Dear Friend,
I hope you are staying safe and warm as we head into the holiday season. I wanted to reach out and provide you with some exciting updates from my office from the past couple weeks:
1. Healthcare Pricing Transparency
2. New Pre-K Center in the East 60s
3. Rat Mitigation Ramping Up
4. Small Business Saturday at the Nasdaq
5. NYC Open Data Class
6. New Support for Business Improvement Districts
7. Participatory Budgeting
8. EDC SWARM Team
9. Constituent Service Corner
10. Shredding Event Announcement!
11. Community Events and Updates
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1. Healthcare Pricing Transparency
Healthcare costs can often break the bank for New Yorkers and the City alone spends over $9.5 Billion (almost 10% of its budget) on healthcare every year. I have been working with advocates, colleagues, and labor unions to push for healthcare pricing transparency in New York City. As the New York Post reported, this week I introduced the Healthcare Accountability and Consumer Protection Act, and rallied with many of my colleagues, the leaders of many of the city's labor unions, and even Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon. With transparency, we can empower consumers and we can save significant money for the city especially as we face turbulent economic times with our budget. As AM New York reported, the prices for the same medical procedure can vary significantly at different hospitals with a C-section costing $55,000 at one and $20,000 at another. I look forward to working to move this legislation through the Council and pass it to bring a major win for New York's taxpayers.
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2. New Pre-K + 3K Center in the East 60s
Access to affordable Pre-K and 3-K facilities is critical for hardworking families in our City. While I sponsored legislation to bring universal childcare to New York City and address childcare shortages for children under 3, I am also strongly committed to bringing more Pre-K and 3-K seats to our community. As Patch reported, I was pleased to announce with the School Construction Authority that a new standalone early childhood center is coming to our neighborhood. An old garage building on East 65th Street will be converted into the Center and it will be the first City-run standalone center in the entire 10065 zipcode providing up to 10 classrooms. I will provide more information as the construction proceeds, but this is a great win for the hardworking families in our community and can bring affordable pre-k to many.
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3. Rat Mitigation Ramp Up
My office has been very focused on pioneering effective strategies for rat remediation in our District and has been very pleased with initial successful results from our extermination efforts through allocating discretionary funding in the NYC Cleanup Initiative. I am pleased to announce that we heard from many constituents flagging blocks with high volumes of rodent burrows in tree pits. The past couple days, our exterminator was out expanding the breadth of those efforts to many of those flagged blocks including East 69th St between 1st and 2nd Ave, East 78th St between 1st and 2nd Ave, and East 88th St between 1st and York Ave among many others. We are targeting over 10 of the worst blocks with this ramped up new effort. We appreciate constituents flagging some of these areas and encourage you to continue to share!
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4. Small Business Saturday at the Nasdaq
At the end of November we marked Small Business Saturday, a great day to celebrate the contributions of local businesses across our communities and to encourage people to shop local. I was happy to join the Administration in promoting these efforts as alongside Mayor Adams and Department of Small Business Services Commissioner Kevin Kim, I rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq on Black Friday. We were joined by advocates and small business owners from across the City. It was wonderful to promote Small Business Saturday to a large audience and continue efforts to raise awareness of the importance of shopping local.
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5. Open Data Class
NYC Open Data is an important tool for our municipal government to make information and data more accessible to New Yorkers. With Open Data, important data from every agency is available at the fingertips of everyone. That is why I hosted a usage class for Open Data on Wednesday where dozens of constituents joined us to learn how the software works and how they're able to look up critical statistics and mapping from agencies. I was pleased with the successful class and look forward to continuing to provide opportunities for constituents to learn more about the software and engage with the technology that helps our municipality function transparently.
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6. Support for Business Improvement Districts
Back in January when I assumed the role of Chair of the Small Business Committee, I advocated to the Administration to increase funding to support Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in underserved areas and to support expenses in the formation of new BIDs across the city as well. BIDs provide important functions of sanitation and safety in commercial corridors as well as marketing and other back-office supports for businesses. I was pleased that the Administration responded and allocated that funding through SBS. I joined the SBS Commissioner and advocates Wednesday to celebrate the allocation of $4.4 million to BIDs and BID formation. This was the first time the city has ever done this and was a major win for small business. You can read more about the allocation and its impacts here.
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7. Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is a great opportunity to hear about community priorities for capital funding and work to deliver support to many important projects the community brings to the attention of my office. Last year's was a great success with almost 2000 votes cast. So far, we have received dozens of submissions ranging from security cameras at NYCHA's Holmes Towers, to upgraded basketball hoops at St. Catherine's Park, to bathroom renovations at P.S. 217. There's still time left to submit ideas before we submit the ballot and voting happens in early spring. You can submit an idea here!
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8. EDC Swarm Team
The Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has been visiting different Districts around the City doing targeted cleanups with their "SWARM" team. The folks from the EDC visited District 5 a couple weeks ago and had tremendous success picking up 400 bags of trash, cleaning up 20 instances of graffiti, and servicing 150 litter baskets! Thank you for flagging so many locations to our office to work with EDC to address. I am grateful for EDC's partnership in our work to clean up the neighborhood.
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9. Constituent Service Corner
My constituent service team had another busy couple weeks solving cases including assisting a couple individuals who were struggling with the Department of Finance to get their Co-Op/Condo property tax abatement reflected on their tax bill. We also restored lighting to multiple street lamps in the District including getting the one on 83rd and York Ave turned back on. Please call, email, or visit us for further constituent service issues.
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10. Shredding Event Announcement
Constituents have been reaching out to us requesting another shredding event after our successful shredding event in the late spring. We're thrilled to announce that we're once again partnering with the Chapin School to host a Shred-A-Thon on 84th and East End Ave. There will once again be a shredding truck present. We are still finalizing the exact timing, but it will be for the morning of January 27th. We encourage you to save the date and stay tuned for further information.
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11. Community Events and Updates
It's been a wonderful start to the holiday season and our neighborhood had a great assortment of tree lightings over the past couple weeks. I wanted to highlight a couple more holiday events and further announcements:
Sutton Place Parks Conservancy Singalong and Lights Show, Saturday December 17th at 5pm, Sutton Place Park (57th Street Side)
Jewish Museum Hanukkah Art Mix Family Day, Sunday December 18th 11am-330pm, Jewish Museum (1109 5th Avenue)
We wanted to flag a request from NY Times reporter Larry Buchanan who is working to create a reader-sourced map of New York City neighborhoods. They're using data to create a map of neighborhoods and an accompanying article about the findings — potentially touching on how the neighborhoods of New York are constantly in flux (and how people love to fight about them).
They have more than 10,000 neighborhoods drawn so far, but would love help from your office if possible to get more responses from the Upper East Side's Yorkville, Lenox Hill, Carnegie Hill, Roosevelt Island, Midtown East, Sutton Place, El Barrio in East Harlem. You can submit your own responses here.
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Contact Us
Email us at district5@council.nyc.gov, call our office at 212-860-1950, or visit us at 445 East 75th Street #1B (75th and York Avenue)
Best,
Julie
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