‘End Rikers’ commish: Transparency needed
BY SYDNEY PEREIRA
The independent commission that
originally spearheaded a plan
to close Rikers Island released
a progress report late last month. The
update details how the city can meet its
goals to reduce the city’s jail population
by more than 3,000 people.
The report comes just a few months
before the city is expected to begin
the public review process known as
the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure,
or ULURP, for its plans to site a
community-based jail in each borough,
except for Staten Island.
The project is a part of a larger plan
to close Rikers Island’s facilities by
2027, reduce the city’s jail population
to around 5,000 people, and create a
more humane jail system.
The commission’s report says the city
has not been transparent enough with
the community, and recommends reducing
the jail system’s total bed capacity
from 6,040 to 5,500, as originally
recommended by the commission. The
report recommends designing smaller
facilities and re-examining siting a fi fth
one in Staten Island to reduce each
jail’s size.
“Reducing the number of beds will
also help achieve the goal of smaller
facilities that fi t better with the neighborhoods,”
said Tyler Nims, the executive
director of the Independent
Commission on New York City Criminal
Justice and Incarceration Reform.
“That is something that many of the
communities have expressed concerns
about.”
Under Mayor de Blasio and the City Council, the city is determined to close Rikers Island, above, and replace
it with new jails in the individual boroughs.
The shift to neighborhood-based jails
has sparked intense community pushback
in recent months. This recently led
the city to change the planned location
of the Lower Manhattan jail, which is
now expected to be at 125 White St.
at the Manhattan Detention Complex
a.k.a. “The Tombs.”
However, Nims added, “it’s much
more than moving the real estate of
jails in Rikers Island to other places.”
“The next year is really going to be
a decisive one both in Albany and here
in the city as the land-use process goes
forward,” he said.
The report recommends passing
state legislation to end cash bail, implementing
stronger laws for speedy trials
and discovery, and limiting jail time for
alleged parole violations, all of which
Nims said appears more likely with the
new Democratic majority in the state
Senate.
The commission estimates these reforms
FROM THE REPORT “A MORE JUST NEW YORK CITY”
could reduce the city’s jail population
by more than 3,000 people.
Already, the city has managed to reduce
the jail population by more than
1,500 persons in the past two years.
“In the big picture,” Nims said,
“there’s been a lot of positive change
that has happened over the past couple
of years, and I think that we are really
getting closer and closer to being in a
position where the Rikers jails can be
shut down.”
Report: Create alliance on E. Side resiliency
BY SYDNEY PEREIRA
East River Park is expected to
undergo massive changes in the
coming years.
As early as March 2020, the city
could begin burying the park with 8
feet of soil, closing it for three-and-ahalf
years, in order to rebuild the park
anew to protect thousands of nearby
residents from coastal fl ooding and
storm surges.
But with all the new changes also
comes skepticism that the city would
be able to meet its deadlines. A new
report commissioned by research and
design fi rm Rebuild by Design and local
affordable housing organization
Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES)
says communities bordering East River
Park should form an alliance to ensure
the community’s voice is listened to.
The idea is that an “East River Park
Alliance” would be a more organized
entity, bringing together many of the
East Side’s myriad park groups. The
$1.45 billion project to redo East River
Park would benefi t from such an alliance’s
input and help on the new, rebuilt
park’s facilities, spaces, programming
and ultimately maintenance, according
to the report.
The report draws from examples of
other stewardship groups, such as the
Bronx River Alliance and the Building
Bridges Across the River group in
Washington, D.C.
The Bronx River Alliance began
as an all-volunteer organization in
the 1970s to clean up and restore the
Bronx River. But it later morphed into
a formal nonprofi t and has secured an
eco-friendly building for community
and school groups, environmental research,
storage for canoes and kayaks
and Parks Department use.
Meanwhile, D.C.’s Building Bridges
Across the River has secured millions
of private funds to preserve affordable
housing and implemented an “Equitable
Development Plan” — an effort to
prevent gentrifi cation once the elaborate
11th St. Bridge Park, often likened
to the High Line, is completed.
But some Lower East Siders were already
skeptical of creating such a stewardship
group. They feared a lack of
transparency without true community
engagement, some said at a mid-November
Community Board 3 meeting,
when Rebuild by Design announced it
would release the report.
But the goal of such an alliance
would be to avoid becoming the typical
kind of stewardship group that is often
criticized by communities for a lack of
transparency, according to the report.
Amy Chester, Rebuild by Design’s
managing director, wrote that the
recommended model is to be “community
oriented and avoid or mitigate
externalities that can arise from nongovernmental
stewardship models such
as gentrifi cation, privatization of park
resources, and amenities that lack affordability.”
An immediate strategy would be to
work on a construction phasing plan
for the city’s resiliency project — one
that could keep East River Park from
going off-line all at once for the construction.
Parks is currently working
on such a plan, though details have not
been released, a spokesperson previously
told The Villager.
“There’s not a lot of other parkland
around — certainly not with active
recreation fi elds, so that’s going to be
important,” said Carter Strickland, the
state’s director of The Trust for Public
Land. Strickland worked with James
Lima Planning + Development on the
report after winning a request for proposals,
or R.F.P., put out by Rebuild by
Design and GOLES this summer.
“Any working group or alliance
would be busy almost immediately,”
Strickland said.
The alliance would start as a working
group and later be structured to
coordinate with the city through a
paid alliance staff and director. The
report estimates necessary funds for a
formalized alliance would be between
$200,000 and $250,000 a year for
staffi ng, a Web site launch and administrative
support.
“We’re just giving the community
tools,” Strickland said. “We’ll see what
the community does with it.”
8 January 3, 2019 TVG Schneps Media