Good morning, splooting times are finally over, hooray! (Though spare a thought for these poor kids staying in an NYU dorm over the summer without A/C.)
Speaking of kids, the legal battle over NYC public school funding continues, as the school year inches closer. On Tuesday, an appeals court ruled that the budget cuts can move forward, for now. (Someone must have prayed for Eric Adams, I guess, though it wasn't me!) Via Chalkbeat:
The appellate court’s order Tuesday brings whiplash to back-to-school planning for the fall. Four days prior, a lower court judge ruled that the city needed to redo the education department budget, which includes cuts for nearly 75% of schools. Now that order has been paused — at least until the case is back in court on Aug. 29, a little more than a week before the first day of school.
A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams applauded the decision allowing the city to move forward with its current budget.
"As Mayor Adams said this morning, schools will open, on time, in September and will have the resources they need to ensure our students thrive next month,” City Hall spokesperson Amaris Cockfield said in a statement. "We will continue to defend the city’s budget process."
As Chalkbeat notes, "The legal back-and-forth does not appear to have caused any dramatic changes in school operations so far, aside from a very short freeze on school spending that was quickly lifted."
In extremely relevant news for me (a car owner), the MTA has at long last issued its congestion pricing environmental assessment, examining plans where fees to drive into Manhattan below 60th Street could range anywhere from $9 to $23. Here's what the impact could be on traffic, according to NY1:
The number of vehicles entering the congestion zone would decline between 15% and 20%, using pre-pandemic data from 2019.
There would be thousands of commuters no longer driving into work in Manhattan’s core, anywhere from 12,571 to 27,471 fewer auto trips each day — a 5% to 10% decrease.
And daily truck traffic in Manhattan’s core would decline anywhere from 21% to 81%, meaning thousands of trucks will no longer drive through Manhattan.
The MTA would experience a modest ridership bump — as much as 2.1% for the subway and 1.6% for buses.
There's still plenty of time for the Traffic Mobility Review Board to take up Hell Gate's reasonable proposal for congestion pricing exemptions.
Men: they're baaaaaack!
Exhibit #1:
Exhibit #2:
Exhibit #3.
Here's what else I'm reading this morning:
- After hedging on whether Joe Biden should run again in 2024, both Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler have changed their tunes. Meanwhile, their 38-year-old challenger Suraj Patel, who has made a point about stressing the need for a generational shift in leadership, blasted the two for not being 100 percent behind Dark Brandon, which is certainly a choice! "The rookie on this stage is the only one who didn’t just spend seven days embarrassing themselves and throwing President Biden under the bus for re-election in 2024,” Patel said during the debate.
- City councilmembers held a hearing on Tuesday to press the Adams administration on its response to asylum seekers arriving in NYC from Texas. According to the head of Catholic Charities, some of these people "are sleeping in the parks," due to shelters being at capacity.
- In somewhat related news, Eli Zabar is singlehandedly blocking a homeless shelter from opening on the Upper East Side, according to a lawsuit. According to the filing, Zabar is alleged to have said that he would allow the shelter to move forward if its future residents were limited to "a specific gender."
- NYPD cop Salvatore Greco was "terminated" by the department recently, after he was alleged to have been a bodyguard for Roger Stone during the January 6 insurrection. Notably, he allegedly offered his services to Stone for free, which, okay!
- Amazon is about to receive $124 million in tax breaks to build a warehouse in western New York, with nary a community benefits agreement in sight.
- Science has urged us to be cold-blooded spotted lanternfly killers, an assignment that we grimly accepted as we kissed our family goodbye and became remorseless machines of insect destruction. Now we learn that they're not that bad? Excuse me?
And finally, something to aspire to:
