And the winner is ... we're not sure!
Polls closed at noon yesterday in our March (Parking) Madness final between the 41st Precinct in the Bronx against the 84th Precinct in Brooklyn. And the 41st Precinct ended up with more votes. But the vote was marred by serious questions. At one point in the polling, several dozen votes "disappeared" from the Hunts Point precinct. But at other points in the voting, hundreds of votes showed up in batches for the Bronx bummers. And we received more than 1,000 votes than we normally do in this competition.
And it looks like some IP addresses voted more than once, which is supposed to be illegal.
For now, we're blaming Wordpress, our content management system. But in any event, before we announce a true winner, we've asked our web team to look into the inconsistencies and allegations and conspiracies. We'll get back to you on Monday. But in the meantime, read the final story and decide for yourself.
In other news:
- The state legislature has reached a budget deal (a few days late). Here's how the papers covered it:
- The Post focused on bail reform and the Buffalo Bills boondoggle. Oh, and the freaking gas tax holiday.
- The Daily News did the same.
- The crime- and car-obsessed NY Times focused on the bail reform and the gas tax holiday as saving "New Yorkers grappling with skyrocketing gasoline prices." (Reminder: if you choose a lifestyle based on the car, you are going to be hurt by it.)
- Gothamist did the classic, "Five takeaways."
- The City played it slow, offering reactions before explaining what people were reacting to, but Jose Martinez did a sidebar about the gas tax holiday.
- A driver badly injured a dad and his two kids when he jumped a curb in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Media coverage was unsurprisingly incurious. (NY Post)
- An NYPD officer ran over a panhandler in Brooklyn. Sorry, but judging by the photo, the van driver was clearly going too fast, not that the Daily News was particularly curious.
- Mayor Adams has a new Sanitation commissioner. (The City)
- The Long Island City Post followed our story on the DOT's bike lane plan for the neighborhood.
- Whenever politicians say "no public money" will be given to developers, you better grab your wallet. But that's what state officials are claiming about the Penn Station redevelopment. Yeah, right. (NY Post)
- Streetsblog gets action? Two weeks after our colleague Christopher Robbins took a long swim in the city's waste stream, the Department of Sanitation announced quietly that it was finally accepting applications for piddly little $20,000 grants to BIDs and community groups for "projects that help improve waste management operations and street cleanliness in business districts." Sorry, but isn't that the city's job? How will five little pilot projects change the world? (Waste360)
- Your yellow cab ride is going to resemble an Uber or Lyft ride in the future — and the city needs to figure out what to do with the existing congestion fee on yellow cabbies once congestion pricing kicks in (when is that, again?). Gothamist did a deep dive on the latest effort to save a troubled industry.
