16 DECEMBER 1 - DECEMBER 7, 2017 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
EDITORIAL
IT’S NOW NO LONGER JUST R
FOR RARELY
Problems on the subway line that residents of Bay
Ridge and Sunset Park rely on to travel throughout the
borough and into Manhattan appear to be escalating,
despite high-profile renovations of three southwest
Brooklyn stations at Bay Ridge Avenue, 53rd Street and
Prospect Avenue that all reopened bright and shiny
ahead of schedule.
The most recent issue — which shut a portion of the
line in Bay Ridge down for 12 solid hours — was a panel
falling from the wall of the 86th Street station onto the
tracks.
Spot-on maneuvering by the train conductor brought
the train to a stop quickly and there were no injuries, but
the incident — which took place in the early morning
hours of Sunday, November 26 — has straphangers and
elected officials crying foul on the MTA.
And, for good reason.
While stations in Manhattan get the royal treatment,
those in the outer boroughs have historically been
treated like the system’s stepchildren, something that
installing free wi-fi and countdown clocks at three
stations can’t erase.
Instead of renovating a station here or there, the MTA
should once and for all undertake what has long been
requested of it — making a thorough audit of the line
and its stations to find out precisely what the problems
are — and then follow through with corrective action.
It should also follow through on its dust-covered
promises to add elevators to stations in Bay Ridge, to
make them accessible to riders who can’t navigate steps.
Discussion about installing an elevator at a station
along the line dates back to 2004, although the MTA’s
first plan was to install it at 95th Street rather than 86th
Street, despite the latter being a significant transit hub.
Now the MTA says it plans to bring elevators to all
but one of the R train stations in Bay Ridge, though
plans unveiled earlier this year to put an elevator in at
86th Street generated significant pushback because of
dangerous design flaws.
That’s frankly unacceptable, as it the MTA’s tardiness
in dealing with problems that have for years frustrated
those who use the R train.
It’s well past time for that to change.
14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12, 2014
editorial A LOOK BACK compiled by
GO BACK TO THE
DRAWING BOARD
HOMEREPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS
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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
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.
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as well as affiliation, indicating special interest. Anonymous letters are not printed. Name withheld
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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
A LOOK BACK
We head inside a long-ago bakery, located somewhere in Park Slope (according
to the only information on the back of the photo found in the archives
of this newspaper), for this week’s Look Back. This photo certainly brings
back the Brooklyn of a bygone era, with its tile floor and walls and white
enamelware scale. The white-uniformed proprietors stand proudly to one
side, behind the sparkling counter displaying gorgeous rows of freshly baked
cookies and pastries. The prices definitely hark back to an earlier time -- the
special, one sign says, was 39 cents per pound. Do you recognize the bakery
or its owners? If so, we’d love to hear from you, at editorial@brooklynreporter.
com.
FOR SALE?
Cowardly and contemptible are the politicians
who are bought and owned by evil and greedy
NRA dictates.
My succinct statement on "gun control" —
putting a potential gun owner through the
rigors that a licensed operator of an automobile
must go through is an idea to start with, though
it is far more complicated than that when one
considers the type of guns, ammunition and
such.
My New York City-bred sarcasm/wish: If only
we had cowardly and contemptible politicians
who were bought and owned by (to name one)
evil green energy, environmentally conscious
companies.
Barry Brothers
A TAXING SITUATION
Earlier in his term in office, Mayor de Blasio
scurried up to Albany to ensure that the city
would be exempt from the statewide cap on property
taxes. Meanwhile, his Department of Finance
has lowered or kept stable property assessments
in areas like the mayor's home base of Park Slope
and other upscale neighborhoods despite a red
hot real estate market.
In addition, the Department of Finance has
lowered the property tax rate on residential
properties of four units or more from 13.2 to 12.9
percent, benefiting apartment house landlords as
well as most brownstone owners.
Of course, the Department of Finance has seen
fit to continue raising assessments in working
class communities as well as to raise the property
tax rate on one to three-family homes from 19.1 to
20 percent.
This helps explain why the property tax on my
three-family house in Bensonhurst has risen by
90 percent since 2008, while my cousin, who owns
a four-story brownstone in Carroll Gardens, has
actually seen a decrease in his property taxes
over the same period.
Indeed, the Department of Finance lowered
the assessment on his brownstone from $940,000
three years ago (a joke even then) to just $543,000
this year. He has been offered $3.5 million for the
property!
My humble abode is assessed at 2.5 times as
much despite being worth about one third of the
market value of his house. I can assure you that
this is not an isolated case.
This is criminal class warfare, and the city is
getting away with it. Why?
Dennis Middlebrooks
LETTERS
BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP/file photo