The two-week strike by unionized employees of Verizon offset all of the hiring that occurred last month in New York City and pushed the city’s unemployment rate up slightly, according to figures released Thursday by the State Department of Labor. The city’s official unemployment rate rose to 8.7 percent in August from 8.6 percent in [...]
The Rent Guidelines Board has approved a nearly 4 percent hike for rent-stabilized apartments in the city, affecting some 1.1 million apartments by 3.75 percent for one-year renewals and 7.25 percent for two-year contracts, the New York Daily News reported. The hikes will take effect October 1. “It’s very disappointing,” said Jesse Duperon, who lives [...]
The Rent Guidelines Board will hold a final vote tonight on how much the tenants of more than one million rent-regulated city apartments will pay this fall. Board members are gathering at Cooper Union’s Great Hall at 5:30 p.m. to consider a hike of 3 to 5.75 percent for one-year lease renewals and an increase [...]
After a long battle followed by days of protracted deal-making, the New York State Senate voted Friday night to legalize same-sex marriage in the Empire State. The historic yet divisive measure passed by a narrow margin of 33 votes to 29. The vote will make New York the sixth state – and the largest one [...]
Governor Cuomo plans to meet with prominent gay activists in order to push for a bill that legalizes same-sex marriage in New York, sources tell NY1. They say the governor will attend a brain storming session on Wednesday in order to put together a solid measure and introduce it by June. Source: NY1 Continue reading [...]
Well-connected New Yorkers have taken the unusual step of suing the city to remove a controversial bicycle lane in a wealthy neighborhood of Brooklyn, the most potent sign yet of opposition to the Bloomberg administration’s marquee campaign to remake the city’s streets. The lawsuit, filed on Monday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, comes after [...]
High water bills due to leaky pipes can drain one’s bank account, but new technology from the city Department of Environmental Protection could change that. The DEP is using wireless water meters across the city and will contact residents if it sees their bills spiking. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in Douglaston, Queens today that the [...]
Mayor Bloomberg has yielded to Controller John Liu’s demand that the city rein in the skyrocketing cost of its 911 system modernization. Liu refused in January to approve a new $286 million contract for defense giant Northrop Grumman to design and install computer software for a $650 million backup 911 call center the city is [...]
A billboard that an anti-abortion group erected last Friday in SoHo, a half-mile from a Planned Parenthood center, claiming that “the most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb,” quickly stirred discussion and controversy. “This billboard simply doesn’t belong in New York City,” Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, said in a [...]
Plans for building new city schools got slashed by 16,000 seats, Education Department officials announced Friday. Neighborhoods – such as Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Riverdale, the Bronx; North Shore, Staten Island and Bayside, Queens – each will lose out on hundreds of seats that the agency had expected to build by 2014. Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, alone will lose [...]
