12 JULY 14 - JULY 20, 2017 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
EDITORIAL A LOOK
DRIVING INTO THE 21ST
CENTURY
As of July 8, southwest Brooklyn took a leap into the
future with the advent of cashless tolling on the Verrazano
Narrows Bridge.
An important goal of the update, which replaces toll
booths with overhead roadway-spanning archways
containing the necessary technology, is to speed things
along across the span and ease up congestion on approaches
14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12, 2014
to it, something that — if it works as intended
— residents of neighborhoods near the bridge will join
commuters in applauding.
Given the seemingly ever-increasing volume of traffic
that appears to be a fact of life in New York City, this is
an advancement that is long overdue.
Indeed, for months in advance of the arrival of cashless
editorial A LOOK BACK compiled by
GO BACK TO THE
DRAWING BOARD
tolling, Bay Ridge streets were clogged with vehicles
as traffic across the bridge backed up from the Staten
Island-based toll plazas that were clearly incapable of
handling the amount of cars, trucks and buses passing
through them.
Over the past several months,there were days that
it took motorists as much as a couple of hours to cross
the bridge, and even those just passing near the access
points were impacted, forced to sit in traffic jams on
Fourth and Fifth Avenues, 92nd Street, 86th Street and
Fort Hamilton Parkway that frayed tempers, wrecked
schedules and generally caused agitata for motorist and
nearby residents.
Hopefully, those problems are by and large now in
the past.
That said, residents of southwest Brooklyn still have a
legitimate beef with the MTA and the state of New York.
While Staten Islanders enjoy a significant discount on
Verrazano tolls, those that live on this side of the bridge
— and have to cope with the problems its proximity
causes — can’t say the same.
It’s about time that this inequity be addressed by the
governor and the MTA board who should once and for all
give Brooklynites the same break that Staten Islanders
have enjoyed for years.
Frankly, it’s only fair.
HOMEREPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS
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Gary Nilsen and Helen Klein
(Estab. 1953)
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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
With cashless tolling
now instituted
on the Verrazano-
Narrows Bridge,
the 53-year-old
span has officially
entered the 21st
century. In this
photo, from the
archives of this
newspaper, area
residents watched
an early stage of
the construction
of the engineering
marvel from a
walkway along the
waterfront, where
today joggers,
strollers and bikers
utilize the Shore
Road Promenade.
Compiled by Helen Klein
BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP/
file photo
HAPPY 53RD BIRTHDAY
July, 2017 marks the 53rd anniversary of federal
government support for public transportation.
The success of public transportation can be traced
back to one of the late President Lyndon Johnson's
greatest accomplishments which continues benefiting
many Americans today.
On July 9, 1964 he signed the "Urban Mass
Transportation Act of 1964" into law. This has resulted
in the investment over time of several hundred
billion dollars into public transportation.
Millions of Americans including many residing
in Kings County today on a daily basis utilize
various public transportation alternatives. They
include local and express bus, ferry, jitney, light
rail, subway and commuter rail services. All of
these systems use less fuel and move far more
people than conventional single occupancy vehicles.
Most of these systems are funded with your
tax dollars thanks to President Johnson.
Depending upon where you live, consider the
public transportation alternative. Try riding a
local or express bus, commuter van, ferry, light
rail, commuter rail or subway.
Larry Penner
Larry Penner is a transportation historian
and advocate who previously worked 31 years for
the United States Department of Transportation
Federal Transit Administration Region 2 NY Office.
FATE OF AMERICA
AT STAKE
After reading the Un-Common Non-Sense
being perpetrated here in South Brooklyn, I am
becoming fearful of what the fate of America will
be in the next few years, under the presidency of
the Trump-eter, blowing his horn while he continues
to live in his private world of either zero
denigration or 100 percent approval.
Getting total approval from his local Republican
supporters, while he continues to lie as he
removes protections, rules and regulations and
for that matter agencies as well, is starting to
scare the hell out of me.
By failing to appoint heads of many agencies,
he is creating the possibility that he will close
them down completely. In the cases where he has
appointed new heads for some of the agencies,
he has put into those positions, people who have
spent years fighting against them and now those
people are in a perfect position to remove the
safeguards and limits placed there for our safety
and well-being.
It is frightening to watch him speak and see Ryan
sitting behind him with a big smile on his face
as he nods his head in approval of the destruction
being done in minutes, to what has taken years to
create as protections for the public.
Health care is facing the same abuse suffered
by Social Security when it was mandated for all
employees. Bush made the first inroads to removing
from government approval and privatizing
Social Security, but the failure of the stock market
warned the country of the need for government
supervision. The same is now true for health care.
If we allow McConnell’s secrecy and political
pressure to combine taxes with medical care,
we are doomed to suffer a fate worse than death,
which will actually be the end it will achieve for
millions of America’s people.
Allen Bortnick
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