By Gus Saltonstall
Participatory budgeting season has returned to the Upper West Side.
After an initial phase at the end of last year to collect ideas, seven local projects have been placed on a ballot to allow community members to help designate where a portion of city money is spent in the neighborhood.
Upper West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer is spearheading the process, and, in total, her office has $1 million allocated from the upcoming city budget for projects chosen during the participatory budgeting balloting. Multiple projects will be selected, but the exact number will depend on the cost of those with the greatest support.
Voting for residents in Council District 6, which stretches from around West 54 to 92nd streets, will begin on Saturday, March 29, and last through Sunday, April 6. All residents over the age of 11 can vote, and you do not need an ID.
You can find the voting locations, one of which is online, below.
- Brewer’s District Office – 563 Columbus Avenue (87th Street)
- St. Agnes Library – 444 Amsterdam Avenue (Between 81st and 82nd streets)
- Riverside Library – 127 Amsterdam Avenue (Between 65th and 66th streets)
- Additional in-person pop-up locations* will be posted at https://council.nyc.gov/gale-
brewer/participatory- budgeting/ - You can also vote online at pbnyc.org/vote starting on March 29 at 12:01 am.
Without further ado, here are the final seven Upper West Side projects that have a chance at becoming reality.
- Tree Guard Installation: “Install 100 tree guards throughout the district around street tree pits to protect them from damage, support healthy growth, and enhance the streetscape.” $160,000.
- Beautify Broadway Malls: “Replace and repair post and chain fencing; repair rotted bench slats on the center medians on Broadway between West 81st to 92nd Streets.” $200,000.
- Bathroom Upgrade: Lillian Weber School of Arts (PS84), 32 West 92nd Street. Renovate two student bathrooms to improve existing structures and usability.” $300,000.
- Riverside Park Wall Repair: “Restore the retaining wall at West 72nd St between Riverside Drive and Riverside Boulevard by replacing deteriorating mortar and reinstalling missing stones to improve structural integrity and ensure safety.” $100,000.
- Cooling System Upgrade: “Frank McCourt High School, 145 West 84th Street. Upgrade school’s cooling system to enhance climate control, ensuring a more comfortable, safe and conducive learning environment for students and staff.” $250,000.
- Gymnasium Cooling System Upgrade: “William O’Shea School Complex (including MS247 and MS245), 100 West 77th Street. Install a new cooling system in the gymnasium improving comfort and safety for students, staff, and community members.” $250,000.
- Auditorium Upgrade: “High School for Environmental Studies, 444 West 56th Street. Upgrade auditorium with new equipment and needed structural repairs enhancing student, staff and audience accessibility.” $250,000.
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1. Tree Guards. Why install these when dog owners continue to use trees on our streets as dog toilets and refuse to curb their dogs. Let’s have some enforcement of the laws. Let’s fund an enforcement officer instead who can then become self sustaining from the revenue from the tickets they will write.
2. Broadway Malls. Why would the malls only be repaired in these areas. Why not from 72nd to 106th? Is Brewer coordinating with Abreu so that all the malls get done?
Bathrooms, Cooling Systems, Auditorium , Gymnasium: Why are these school infrastrucrture needs considered neighborhood projects dependent on this discretionary funding? Why isn’t this covered in the massive school’s budget?
i agree with the school projects. this is a doe responsibility, not the city. money should be spent on public welfare not only for those in a school or gymnasium!
I want a lawn so I can tell you to get off it!
Oh, why oh why oh why?! Things are just so awful. That’s why I’m moving to Somalia.
What are you talking about though? The tree guards absolutely stop dogs from using flowerbeds as toilets. It only doesn’t work if the dog jumps over it . But most dogs do not.
Rational questions will not be answered.
Happy Friday! I think I saw a pack of Labradors in Riverside Park getting ready to attack some trees if you want to arrest them.
Zero on policing. Where are priorities?
The NYPD’s for 2025 is $5.8 billion. What’s increasing their budget by less than 1% going to offer the community?
The 24th precinct had 11 new officers assigned this year and they were taken and given to Transit.
They went to Transit because it is a mess and a safety issue. Every bit would help this year. If people would go to the NYPD Community Precinct meetings just ONCE, for an hour, to learn how things really work, we would all be the better for it. They are every 3rd Wednesday starting now at 7pm.
I propose we step up and do the right thing: Give the money to the kids. Fix the AC at Frank McCourt, fix the auditorium at HS for Environmental Studies, fix the bathrooms at Lillian Weber. I can find another bench to sit on and live with trees that don’t have little fences around them (I’ll keep my dog away, I promise). The kids have to spend every day in those schools. Let’s treat ’em right. That’s what I’m voting for.
Thank you! The gyms in the O’Shea building gets really hot it is unbearable and I bet it is the same for the other school on the list. In response to the above comment about “massive school’s budget,” if you are talking about DeBlasio’s promise to install ACs in all school classrooms, that promise did not include gyms and auditoriums.
Did all classrooms get ACs? I went to PS 87 and then MS 144, and iir was awwssful at the end of the school year. Those rotating fans!
How about hiring the Dog Whisperer to train humans how to behave — it’s not the dogs’ fault.
Bingo!
160k for 100 tree guards?! Right, I bid that I can do it for 150k
The city doesn’t install tree guards. If they exist, it’s because the buildings or other private entities installed them. My building just priced tree guards for our new tree pits, which are 10×5 feet, the new standard. Bids ranged form $1,200 to $2,000.
I’ve reported broken/jagged and missing tree guards a few times over the years and the city replaced them. I just thought it was a given. I had a good laugh about the $200,000.
I like all of these except the school infrastructure ones. Why are discretionary funds used for school improvements? This should come out of the city capital and school budgets not discretionary funds.
Why not a new parking garage?
OgolligoshNo! Use public funds to provide any support whatsoever to those awful Private Properties that some people call “cars”? No cars! No garages! Everybody must bicycle bicycle bicycle!
Really, folks, how can we hope to turn New York City into a carbon(free?) copy of Amsterdam if we continue to recognize the existence of those (ugh!) cars? Vote NO!
(To be clear, my friends: ^sarcasm….)
YES! A new parking garage for $1M! Love it!
What are we parking – my Matchbox collection?
No tree guards please, they just reduce the space that you can walk in.
We need more cops, cameras, lighting.
Whoa. Frank McCourt High School? Did Brandeis get renamed? Or are there two public high schools on West 84th? Orr is this a mini school within Brandeis?
Anyway. These projects all seem good
Brandeis houses five small schools, including the Frank McCourt High School.
I wish we would stop spending as much time on this bread-and-circuses style exercise. The NYC budget is so massive (over $100B dollars…not including state funding!) that it should cover all these basic things. But it doesn’t.
So instead of making government more effective and/or prioritizing, the politicians let citizens fight over 0.0890% of the City budget and pretend that it’s important. All the while distracting folks from the important things that cost much much more.
The work the City-owned building on 104th needs to do to take down their sidewalk shed is larger than this.
You’re right about the city being underfunded overall, but I (for one) think it’s a great idea to give the citizens a direct voice over how to spend that small fraction of additional funding.
“Do you want vanilla frosting or chocolate frosting on that cake?” does not mean I wouldn’t rather have a bigger cake.
Dino Park is a disgrace.
Does District 7/Shaun Abreu have participatory budgeting candidates?
There’s only so much this initiative can do. It’s for smaller projects local to our neighborhood. No police, firefighters, garbage collectors etc. And with the in process decimation of the federal DOE, I see why the schools are concerned. I also agree with the tree guards, probably gets my vote. The beautiful old growth trees lining the blocks up here are a part of what makes it so special.
They should be projects everyone can enjoy and benefit. School improvements do not meet that criteria as they only benefit a handful of people.
How selfish. Tree guards on a particular block benefit only those who walk on that particular block. School improvements benefit the children – who are the next generation of ALL of us.
Not only at 72nd St.
Riverside Park Wall Repair: “Restore the retaining wall at West 72nd St between Riverside Drive and Riverside Boulevard by replacing deteriorating mortar and reinstalling missing stones to improve structural integrity and ensure safety.” $100,000.
Up by 110th street, its the one-way RSD, and “all inbetween” needs repointing as well
I agree that the Doe should take care of the schools but also concerning are what seem to be highly inflated costs for all of the construction projects especially the bathrooms. why are we not focusing on safety first. crime continues to be a real issue and while all of these things are nice if people are afraid to walk around it doesn’t really matter