May 16, 2012 · www.gothamgazette.com

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Measuring Up

The Mayor's High Stakes Test  (April 27, 2009)  After all the reports and rhetoric on mayoral control of city schools, it soon will come down to the only grade that matters -- the one from the state legislature.

City Faces a Rising Demand for Food Stamps  (April 6, 2009)  With more and more New Yorkers needing help to buy food, many residents who would qualify for food stamps do not get them. The city says it is working to get the word out, but some experts say it could do more.

A City Council Scorecard: Who's Engaged and Who's Not?   (March 9, 2009)  Which City Council member skips a third of all meetings, and who never misses one? Who is the chamber's top naysayer? And which committee chair held just six meetings in three years?

A Budget Expert Looks at the Numbers  (February 17, 2009)  

Meet the Independent Budget Office  (February 10, 2009)  Have any questions about the administration’s new preliminary budget? Ronnie Lowenstein of the Independent Budget Office will join Gotham Gazette City Hall reporter Courtney Gross to answer your questions live. Check back here at 2 p.m. to participate.

The Budget Outlook Goes from Bad to Worse  (January 15, 2009)  The city's November budget projections now read like ancient history as the deepening recession has already led to major job losses and plummeting revenues.

New Yorkers Rate Their Government   (December 18, 2008)  As the mayor and City Council fight over budget, they might want to turn to a new public survey on what New Yorkers think of how their government spends their money.

Choosing Sides in the Fight Over Schools   (November 17, 2008)  Another term for Mayor Bloomberg would let him run city schools for four more years-- if the legislature extends mayoral control. Look for a tough fight with warring statistics, rival reports and lots of spin.

A City's New Poverty Guidelines  (October 14, 2008)  The administration has a new way of calculating who is poor in New York. What effect will that have on the millions of New Yorkers struggling to make ends meet?

Looking at the Record: Taxes and Homelessness  (September 29, 2008)  Three recent reports examine key tax issues and the city's record on homelessness and provide one way to measure the Bloomberg administration's performance.

The Three C's: Condos, Classrooms and Crowding  (September 2, 2008)  Young affluent families are moving to the city and putting their kids in public schools. It may be too much of a good thing.

Lost in the PDFs: Getting City Data  (August 5, 2008)  Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said government data should be available with a few clicks of the mouse. But a review of agencies indicates the city's information sharing could be due for an upgrade.

Language Barrier Begins to Fall at City Hospitals  (July 22, 2008)  New regulations require hospitals to provide translations and other language services to their patients who do not speak English. The rules appear to be working -- at least for Spanish speakers.

New York's Best and Worst Beaches   (July 21, 2008)  

Measuring Constituent Complaints: Round One  (July 14, 2008)  

The Past and Future of Sustainability  (June 9, 2008)  Will be mayor's long-term plan for a greener city survive and help create a sustainable city? Hunter College professor Tom Angotti discusses how the mayor can improve the odds.

Puffing Up Marijuana Charges  (June 6, 2008)  Marijuana arrests in New York have gone up sharply in the past decade -- landing tens of thousands of young back and Latino men in jail for the night and with arrest records for life.

Rating Health Care Behind Bars  (June 2, 2008)  The city recently renewed its contract with the company that provides health care on Riker's Island -- even though the provider has repeatedly failed to meet the city's own standards.

Grading New York's Public Schools  (May 5, 2008)  

Tracking Crime in the Parks  (April 2, 2008)  New York City parks today have far less crime than they once did, but police have not complied with a requirement that would tell all New Yorkers just how safe -- or dangerous -- their parks are.

Testing Fails the Arts  (November 26, 2007)  New test scores and the school report cards have renewed the debate on how we evaluate schools. Two experts point out what they see as shortcomings in the city's methods.

Report Cards Flunk the Clarity Test  (November 26, 2007)  New test scores and the school report cards have renewed the debate on how we evaluate schools. Two experts point out what they see as shortcomings in the city's methods.

Poor Grades for a School ‘Contract’  (July 16, 2007)  After years of litigation, the city is getting some additional state money for education. Now the disagreement centers on what to do with it.

Data to the People  (May 7, 2007)  In an on-line chat with Gotham Gazette, Gale Brewer discusses how technology can improve access to government.

Language Barriers Silence Immigrant Tenants  (April 10, 2007)  Housing services don’t reach many of the immigrant families that need them most.

A ‘Customer’ Survey for the City  (April 9, 2007)  City officials may be in for some surprises when they ask New Yorkers what they think of public services in the city.

New Bills -- Government on the Web, Parking, and Illegal Hotels  (March 26, 2007)  

Confronting the Congestion Crisis  (February 12, 2007)  Councilmember Gale Brewer on how city officials should keep traffic in city streets from grinding to a complete halt.

Charting New York’s Health  (January 22, 2007)  Which New York City neighborhood has the most binge drinking? Which the highest rate of obesity? Which the most deaths from heart disease? The answers are in the health department’s Community Health Profiles. Cari Olson of the health department explains what the numbers tell us and how citizens can use them.

High Revenue, Obscure Spending  (December 8, 2006)  City Hall cannot be blamed for boasting about an increase in revenue to government coffers. But it is rightly criticized for obscuring information about how it spends the money -- specifically, its more than $11 billion in contracts with organizations outside of government.

The Poverty Commission: Measuring Up?  (October 16, 2006)  How many poor people live in New York? How do we determine who is poor? Is that accurate? A member of the mayor's poverty commission answers key questions on the shape of poverty in the city.

Housing In New York City -- Figuring Out The Big (And Little) Picture  (September 18, 2006)  A spate of reports on the city's housing details what most New Yorkers already knew -- but with some surprises, and plenty of mysteries.

Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, Then and Now  (September 14, 2006)  The news of the proposed sale of two of the last bastions of middle class housing in New York City, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, prompted Andy Beveridge to look at the demographics of the residents in 1950, and see how they changed by 2000.

Putting City Hall’s Documents Online  (September 13, 2006)  Though city agencies have been required since 2003 to post their official documents online, few are fully complying with the law.

Transit Riders – More For Work, Fewer For Fun  (September 12, 2006)  Bruce Schaller analyzes recent census data to show that, while more New Yorkers are taking public transportation to work, fewer are taking the bus or subway for fun.

Noise In New York  (August 31, 2006)  By many measures, noise (especially from nightclubs and car alarms) has become New Yorkers’ biggest concern.

What New Yorkers Are Like Now – First Results of the American Community Survey  (August 29, 2006)  Andrew Beveridge looks at newly released census data – which reveals that there are more educated New Yorkers, fewer black people in the city, a slower increase in immigrants, etc. – and the new American Community Survey from which the information comes.

The Homeless Pledge  (August 22, 2006)  The mayor is promising to reduce by two-thirds the number of homeless people in New York City by the time he leaves office. But advocates are skeptic.

Taking the Public Pulse  (July 24, 2006)  As governments, including New York City's, find new ways to assess their performance, some experts say that officials often ignore a key piece -- what the people who are supposed to benefit from government services think of those services.

Beyond 311: Listening to New Yorkers  (July 24, 2006)  Talking to citizens can provide government with a better understanding of how satisfied citizens are with city services.

What Residents Can Tell Government  (July 24, 2006)  Citizen surveys can tell government a lot about how well city services are working.

The Way in San Jose  (July 24, 2006)  An official from the California city explains how it surveys residents and what it has learned from those surveys.

The Web Site, 311, Surveys and Focus Groups  (July 24, 2006)  The director of the Mayor's Office of Operations on how the city learns what citizens think.

Parents Grading Schools  (July 24, 2006)  An education department official describes the school system's plan to start asking parents, teachers and students how they rate city schools.

Counting The Empty Buildings  (July 19, 2006)  Joe Lamport details a new effort to find all the empty buildings in the city, in hopes of turning some of them into affordable housing.

Childstat  (June 12, 2006)  A new program called “Childstat” is just one of the reforms that the Administration for Children’s Services is putting in place after the death of seven-year-old Nixzmary Brown. A transcript of an online chat with ACS Deputy Commissioner Jan Flory, in charge of Childstat.

Predicting The Unpredictable -- Planning Future Hospital Beds, Classrooms, Jail Cells Etc.  (April 24, 2006)  How does the city know how many classrooms, jail cells and hospital beds it will need ten years from now?

Homeless Prevention Programs A Year Later  (April 19, 2006)   Joe Lamport looks at three programs launched last year to prevent homelessness – two widely viewed as “promising,” one “a mess.”

Budget: More Cops, More Surveillance; Less Crime?  (April 3, 2006)  David Dean details a proposed crime budget with the largest city-funded expansion of the police department’s uniformed force since 1993, and asks what if anything it will accomplish.

Behind the Dropout Rate  (March 20, 2006)  New York still does not have good information about how many students complete high school and how many do not. And that makes it only more difficult to fix the dropout dilemma.

Hiding Behind the Numbers  (March 20, 2006)  Fire department response times are slower. More students are dropping out. It costs millions more to throw out the garbage. The city is hoping, Glenn Pasanen argues, that New Yorkers don’t notice.

311 + 3 : Adding Social Services  (March 16, 2006)  On its third anniversary, 311 will now include referrals to private, non-profit social service agencies.

Parkstat To Fight Crime  (January 27, 2006)  Anne Schwartz details a new law that, by requiring the police to report felonies that occur in city parks, will help make them safer – or at least let the public know how safe they already are.

A Checkup for City Services  (January 23, 2006)  New York City government could get a new way take its vital signs with the proposal of CityStat NY. And that's just one way to spot trends, gaps and overlaps in city services.

Mayor’s Management Report for 2005: Thinner, Less Useful  (October 11, 2005)  The mayor’s management report for 2005 presents a picture of “historic progress.” Glenn Pasanen uses independent management studies, constituent surveys, and his own analysis, to come up with an alternative view -- and criticizes the report itself for being less useful.

The Mayor’s Management Report Skimps On Information About Education And Everything Else  (October 6, 2004)  The newly released Mayor’s Management Report focuses endlessly on 311 calls, far more than on the mayor’s other big priority, the overhaul of the $15 billion education department. Indeed, Glenn Pasanen writes, it skimps on information about almost everything.

Report Card On Neighborhood Parks  (June 23, 2004)  Anne Schwartz previews the second annual report card on New York City's neighborhood parks - "a small improvement ... although a quarter of the city's parks still have failing grades."

Questioning Police Statistics For Crime and Cases Of Misconduct  (April 5, 2004)  Jaime Adame reports on recent criticism questioning police statistics in both crimes and cases of police misconduct.

Lessons For   (November 11, 2003)  Glenn Pasanen looks at the results of the election, and at the comptroller's new annual financial report released this month,  and finds "some lessons for more democratic fiscal management."

Judging School Reform  (September 4, 2003)  The new school year promises a rocky start because of  the Bloomberg administration's ambitious new school reforms.  But "New Yorkers should not rush to judgment," advise Raymond Domanicco and Jessica Wolff, who offer 11 questions to ask, beyond test scores, when it is indeed time to judge.

Compstatmania  (July 7, 2003)  Think of a problem facing New York City, and someone surely has already proposed solving it with a variation of "Compstat," one of the most rapidly spreading innovations in America. But how much of Compstat is magic, how much a magic act?

Private Report Card on Smaller Parks  (May 20, 2003)  Anne Schwartz details the results of a survey by New Yorkers for Parks of the city's smaller parks and recreation areas.

Report Card On The Parks  (March 21, 2003)  Spring is here, and Anne Schwartz looks at Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "report card" in parks - in which he measured how he was doing compared to what he had promised to do - and gives him a lower grade than he gave himself.