February 2, 2007
GIVING GOOD COUNCIL
 |
Speaker Quinn |
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other city council members have been hosting a series of gatherings called the Community Conversations on the City Budget to give the public more insight into the workings of the city budget—and input as to its priorities. Last week Housing Works' Felicia Carroll and other AIDS advocates took advantage of the opportunity and descended to the basement of the New Life Tabernacle in Flatbush, Brooklyn for the latest meeting.
The place was packed: Nearly 200 community board members, churchgoers, and health care providers showed up to participate. They raised their hands to raise issues from youth employment to city contracts. Cameron Craig, a community organizer at NYCAHN, brought up the problem of people living with HIV who are asymptomatic and therefore do not qualify for benefits such as housing, food stamps and cash allowances. He said that 11,000 people—a majority of the 20,000 newly infected—were asymptomatic and it would cost the city a pretty penny to more than double its roster of beneficiaries. However, he told the Update , "Bloomberg just gave $1 billion in tax cuts. If you can give a tax cut, you've got money."
Craig also brought up HASA rent increases as well as the lack of emergency housing for homeless PWAs and the consequent violation of the law mandating same-day, medically appropriate housing. Quinn declined to publicly discuss the details that day but committed to a follow-up meeting with NYCAHN this week. That meeting took place and was "cordial," according to one insider.
HIV education in the schools also came up. While policy dictates the teaching of HIV prevention and condom distribution, the details and degree of HIV education are left to each school's principal to decide. "And if there's no school nurse, there's no condom distribution," Craig points out. One woman asked for the city's plans around the growing rates of transmission in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where an estimated 84 percent of new cases are among African Americans. Housing Works' peer educator Felicia Carroll hoped to take this question a step further by demanding accountability for dollars designated for prevention in the black community. "HIV rates are increasing, and we want to know where the money is going," Carroll told the Update. "Can we track it?"
While Carroll didn't get a chance to pose her query, audience members felt that the council members were quite attentive. "It's clear that they want to get things done," says David Golden of NYCAHN. "They're tired of the gridlock." Sounds about right to us.
To find out about upcoming Community Conversations inquire at budgetpriorities@council.nyc.ny.us or go to http://www.nyccouncil.info/tempissues/budget08_index.cfm