u/thenygroove — reddlx

▲ 689 r/knicks+1 crossposts

Madison Square Garden spies on fans. There's a budget crisis. Why does MSG still not pay property taxes?

For 44 years now Madison Square Garden has been exempted from paying property taxes to New York City. The arena has been the only sports venue in the city that’s able to skip out on the bill since 1982 thanks to a poorly thought-out bit of panic legislating last century, despite the fact that it sits on ludicrously valuable land smack dab in the middle of Manhattan on top of a thriving mass transit network that makes it easy to get to and from games and concerts.

A 2023 report from the city’s Independent Budget Office put the total amount of unrealized tax revenue from MSG at a staggering $946.7 million between 1984 and 2023, and estimates from the city Department of Finance since the report came out push that number over $1 billion in total. Since 2015, the city has been losing out on over $40 million per year in property taxes.

Is it time to change the exemption finally? Knicks fan Dave Colon. makes the case here.

nygroove.nyc

u/thenygroove — 8 days ago

▲ 76 r/brooklynheights

Volunteers who became local celebrities for their efforts to clean garbage and love locks from the iconic Brooklyn Bridge say they’re now facing pushback from cops and other city employees for their efforts to pull trash off the bridge.

In the weeks and months since The New York Groove broke the story earlier this year about volunteers cleaning plastic garbage and those odious “love locks” off the Brooklyn Bridge, bridgilantes Ellen Baum and Max Parke have been rightly hailed as local heroes, and received a frenzy of positive media attention. So naturally, the pair seem to have drawn the ire of the police.

“A couple of cops have come up to me and said someone complained,” said Parke, who regularly goes to the bridge with an angle grinder to take down the locks. “No one has been able to cite any rule or law. But one was very set on what he wanted me to do and not do, even when I was literally just using scissors to cut down trash.”

Read the rest of the update here.

u/thenygroove — 8 days ago

▲ 4 r/nycbus+1 crossposts

>“Sex and the City, Girls, Broad City, there are a small number of recent and contemporary shows that sort of capture the urban experience of living in New York City,” said Joshua Goodman, deputy commissioner of public affairs and customer experience for the NYC Department of Sanitation. “One of the true experiences of a New Yorker is properly separating your waste in an apartment setting.”

u/thenygroove — 15 days ago