UWS Budget: Help Choose Where $1M Gets Spent In The Neighborhood

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A boxing gym in the long-shuttered Metro Theater, a pedestrian overpass at a particularly busy entrance to Central Park, and an art installation under the West Side Highway in the 60s are some of the suggestions already submitted in the Participatory Budget process for the next fiscal year recently opened by new Upper West Side City Council member Gale Brewer.

From now through Jan. 23, Upper West Siders can propose and support ideas on how $1 million of Brewer's budget allocation can be used in the neighborhood.

The projects can be used for physical infrastructure that benefits the public, cost at least $50,000, and have a lifespan of at least five years.

"(Participatory Budgeting) is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of the public budget," Brewer wrote in her first newsletter as council member. "PB gives people real power to make real decisions over real money."

Here is a full list of ideas already submitted:

• Enhance Safety on Central Park West Drive at 81st Street
• Revamp Metro Theater
• Build a sound barrier wall in Riverside Park to block noise from the West Side Highway
• Residential Parking Permits Program
• Happy Warrior playground basketball courts renovation
• Art installation under West Side Highway in the 60s
• Boxing Gym & Fights at Metro Theater
• Sanitation Improvements and Increased Recycling Bins
• Public Tennis Courts in Riverside Park

You can submit your own idea and vote on others on the city's page here.

The projects that receive the most votes will be submitted by Brewer to be allocated in the creation of the budget in June for the following fiscal year.

The WestSideRag was the first publication to report on the Upper West Side's Participatory Budget proposal process.