QUEENS — Nine schools in Jamaica will soon receive money to buy laptops for their classrooms under this year’s Participatory Budgeting for City Council District 27, which includes Jamaica, Hollis, St. Albans, Queens Village and Cambria Heights.
Nearly 1,900 residents voted in recent weeks for 18 possible projects in order to determine how nearly $1.3 million of Councilman Daneek Miller’s capital funds would be spent.
The Benjamin Franklin High School for Finance and Information Technology, P.S./I.S. 268, P.S. 176, P.S. 140, P.S. 95, P.S. 118, P.S. 134, P.S. 37 and the Emerson School will each receive $50,000 for their new laptops.
Voters also decided to allocate $270,000 for bus countdown clocks that will provide real-time travel information to riders traveling on the Q2, Q3, Q4, Q27, and Q110 routes.
Locals also chose to invest $150,000 in NYPD safety cameras which will be installed in several locations in St. Albans and Jamaica, and P.S. 36 St. Albans will receive $400,000 for security cameras that will be installed around the school building.
“Participatory Budgeting is grassroots civic education at its best,” Miller said in an email sent out to local residents Wednesday, announcing this year's winning projects. “Your efforts this cycle will provide $1,270,000 of my capital budget to these wonderful projects, and I look forward to seeing them come to life very shortly!”
Projects that didn't make the cut this year include Cambria Park basketball courts, tennis courts at I.S 238, Roy Wilkins Park entrance repaving and St. Albans park entranceway.
