Argue over ways to spend post-Sandy fun money, this week

So we’ve already got one way to argue over how to spend gobs of money, at least if you live in Brad Lander’s district and want to be part of his participatory budget-palooza. If you don’t live in Lander’s district, don’t get bummed out about not being able to spend huge amounts of money, because you’ve got two more chances in front of you. One, involves how Ikea should help Red Hook, and and the other is the big kahuna: how do we spend the money the federal government gave us after we clawed it out of their horrible hands.

First, the smaller amount. Ikea has a contest called “Click for a Cause” where they leave it up to residents in cities with an Ikea on what the company should do with a $10,000 donation to each neighborhood where an Ikea is located. In this case, it’s what to do with $10,000 earmarked for two Red Hook locations. The money can either go towards helping rebuild the Red Hook Senior Center, which was destroyed by Hurricane Shithead, or towards creating an ecology room in a Red Hook after-school program center. Voting goes until April 8 for that one.

As for the matter of the billion dollars we got from the feds (no thanks to Randian monster Paul Ryan). The Bloomberg administration has a summary of what they’d like to do with the money, available to check out here, which they’ll be giving out in the form of a Community Development Block Grant. Housing reconstruction, small business relief, things like that. But if you’ve got a really brilliant idea in that big brain of yours, the public comment period on what to do with the money is drawing to a close on Thursday. Fortunately, all you need to do to let the city know where you think the money should go is fill out this form and hit “send.” You don’t even have to wear pants while you fill it out!

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