18 JULY 21 - JULY 27, 2017 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
EDITORIAL A LOOK BACK
NEW YORK NEEDS A NEW
TRANSIT DEAL
Brooklyn residents are generally angry that the city’s
public transportation system appears to be failing — and
they have every right to be.
The city’s subway system is reliant upon outdated
technology. The MTA continues to use subway cars
and buses that are decades old, have logged hundreds
of thousands of miles beyond their intended lifespan
and are prone to breakdowns. The mobility problems
are such that more people are turning to independent
modes of transportation — including bicycling and the
automobile.
There’s a sense that the city’s almost going in reverse
here when it comes to transportation. In the decades
since Robert Moses tore apart entire neighborhoods to
build a network of expressways across the city, there’s
been a movement to get New Yorkers to stop driving and
to start using public transportation. In recent years, the
de Blasio administration has also fostered the proliferation
GUEST OP-ED
14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12, 2014
editorial of bike lanes which — for better or worse —have
A LOOK BACK compiled by
aimed to encourage But many GO Brooklynites BACK more cyclists TO to take THE
to the streets.
still remain reliant upon the
automobile.DRAWING This is especially true BOARD
in the southwestern
portion of the borough, where neighborhoods like
Dyker Heights do not have subway service and such
subway service as exists is often less than stellar.
Vehicular reliance will get worse if the city doesn’t do
something substantial to improve the public transportation
system. That means not only investing billions of
dollars in upgrades, but also expanding public transportation
options.
Money, of course, is the overarching issue here, but
the state and city are not in a position to choose between
repairing and expanding. They have to do both, expenses
be damned.
New York City is a 21st-century city reliant upon
20th-century technology to get around. It needs to fix
the existing problems while also investing in its future.
We might not be in a depression, but it’s time for a
“new deal” program that will restore our transit system
for our modern time. If the federal government won’t
come up with the billions of dollars needed for that effort,
then the city and state must work together to find
every possible way of raising the necessary revenue to
accomplish this mighty task.
HOMEREPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS
Change (Estab. 1953)
to
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Gary Nilsen and Helen Klein
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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 STATE SENATOR
KEVIN PARKER
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 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
For decades, Hinsch’s Ice
Cream Parlor reigned supreme
on Fifth Avenue as the place to
go for homemade ice cream.
In this ad from a 1955 issue
of the Spectator, that period
is evoked -- with the beloved
eatery’s ice cream cakes in
the spotlight. In more recent
years, the eatery closed
suddenly then reopened under
new management in 2011,
undergoing a second closure
and then reopening again as
a Greek diner, Mike’s Hinsch’s,
in 2013, before morphing into
a Stewart’s All-American, in
2015.
Compiled by Helen Klein
BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP/file photo
COMBATING GUN VIOLENCE
Nationally, at least 32,000 people a year
are killed by guns. As such, gun-related
violence and death have become not
just a public safety issue, but also a
public health concern.
In fact, firearms remain the only
consumer product not regulated by
the federal government for health and
safety compliance, yet more Americans
die from guns than automobile
accidents year after year.
In New York City, gun violence is a
major problem every day of the year. My position
is that the problem is not our parades, nor our
block parties or our nightlife scene, not even guns
per se–though I wholeheartedly support sensible
gun control laws as indicated by my vote in favor
of New York’s Safe Act in the wake of the Sandy
Hook school shooting.
Unlike rural and suburban communities whose
tales of gun violence follow a script of isolated
outbursts of assault weapon fueled aggression,
in New York City and urban centers across the
nation, the story of gun violence is one of constant
and horrific systematic deconstruction of already
marginalized communities.
At the heart of the gun problem in our city
is the gangs that call the Big Apple their home.
When you end up with startling statistics like 40
percent of all shootings in New York City are from
gang violence, it is clear that we are not doing a
good enough job engaging our youth. But that’s
the stark reality for communities terrorized by
gang and gun violence.
We must do a better job of taking care of young
people in our schools by increasing access to athletics
and unconventional sports like fencing and
tennis, while bolstering art and theater offerings.
For many years now I have sought to make
every New York City public school a Beacon
School with 24 hours a day, seven days a
week access to educational and family
support services.
If we don’t take meaningful steps
today, we will continue to write this
tragic story of the failure of our educational
system to prepare our future
generation.
Hence, I continue to be a voice
advocating that our children should
learn in schools that are not merely
teaching for a test. They deserve to
be in schools where teachers are allowed to teach,
engage, challenge and nurture them in ways
conducive to developing the whole child in the
context of their family composition.
We can address much of the problems of gang
and gun violence festering in our neighborhoods
by embracing a holistic mindset that informs
us that well-rounded individuals make better
choices.
Thus, I have developed a far-reaching legislative
agenda sponsoring bills such as one that
increases the types of firearms that are to be
included in the firearm ballistic identification
database, and another potential law that would
require owners of firearms to obtain liability
insurance.
Too often we pass laws where we legislate an
outcome. I am an advocate for passing laws where
we hope to avoid outcomes such as the horrific
one we recently witnessed at Bronx Lebanon
Hospital.
I am calling on all of us to work together to
repair the fabric of our community. Only collectively
can we cure gun violence and restore our
communities to the prominent centers of learning
and nurturing we know them to be.
State Senator Kevin Parker represents the 21st
S.D.