Decrepit NYCHA playgrounds await repairs with no firm timeline

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Nearly two dozen dilapidated NYCHA playgrounds are slated for an overhaul with no clear timeline in sight, The City reports. Public housing officials did not disclose a completion target date or an estimated price tag for any of the revamps—even in the case of one park where the City Council allocated funding five years ago.

In the meantime, families are starved for play space in their own backyards. They’re left to “make do,” as one tenant at Coney Island’s O’Dwyer Gardens complex put it, with crumbling concrete, damaged rubber mats, and broken drinking fountains. Of the deteriorating playgrounds, according to The City, 13 are in Brooklyn, six are in the Bronx, and three are in Manhattan; four were added to NYCHA’s replacement list in 2014.

The revelation follows NYCHA’s broken vow to inspect each of its 710 playgrounds within 90 days after a scathing audit by Comptroller Scott Stringer discovered many were in poor condition. NYCHA playground inspections are not required by law, though the authority has had what appears to be a largely overlooked internal review system in place for years.

And in other news...

• Newark is suing New York City and Mayor Bill de Blasio to shut down a program that relocates homeless families from the Big Apple to New Jersey, and dumps them in inhumane conditions.
• A new bill introduced by Manhattan Assemblymember Daniel O’Donnell seeks to rebrand Robert Moses State Park with a name that “clearly reflects the history of Long Island.”
• New York City has a package theft problem.
• On the topic of package deliveries, city lawmakers are pushing to abolish the Stipulated Fine Program, which allows delivery businesses to pay a pre-set rate for their parking tickets in exchange for not challenging the fines in court. Without the program, New York’s 10 largest shipping companies would have owed more than $20 million in fines last year.
• Check out this nifty interactive map on the history of the subway.
• The Brooklyn Public Library will begin lending board games next spring at branches in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.
• Brace yourself: SantaCon is on the horizon.
• And, finally, it’s another wet one out there today, but please, maybe don’t air dry your socks on a subway pole like a public clothesline: