Archive for ‘Politics’

Protestors Get the Big Net on Brooklyn Bridge

By , 3 October, 2011, No Comment

More than 700 protestors were arrested yesterday as they attempted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge roadway from the Wall Street area. According to the NY Times,

The police said it was the marchers’ choice that led to the enforcement action.
“Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.”


Strangely enough, we were the last car allowed on the bridge before it was closed down by the marchers, as these pics show (note sign: “I won’t believe a corporation is a person until Texas hangs one.”). Though we saw the police officers running beside them and corralling them away from the car, we heard no warnings or signs that the cops were planning on doing any arrests–though it may have been made clear before they turned onto the ramp. As it turned out, the protestors were allowed to walk about halfway across the bridge, and then caught in a large orange net and arrested. I mean really, it’s just not a protest until someone gets pepper-sprayed or arrested, now is it?

Cobble Hill’s PS 29 Gets a Schoolyard Makeover

By , 11 July, 2011, No Comment

I know this may be old news for many of you, but since I was away last week, it was a nice surprise to see the PS 29 schoolyard looking so shiny and new. With a brand new coat of paint outlining a track and some neat-o games, it was hard to even remember the days of the harrowing playground fire in May (the equipment looked new as well although there’s still some work to do before kids can have a go). A shed was also being set up near the gardens, which looks like a nice touch for our tiny farmers-in-training.

BQE Workup At Cobble Hill Association Meeting

By , 21 May, 2011, No Comment

You’d be hard-pressed to find a Brooklynite who thinks the BQE is anything but a hot mess. From start to finish, it’s a jumble of potholes, bad merges and unfathomable traffic–plus it’s nasty to look at. Which wouldn’t be so terrible if we didn’t actually need it. If you’d like more information about how and why it was created, how it’s gotten so gross and what we have to look forward to, you may want to pop into the Cobble Hill Association Spring General Meeting. Focusing heavily on the BQE, you’ll get a fascinating look at the construction of the BQE “ditch” that runs through our communities by historian Francis Morrone, an update on plans to reconstruct Triple Cantilevered Roadway, and a look into how to “Fix the Ditch”–-a presentation of the NYCEDC/Starr Whitehouse “BQE Enhancement Study.” The meeting begins at 7:30pm Monday, 23 May at Long Island College Hospital, Conference Room A, (enter at main entrance 339 Hicks at Atlantic).

One Teen Turns Himself in for PS 29 Blaze

By , 18 May, 2011, 1 Comment

Though you might be getting tired of this story, it just keeps surprising us. Soon after a group of teens set fire to PS 29′s new playground equipment early Mother’s Day, their parents decided to pool together a guilt slush fund of $50k to fix the problem. Now we’re learning that one 16 year old boy has actually shown his face and been arrested for the deed. According the Daily News, Max Layton, a Brooklyn private school student and son of film distributor Charles Layton (president of Canadian-based company Alliance Films and has distributed film hits such as “The King’s Speech”), turned himself in to cops early Tuesday.

“I’m absolutely shocked that this happened,” said the boy’s mother, Ursula Alexander, who lives with her son in Cobble Hill. Max Laytan’s lawyer, Sam Gregory, confirmed the arrest. It is unclear what charge or charges the teen is facing. “The first thing these people (the Laytans) wanted to do was to make sure the kids at PS 29 had a new playground,” said Gregory, who added that Ursula Alexander “put together” the group of teens’ parents to collect the $50,000. Sources said four of nine teens involved in the incident attend prestigious St. Ann’s School, where a year’s tuition is about $28,000.

What can I say. I’m not lighting torches and rounding up the towns people–I get it, we all want to protect our children when they do stupid shit. But throwing money at a problem to do it seems more than a little skeevy (and kind of like the movies I watched with boys named Blane and Steff in the 1980s). It’s good to see that this parent had her son face the music. Now how will the other eight react?

Burnt PS 29 Equipment To Be Replaced

By , 10 May, 2011, 3 Comments

As we reported this weekend, a fire burnt much of PS 29′s playground early Sunday morning in Cobble Hill. Though we still don’t have answers to who did the deed, the school’s Principal Melanie Raneri Woods is promising a replacement of the equipment, according to The Brooklyn Eagle.

“The School Construction Authority and [non-profit group] Out2Play have agreed to replace it,” Woods said. “Andrea Wenner of Out2Play was already out here, and we spoke to the playground equipment people. Even the rubber matting will be replaced. That’s great news.”

So glad to hear it. Now let’s hope they won’t decide to lock the playground up after school and on weekends (though I guess I’d understand if they did). We love to use it for baseball, bikes, scooters, soccer, etc. With open space so hard to find, it would be a shame for one bad egg to ruin it for the rest of us.

Gifted & Talented? Aren’t They All?

By , 5 May, 2011, No Comment

In the past few months, I’ve had several moms ask if I had my son tested for the Gifted & Talented program for NYC public school. And though I’m sure some think I’m nuts, I admit I didn’t bother. He’s going into kindergarten this September, his first experience as a non-preschooler, and he got into PS 29, his zoned school. So I’m cool. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anything to people who did have their kids take the test. To each their own. I know I’m lucky to be zoned for one of the top schools in the borough so I ain’t judging. But I did read an interesting article this morning in The Brooklyn Rail about the program. Basically, it talks about how private schools don’t offer G & T tracks and how all city public schools should have programs to challenge and enrich their kids in the same manner. If you’ve got a minute, it’s worth checking out. A little idealistic, but a nice thought.

Boerum Place Stop Sign Means D—K to Most Motorists

By , 28 April, 2011, 3 Comments

image via Carroll Gardens Patch

A friend emailed me today after she got a mighty scare crossing the street at Boerum Place and Dean St. After three cars rolled through the stop sign, someone finally allowed her to cross–until another car swerved around the first and almost hit her and her baby. We know this corner has been one of interest after Carroll Gardens Patch reported on a proposal for speed bumps around the neighborhood and specifically at this intersection. At the time, in late January, nearly 80 signatures were were collected for the project and a traffic task force was formed, with the last meeting in mid-March. Want to get involved? Call Hope Reichbach at 718-875-5200 or email her at hreichbach@council.nyc.gov. You gotta be in it to win it.
UPDATE
I woke up this morning to a story reporting the death of above-mentioned Hope Reichbach. According to The Brooklyn Paper,

The cause of death was not immediately released, but a source said Reichbach died of an overdose of prescription drugs. An autopsy was scheduled to take place on Friday.
Reichbach was a lifelong resident of Boerum Hill, though some wrongly labeled her as a young interloper when she challenged the Brownstone Brooklyn political establishment last year by running for district leader against Jo Anne Simon. Reichbach lost, but not by the usual landslide.

We are saddened by the loss and send our deepest condolences to her family.

PS 8 Middle School: Fact or Fiction?

By , 20 April, 2011, No Comment

Talk enough to parents of elementary school-aged kids in our neighborhood, and eventually the subject of leaving the community comes up. If you’re zoned for one of the more sought after schools (PS 8, PS 29, PS 58), you can rest easy for about nine or 10 years. Then things start getting sticky. Local, public middle schools, it seems, are not a thumbs up proposition in our little world–land of burgeoning yuppie families. And even private schools are brimming over with students, with parents vying desperately for a spot–and the chance to throw large amounts of cash at the problem. So the idea of a new middle school zoned for District 13 (encompassing Brooklyn Heights, the projects of Fort Greene, and the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of Clinton Hill and Bedford Stuyvesant) makes a whole lot of families happy–letting them put off the moving van as their spawn become prepubescent. According to the Brooklyn Paper, a huge letter-writing campaign has been launched by PS 8 parents to convince the DOE to give them what they want/need.

The DOE is reluctant to act, however. The School Construction Authority has been counting on a small middle school to be built at the controversial Dock Street Project site in DUMBO — a project that has no definite timetable, and which would eventually serve the entire district, not just the area zoned for P.S. 8.
In 2008, then-Councilman David Yassky, with the support of the Brooklyn Heights Association, proposed several alternative middle school sites, including enlarging the yet-to-be-built P.S. 8 annex, but the DOE turned them all down.
At the school’s January PTA meeting parents passed a resolution calling for expansion, and they’re actively looking for a facility within walking distance of their present school building. According to the PTA, Principal Phillips will be filing an application with the DOE within the next two weeks.

Will it work? Dunno. But you may want to start quizzing those kids for their gifted and talented tests, just in case.

Cold, Hard Facts for Brooklyn Bridge Park

By , 31 March, 2011, 2 Comments

Did you know Brooklyn Bridge Park may never be finished? The park isn’t actually fully funded yet. Yup, in order to complete construction–Piers 2 and 3, the outer section of Pier 6, the section in Dumbo, and Brooklyn Bridge Plaza–it needs about $130 million. The city has offered this capital but will only provide it with a viable plan of how to fund the park’s maintenance and operations. The obvious angle is building housing (like One Brooklyn Bridge), which many in the community are against. What’s the answer? Here’s a general idea of what the Brooklyn Bridge Conservancy has to say about the matter:
Of the alternatives studied, the Conservancy believes that the careful and judicious use of private events, the exploration of sponsorship opportunities and private philanthropy in support of capital projects, and the metering of existing street level parking spaces hold some potential as revenue sources.
But let’s be clear that these and other revenue alternatives outlined in the report [Brooklyn Bridge Park's Committee on Alternatives to Housing and the most recent study on revenue alternatives] will not be sufficient to replace the Pier 6 and John St residential sites, which are expected to contribute approximately $8.25 million in revenues per year, nor the Pier 1 residences. However, as we have advocated, these new funds could help to reduce the scale of residential development in the park. We call on Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation to examine that potential quickly and thoroughly.
Limited residential development actually privatizes the park far less than some of the alternatives outlined in the BAE report, such as taking up more open space by spreading additional retail stores across the park’s boundaries, or building a parking garage on what could be open space, or charging fees for basketball courts that are free at every other park in the city.
We think the park’s designers are right when they note that in the case of Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is cut off from surrounding neighborhoods by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, having people live on the park’s edges will help activate and energize the open spaces and provide critical “eyes on the park” for what can be an isolated area. And additional residents will support the retail activities already envisioned in the park’s plan.
We call on the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, the Mayor, and our local elected officials to reach an agreement and move forward now with a revenue plan that fully funds a safe, beautiful, and vibrant Brooklyn Bridge Park and fully commit the remaining $130 million in capital funds to complete the world-class, waterfront park this community has worked for over the past twenty-five years.
What do you think? Can you deal with a few more condos to get the park finished? Or is there another way to raise this kind of cash?

Kindergarten Crisis in Park Slope-Can It Happen Here?

By , 30 March, 2011, No Comment

Yesterday, I dropped off the last piece of paperwork insuring my son a spot in the 2011-2012 kindergarten class of PS 29. After a few months of varying degrees of anxiety, I was glad to be done with it and look forward to September. But, not all parents in Brooklyn are feeling the same relief. A friend of mine, who has a son at PS 107 in Park Slope, tipped me off to some not so great news in her part of the borough. Seems the charming little red school has started putting zoned children on the waiting list for kindergarten next year. According to The Brooklyn Paper,

“Park Slope parents panicked last week when the city put 47 kindergarten-aged kids on the waiting list at PS 107 — and gave no information about where the rejected students would be enrolled in September. Meanwhile, the staff of the Eighth Avenue school is making unannounced house visits to weed out kids whose parents lied about their address. “I know it’s terrible, but what are you going to do?” said Pat Mannino, a school administrator who has visited 35 homes on a list of 142 — yet only caught two out-of-district kids. “When there’s so many kids on a wait list, it’s not fair to those who are legit.”

Denied parents are asking the school to close down its pre-k class in order to accommodate more kids, and if you don’t know how the waiting list works–first preference goes to siblings of students already enrolled in the school, then kids who live in the zone but don’t have siblings, then non-zoned kids with siblings in the school. Obviously, out-of-zone applicants are considered last.
Could it happen here in Bococa? Never say never.

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