Tracie McMillan, Author at Tracie McMillan

Kiwi Culture: New Zealand’s Capital Gets Hip

January 22, 2025March 29, 2006

Metro • March 29, 2006

Wellington, New Zealand–Say New Zealand and three things come to mind: Hobbits, sheep and mountains. Soon you’ll be adding a fourth: Hipsters. After a flurry of government investment in local creative industries—everything from film to fashion to popular music—young trendsetters are choosing to roost at home and they’re bringing the silkscreened T-shirts. The result? A transformation of Wellington, once known as a drab government hub, in to a vibrant arts and culture center, and the nightlife that comes with it. Here’s the best of what hip Wellington has to offer:

After-School Budget Won’t Budge: City Leaves Providers Scrambling

January 22, 2025December 12, 2005

City Limits • Dec. 12, 2005

Child care providers around the city were riled up last week after a city official publicly explained the approach undergirding the city’s massive new after-school child care initiative: Pay less than needed and expect service providers to make up the rest.

“Government can be a big part of the solution but not the only part,” said Bill Chong, deputy commissioner of the Department for Youth and Community Development (DYCD), at a Milano School forum on the new “Out of School Time” (OST) program last week. “To depend simply on city resources is a short-sighted approach.”

The New Safety Net?

January 22, 2025November 1, 2005

Part 3 of series, “Getting By”

Winner, 2006 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism
Finalist, 2006 Livingston Award for Young Journalists

City Limits • November/December 2005

Early this April, before the snow had completely disappeared, Milagros Espinal undertook an annual ritual, rustling her three children out of her Bronx apartment for a 15-minute jaunt over the Tri-Borough Bridge. Upon reaching Bayside, Queens, she hunched over an aging Hewlett Packard computer, consulting earnestly with her stepbrother, Veder Velarde. Between slurps of Coke, Milagros and Veder, who works in accounting, focused on the task at hand: painstakingly inputting figures from the receipts and 1099s generated by the child-care business she was running out of her living room. It was a late start for Milagros. She had hoped to finish her taxes months before, but now April 15 loomed just two weeks away, and she was anxious to dispense with the paperwork.

Big Changes in Child Care: City Hopes to Regulate Informal Providers

January 22, 2025October 31, 2005

City Limits • Oct. 31, 2005

As the city moves to overhaul its public child care system, officials are looking to recruit new allies into the fight: “informal” providers who currently receive public funds to care for children. The initiative, which also institutes background checks on informal providers, comes less than a year after Jaylen Robinson, a 19-month old in informal care, was smothered and killed by his caregiver.

Still in the early stages of discussion, the idea is a small component of the massive child care overhaul announced last week. It marks the city’s first major attempt to regulate unlicensed care, which has grown dramatically in recent years.

Hidden Health Costs

January 22, 2025October 11, 2005

City Limits • Oct. 11, 2005 High rates of childhood obesity may have a stealth culprit: rising prices. A new study from the Rand Health Corporation, a nonprofit policy group, found a strong correlation between childhood weight gain and higher prices for fruits and vegetables. In fact, the study found higher prices to be a … Read more

At Campaign Headquarters, Glitter and a Salsa Beat

January 22, 2025September 4, 2005

New York Times • Sept. 4, 2005

Nothing about Ruben Gonzalez’s block of East 108th Street near Third Avenue suggests a run for City Hall. The street, which is peppered with vacant lots and abandoned buildings, and punctuated by a fire hydrant spouting graceful arcs of water, ends, eloquently, at Poor Richard’s Playground.

But as August drifted to a close, it was City Hall — or, more precisely, the work of a candidate angling for a job there — that had drawn the attention of Mr. Gonzalez and his friends. Passing the afternoon in lawn chairs on the sidewalk, he and a bunch of fellow retirees casually eyed a building that once housed La Palma, a nightclub, but which is now the bustling headquarters for a City Council campaign.

Primary 2005

January 22, 2025August 1, 2005

City Limits • September/October 2005

As New York politics heats up for its main event–the Democratic Parry primary on September 13–several races warrant a closer look. There are two stats that generally indicate the strength of a campaign: the number of petition signatures gathered to get on the ballot, which can reveal whether the operation has a wide reach, and the size of the war chest (a combination of donations and anticipated matching funds). With six candidates leaving office thanks to term limits and a handful of incumbents facing serious challenges, there’s plenty to talk about: Harlem’s District 9, the Lower East Side’s District 2, Sunset Park’s District 38. But the field narrows considerably when you focus on neighborhood activists who’ve managed to pull together competitive campaigns. City Limits picks out the ones to watch.

For a Scrappy Neighborhood, a Scent of Farm Fresh

January 22, 2025July 10, 2005

The New York Times • July 10, 2005

After 17 years, Joanne Grant knows Bushwick. So when she looked out her kitchen window and saw a farmer unloading his bounty onto her Brooklyn street Wednesday morning, she knew something was up.

Still clad in slippers and an aqua housedress, her hair tucked under a nightcap, Ms. Grant headed over to the farmer and waited in line to buy the three bunches of broccoli she clutched in her hand. But she also watched her front door anxiously.

Ending Workfare as We Know It?

January 22, 2025July 1, 2005

Part 2 of series, “Getting By”

Winner, 2006 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism
Finalist, 2006 Livingston Award for Young Journalists

City Limits • July/August 2005

It starts before Benita Andrews even makes it home. Five o’clock finds her walking to her South Bronx apartment, a ramshackle three-family covered in aluminum siding. Her kids–nine in all–spot her from their third-floor window, and they are already calling for her when she is half a block away. By the time Andrews passes the corner house, known as a drug spot, and a stoop blaring salsa music, her front stairs are lined with children. “It gets kinda crazy when I get home. Everybody’s all ‘Mommy, mommy, mommy.’” says Andrews, feigning irritation. “I about fall into a coma come 10:00.”

Ending Workfare as We Know It?

January 22, 2025July 1, 2005

City Limits • July/August 2005

So far, the only sign of exhaustion from Andrews is a deep breath before the onslaught from her children begins. “I want to be working, but there’s too many loose ends at home,” she says matter-of-factly. Asked what it would take for her to leave welfare, Andrews raises her eyebrows–I have tried and it does not seem possible, her look says–and ponders the question. “If I do Scratch n’ Match [a state lottery game], that might cover me for three or four years,” she says. Pressed for specifics, Andrews launches into a list.