenants Union, also attempted to speak “in support of our homeless neighbors.”
“Get the [expletive] outta here,” one man screamed. Most of Ahsan’s speech was inaudible amid the jeers.
District 30 Councilmember Robert Holden, whose 2017 victory over incumbent Elizabeth Crowley was driven by anti-shelter sentiment, did not condemn his constituents’ commentary. Instead, he stoked their anger.
More than 1,000 parishioners packed a Brooklyn church on Sunday to
give Saint Frances Cabrini her dues — after the city passed her over for
a statue, despite a groundswell of support. The overflow crowd at Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary & St. Stephen church was the latest outcry from Catholics and Big Apple Italian-Americans after Cabrini was snubbed by First Lady Chirlane McCray’s “She Built NYC” statue program. Cabrini, an Italian immigrant who founded 67 institutions to help the needy, finished first in a citywide poll
asking who should get an effigy — but McCray and former Deputy
Mayor Alicia Glen nonetheless decided not to grant her the honor. “That’s a disgrace,” said Connie Gessler, who said Cabrini taught her
grandmother. “Why did they have an election if they weren’t going to
give one to the person with the most votes? How would she like it if we
didn’t make her husband mayor if he got the most votes.” The mass came after hundreds of Cabrini supporters gathered at Mother Cabrini Park on President Street and to the church.
Brooklyn Catholics are waging a holy war against First Lady Chirlane McCray. After McCray enraged the faithful by ignoring the public’s top choice
for her women’s statue program — Mother Frances Cabrini, the patron
saint of immigrants — the Brooklyn Diocese has launched a campaign to
build its own monument to her. “Mother Cabrini recently received the most votes in the ‘She Built
NYC’ competition, which aims to build more statues honoring women,” the
Diocese wrote in a press release. “But despite earning this top ranking,
a public statue honoring her life is not being planned.” The flock felt compelled to act after The Post revealed McCray’s statue snub,
according to Monsignor David Cassato of the Italian Apostolate, which
is leading the fundraising effort along with the diocese. “There was a story in the New York Post about Mother Cabrini, that
she did not receive a recognition of a statue, and that’s what
precipitated our honoring her,” said Cassato, who plans to donate $1,000
to the cause. Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio noted Cabrini is deserving of the
“She Built” honor because she literally helped build New York City. “Her work to establish orphanages, schools, and a hospital, along
with her commitment to immigrants, absolutely should be recognized,” he
said. “The failure to honor Mother Cabrini with a public statue would be
an affront to many New Yorkers, especially Italian-Americans, who see
her as most deserving.” McCray, meanwhile, insisted through a spokeswoman that she is not “anti-Catholic.” “To claim that the First Lady is anti-Catholic is a falsehood and outrageous,” said spokewoman Jaclyn Rothenberg. “She was invited to speak at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and has worked
with Catholic Charities on a variety of mental health issues. Every one
of the monuments for She Built go through the same process and the
decision-making on this one was no different.” Cabrini was public’s top choice for a statue, garnering 219
nominations, but she, along with two ohter top-5 vote-getters — Emily
Warren Roebling, who directed the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, and
Manhattan Music School founder Janet Schenck — were tossed in favor of
more women of color and an LGBTQ activist.
The woman who finished in second place was journalist and author Jane Jacobs. So it makes sense why her and Mother Cabrini were blown off by the craven phony first lady/co-mayor and the neoliberal developer crony and fixer Alicia Glen. Because if they were alive they would be excoriating the policies affecting the affordable housing and homeless crisis those two elitist womenare complicit with.
Italicized passages and many of the photos come from other websites. The links to these websites are provided within the posts.
Why your neighborhood is full of Queens Crap
"The difference between dishonest and honest graft: for dishonest graft one worked solely for one's own interests, while for honest graft one pursued the interests of one's party, one's state, and one's personal interests all together." - George Washington Plunkitt
The above organizations are recognized by Queens Crap as being beneficial to the city as a whole, by fighting to preserve the history and character of our neighborhoods. They are not connected to this website and the opinions presented here do not necessarily represent the positions of these organizations.
The comments left by posters to this site do not necessarily represent the views of the blogger or webmaster.
