Talk Bronx New York

Increased Flow of Council Grants to Private Groups Leads to a Backlog 

Speaker Christine C. Quinn said, “It’s fair criticism to say there wasn’t enough vetting of capital budget allocations” in the past.

 The Northeast Bronx Development Corporation received City Council grants of $4.7 million despite a troubled financial history.

Increased Flow of Council Grants to Private Groups Leads to a Backlog 

An Orthodox Jewish school in Queens was to get $500,000 for a swimming pool. A social service agency in Queens plagued by financial mismanagement was set to receive $100,000 for a shelter and a van.

A nonprofit corporation in the Bronx that has filed only one tax return in nine years was to be granted more than $4.7 million for a housing complex, a community center and a hip-hop museum.

Every year, the City Council receives a huge wish list of requests for capital project money for local organizations. And in recent years the Council leadership has deemed some $500 million in projects worthy of public finance, even projects that are sometimes parochial, overly ambitious or sponsored by organizations with spotty financial histories.

Investigators reviewing Council spending have focused on grants that community groups receive to offset their operating expenses. But the capital budget that legislators use to finance big-ticket items like new buildings or buses is a larger pot of money: a half-billion dollars versus $360 million. And for years it has been shrouded in bureaucratic secrecy.

Once, council members rarely used their capital money to do more than finance a pet project within a city agency, perhaps road repaving in their districts. But increasingly, larger amounts of taxpayer dollars have been set aside for church groups, nonprofit groups and other private organizations, earmarked by council members to buy these groups equipment or renovations, or sometimes new buildings.

The practice has grown so expansive that the city has hired extra staff to shepherd the projects, which are often fraught with legal complications. Hundreds of groups approved for the money, meanwhile, have never received it. Some requests have been stalled because of constitutional questions over the separation of church and state, others because the groups did not have the financial or technical means to carry out the project — even with city aid. Many simply languished, yet remained on the books, year after year.

In fact, the backlog has grown so big that last year the Council and the Bloomberg administration stopped financing any new capital projects for private groups until they could develop a better way to choose which programs deserve the money.

“We really had to find a way to get this under control,” said Speaker Christine C. Quinn. “What was happening is the money was getting put in the budget and then it wasn’t moving, which is really a waste.”

The unspent money could have gone to schools or libraries or health clinics, Ms. Quinn said.

Advocates say it would be wrong, however, to view the broad expanse of capital spending on nonprofits as wasteful.

“Without city assistance, the not-for-profit sector would not be able to maintain the quality of facilities that are necessary to meet the needs of the poor and vulnerable citizens of New York,” said Ronald Soloway, director of governmental relations for the UJA-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.

The city’s capital budget is meant to finance permanent improvements to its infrastructure, like new buildings or bridges, or expensive equipment like buses. As with the operating budget, the mayor’s office sets aside a portion of the capital budget for the Council to spend as it deems fit.

The Council spends most of its money on public schools, libraries and parks. But increasingly over the last five years, resources have been directed to outside nonprofit groups. The current capital budget shows at least 570 projects totaling more than $490 million, though the city no longer supports many of the projects.

Many of those projects that never came to fruition had sailed through a review process that required only minimal vetting and that the City Council used for many years to set spending priorities, according to city records and interviews. Only after the money was allocated and on the books did the vetting process really begin.

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City Freezes Bronx Councilman’s Million-Dollar Non-Profit Play

Amid recent revelations about a secret Council slush fund and taxpayer-funded shenanigans at non-profits, the city has denied Councilman Larry Seabrook’s near million-dollar request to fund a new non-profit that’s located within his district headquarters.

The city system of checks and balances denied the Bronx Democrat’s appropriations, freezing his Fiscal Year ‘08 requests of $887,244 to fund the newly founded Bronx African-American Chamber of Commerce. The non-profit did not have the proper paperwork in place for the money to be released.

A divider is all that separates the commerce chamber, at 3687-B White Plains Road, from Seabrook’s district headquarters at 3687-A White Plains Road.

The office of United States Attorney Michael Garcia would neither confirm nor deny that Seabrook or the Bronx African-American Chamber of Commerce were targets of the ongoing federal investigation, said spokesman Yusill Scribner. That investigation has already snared two former aides to Brooklyn City Council Member Kendall Stewart for their roles in funneling Council cash to the Donna Reid Memorial Education Fund, and then taking that money for personal use.

Neither Seabrook nor Carl Green, director of the Bronx African-American Chamber of Commerce, returned repeated calls for comment. The organization also denied repeated requests to furnish public records about its financing.

Being less than a year old, the Bronx African-American Chamber of Commerce does not have much of a public profile, only receiving media attention for a recent press conference to discuss a program to train minority applicants to become truck drivers. A group flyer announces the “Jobs to Build on Initiative,” jointly sponsored by Seabrook, that “offers free training and employment services to low skilled, unemployed or under employed individuals.”

According to the New York State Department of State, the Bronx African-American Chamber of Commerce was founded on May 2, 2007 — just weeks before the deadline for council members to submit requests for the FY2008 budget. The group incorporated using the Bronx address of 1530 East 222nd Street, but now shares Seabrook’s office. Read more..

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New life for Bronx rail station?

Can the Cass Gilbert-designed Westchester Avenue Railroad Station ? abandoned since 1937 ? be transformed into a grand entrance to the Bronx River and its new greenway?

That?s the hope of local group Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice ? one that?s complicated and costly.

?It could be a beautiful gateway from Westchester Avenue to the new park,? said Tawkiyah Jordan, senior director for community programs at Youth Ministries.

The boarded-up station that belongs to Amtrak overlooks the new Concrete Plant Park, which is expected to open in summer 2008. After months of pestering Amtrak, Youth Ministries was able to bring in architects to look at the space.

?It?s a building that would break your heart to lose,? said Joan Byron, of the Pratt Center for Community Development. ?But it?s about as challenging a site as they come.?

It?s ?fragile,? with an exposed steel lattice work embedded with terra cotta, Byron said. ?The steel is expanding and exfoliating, like little potato chips flaking off, and that?s damaging the terra cotta.?

It would cost millions to renovate the roughly 2,700 square foot building above rail tracks. ?It?s like the size of a ranch house,? Byron said, ?and that?s one of the challenges because it can?t generate revenue that would pay for its development debt.?

Residents have pitched turning it into a Bronx River ecology center or a place for renting fishing gear and canoes. Some envision a holistic heath care and reproductive rights clinic there or a food pantry or restaurant.

Linda Cox, executive director of the Bronx River Alliance, the public-private partnership overseeing the Bronx River Greenway, said any project would be ?a daunting? undertaking.

?We need a closer look at the costs, the benefits and if it?s even feasible for the building to be made available,? she said.

Adam Liebowitz, of community group the Point, said some locals want a hip-hop museum.

?The South Bronx was the birthplace of hip-hop and to have this place all graffitied up in the heart of the neighborhood could be great,? Liebowitz said. If not, ?I think Youth Ministries would make sure it?s something the whole community has a stake in.?

SOURCE: NYMetro.us

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