16 FEBRUARY 9 - FEBRUARY 15, 2018 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
EDITORIAL A LOOK BACK
A PROPER SWINDLE
The city’s real estate taxes have been inequitable for a
while, a situation that has only gotten worse as property
values have increased.
While it fills municipal coffers, the result is undue
stress on many homeowners of modest means while
wealthier homeowners in richer areas, whose properties
are worth far more, pay much less than their fair
share, in many cases.
Last year, faced with a lawsuit from Tax Equity Now,
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would tackle the situation
but not till after the 2017 election.
That election is over, and it’s time to get serious about
property tax reform.
How bad is it? The mayor, to take one striking example,
paid $3,581 in 2017 in real estate taxes on his Park Slope
home whose market value is approximately $1,547,000.
That makes .20 percent his effective tax rate.
Go a few miles further south, into Flatbush, and the
owner of a home valued at $1,375,000 paid real estate
taxes of $9,315 in 2017, for a .70 percent effective tax rate
— more than two and a half times what the mayor paid,
on a home worth nearly $200,000 less.
The disparity is even more stark for Assemblymember
BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP/file photo
14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12, 2014
editorial A LOOK BACK compiled by
GO BACK TO THE
DRAWING BOARD
Nicole Malliotakis, who’s started a petition drive
calling for the city to form a commission to address the
issue.
Malliotakis paid $5,485 in 2017 on her Staten Island
home which is valued at $559,000, making her effective
tax rate .98 percent. While her home is worth slightly
more than a third of the value of de Blasio’s home, her
taxes were nearly $2,000 higher.
One of the drivers of the disparity is New York law,
which limits the increase in taxable value of any property
in one year to six percent (20 percent over five years),
meaning that property taxes assessed on individual
homes don’t necessarily accurately reflect their value,
and the owners of homes whose value has risen fastest
take the least hit, proportionately.
If that doesn’t seem fair to you, rest assured.
It doesn’t seem fair to us either.
Now, we’re not saying Mayor de Blasio created this
mess. He inherited it.
But, that doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for fixing
it — and soon — by curbing runaway property taxes
(which have risen some 32 percent in the past six years).
We’re waiting, Mr. Mayor.
HOMEREPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS
Change (Estab. 1953)
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2015
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Gary Nilsen and Helen Klein
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LETTERS
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
While today the
Brooklyn Army
Terminal is a
bustling hive of
activity, for many
years, it was
anything but.
After having been
the country’s
most extensive
military supply
base through
World War II, the
complex -- at First
Avenue and 58th
Street -- gradually
sank into
somnolence, as
seen in this photo
from the files of
this newspaper,
closing down as a
military outpost in
the 1970s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983,
having been purchased by the city two years earlier. Renovations began on
the 1919 structure in 1984, paving the way for its current renaissance.
Compiled by Helen Klein
MONEY MATTERS
Not with my tax money.
Though UFT sought and sanctioned, the
New York City "Central Education Department
Office of Administrative Duties" has outlived a
proper, fiscally responsible place (under many
circumstances).
A "Perv Teach" creep like the one just reported
to have again emotionally and sexually abused a
student in Queens should be fired, period. The
time it takes to investigate and make judgment
is far too long.
Additionally, there are many other examples of
fiscally irresponsible practices various city/state
unions sanction, approved by former and current
elected officials, that abuse our tax dollars at the
cost of the quality of life of the hard-working,
tax-paying electorate.
Barry Brothers
PASSING THE BUCK
Funding to solve the ongoing NYC Transit
subway crises is a four way dance between riders
who pay at the fare box along with funding from
City Hall, Albany and Washington.
Federal support for transportation has
remained consistent and growing over past decades.
When a crisis occurred, be it 9-11 in 2001 or
Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Washington was there
for us.
Additional billions in assistance above and beyond
yearly formula allocations from the Federal
Transit Administration were provided. In 2009,
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
provided billions more.
Most federal transportation grants require a
20 percent hard-cash local share. In most cases,
the Federal Transit Administration accepted toll
credits instead of hard cash for the local share.
This saved the MTA over $1 billion in the previous
2010-2014 Five Year Capital Program.
The same will be true with the 2015-2019 fiveyear
capital program. Washington provided over
$1.3 billion in 2017 Federal Transit Administration
formula funding for the MTA which helps pays
for its capital program. The same if not more
federal funding will be coming in 2018.
Mayor Bill de Blasio should come up with the
balance of $2.5 billion the city still owes toward
fully funding the $32 billion MTA 2015-2019 Five
Year Capital Program and provide several billion
more.
City Hall should match Albany dollar for dollar
in any increased assistance. Governor Andrew
Cuomo should deliver the outstanding $5.8 billion
balance toward his original $8.3 billion pledge
plus his most recent new commitment of an additional
$1 billion.
MTA can't afford to wait for both de Blasio and
Cuomo to make good on their respective promised
financial commitments. Neither can transit riders
and taxpayers who are looking for accountability,
efficient and timely completion for both capital
projects and routine maintenance to assure more
reliable and safe on time service.
Larry Penner
Larry Penner is a transportation historian and
advocate who worked 31 years for the US Department
of Transportation Federal Transit Administration
Region 2 NY Office.