Federal Stimulus Package

Here's the mayor's press release on the four new city housing developments being kick-started with federal stimulus money:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Governor David A. Paterson today announced that New York City is first City in the nation to begin construction of new affordable housing using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Tax Credit Assistance Program (TCAP). Four housing developments – three in Harlem and one in East New York – will comprise 739 units of affordable housing and their construction will provide more than 2,800 construction jobs. The Tax Credit Assistance Program aims to increase the supply of newly constructed or recently renovated affordable housing units that otherwise would not have come to market due to current economic conditions. The $60 million in stimulus funding spent on the first four developments accounts for more than 70 percent of New York City’s Tax Credit Assistance Program allocation. Building affordable housing in neighborhoods across New York City is a central component of the Bloomberg Administration’s Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan to create jobs for New Yorkers today, implement a vision for long-term economic growth and build affordable, attractive neighborhoods. The announcement was held at the East Harlem site for one of the housing developments, Hobbs Court, where the Mayor was joined by Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, Department of Housing and Preservation and Development Commissioner Rafael E. Cestero, New York City Housing Authority Chairman John B. Rhea, New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal Commissioner Deborah VanAmerongen and Phipps Houses President and CEO Adam Weinstein.

A few weeks ago, we did a post breaking down what's at stake for New York City as it prepares for the fast-approaching Aug. 14 deadline to apply for broadband infrastructure funding through the federal stimulus bill's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP).

You can learn more about that tomorrow, July 28, when Council Technology in Government Committee Chair Gale Brewer and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications host a meeting about the city's BTOP application. It's scheduled for 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the third floor conference room of DCTV on Layfayette Street.

As Government Technology reported last week, municipal governments had expected to have 60 to 90 days to get their applications ready. But when the grant application guidelines were released on July 14, they provided only a month-long window, and now some local governments are scrambling to make the deadline.

In the weeks before the application guidelines were released, the city was collecting ideas from broadband service providers, non-profits and other agencies. At the time, DoITT's spokesman, Nick Sbordone, said the city wanted to "hit the ground running, so when these funds become available, we have a pretty solid idea of what some of the best practices are in terms of providing these services."

Read the letter Ms. Brewer's office sent out last week after the jump:

We reported last week that the city has been gearing up to receive a bundle of federal-stimulus money that will be made available for broadband infrastructure through the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). Out of a total of $7.2 billion in broadband funds from the stimulus bill, it's looking to get a piece of the $250 million to be set aside nationally to improve in-home broadband adoption programs for underserved areas, and of at least $200 million nationally for technology upgrades at "public computing centers" (libraries, senior centers, community colleges, etc.)

The BTOP funding is one of several big tech issues on the table this summer for New York, and techies have been waiting anxiously for the release of a set of guidelines outlining the application process. Today, as expected, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration made that document available on the brand new federal Web site, broadbandusa.gov.

The application process will run from July 14 to August 14. Here's a quick, general excerpt from the section about BTOP (the full document is 121 pages long):

Taking a quick break from PdF-related coverage, an interesting press release just came in from Center for an Urban Future.

According to the results of a new study the Manhattan-based urban policy think tank released today, New York City could "capture a significant share" of the 212,000 jobs that the stimulus is expected to create nationwide in the health IT sector.

According to the Center’s report, New York City’s small but fast-growing Health IT sector will benefit enormously by the fact that no other place in the country has as many patient records ready for automation. The city is home to 65 hospitals, 1,300 outpatient clinics and over 30,000 doctors --- and only a small fraction of them have previously converted to electronic health records (EHR). The city has other things going for it as well, including a more developed local health IT infrastructure than most other regions. For instance, the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene pioneered one of the first local initiatives in the nation to help physicians adopt information technology.

The study echoes some remarks we reported on during Internet Week New York back in early June. Throughout the week, there was talk of how New York's digital sector is poised to help the city recapture some of the economic power that Wall Street lost as a result of the downturn. During one such panel discussion, called Start Me Up: Investing in New York's Digital Industry, NYC Investment Fund Senior Vice President Jalak K. Jobanputra also cited the digitization of hospitals as a key opportunity for New York city.

"Given the amount of stimulus money that will be available for digitization in the health care sector, I think it’s a particularly interesting area," she said.

You can read the Center for an Urban Future report in PDF here. Full press release is after the jump.

recovery.gov

The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week posted its most recent numbers on state-by-state infrastructure spending in the federal stimulus package. The result: Money certainly doesn't get out the door quick. As of May 31, according to the committee, of the $2.86 billion going to New York State for physical infrastucture, just $3.2 million had been “outlayed,” or spent, since the stimulus funds became available in early March.

Specific projects weren’t detailed, but generally, the money has been allocated toward road paving, bridge repairs, and some larger transit projects in New York City.

Of course, there’s a number of steps to go through before money actually gets out the door and spent on infrastructure, and the numbers for other categories show a bit more movement. For instance, $1.3 billion in stimulus money is associated with projects that have been put out to bid, and $164 million is linked to projects that are under contract.

We mentioned last week that the city is seeking proposals for stimulus-fund projects that will help close the gap in broadband access across the five boroughs. Here are some more details on the two Requests for Information the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications issued earlier this month.

The content of the R.F.I.s is pretty much the same, except one is aimed at broadband service providers, and the other is aimed at nonprofits and other agencies with which the city might form public-private partnerships to bring affordable broadband to low-income New Yorkers. (According to the documents, which you can find here, a study conducted in 2006 and 2007 found that there was a roughly 28-percent gap in the broadband-adoption rate between low-income and moderate- to high-income households, and that this gap would not become significantly narrower until at least 2012 unless programs for increased broadband adoption were implemented.)

The R.F.I.s state that the city intends to develop programs targetting public school students and their families, under-employed and unemployed adults, and adults over the age of 50, and that the programs would include the following core components: