Astoria, Community, Neighborhood, Politics
Mar 16, 2015

Astoria Wants YOU To Help Decide How To Spend $1 Million

What would you do with a million dollars? Take a trip to Greece? Put a down payment on a fancy apartment? The possibilities are endless! While it’s fun to dream, (…)

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What would you do with a million dollars? Take a trip to Greece? Put a down payment on a fancy apartment? The possibilities are endless!

While it’s fun to dream, Astoria residents actually WILL get the chance to decide how to spend $1 million, not for ourselves, but for our community. Next month, residents of our district are encouraged to vote on how to allocate $1 million on projects throughout the area. This is an opportunity that you don’t want to miss!

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Photo credit: Costa Constantinides

Our city council member, Costa Constantinides, unveiled a sample of the Participatory Budgeting Ballot (shown at the top of this post), to provide a taste of the potential neighborhood projects to vote on. Some ideas include schoolyard upgrades at I.S. 126, a pedestrian plaza at Newtown Avenue and 33rd Street, renovations at the NYCHA Astoria Houses, and a new dog run under the RFK Bridge.

You can vote from April 13 to April 19, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at various location throughout the district:

  • ​Office of Councilman Constantinides, 31-09 Newtown Avenue
  • Bohemian Hall, 29-19 24th Avenue
  • Goodwill Apartments, 4-21 27th Avenue
  • Office of Assemblyman Michael DenDekker, Jackson Heights Shopping Center, 75-35 31st Avenue

More voting sites may be added as we get closer and we’ll keep everyone updated on those as we gt them. If you’d like to volunteer with a voting site, please e-mail bbarnwell@council.nyc.gov.

Need a quick 101 on how Participatory Budgeting works? We’ve got you covered. From our City Council Member’s office:

“The Participatory Budgeting process includes a series of meetings that feed into the city’s annual budget cycle. Hundreds of community members attended four assemblies, held in October and November throughout Astoria and Jackson Heights, and brainstormed project ideas. Close to 100 residents volunteered to be Budget Delegates. These delegates broke into groups that worked on specific issues and transformed the initial list of 250 capital project ideas into a ballot of seventeen fully-formed proposals. Ballot proposals that get the most votes will be the winning projects.

Participatory Budgeting has been rewarding for our entire district. This entire process has featured ideas generated by members of the community. I thank everyone who has been involved so far and look forward to seeing a successful turnout during our voting days.”

This exciting program gives Astorians the opportunity to have our voices heard on how to best improve our community. Let’s support our neighborhood by turning out and rocking the vote! (And really, who needs a trip to Greece? We live in Astoria, after all!)

What improvements are both important to you? Sound off in the comments below!

About Lindsay Goyette

Lindsay has been eating and drinking her way through Queens since 2011. A casting director by day and Astoria explorer by night, you can usually find her checking out live music, theatre, or the newest neighborhood spot to enjoy a craft beer.

4 Comments

John

Huge garbage bins on every corner like in Europe. It’s so nasty to see garbage bags on the street in the Summer with the stench, the rats and roaches feasting.

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nycgal

Costa – can you please call the city and tell them to come and clean the streets of Astoria? It is filthy everywhere and we need good clean from this winter we have had. Bring back the Doe Fund people too – they made our hood clean again…

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dunnypop

Garbage cans….. and potentially teaching people that garbage goes into garbage cans.

Reminded of this yesterday as some dude was tossing his napkins on the floor several times while eating his pizza slice.

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