The view from the 7 train platform Thursday night
Three vastly different stories of interest this week:
New York City’s 2021 election season was the largest in the city’s history, by a few measures. The most significant are the sheer number of candidates and the public matching funds available to those candidates. All of this added up to the largest pot of cash doled out to people running than ever – more than $127 million, according to a Campaign Finance Board report published first in THE CITY.
The matching-funds program has helped candidates who wouldn’t have the resources to run actually launch successful campaigns, candidates say. You can read more here – and debate about whether this is too much money or just enough to encourage more candidates and, hopefully, voter engagement.
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“When Philip Banks was named deputy mayor for public safety in January, Mayor Eric Adams dodged questions about his longtime pal being named an un-indicted co-conspirator in a high profile police corruption case.
While most big Adams announcements took place via well-attended news conferences, Banks’ appointment emerged via a press release sent out late on a Friday.
Since then, Banks has made few public appearances and has answered no questions.
Behind the scenes, however, he has been very busy.”
You can read the full story I helped Greg Smith and Yoav Gonen with here. My favorite detail is the meeting with NYPD chiefs at a Brooklyn apartment building with a kickboxing studio on the ground floor.
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For more than a year, the thousands of trees in Brooklyn and Queens – the largest boroughs, with the most trees – were not getting pruned because the main tree pruning contractor was arrested for insurance fraud. The Parks Department was between a stump and a hard place (sorry) – unable to grant another contract and unsure of what to do with the Dragonetti Brothers, all the while all those trees went unpruned.
The pruning pause was first reported by Brooklyn Paper, but this week I tracked down what’s next. Dragonetti Brothers, based out of Brooklyn, is now under a monitorship with the Department of Investigation. They’ve placed the company under a receiver with a Manhattan lawyer. And very soon, they’ll return to pruning trees.
LISTEN
The FAQ team spoke to Dennis Walcott and Politico’s Joe Anuta (separately) about the redistricting maps and what the hell happened at last week’s vote, when they were narrowly voted down. [FAQ NYC]
This week Pitchfork released their pick for the 250 best songs of the 1990s. It’s a very comprehensive list, but including “Flava in Your Ear” instead of literally any Nas song seems weird to me. Three random picks from the list that I enjoy:
“Scenario” by A Tribe Called Quest
”Paper Bag” by Fiona Apple
”Gypsy Woman [She’s Homeless]” by Crystal Waters
One more thing: You can appreciate the message behind Amal the Little Girl but still be a little freaked out by this giant puppet traveling all around the city. I sure am.
Thanks for reading!