14 APRIL 21 – APRIL 27, 2017 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP EDITORIAL A LOOK RIDE-SHARING WON’T FIX OUR TRANSIT WOES We are constantly reminded by local officials that we should use public transportation whenever possible to keep cars off the road and reduce congestion. But what does a commuter do when the buses and trains they rely upon aren’t showing up on time, besieged by delays and sudden cancellations? In the digital age, more commuters are turning to ride-sharing. A February New York Times report pointed out that annual subway ridership fell slightly in 2016, the first time the system experienced such a decline in seven years. Ride-sharing was listed among the reasons for this rather unexpected downturn in commuting. Without a doubt, ride-sharing apps such as Uber and Lyft have made it more convenient for Brooklyn residents to get where they need to go. Ride-sharing also creates jobs for scores of drivers who either make it their full-time job or work a few hours each week on the side to make a few bucks. But the increase in ride-sharing is also symptomatic 14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12, 2014 of a far greater problem: a public transportation editorial A LOOK BACK compiled by system that’s outdated, broken down and doesn’t give Brooklyn GO commuters BACK the bang TO for their THE buck. For instance,DRAWING the R train. There’s dub it “R for rarely,” with waits at BOARD a reason that riders such transfer points as 59th Street increasingly frustrating. And, it’s only getting worse, as the MTA shuts down stations for long-overdue renovations but doesn’t do enough to aid commuters to get where they need to go during the construction. That’s also been the story for the last year and more on the N line where, for over a year during station renovations, commuters who use seven stops in southwest Brooklyn have had to go back toward Coney Island in order to head into Manhattan. Brooklyn’s transportation infrastructure is in need of major upgrades, and such improvements as those taking place on the R and N lines are as welcome as they are long-overdue, as is the eagerly anticipated ferry between Bay Ridge and lower Manhattan. That said, there’s plenty more work that needs to be done, and those in power must provide the resources — billions of dollars in funding — to make it happen. It won’t be cheap, it won’t be quick, but it is a necessity. Ride-sharing helps people move, but it doesn’t fix what’s broken in our borough. HOMEREPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS Change (Estab. 1953) to 2015 ▲ ▲ Gary Nilsen and Helen Klein (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. 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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 [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 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 The Verrazano- Narrows Bridge – which changed the face of Bay Ridge forever — was under construction in this photo taken in the early 1960s. The bridge opened in 1964 to great fanfare, an engineering marvel that was the first physical connection between Staten Island and any of the other boroughs. As of 2015, the bridge carried 198,123 vehicles on a daily basis. Photo from the files of The Home Reporter LETTERS SIXTY YEARS AFTER It was 1955 and the Brooklyn Dodgers had just won their first World Series, so no one got too excited about the bickering between City Hall and the team’s owner Walter O’Malley regarding a new stadium. The Dodgers were a special team representing a special place. Don’t forget it was Brooklyn that broke the so-called “color line” in major league baseball when we signed the late, great Jackie Robinson. And when the others didn’t like it, we told them in typical Brooklyn fashion to “stuff it!” But soon a lot of silly talk about California began appearing in the news. California was for movie stars, not baseball teams. And certainly not our guys. And hadn’t O’Malley told Wagner the mayor, that there was no commitment to move the team. The only thing needed he said, was a new stadium with some decent parking. But it soon became apparent that City Hall wasn’t listening so to get their attention we dumped a petition with over two million signatures on Wagner’s doorstep. Still nada! Then Nelson Rockefeller, the millionaire and future governor of New York, and eventual vice president of the United States got into the act, offering to help with the financial roadblocks. That too went nowhere. We were in the Series again in ’56 but lost to the Yankees in seven games. As 1957 dawned, things were still unsettled but we hung tough, confident that sooner or later the immoveable objects and the massive egos would give way to common sense, tradition and loyalty. But when the possibility that they really might leave finally took hold, everyone from the mayor on down was branded a “no-good traitor” or “on the take.” That went double for O’Malley and Robert Moses, who was the real power behind the city’s position. He shamefully offered up a piece of land in Flushing Meadows, to which O’Malley, with great restraint, quite correctly replied: “We’ll not be the Brooklyn Dodgers if we’re in Queens.” And so on October 8, 1957, at four o’clock in the afternoon, some cigar-chomping “suit,” from the Dodgers’ front office handed out a statement to reporters. They were going and taking with them the promise of all summers to come, leaving only memories. Memories like that October day in ’55 when we all walked around with stupid grins after beating the New York Yankees in seven games. Right after the final out, Ma Bell lost her dial tone, as delirious fans overloaded the system. Traffic came to a halt as car horns blew and bells rang out all across the “city of churches.” Thousands spilled into the streets, laughing and crying and dancing without music. Bars overflowed, and in houses of worship, fervent prayers of thanksgiving were whispered. Torn phone books and newspapers fell from downtown office windows like giant snowflakes. On my block, a portable radio blared as the crowd formed a long Conga line that wove down the street and around parked cars, with everybody shouting one-two-three-kick. At midnight, skyrockets of Dodger blue and white burst under a glorious Brooklyn moon. The final chapter wouldn’t be written until a blustery February day in 1960 when a giant wrecking ball that some sicko had painted to look like a baseball smashed into the visitor’s dugout of Ebbets Field, and into the heart and soul of Brooklyn. Our grand old palace of hope and heartbreak was gone forever. And only in dreams, would the summer sun of Brooklyn warm the broad shoulders of the “faithful,” as they watched Jackie dance off third, everyone in the joint knowing exactly what he had in mind. Joseph LaQuinta
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