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COURIER L 12 IFE, MARCH 8–14, 2019 B
SAFE STREETS
— whom leaders of local community
boards and other organizations nominated
for their posts, according to the
pol, who declined to give the members’
names — discussed how to “enhance
and elevate the value of street safety”
in their communities.
And going forward, task-force offi
cers will host open meetings every
other month to brainstorm streetsafety
ideas within four categories —
enforcement, education, advocacy, and
legislation — because no one initiative
will make streets safer on its own,
“We’re not going to solve the streetsafety
FLIP
Gounardes said.
problem by putting a cop on every
corner,” he said. ”These are all
things that need to be done in tandem.”
To date in 2019, the number of fatal
collisions, and injures caused by cars
smashing into cyclists and pedestrians,
increased in the Bensonhurst and Bath
Beach portions of Gounardes’s district
— neither of which has any bike lanes
— when compared to the number of
similar incidents within the same time
span last year, according to city data .
Motorists killed three people, injured
seven cyclists, and hurt 37 pedestrians
on streets in those parts of
the pol’s district this year, according
to the statistics, which reported drivers
killed no one, injured four cyclists,
and hurt 36 pedestrians in the same
time period last year.
Elsewhere in Gounardes’s district,
data shows that the number of motorist
caused deaths or injuries to cyclists
and pedestrians has mostly remained
the same or decreased year over year.
But locals still confront distracted and
speeding drivers on a regular basis: in
REHAB CENTER
serve community members, and claiming
that the new center would bring
undesirable characters to the neighborhood.
And Jorge claimed the committee’s
earlier opposition poisoned the opinions
of other board members, whom
she alleged cast their votes against
supporting the center due to a preconceived
bias — not because they fully
weighed the pros and cons of the facility
and its offerings.
“They clearly voted in favor of the
Health Committee, and I believe they
were not aware of who we were, and
what they were voting on,” she said.
“It’s all about stigma.”
LSA Recovery Center’s Coney
outpost will offer the same services
provided by the fi rm’s existing location
in Midwood, where about 150 clients
spend an average of between six
months and a year receiving regular
treatment, including counseling sessions,
medication-assisted treatment,
and substance-abuse education, according
to Jorge, who said that LSA
does not, and would not, use the controversial
opiate methadone to wean
patients off of other addictive drugs.
And statistics prove the area needs
another outpatient rehab center, Jorge
alleged. In 2017, an average of 22.3 fatal
overdoses occurred among every
100,000 residents of Coney Island,
Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach,
and Sheepshead Bay combined — a
higher-than-average rate compared
to the citywide statistic of 21.2 deaths
among every 100,000 residents, according
to city data .
The center could open in as soon as
a few weeks, according to Jorge, who
said she and her colleagues will continue
to engage with the community
to keep locals informed of its work and
answer any questions that arise about
its operations.
“I understand their concerns and
the stigma that we all have to work
with,” she said. “We will prove to the
community that we will be part of the
community.”
Neither CB13’s chairman nor members
of its Health Committee could be
reached by press time.
Continued from cover
Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, for instance,
drivers already killed one, injured
fi ve cyclists, and hurt 30 more
pedestrians this year so far.
The task force’s chief priority is to
pressure local lawmakers to improve
street safety on roads around schools,
parks, and senior centers, by calling
on the electeds to implement even more
infrastructure fi xes in their ongoing
effort to eliminate traffi c deaths as
part of the city’s so-called Vision Zero
initiative, according to Gounardes.
Such improvements would include
adding more signage, so-called bulbouts
to narrow intersections, and speed
bumps within the district, as well as
giving pedestrians more time to cross
certain streets — including Cropsey
Avenue in Bath Beach, where motorists
killed one person and injured three
more within the past year, data shows.
Task-force members also plan to
start conversations with local community
board leaders about expanding
bike lanes throughout Gounardes’s
district, where only fi ve of the 11 neighborhoods
within it now feature some
sort of offi cial bike paths.
But the freshman lawmaker — who
last November turned his district blue
for the fi rst time in decades when he
unseated known speeder and long-time
Republican state Sen. Marty Golden —
isn’t putting his entire street-safety
agenda in the hands of locals.
He plans to introduce legislation
in Albany to preserve and “dramatically
expand” the city’s speed-camera
program, which currently includes
140 cameras that ticket speeding drivers
in school zones across the fi ve boroughs.
Gounardes’s bill would bring
even more cameras than the total 290
that Gov. Cuomo called for in the latest
draft of his executive budget , which
are not enough, according to the pol.
Continued from cover
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