14 JANUARY 13 - JANUARY 19, 2017 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP KEEP OBAMACARE ALIVE Since the A ordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) was enacted in 2010, Republicans have worked diligently to have it repealed and replaced. Most of the focus has been on the repeal e ort rather than what would replace a program that provides health insurance coverage to more than 20 million Americans. Now that Republicans are poised to have full control of Congress and the White House for the fi rst time since 2006, the talk of repealing Obamacare is moving closer to reality. What happens to those Americans who would lose coverage—including many residents of Brooklyn—and what would replace Obamacare remain a great mystery. To repeal Obamacare without providing an adequate replacement for it—basically, something that provides the same services but at a far lower price to taxpayers—would be an act of fi scal and moral irresponsibility. Members of Congress must not take such a grave measure, which would have tremendous repercussions on the health of millions and the nation’s economy. According to Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York State would lose billions in funding vital not just to making health insurance a ordable, but also for maintaining the vast networks of medical facilities serving people across the Empire State. Obamacare hasn’t saved medical institutions as much as it has kept them on life support. New York Health + Hospitals is a prime example of that; the network of city hospitals is bleeding red ink because health care costs continue to spiral upward. Most people would acknowledge that Obamacare is far from a panacea for all that ails the health care industry in this country. If anything, Obamacare isn’t doing enough to address the extraordinary costs of medical care. If nothing is done to improve what we already have, the health care system will collapse slowly—but if Obamacare is killed entirely, the health care system will collapse swi ly, and the damage to our economy and to our overall health will be far-reaching. We know the Brooklyn Congressional delegation will fi ght to keep the A ordable Care Act alive, but we encourage 14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12,editorial A LOOK BACK compiled by GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD our readers to reach out to them, thank them for their support and urge them to fi ght to save and improve Obamacare. HOMEREPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS Change to 2015 ▲ ▲ Gary Nilsen and Helen Klein (Estab. 1953) (USPS 248.800) 9733 FOURTH AVE. • BROOKLYN, NY 11209 Co-Publisher ... Victoria Schneps-Yunis Co-Publisher ... Joshua A. Schneps Editor in Chief ... Helen Klein Telephone 718-238-6600 Fax 718-238-6630 E-mail [email protected] Periodical postage paid at Brooklyn, N.Y. Published weekly by Brooklyn Media Group, Inc. Single copies, 50 cents. $35 per year by mail, $40 outside Brooklyn. On June 8, 1962, the Bay Ridge Home Reporter (founded 1953) and the Brooklyn Sunset News, a continuation of the Bay Ridge News (founded 1943) were merged into the HOME REPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS. Postmaster: Send Address Changes To: Home Reporter and Sunset News 9733 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11209 Entire contents copyright 2014 by Home Reporter and Sunset News All letters sent to the HOME REPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS should be brief and are subject to condensing. Writers should include a full address and home and office telephone numbers, where available, as well as affiliation, indicating special interest. Anonymous letters are not printed. Name withheld on request. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, AS WELL AS OP-ED PIECES IN NO WAY REFLECT THE PAPER’S POSITION. No such ad or any part thereof may be reproduced without prior permission of the HOME REPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS. 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Photo by Gardiner Anderson And the award goes to… Bay Ridge, which has provided the backdrop for many movies and television shows over the years, from “Blue Bloods” and “Saturday Night Fever” to “Mad Men” and, in 2006, to “Then She Found Me,” starring Helen Hunt and Bette Midler, seen above in a September, 2006, Home Reporter photo taken on location on Shore Road at 77th Street. Midler performed at the most recent Oscars, singing “Wind Beneath My Wings” during the awards show’s In Memoriam segment. “Then She Found Me,” which also starred Matthew Broderick, was also shot inside a historic home on 88th Street. BY MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO Each day, thousands of people depend on SUNY Downstate Medical Center for emergency medical care and vital health care services. But this state-operated public hospital has been in danger of being closed or privatized for more than two years. Hundreds of jobs have been lost, and numerous health care services have been cut or curtailed due to the hospital’s ill-prepared “Sustainability Plan.” Now, there is language in the 2014-15 proposed state budget that would open the door to as many as five corporations to operate SUNY’s public hospitals. United University Professions, the union that represents nearly 3,000 employees at SUNY Downstate, has been fighting to keep SUNY Downstate a fully operational staterun facility. However, UUP isn’t fighting the battle alone. The SUNY Downstate Coalition Faith, Labor and Community Leaders has become an important ally. The coalition has staged a number of rallies and protests over the past 18 months to save health care services and jobs at SUNY Downstate and keep it a public facility. The latest such effort is a 48-hour interfaith fast. It will begin Sunday, March 9, at 3 p.m., in front of Downstate’s 470 Clarkson Avenue entrance. Interfaith leaders and members of the community will participate to show their strong support for this beacon in Brooklyn and call attention to the threats it faces. You can take part in the fast or find out more about it by calling 718-270-1519, or sending an email to [email protected]. We strongly urge you to join our campaign. Take part in the fast, or come out and show your support. Together, we can deliver a strong message that SUNY Downstate must remain a full-service, state-operated public hospital. The threats facing SUNY Downstate are real. The SUNY Board of Trustees has openly discussed the possibility of closing SUNY Downstate. There is also language in the Executive Budget, which would allow corporations to control SUNY’s public hospitals; one corporation affiliate with an academic medical institution or teaching hospital. SUNY Downstate has Brooklyn’s teaching hospital. Privatizing or closing SUNY Downstate as a way the state to save dollars is shortsighted and unnecessary. We believe the answer to Brooklyn’s health care shortcomings lies in the “Brooklyn Hospitals Safety Net Plan,” a UUP-backed initiative to stabilize and deliver health care throughout Brooklyn. This plan would preserve SUNY Downstate and several financially unstable hospitals in Brooklyn, including Interfaith Medical Center, Brookdale, Island College Hospital and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. You can see the proposal online http://www.brooklynhospitalplan.org. It calls for the creation of a network of satellite ambulatory care centers, and would be controlled by and with 14 other Brooklyn hospitals. Downstate would be the network’s hub, educating and supplying physicians and medical staff to the care centers and working with doctors at the other hospitals. It’s a simple, effective plan and, if given a chance, will work. New York has a responsibility to provide for the health care needs of its citizens. The Brooklyn Hospitals Safety Net Plan—our plan and the community’s plan—viable, workable option for long-term health care Brooklyn. That’s something that Brooklyn residents desperately need. Frederick E. Kowal is president of United University Professions, the union representing 35,000 faculty and professional staff at SUNY’s 29 state-operated campuses, including SUNY’s public teaching hospitals and health science centers in Brooklyn, Buffalo, Long Island and Syracuse. With the city deciding to move forward on most of the school co-locations approved late last year, as Mayor Bloomberg prepared to vacate City Hall, parents in southwest Brooklyn are not only disappointed but angry. While the Department of Education under Mayor de Blasio wisely opted to back out of a planned co-location of a new high school inside Gravesend’s John Dewey High School, the DOE decided to move ahead with two others: the co-location of a charter school inside Seth Low Intermediate School in Bensonhurst and another inside Joseph B. Cavallaro Intermediate School in Bath Beach. These – like others in the borough and the city – are both fiercely opposed by parents, educators, students and the local Community Education Councils, all of whom contend that the co-locations would steal necessary space from students already attending the schools, and those who will be going to them in the near future. While the city has said it only considers under-utilized schools for co-locations, area education advocates say that both Cavallaro and Seth Low are well utilized, and likely to become more crowded as students now in elementary school in both District 20 and District 21 move up to middle school. Indeed, District 20 is one of the most crowded school districts in the city, so much so that the city built a host of new schools for it in the past decade, with more being planned, meaning that public school students in both District 20 and District 21 are likely to feel the squeeze should they have to share space with students from a charter school. That strikes us as patently unfair. While some of the charter schools poised to open in September, 2014 may be worthy additions to the city’s educational offerings, their needs should not trump the needs of existing schools with existing students. And, indeed, when a charter school is put inside a public school, the process must involve the school communities at both educational institutions, and parents must also be involved. The city must go back to the drawing board and come up with alternative arrangements for the charter schools planned for Seth Low and Cavallaro as well as other schools where they are opposed.. The students who attend those schools deserve no less. guest op-ed Keep SUNY Downstate open and public BY FREDERICK E. KOWAL Entire contents copyright 2016 by Home Reporter and Sunset News OUR STRATEGY FOR RECORD SAFETY This is an amazing moment for New York City. In 2016, overall, we had the fewest major crimes in modern history. We had the fewest shootings. We had the fewest robberies. We had the fewest burglaries. In 1990, there were more than 2,200 murders in New York. One murder is one murder too many, but last year, there were 335 murders, out of a population of 8.5 million people. To sum up, 2016 was one of the safest years in the modern, recorded history of New York City. What New Yorkers and our police force have achieved together over the past two decades didn’t happen easily. It took the courage, brain power and hard work of legions of heroes, in uniform and out. Today, the NYPD is perfecting a strategy of precision policing in combination with neighborhood policing. Enforcement is focused on the small number of people in the small number of places who are responsible for most of the violence and the police are working in partnership with communities. That combination is the cornerstone of our success. It began in 1994, when Police Commissioner Bill Bratton – who I was honored to bring back as commissioner for the fi rst part of my term – and his team instituted precision policing. By tracking where crime occurred, and applying pressure in the right places, they changed policing and this city forever. When I came into o ce, I reached a consensus with then-Commissioner Bratton, our new Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill and the NYPD leadership. We believed that if we got o cers and community members to communicate better and foster a sense of common purpose we could make this city even safer. We call it Neighborhood Policing. Neighborhood Policing frees up cops to walk the same beat day a er day and get to know the community. This fundamentally changes the dynamic on the street. Suddenly, police and people become allies. They share information, and crimes are prevented before they even occur. And it is working. Preliminary statistics suggest that areas with Neighborhood Policing are on average seeing greater reductions in crime than the city has a whole. The NYPD leadership and I also understood that some of the policies of the past were not working. We needed a change in Stop-and-Frisk and since I took o ce, we have reduced Stop-and- Frisk 93 percent. We have placed a fundamental focus on training and supporting our o cers to use proper discretion. Obviously, there are times when an arrest is the right thing, but there are times when other tools might be more e ective. Since I took o ce, arrests are down 20 percent and crime continues to go down at the same time. Our history sends us a clear message. New York has been and continues to be the greatest city in the world because this is a place for everyone. We aren’t perfect, but over centuries we have learned to be one of the most diverse and one of the most harmonious places on earth. As this country enters into a new, uncertain time, New York City must continue to be beacon. So, let us honor the legacy of all the New Yorkers who fought for a safer and more respectful city and show the world that in the largest, most intense urban environment in the United States, harmony, prosperity and safety can all go together. A LOOK BACK As the city mourns the death of Detective Steven McDonald -- who for upwards of three decades took his message of peace and forgiveness across the city and around the world – we chose this week to look back on a visit that the late hero made to this neighborhood in the rst years after a gunshot red by a suspect that he had tracked down in Central Park paralyzed him from the neck down. McDonald, who regularly visited schools, police precincts and other forums to speak about his experience, is seen here in a photo from the les of this paper at a meeting of the 68th Precinct Community Council. McDonald – who forgave the youth who so badly injured him in the months after the shooting – was truly an American hero. Compiled by Helen Klein EDITORIAL GUEST OPED
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