Month: January 2008

Not a good review for Peters Since 1969.

Rudy, speaking of his support for John McCain, says that he is

fully aboard 100 per cent. I don’t do things half way, and when I believe in a man like I do John McCain, this will become to me as important as my own election campaign.

Well, there was that half way run for the Senate. Not to mention the half way “campaign” for the Republican nomination.

McCain must be comforted to know that Rudy has his back.

At a rally pushing for the downzoning of Carroll Gardens yesterday, blogger and City Council candidate Gary Reilly said that he was fighting to keep Carroll Gardens from “becoming the next Williamsburg”. Today, on his blog, Reilly had this to say about his comment:

A quick note on the Williamsburg comment, before it’s taken out of context – I’ve got nothing against Williamsburg. What I’m opposed to is what crap developers and their architects like “Hot Karl” Fischer have done there . . . and for the record, Hot Karl is currently straddling Carroll Gardens and making his first deposit at 100 Luquer Street. We can’t have more of that.

We won’t take it out of context at all – and won’t even take offense. The fact is, 90% (or more) of the buildings going up in Williamsburg and Greenpoint are crap. Some, like the crap on Karl Fischer Row, went up before contextual zoning took effect. Others, like the proposed Karl Fischer crap on Grand and Driggs is trying beat out a pending contextual zoning. Still others, like the Karl Fischer crap on Humboldt, is going up precisely where our community is working to implement more contextual zoning.

A word of warning to our friends in Carroll Gardens: a lot of the crap that is going up in Greenpoint & Williamsburg is consistent with the contextual zoning that was implemented in 2005 (R6A and R6B, predominantly). Its shorter crap, but its still crap. And other than landmarking, there’s not a lot you can do about that.

As expected, Rudy was trounced in Florida yesterday, and is expected to drop out of the race today (endorsing John McCain in the process).

On the plus side, Rudy finally managed to outpoll “fringe” candidate Ron Paul. On the minus side, the putative front-runner for most of 2007 has only two convention delegates to Paul’s six.

Apparently DoE has backed off and decided not to put a second school in PS 84. According to a flier posted at the school, DoE has determined that “the community clearly doesn’t support the plan”.

Hopefully the principal and PTA at 84 can bring the same passion and vigor to improving their school (which DoE says is on the verge of failing) as they have brought to keeping this school out (and as they brought to fighting a change to a “progressive” (whatever that means) curriculum last year). At this point, 84 is not only failing, it is undersubscribed. Parents who have the means (and I’m not talking financial) are sending their kids out of zone – to PS 132, the East Village, open enrollment public schools, or private and parochial schools. Parents dedicated enough to schlepp their kids across the East River every day are exactly the type of parents that PS 84 needs.

True, a Discovery School in PS 84 would not have done anything to improve the existing school – they would have been two separate programs (with the Discovery School open to citywide enrollment). But fighting against a Discovery School also does nothing to improve PS 84.

Two somewhat stealthy council race announcements happened in the last week or two. First, as reported in the Brooklyn Paper, Steve Levin has thrown his hat in the ring for David Yassky’s 33d Council District seat. Levin, who is currently Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s chief of staff, joins Evan Thies (we told you he wouldn’t be the only North Brooklynite) and Joanne Simon. If there was an official announcement, I missed it (Levin also hasn’t registered with the Campaign Finance Board yet).

In the 34th CD (Diana Reyna’s district), there is finally one official candidate – Gerry Esposito, the long-time District Manager of Community Board #1. Again, a low profile – Esposito essentially announced his candidacy in a letter to Board members.

Its been a busy week or two on the local school front, with two raucous meetings on two separate issues related to two failing elementary schools.

First, a rumor surfaced last week that MS 577, which is currently housed in trailers in the playground of PS 132 (Manhattan and Metropolitan) would be relocated to PS 17 (Driggs and North 5th). Given that 17 is undersubscribed, and is not using all of its space, such a move makes some sense. It would allow overcrowded 132 (one of the neighborhood’s better-rated schools) to reclaim its playground, open a library and provide other basic services one would expect from a public elementary school. The principal of 17, needless to say, was not happy with the usurpation of his space, and mobilized parents. This all came out at a CEC meeting last week, where angry parents spoke out against the relocation of 577. The relocation of 577 has been a pressing need and, I think, a priority of the DoE. But its still not clear to me that DoE intends (or ever did intend) to move 577 in the unused space at 17.

Second, an older rumor that a charter school would be going in to the underutilized space at PS 84 (Grand and Berry) resurfaced. The principal of 84, not happy with the usurpation of her space, posted flyers alerting parents and calling a PTA meeting. As it turns out, a charter school was never planned for 84 (a fact confirmed to me by a source at DoE), but some other type of school-within-a-school might be. As presented at the PTA meeting, DoE is planning to put a K-5 “Discovery School” into 84, again, using excess space at the facility (of which there is plenty).

Both of these reactions (and they are reactionary) seem to be responses to an effort on the part of DoE to identify unused or underused school facilities. District 14 (Williamsburg and Greenpoint) is listed by DoE as a “declining enrollment” district. This has been true over the past 10 to 20 years. But the designation is based on census figures that are now almost a decade out of date, and ignores the fact that recent rezonings are projected to add 10,000 new housing units between 2005 and 2015 (that doesn’t begin to count the new housing units outside rezonings areas, such as, uh, the Southside). In the midst of these demographic crosscurrents, DoE has embarked on a “space utilization” study citywide, the goal of which is to identify underutilized spaces within schools and find appropriate educational uses to go into them. But the principals of these two failing elementary schools seem intent on keeping their schools half-empty and irrelevant.

Lose a little, gain a little, though the net result is a permanent cutback on G service in Queens.

Rundown from the Star on the recent GWAPP parks forum.

While Brooklynites learn to live without the Water Taxi, some people are having a grand time:

[The] unhappiest travelers I found were on the subway. Worn out by drudgery, angered by slow service, they were the most vocal and the least satisfied… Other types of commuters have the opposite experiences. A group of Haverstraw residents who take the New York Water Taxi to Wall Street have become fast friends — they even hold onboard happy hours on Friday evenings, taking turns bringing food and drinks.

Live it up, folks, come May, your party will be over too. Too bad, that’ll be just the time to bring the party up topside.

[Remember this from the Post: “Rockland County kicked in a $1.2 million grant for a Haverstraw connection until April 30, 2009..”? Coincidentally, May 1 is when the East River service is scheduled to back in service.]