On Feb. 6, Councilwoman Gale Brewer honored the Martin Luther King High School Knights soccer team in a ceremony on the steps of City Hall. The varsity team won their 14th Public School Athletic League title in 17 years. The Knights finished their season with an almost perfect record of 21-1. Since 1994, the Knights have amassed an impressive record of 344-25-14, and this past year were ranked 10th in the country in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s final poll of the season.

“The lessons they’ve learned on the field, particularly teamwork and sportsmanship, will remain with these students throughout their entire lives,” Brewer said in a statement.

Mandated Physical Education

Pretty soon it might be mandatory for New York City schoolchildren to play that dreaded game of dodgeball, or some similar activity. On Thursday, Feb. 7, Council Members Melissa Mark-Viverito, Robert Jackson, Letitia James and Gale Brewer held a press conference on the steps of City Hall, with Women’s City Club and American Heart Association, urging the Department of Education to make physical education mandatory.  The Women’s City Club released a report that showed New York’s inadequacies with physical education classes in public schools, including a shortage of PE teachers. The Women’s City Club also recommends a plan of improvement by necessitating mandated PE time and space in school buildings.

Paying a Parking Ticket: It’ll Cost You!

Drivers beware: Without any apparent notice, the service charge for paying an average $115 New York City parking ticket online has increased from $2 to $2.86. According to driver-advocate and parking watchdog Glen Bolofsky, who runs parkingticket.com, that’s a 43 percent increase.

“In essence, the city is charging its citizens a premium for something that actually eases the city’s workload, streamlines costs and reduces man hours,” Bolofsky said in a statement.

Drivers who think they do not deserve a parking ticket can report it on parkingticket.com through “Worry Free Parking,” where users can contest tickets that they receive through the city.  It’s worth a try. Parkingticket.com guarantees that it can reduce or dismiss their customer’s tickets.

What’s going to be the biggest news story to come out of your district in 2013?

Garodnick: Dan Garodnick will kiss every baby in Council District 4 in support of his reelection bid.

Quart: As the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway moves closer to completion, the MTA is going to have to start planning for the next phases of this project. We’ll begin discussing the next phases of construction and how to fund it.

What’s going to be the biggest political upset in 2013?

Garodnick: Hillary Clinton will take Mayor Bloomberg’s advice and run for mayor, but she will lose in a nail-biter to a young, charismatic politician who comes out of nowhere and gives better speeches. He is gracious enough to give her a deputy mayor post.

Quart: Scott Stringer winning comptroller. He has some serious competition in that race.

What will be the single most important development for the downtown community in 2013?

Garodnick: With the Roberts settlement announced, 2013 will be the year Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village tenants get management to work with them on a condo conversion, and begin the process of taking ownership of their community.

What’s one thing that everyone thinks will happen in 2013 that probably won’t?

Garodnick: Joe Lhota will lose the Republican nomination for mayor when his campaign is saddled by allegations that sometimes the MTA’s trains are late.

Who will win the Super Bowl in 2013?

Garodnick: Giants. I got this right last year, so why stop now?

Quart: Anybody but the Patriots.

Read our predictions on literature, Broadway, politics and fashion.

The city’s eviction moratorium was extended post-Sandy, but tenants are left hoping they’ll have enough time

Last Thursday, Council Member Dan Garodnick, various legal groups and at least one New Yorker facing eviction convened on the steps of City Hall to push for an extension to the eviction moratorium that had been lifted the Monday before.

The New York Civil Court had initially issued a moratorium on evictions following Hurricane Sandy, but legal advocacy groups were calling for an extension, indicating that thousands of New Yorkers were still without a home after the storm.

“To resume evictions when we know many families will have nowhere to go is callous and irresponsible,” Garodnick said in a statement.

In spite of the rally’s minimal turnout among those directly impacted, the New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) has since announced it will extend the moratorium, giving tenants facing eviction until the beginning of February to catch up on past-due rent before initiating eviction procedures.

While the extension may alleviate pressure for some, one such tenant, Maria Perez, who believes she was the only person in her position at Thursday’s rally, just hopes that will be enough time for her.

“I’m meeting with a lawyer … I have my fingers crossed,” Perez said.

Perez is one New Yorker and Lower East Side resident strongly affected by the moratorium, particularly as her situation has been exacerbated following Hurricane Sandy.

She said while there are many like her, there was little to no information disseminated about the City Hall rally beforehand, making it difficult for other displaced New Yorkers to trek out and show their support and meet with the legal groups present, like MFY Legal Services.

“I know I’m not the only one going through this,” Perez said.

Nonetheless, the rally was successful for Perez, who was approached by a lawyer willing to look into her situation.

Perez has been on the brink of eviction since her daughter moved out two years ago and NYCHA’s Section 8 branch never lowered her rent. The organization has also been completely uncommunicative, she said. She said her building suffered severe damage in the storm, damage that has become yet another obstacle.

“Section 8 has been asking for things like my Con Edison breakdown,” an exasperated Perez said.

“My landlord doesn’t care if I stay,” she said. “Section 8 is the problem.”

She doesn’t blame the program entirely for their oversights, however, pointing out they are clearly overburdened. Perez said while they used to assign one worker to a set number of tenants, their offices are now an endless array of windows and chairs for waiting, and “you never see the same person twice.”

“[Hurricane Sandy] slowed down the process,” she said, as she has been trying to fight the pending eviction.

Perez said she has been unable to get in contact with the necessary people at Section 8 to resolve her situation—one she claims is an illegitimate eviction. If this was difficult prior to the storm, it’s all but impossible now.

Wasim Lone of the Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) tenants organization has been helping Perez with her case.

“She has serious medical problems,” explained Lone, who was rushing off to help Perez with her situation at the time, particularly ensuring she receives her Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
“I’m sending her information to the Marshall,” he said.

“GOLES is a rat hole with five or six people working,” explained Perez. “But they are some of the few people who care.”

GOLES, which aims to give power to low-income tenants on the Lower East Side and keep them in their homes, is funded by corporations, like some banks, and various government agencies.

The process Perez describes has reportedly been laborious from the start, but the extension gives her more time to resolve the situation.

“I’m going to a Section 8 office now,” she said, after speaking with Our Town Downtown. “I hope it’s not like the zoo up on Fordham Road.”

By Aaron Adler

Two members of Housing Works, a New York-based healthcare and AIDS advocate group, climbed two 40 foot flagpoles at the southern end of City Hall Park in lower Manhattan on Wednesday around 10:45 a.m. The activists, wearing helmets and climbing gear, unfurled a 30 foot banner that read “HOUSING IS HEALTHCARE: HOUSE PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS” after quickly climbing to the top of the flagpoles without being noticed by several police officers in the vicinity.

Police quickly arrived and blocked the sidewalk and the area immediately under the flagpoles and brought in a cherrypicker to bring down the activists. Other Housing Works activists held signs and cheered on Tony Ray and the other unidentified flagpole climber from the ground.

“I am up here today because of the lack of attention to housing for people with AIDS.” said activist Tony Ray through a megaphone high above the crowd, “If people with AIDS have a safe place to live, and a place for them to refrigerate their meds, they are going to stay healthy.”

The two activists stayed on the flagpoles for around 25 minutes before they were removed peaceably by the NYPD and arrested without incident.

The civil disobedience came two days before World Aids Day, a global day of remembrance of those lost to the disease.

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

The City Districting Commission released an initial draft of the City Council district map at a City Hall meeting today. The map is based on census data and also adjusted for City prison populations. The new map is available online and a hard copy will soon be available to the public in main library branches throughout the five boroughs, according to a statement released by the Commission.

Commission members were presented with the preliminary draft, on which the next cycle of hearings will be based. The next step is for members of the public to present testimony based on this first drawing. Chairman Benito Romano said many more views still need to be presented given the districting’s significance in coming years. The Commission encourages members of the public to come forward and express their views on the preliminary draft.

The dates for the second round of public hearings are listed below, while times and locations will be updated on the Commission’s website.

Tuesday, October 2nd
Thursday, October 4th
Tuesday, October 9th
Wednesday, October 10th
Thursday, October 11th

—Alissa Fleck

Downtown was buzzing with excitement yesterday for the prospect of free vibrators. Trojan announced that it would be distributing 10,000 Tri-Phoria and The Pulse devices — $40 and $30 retail values, respectively! — from two hot dog carts in different neighborhoods throughout the day, so New Yorkers lined the streets of the planned locations in anticipation.

Most people left disappointed, though, because a City Hall rep stopped the popular condom brand from delivering the goods shortly after they set up shop.

Citizens were not shy to express their frustration with the city’s interruption to media on the scene. “There’s a lot more important things the city should be worried about than a free-vibrator giveaway,” bar owner Melody Henry told New York Post. “Bloomberg doesn’t want anyone to have fun. You can’t have a giant soda. You can’t have a vibrator.”

Photo by wallyg, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

“Chin and Quinn did us in!” jeered over 50 opponents to New York University’s expansion plan from a balcony overlooking City Council’s chamber. “Shame on you!”

Greenwich Village residents, community activists and N.Y.U. professors filled the chamber to capacity yesterday to witness the full City Council’s final vote to approve hotly debated zoning and map changes that will allow the university to construct four new high-rise buildings over the course of 17 years, 2014 to 2031.

The opponents became increasingly vocal as the time to vote neared, and broke into chants just before it. Speaker Christie Quinn asked for silence and warned the opponents that they would be kicked out, but the chants continued, and security escorted the entire balcony out of the building.

The proposal passed by a 44-to-1 vote.

Prior to the meeting, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) commissioned a 32-page report that outlined the negative impacts of the expansion plan, and opponents wrote a letter to City Council that expressed the community’s dissatisfaction with the proposal.

“The NYU expansion plan will turn a residential neighborhood into a company town and subject it to twenty straight years of construction,” said GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman in a statement.  “The Council ignored the grave environmental impacts of this plan and the much better options that had been put forward for NYU to locate new facilities in the Financial District; this is a sad day for democracy in New York City.”

John Sexton, N.Y.U.’s president, however, said that the approval marked “a great day for N.Y.U. and for New York City,” and said that the expansion will provide the city with much-needed construction jobs and university positions.

His statement argued that the plan “strikes an important balance: permitting N.Y.U. to maintain academic excellence by meeting our educational- and research-space needs on our existing footprint over the next two decades, while at the same time addressing the concerns of our neighbors on such issues as improving access to open space.”

The opponents are now considering legal action. “We will be working closely with our partners in the NYU faculty and with our lawyers at Gibson Dunn to pursue every avenue available to us to remedy this tragic wrong which has been imposed upon the people of the City of New York,” said Berman.

Fracking explained. Illustration courtesy of Wiki Commons.

The Cuomo administration has hinted it may allow hydrofracking to move forward only in municipalities that express support for the procedure, and this week Gov. Andrew Cuomo explicitly said that “home rule” should be a factor in deciding where to allow it. But the technology is such that drilling for natural gas in some locations and not in others doesn’t make sense, several lawmakers argued yesterday. “You may have a town that says no, but if the town next to it says yes … well, it’s horizontal hydrofracking we’re talking about,” State Sen. Tony Avella, an outspoken opponent of the controversial practice, said at a rally on the steps of City Hall. “The pipes are going to go a long distance underground and we’ll have contaminated water seeping into the water supply of a town that never wanted it.” State Sen. Liz Krueger said that polluted water from a single source could contaminate crops and livestock, which would in turn spread through the state. “If one county does it, it can contaminate other counties,” she said. “We are all one when it comes to this issue and we are all interdependent, literally and figuratively.”

Jazz Hands Courtesy of Alissa Fleck

There’s no “behind the scenes” of a City Council hearing, particularly one as contentious and impassioned as the recent hearing on NYU’s proposed expansion. Indeed the spectacle unfolded without pretense.

(by Alissa Fleck)

Last week at 8 a.m. on the morning of the hearing, plan opponents clutching massive, colorful banners flooded the City Hall steps in protest. They were tree-huggers, “village crazies,” dejected faculty, curmudgeons and idealists alike.

They fluttered their signs in the air while speakers growled into the microphone in front of them. Unfortunately the marriage of wind and a lackluster microphone muted most of the speeches.

One speaker said: “NYU tells us they will create open space!”

“IT’S A LIE!” shouted someone behind me. “IT’S A LIE!” joined others in chorus.

At the rally’s conclusion, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) Executive Director Andrew Berman, who, with his vehemence could have stepped straight out of a Kinks song, asked the press if they had any questions.

Not a moment after he’d asked, protesters behind him broke out into raucous chant, replete with fist pumps. After a few minutes, Berman turned to the mass behind him: “Everybody get your regulation-sized signs,” he said. He said something about how it would be a long day, I expected him to add few would make it out alive.

The subsequent rally in support of the proposal consisted of approximately three people. “I’m in favor!” said one man, urging press people to come forward and ask him questions. They appeared reluctant, as though they were waiting on someone more noteworthy.

As I tried to make my way into City Hall, a crazed bottleneck formed at the entrance. Security attempted to filter in an even number of supporters and opponents, but made exceptions for anyone who said they had to use the bathroom. As men in “BUILD IT!” shirts trickled in, protesters, well, protested.

“Why do they get to go in and not us?” they demanded.

So many protesters filled the balcony, a few lay down on the steps. A woman on the ground next to me, dressed for what could have been a day of gardening, appeared to slip in and out of consciousness.

In the crowd, another woman turned around and addressed the man behind her:

“You’re a union guy, aren’t you!” she said.

“Look I need a job, I got a kid,” he said. “I don’t even really know what’s going on.”

“That’s the problem!” She attempted to unload one of her extra signs on him. “Come on, why don’t you just take it?”

A security officer tried to bring order by organizing testifiers.

“Is there a Milton in the crowd?” he asked.

“I’m Milton,” said an older man in the balcony.

“Are you in favor or opposition?”

“What?”

(It took a few more tries, as Milton was evidently hard of hearing.)

“Are you in favor or opposition?”

“OPPOSED ALL THE WAY!” he shouted down from the balcony. The crowd exploded with applause.

“Another outbreak like that and you will be kicked out for the rest of the hearing,” said the security officer.

Council Member Mark Weprin insisted audience members use jazz hands only to express approval. The consistent reprimands and reminders to use jazz hands only did little to suppress the boos, hisses, laughter and chants which, when done in unison, could not be attributed to any single defiant individual.

I briefly wandered down from the balcony to see if I could get closer to the proceedings. I walked into the ground floor section, only to be interrogated by a security guard. I told him I would just stand in the back for a moment. “No, you won’t,” he said. I walked back out of the chambers and a woman outside snarled (in reference to NYU President John Sexton): “Is he still SPOUTING that BULLSH*T?” “The bullsh*t is unbelievable!” responded another.

Sexton’s speech went something like this:

“We need to be able to attract an outstanding genomicist.” Laughter.  (Maybe people think are envisioning someone studying adorable garden gnomes.)

“It would be obstructive to build anywhere else.” More laughter.

“Many of our students work three jobs and it’s because they want to be here.” Riptide of laughter.

“This is not a development project.” Laughter plus a few audience members get booted.

Often these proceedings boil down to sleights of rhetoric and shiftiness, as when extensive confusion ensued over the delineations between “green space,” “open space,” “open green space,” “public space” and “public green space.”

Then there was the discussion during which I decided, three hours in, it was time for my personal intermission. With more highfalutin jargon and sophistication than a high-schooler being disciplined, but no less evasion and otherwise not much difference, Councilman Robert Jackson drilled Sexton on whether or not he was being honest. Filtering out the excess, it went roughly something like this:

“But are you actually being as honest as possible?”

“Yes, I am being honest.”

“Okay, but, are you actually being honest?”

Preservationists listen in on the hearing. Photo by James Kelleher.

Proposed preservation of the East Village meets a vocal audience

The city’s preservationists came together in City Hall Tuesday when they made their voices heard at a Landmark Preservation Commission public hearing regarding proposed preservation designation for parts of the East Village.

The proposal includes many historical, albeit dated, buildings like the Congregation Meseritz Synagogue and Max D. Raskin Center, both on East 6th, Duo Multicultural Center on East 4th, and the popular ale house on East 7th, McSorley’s.

In all, the proposal covers protects 330 buildings, the NY Times says.

Alongside many of the neighborhood’s foreign residents, who cite the area’s “contextual architecture” and storied past, representatives from the offices of State Senator Tom Duane, State Senator Daniel Squadron, and Councilman Rosie Mendez strongly supported the LPC’s effort.

As expected, local clergy were the opposition’s loudest voices, saying their groups would be put under extreme financial strains if their buildings were landmarked.

One member of the parish went as far as labeling the landmarking a sin.

The meeting was another stop in the LPC’s “extensive correspondence” with local voices, and there is no ETA for the committee’s decision.