The New York City Council will hold a hearing Wednesday on the NYPD’s treatment of accident investigations, with a focus on bicyclists and pedestrians killed by motorists.

In 2011, 21 cyclists were killed in traffic accidents in New York City — nine more than in 2009. Just Monday morning, a Staten Island cyclist was killed by a driver who fled the scene of the accident. And over the past year, bicycle advocates and the families of killed cyclists have repeatedly accused the police of failing to properly handle these investigations, obstructing the release of information about the accidents and failing to prosecute reckless drivers.

As the Council gears up for the hearing, which will feature testimony from the mother of slain cyclist Mathieu Lefevre, among others, MetroFocus looked back at some of the high-profile cases over the past year in which a motorist killed a cyclist and wasn’t immediately charged.

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Like the clenched hands of a young couple ascending a roller coaster incline of love, the relationship between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn seemed to be growing ever tighter over the past dozen or so years. Since 2005, the speaker has backed the majority of the mayor’s policies and the mayor has been lavish in his praise for Quinn.

But lately, the presumptive 2013 mayoral candidate has publicly disagreed with Bloomberg on several issues, which some political insiders say suggests her attempts to distance herself from the mayor as election season nears.

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It’s Fashion Week in New York, and you know what that means. Models, designers and their assistants, fans and celebrities are out in full force, roaming Lincoln Center to see and be seen.

But do you know what else it means? Feathers.

The garment district buzzes with activity every Fashion Week as designers’ assistants make last-minute showroom visits, looking for that one culminating accessory or embellishment that will really make a model — and an outfit — pop.  One place that always sees tons of behind-the-scenes action is the 15-year-old garment district mainstay, The Feather Place.

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As an American fashion designer who manufactures most of my line in New York City, I’m relieved to see that domestic manufacturing has finally taken center stage at a national level. President Barack Obama’s incentives for companies to bring manufacturing back to America present an enormous opportunity for Manhattan’s embattled garment center.

When my husband Bob Savage and I started our business in 1992, we sold my designs out of our boutique in the East Village. Every day we would drag rolls of fabric back and forth in taxicabs and on the subway between the factories in the garment center and our shop downtown.

After weeks of shuttling back and forth, we realized how vital it was for our work space to be close to our factories. We soon rented a small penthouse office on 35th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues and hired our first staff, including a pattern maker, sewer and cutter. We still have that office today but have expanded to an additional eight floors in that same building.

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Once again this week, one bold man proved he can accomplish great things despite the timeworn bureaucracy of New York. We speak, of course, of Nik Wallenda. But amazing as it was for him to win permission to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope, we’re not jinxing him by calling him a winner until he makes it to the other side. For the rest of this week’s Winners & Losers, the only death they had to defy was political:

Bill de Blasio — You don’t have to hit a home run to score – you just have to round all the bases. The city public advocate did it this week by getting on the popular side of a range of issues – letting churches worship in public schools, pressuring the Bloomberg administration to release data on NYPD officers diagnosed with cancer after 9/11, and investing city pension dollars in affordable housing and local infrastructure. Slow and patient work from a low-profile office is the kind of diligence that can pay dividends in the 2013 mayoral contest – and after Anthony Weiner and John Liu ran for mayor like hares, being the tortoise may be the ticket for de Blasio.

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Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City is fast becoming a tech-centric and data driven metropolis. From the push for an applied sciences tech campus, to the support of media and technology start-ups, the Big Apple circa 2012 is making a play to become a new hub for technological innovation.

But beyond expanding the private sector, city government is also using technology to improve service. And one agency in particular is relying on it to modernize and adapt for the future: the Department of Transportation.

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Last week, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) introduced a bill that would raise New York’s minimum wage 17 percent, from $7.25 to $8.50 an hour. The bill, estimated to benefit one million New Yorkers, has strong backers — both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg support the hike. But the bill also has its detractors, some of whom say the increase would discourage businesses from hiring more employees.

So who makes minimum wage in New York City? The guy who serves you coffee? Your buddy at the gym? MetroFocus recently spent a day seeking out New Yorkers working at or near minimum wage, which was last raised eight years ago. Here’s a sampling of what minimum wage workers you might run into during your daily routine had to say about the proposed increase.

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The NYPD is mired in yet another scandal this week — one of many in the last 12 months — over Commissioner Ray Kelly’s participation in a controversial police training video.

Some politicians and policy analysts are calling for a new independent agency to oversee the NYPD — something Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the city won’t do.

MetroFocus looked at the problems with the NYPD’s current monitoring system and, for comparison, at how other cities have used independent government watchdogs to reduce corruption.

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In late January, New York’s Legislative Redistricting Task Force (LATFOR) released its proposed maps for the State Senate and Assembly. The plans have drawn widespread criticism from elected officials and reform organizations, with the New York Public Interest Research Group decrying “clearly the most gerrymandered lines in recent New York history.”

As accusations of gerrymandering and disenfranchisement fly, the New York World set out to answer two basic questions: How exactly do districts get gerrymandered – that is, have their boundaries manipulated to benefit a political party or group? And where, if at all, is it happening in New York?

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Decimating the city’s rat population has been on the agenda of State Sen. Bill Perkins, D-Manhattan, for at least a decade. When former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in office and Perkins was on the City Council, several properties in Perkins’ Harlem district that had fallen into disrepair became garbage dumps, and thus the stomping ground for rats. Today, Perkins is still fighting rats — but this time he’s taken the fight underground.

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According to the Book of Genesis, sometime before the advent of recorded time, God flooded the Earth to punish humanity for its wickedness. Somewhat later, in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that global sea levels would rise between 7.1 and 23 inches by the end of the 21st century. The Deluge, take two? (If you live in Flushing, Queens, and your name is Noah, you may be in luck. Call us.)

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It’s an undeniable fact that millions of New Yorkers are hungry and need assistance to feed their families. More than 3 million a month, to be exact. Demand has increased, too. In July, the city’s Human Resources Administration hired 100 workers to deal with the influx of New Yorkers applying for food stamps and rent-assistance, and plans to hire 100 more, reported the Daily News.

But just how to help is a contentious issue.

Tensions over food stamp distribution erupted in earnest in early January when Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in his State of the State speech, said he would put an end to New York City’s policy of fingerprinting food stamp recipients — a policy Mayor Michael Bloomberg steadfastly supports.

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New York University professor Lisa Duggan says that the Occupy Wall Street movement has inspired an entire generation to want to learn about what might otherwise seem like a dry subject: financial history.

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