16 JANUARY 12 - JANUARY 18, 2018 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
EDITORIAL A LOOK
IT’S TIME FOR A PUBLIC
HOUSING MASTER PLAN
New York City’s public housing system is showing its
age at the worst possible time.
The two-week deep freeze that gripped our city led
to heating failures that affected tens of thousands of
families residing in New York City Housing Authority
(NYCHA) buildings, the Daily News reported. The city received
upwards of 22,000 heat and hot water complaints
during that time.
Prior to this, the city’s been grappling with regular
maintenance issues at NYCHA buildings and grappling
with a lead paint controversy. It was reported that the
city failed to conduct proper lead paint inspections as
required under federal law.
With all the infrastructure problems arising within
the aging NYCHA buildings — many of which are more
than 60 years old and constructed during the ill-fated
slum clearance program — the time has come for the
city to take a different approach when it comes to public
housing.
When they were first constructed in the 1940s and
1950s, the public housing complexes were an improvement
to the purported “slums” they replaced.
But they turned out to be, as Jane Jacobs described in
her landmark book Death and Life of Great American Cities,
“low-income projects that become worse centers of
delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness
than the slums they were supposed to replace.”
The de Blasio administration now has the opportunity,
if it so chooses, to begin the process of reinventing the
city’s public housing system. The city can pursue a master
plan of developing communities out of the complexes,
replacing apartment towers on superblocks with scores
of three to four-family homes for low-income families
and locally owned small businesses serving them.
The task, however, is daunting. It would cost millions
upon millions of dollars to complete, and wouldn’t be
finished for decades. The city cannot wait to fix the immediate
14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12, 2014
editorial A LOOK BACK compiled by
GO BACK TO THE
DRAWING BOARD
problems facing NYCHA; obviously, that must
be made a top priority.
But it behooves the city, in the interest in making it
more affordable and livable for everyone, to get something
started. Other cities such as Chicago and Washington,
D.C., long ago replaced public housing towers with
public housing communities. It’s long past time for New
York City to follow suit.
We’re not talking about opening up a new door for
gentrification. What we desire, however, is for the city
to provide low-income residents with well-built, modern
housing that they deserve.
HOMEREPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS
Change (Estab. 1953)
to
2015
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Gary Nilsen and Helen Klein
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Co-Publisher ... Joshua A. Schneps
Editor in Chief ... Helen Klein
Telephone 718-238-6600
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E-mail editorial@homereporter.com
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Ridge News (founded 1943) were merged into 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.
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 of 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
Brooklyn@uupmail.org.
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 must
affiliate with an academic medical institution or teaching
hospital. SUNY Downstate has Brooklyn’s only
teaching hospital.
Privatizing or closing SUNY Downstate as a way for
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 save
several financially unstable hospitals in Brooklyn,
including Interfaith Medical Center, Brookdale, Long
Island College Hospital and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical
Center. You can see the proposal online at
http://www.brooklynhospitalplan.org.
It calls for the creation of a network of satellite ambulatory
care centers, and would be controlled by and affiliated
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, it
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—is a
viable, workable option for long-term health care in
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
BACK
Back when trolleys
were a regular sight
on Brooklyn streets,
those same streets
were blasted by
the Blizzard of ‘47,
which occurred on
Christmas Day and
dumped 25.8 inches
of snow on the city,
blanketing it and
rendering its thoroughfares
virtually
impassable. In this
photo from the files
of this newspaper,
one of those same
trolleys is captured,
immobile and frosted
with snow, stuck apparently somewhere in Sunset Park.
Compiled by Helen Klein
PIPE DREAM
The extension of the NYC Transit #1 subway
line from the Rector Street downtown Manhattan
station to Red Hook, Brooklyn for $3.5 billion (a
tunnel and three new stations) now supported by
Governor Andrew Cuomo in his 2018 State of the
State speech is wishful thinking.
This subway extension would support a proposed
Red Hook economic development project.
Was this $3.5 billion figure written on the back
of a napkin?
Cuomo wants the MTA to conduct and pay for
a planning feasibility study. There would still be
the need for environmental documents or preliminary
design and engineering followed by final
design and engineering efforts and identification
of billions for construction funding.
Given the narrow streets and dense development,
who could find a staging area for mobilization
of contractor employees, equipment and materials
to support construction? Imagine trying to
assemble a tunnel boring machine adjacent to the
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. What about removal of
debris Hundreds of trucks needed on a daily basis
to remove rock and soil would be challenging.
It cost $4.5 billion for Phase 1 of the Second Avenue
subway (36 blocks and three stations) and $2.4
billion (18 blocks and one station) for the #7 Hudson
Yards subway extension. Neither required a
multi-billion tunnel under the East River.
Construction of new subway stations average
$500 million up to $1 billion.
Is there a political quid pro quo in the form of
campaign donations between developers, construction
contractors and unions who support
this project and Cuomo?
Larry Penner
Larry Penner is a transportation historian and
advocate who worked 31 years for the US Department
of Transportation Federal Transit Administration
New York Region 2 Office.
TAXING SITUATION
The property taxes on my modest three-family
home in working class Bensonhurst have risen
from $5,200 in 2008 to $9,600 this year. Every
quarter, there has been an increase for me, my
neighbors and acquaintances of mine in nearby
areas as well as working or middle class sections
Staten Island and Queens.
This is a reflection of egregious property tax
inequities. I am confident that next year will see
yet more increases, and that I will soon be paying
$10,000, the cap on SALT deductibility, or more.
Of course, property taxes in upscale areas in
Manhattan or in Park Slope and other areas of
gentrified Brooklyn, have seen no significant
increase in years, and even declines in some instances.
My neighbors and I pay thousands more
in property taxes than these well-heeled people.
In short, the people in this city who will be hurt
the most by the GOP tax reform bill will not be
the many multi-millionaire owners of luxury
brownstones paying $6,000 a year. in property
tax or multi-millionaire tenants of rent-controlled
or stabilized apartments, paying well below market
rents, but ordinary working or middle class
homeowners in the outer reaches of the outer
boroughs whose property taxes already approach
or exceed the $10,000 SALT cap and who will not
be able to deduct any city and state income taxes.
In my case, those taxes are substantial.
So, I am quite angry about my non-existent
"tax cut." Other people, as Trump told his wealthy
friends in Mar-A- Lago, will be the ones getting a
lot richer.
Dennis Middlebrooks
LETTERS
BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP/file photo