submitted by Debbie Tiamfook

The Peninsula Library branch in Far Rockaway is one of the facilities that received funding in 2012 through the city's participatory budgeting process

nydailynews.com - by Ritchie Torres and Alexa Kasdan - December 8, 2013

Last month, New York City voters selected a new mayor and 21 new members of the City Council and, in January, a new City Council speaker will be selected, ushering in a progressive makeover to City Hall.

As part of this shift, 21 New York City Council members have committed to partake in Participatory Budgeting (PB) in 2014, allowing their constituents to directly decide how to spend millions of public dollars. This will more than double the size of the current PB process, which is now in its third year with nine council members allocating a collective $10 million.

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CLICK HERE - Participatory Budgeting in NYC

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio at a rally before his victory. (Photo: William Alatriste)

submitted by Megan Fliegelman

politicker.com - by Jill Colvin - November 20, 2013

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio announced that 60 prominent backers will join his transition team to select the city’s next mayoral administration.

Among the names on the list are Sex an the City star Cynthia Nixon, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, and longtime de Blasio confidante Bertha Lewis, who once led the social justice group ACORN.

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Areas that are expected to be in a 100-year flood zone in the 2020s and 2050s as sea levels rise from global warming, according to new projections by the NYPCC

The city's climate adaptation projects should be devised to handle conditions far worse than even the most severe sea level rise estimates, scientists say.

insideclimatenews.org - by Katherine Bagley and Maria Gallucci- June 20, 2013

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to protect New York City from future superstorm Sandys and other climate-related threats is the most ambitious and scientifically accurate plan of its kind in the world. But as global warming intensifies and sea levels rise, even this strategy may not be enough to flood-proof the city for very long, experts say.

Flooding in Red Hook, Brooklyn after Sandy (Flickr/gunnicool)

The agency ignored state and city officials' appeals to update the maps with better data until it was too late.

wnyc.org - December 6, 2013
by Al Shaw : ProPublica / Theodoric Meyer : ProPublica / Christie Thompson : ProPublica

When Patrice and Philip Morgan bought a house near the ocean in Brooklyn, they were not particularly worried about the threat of flooding.

Federal maps showed their home was outside the area at a high risk of flood damage. . .

. . . But the maps drawn up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were wrong. And government officials knew it.

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The new map could put twice as many homes in the flood zone and raise premiums for many homeowners.

propublica.org - by Al Shaw - June 12, 2013

. . . while Sandy’s water has long receded and the bulldozers have left, a residual effect for homeowners along the city’s coastline still lurks quietly beneath the surface. It comes in the form of a July 2012 law called the Biggert-Waters Act, which will end subsidized rates for property owners who are remapped into more severe flood zones, increasing their flood insurance premiums 20 percent a year until they reach market rates, and will apply those higher rates for newly purchased property.

The potential increases, which proponents say are necessary to sustain the National Flood Insurance Program, are not widely understood by residents, and may be catching them unprepared.

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Biggert-Waters Act - Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012

governor.ny.gov - Albany, NY (November 1, 2013)

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the launch of the New York State Resiliency Institute for Storms & Emergencies (NYS RISE), a new “applied think tank” led by New York University and Stony Brook University that will serve as a hub of research and education on emergency preparedness, as well as a clearinghouse of information regarding extreme weather and natural disasters.

The Resiliency Institute will bring together academic thought leaders as well as government officials, national experts and emergency response leaders, to conduct research and provide scientific information and intellectual resources that will lead to the development of comprehensive plans that policymakers and stakeholders can use to better protect communities.

democracynow.org - October 29, 2013

One year after Superstorm Sandy, many of those impacted by the storm remain without a permanent home and dependent on diminishing relief funds. New York Magazine reports at least 22,000 households are still displaced. We are joined by two guests: Shawn Little, a healthcare worker who has been living in hotels with her family since Sandy devastated their neighborhood in the Rockaways section of Queens, and Judith Goldiner, attorney in charge of the Civil Law Reform Unit at the Legal Aid Society.

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democracynow.org - October 29, 2013

Today marks the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy hitting the New York region, becoming one of the most destructive storms in the nation’s history. On October 29, 2012, the hurricane blasted New York City with a record storm surge as high as 13 feet, as well as the Jersey Shore and New England, ultimately killing 159 people along the East Coast and damaging more than 650,000 homes. The storm caused $70 billion in damage across eight states. Millions were left without power in the New York region, some for weeks. We are joined by two women who have played key roles in the region’s recovery: Terri Bennett, a founder of Respond and Rebuild, one of the first groups to help low-income residents of the Rockaways rebuild after Superstorm Sandy, and also focused on providing free mold remediation that eventually inspired the city’s similar program, and Jessica Roff, a founder of Restore the Rock, a nonprofit created by Sandy volunteers who met while working out of a space in the Rockaways called YANA, or You Are Never Alone, where they operated a free health clinic, legal clinic and trained and dispatched hundreds of volunteers.

elitedaily.com - by Christian La Du - October 28, 2013

One year ago, the east coast was ravaged by SuperStorm Sandy, a freak occurrence combining a hurricane, Nor’easter, high tide, and a full moon, which wrought particular destruction on the tri-state area.

Although the enduring legacy of Sandy is not measured in tallies of destruction, numbers like 8.6 million homes and businesses without power, gas and water, 650,000 destroyed houses, 200,000 damaged businesses, and 286 deaths afflicted over 13 states. Approximately 50 million people felt the effects of the storm over 800 mile stretch, and an estimated $65 billion in economic damages were incurred.

The real, lasting effect of Hurricane Sandy, however, is in the radical life shifts that people forcibly underwent.

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Image: Bill de Blasio

theforumnewsgroup.com - October 3rd, 2013 - Anna Gustafson

Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio traveled to Far Rockaway Sunday to discuss his long-term recovery plan for residents still struggling after Hurricane Sandy.

Nearly a year after the storm devastated much of the Rockaways and South Queens, as well as other parts of the city, de Blasio stressed that far too many residents are still struggling and need help from the government in a variety of different ways – among them “quality health care and good-paying jobs with community leaders outside the now-closed Peninsula Hospital.”

Peninsula Hospital was shut down by the state Department of Health last year, leaving just one hospital to service the entire Rockaway peninsula.

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A man walks through flooded streets in Hoboken, New Jersey, after Superstorm Sandy | Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As subsidized rates of federal flood insurance rise, property owners along the coasts get angry. But we need insurance that reflects the risks of a changing planet

time.com - by Bryan Walsh - October 1, 2013

Thousands of homeowners in flood-prone parts of the country are going to be in for a rude awakening.  On Oct. 1, new changes to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which offers government-subsidized policies for households and businesses threatened by floods, mean that businesses in flood zones and homes that have been severely or repeatedly flooded will start going up 25% a year until rates reach levels that would reflect the actual risk from flooding. (Higher rates for second or vacation homes went into effect at the start of 2013.) That means that property owners in flood-prone areas who might have once been paying around $500 a year—rates that were well below what the market would charge, given the threat from flooding—will go up by thousands of dollars over the next decade.

Julio and Belinda Ramos, who were hit with a power outage, hold their eight-year-old son Charles as they stand in line to pick up food supplies at a grocery store after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

theatlanticcities.com - by Siddhartha Mahanta - October 21, 2013

In New York City, locating a bite to eat is rarely a difficult task. The city is a food paradise or, depending on your mood, a place of overwhelming glut.

But when Superstorm Sandy pummeled New York last fall, it revealed the terrifying potential for sudden food shortages.

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