Miraculously the boneheads at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) decided to stop holding 500,000 city school children and their families hostage and come up with the funding, $144 million, needed to keep the free and reduced MetroCard program for students.
On Friday, June 18 Governor David A. Paterson, Senate Majority Conference Leader John L. Sampson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced that they have reached an agreement that would restore the state’s share of funding for the MTA student MetroCards to 2009-10 funding levels.
The Governor’s 2010-11 Executive Budget included $25 million for the state’s contribution to the MTA Schoolfare Program, restoring funding to 2009-10 enacted budget levels and eliminating cuts made as part of the 2009 Deficit Reduction Plan.
"My Assembly colleagues and I fought hard to preserve student MetroCards, because we believe that students simply shouldn’t have to pay to get to school every day. Many cash-strapped families do not have any room in their already-tight budgets to provide children with daily transit fare," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
The third element of the program funding will come from the city to the tune of $45 million.
We feel that the MTA’s attempt to snatch these funds to close their budget shortfalls is/was/and always will be a bad idea. Kids need to get to school and we are obligated to get them there by city buses and subways or by very expensive school busing programs.
Don’t do this again next year!
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Both award-winning community newspaper chains will now be able to offer their clients the additional option of ad placement in both papers at special rates. This alliance will provide the advertisers an increased audience of over a half million readers.
The Queens Courier and its 12 publications will provide its Queens readers for the Anton Community Newspapers, which serves 70 Long Island communities with its 18 papers. Together the two publishers will ensure their market dominance of the classifieds, print and web ads in Nassau and Queens Counties.
