Zumbluskas previously challenged incumbent Assembly Member Micah Kellner in 2010 and is making another run at him this year. He has been active in politics for many years and currently works for the Department of Transportation as a wireless support specialist, according to his biography. Zumbluskas emphasizes a need for job creation, especially in upstate counties, alternative energy development and drastically reducing the state budget. Known to friends as “the Big Z,” he’s positioning himself as a much-needed newcomer who will not play by traditional Albany rules.

“For effective government, we must change the way business is conducted in Albany,” Zumbluskas said in his campaign’s mission statement. “We can no longer have a few party leaders in a back room making all the decisions.”

MALONEY AND OTHERS HAIL CORNELL DEVELOPMENT
Last week, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney joined acting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank, Cornell University President David Skorton, Council Member Jessica Lappin and NYC Economic Development Corporation President Seth Pinsky, among others, to herald a groundbreaking announcement about the Cornell-Technion tech campus planned for Roosevelt Island.

The school announced the impending creation of a new United States Department of Commerce “Innovators’ Resource Center,” which will be located right on the future Roosevelt Island campus. The center will allow students and faculty to easily access information on existing patents and file new patent applications, a function that officials hope will be utilized often at the new innovation-focused school. It is the first partnership between the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a university.

“This new center recognizes the fact that high-tech inventors and start-ups need a patent office for the 21st century, when ideas can move at the speed of Google,” Maloney said. “Even though U.S. exports are now at record levels, the speed of change has itself changed: If we hope to remain competitive on the world stage, we should see to it that anyone with an innovative idea can obtain the protection of a patent without being tied up in red tape.”

The center is slated to move to its permanent location in 2017, but for now will be housed at Cornell/Technion’s temporary incubation campus at the Google offices in Chelsea.

WALK IN THE PARK EVENTS
The Central Park Conservancy is teaming up with Madison Avenue footwear retailers to raise money for the park and encourage exercise—and shopping—in the neighborhood. On Saturday, Oct. 13, shoppers who make a purchase at any of the 15 participating stores on Madison Avenue will be entered to win one of 45 free pairs of shoes.

The stores, all between East 57th and 86th streets, include Bally, Barneys New York, Calvin Klein, Charlotte Olympia, CH Carolina Herrera, Devi Kroell, DKNY, Fogal, Galo Shoes, Jimmy Choo, Longchamp, Max Mara, Porsche Design, Stuart Weitzman, and Stubbs & Wootton and will be marked with a special welcome mat.

On Saturday, Oct. 20, at 11 a.m., walkers can sign up for a quarter-mile high-heeled “Walk in the Park,” leaving 67th Street and Madison Avenue, with a $25 donation to the Conservancy. For more information and to register, visit www.centralparknyc.org/walkinthepark.

Free Flu Shots
New York Doctors at 205 Lexington (corner of 32nd Street) is currently giving FREE FLU SHOTS to the community.  (While supplies last!) For more information, call 212-684-4700.

Pols say Danger in MTS Plans
This Saturday, local politicians joined Upper East Side residents to yet again protest the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station (MTS), citing the recent placement of the Atlantic sturgeon on the endangered species list as another reason to trash the plan. Opponents also seized upon FAA regulations that strongly advise against placing trash facilities within five miles of an airport in order to lessen the threat of bird strikes on planes taking off.
“Today we are urging the federal government to block the city from constructing this facility just three miles from LaGuardia Airport, in violation of federal regulations intended to prevent bird strikes from endangering air passengers and communities near airports, and to consider this site’s impact on the Atlantic sturgeon, which was recently added to the endangered species list and is known to live in the East River,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney. She released letters she had written to the FAA, as well as to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, asking them to carefully weigh the environmental factors before granting the federal permits the city needs to construct the expanded dock for the transfer station.
Maloney, along with all of the East Side electeds, has been fighting tooth and nail against the garbage transfer station—she appropriated a quote from Winston Churchill that was originally about fighting the Nazis in World War II to demonstrate how hard she will fight the MTS, if that’s any indication of how much she thinks is at stake. She was joined on Saturday by State Sen. Liz Krueger, Assembly Members Micah Kellner and Dan Quart and City Council Member Jessica Lappin, and the fish and aviation puns flew with abandon (the plan should “sleep with the fishes,” the city should “go fish,” the proposal is “fishy,” the whole thing “isn’t going to fly”) as each issued forceful statements against the MTS, hoping that these new factors will hold sway with the right people in government.

Kips Bay Day
This Saturday, May 26, the Kips Bay Neighborhood Alliance, along with the Department of Transportation and Community Board 6, is hosting a community celebration at the Kips Bay pedestrian plaza. The plaza is located on the service road between 30th and 33rd streets, on the east side of Second Avenue, and is closed to traffic through July 31 to allow for community events and create more open space in the neighborhood. The events on Saturday run from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and include live jazz music, chess games for kids, a puppet show by Repertorio Espanol, belly dancing with the Stein Senior Center, pet training from Walter’s Pets, bike training from Sids Bikes and NYBikes and other activities for kids and adults. For more information, email mholli@nyc.rr.com.

Cornell Campus at West Side HQ
The CornellNYC Tech campus slated for Roosevelt Island has found itself one heck of an incubator. Earlier this week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Google CEO Larry Page and Cornell President David Skorton announced that Google will be lending, free of charge, 22,000 square feet of their Chelsea headquarters to the fledgling tech school for the next five and a half years, with the option to expand to 58,000 square feet as it grows.
The first classes at the school are set to begin this fall, and the first phase of the construction of the permanent campus on Roosevelt Island is scheduled to be completed in 2017. The Google placement can’t be a bad move for the new tech school, which is sure to attract a slew of students hoping to land jobs with their beneficent officemates, and Google will gain from its proximity to the next crop of tech geniuses. In the words of Council Member Jessica Lappin, it’s “a match made in heaven,” and all the similarly warm, fuzzy things that elected officials had to say about the move.

Choreographers Show Their Stuff
Next Saturday, 11 fledgling choreographers will put their best dance moves onstage for the Young Choreographer’s Festival. The performance highlights the work of choreographers between the ages of 18 and 25 in the genres of ballet, contemporary, modern, jazz, street jazz and tap. There will be a talkback panel featuring festival choreographers from 2010 through the present selection. June 2, 8 p.m., Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at symphonyspace.org.

Upper West Jazz Fest
Fans of jazz can get their fill of one of the greats this summer on the Upper West Side. The Smoke Jazz and Supper Club-Lounge, at 2751 Broadway, is holding its monthlong Miles Davis Festival, beginning May 25 and running through June 30.
Alumni from Davis’ band will play alongside top-notch trumpeters, with different ensembles paying tribute to his music each night. On Monday, June 4 at 6:30 p.m., an original play written by the club’s co-owner, Frank Christopher, and inspired by Davis, Beyond Blue Light, will premiere, with a three-course dinner included in the ticket price.
The festival kicks off this weekend with a celebration of Davis’ birthday, which would have been his 86th, with Jeremy Pelt on trumpet, George Cables on piano, Buster Williams on bass and Louis Hayes on drums. For more information, visit smokejazz.com.

From City & State’s Heard Around Town, May 9, 2012:

In a New Yorker article last month, Stanford University officials expressed misgivings about the Bloomberg administration’s behavior in negotiations on a proposal to build a New York City tech campus — a proposal that was eventually scuttled before Cornell University won the bid. The negotiations reportedly left Stanford President John Hennessey “seething,” and he accused the city of changing the terms. The university’s general counsel, Debra Zumwalt, told the magazine that the city had belatedly added millions of dollars in penalties, and said that she had “never seen negotiations that were handled so poorly by a reputable party.” Asked yesterday to respond to the comments, Mayor Michael Bloomberg insisted that the city “dealt fairly with every applicant” but that the city would never give away something so valuable — the land and the millions in upgrades — without some guarantees. “I just don’t know the woman,” he said about Stanford’s counsel. “I don’t know her. I can just tell you that my experience, mostly with John Hennessy, the president of Stanford, was nothing but great. He’s a great, educated, smart guy, good leader, and it’s just a shame that it didn’t work out.”

To read more from City & State click here.

In The Avengers movie that opened this past weekend, Mark Ruffalo plays the Incredible Hulk, a creature born from a scientific experiment gone awry who joins a team of superheroes seeking to save the world. The risks of scientific progress and efforts to save the planet are also at play in his real-world battle against hydraulic fracturing, Ruffalo tells City & State.
What follows is an edited transcript.

City & State: How did you become involved in fracking activism?

Mark Ruffalo: I heard about hydrofracking before I moved my family to New York, and I thought it was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. It was going to bring this vibrant new economy to upstate New York. But I also started to hear some questionable things about it. So I went to the old Internet and started doing some research. At this time, there was very little to learn. The gas industry is very rosy and extremely positive. There were inklings from EPA whistleblowers and people in Wyoming whose homes were filling with gas and were coming up with these neurological disorders from the drinking water. So I decided, “I have to go look at this for myself.”

CS: Where did you go?

MR: I went to Dimock, Pa. It wasn’t really to find anything wrong. It was just to see what was going on. But in a room of 40 people, it became clear to me that these people were under siege in their life, and the American dream was betrayed. What about the EPA? The EPA wouldn’t allow something like this to happen. Well, this isn’t regulated by the EPA, really. Well, what about the DEP? Well, they’ve pretty much turned their back on us. What about your attorney general? They’re not interested. There were victims there, and basically they were being told they were lying. You had these Americans who obviously had a problem, and everybody turned their backs on them. I didn’t want to get involved, honestly. But if I am who I say—I care about people and I care about injustice—then I realized this is coming to my community, where there are people that I love and I care for, and it can’t happen like this.

CS: But fracking could create jobs in New York’s poorer regions.

MR: There’s only a fraction of the jobs the industry says they’ll create. They tend to be incredibly transient. Cornell did a study last year on what the effects would be, especially in small communities that rely on pristine water and pristine air. A lot of these communities have only agriculture and tourism to support them. What happens is the community is left worse off after the bust. A few people end up making a lot of money. It doesn’t make its way out to the rest of the community. The workers leave. The area is left with less economic diversity. It kills off other industries. I understand that we’re in bad times. The other thing that’s interesting to point out is the fastest growing job sector right now in the United States, at 10–18 percent a year, is the green sector, or the renewable-energy sector.

CS: In your experience, are people aware of the hydrofracking issue?

MR: When I started three years ago, I just thought, There’s no way. We’re done for. We have the biggest industries in the world; we have Exxon Mobil and Chesapeake just dumping so much money. It was a done deal. Thousands of families have reported contamination now. These people are poor, they’re desperate. When their wells become contaminated, their properties become worthless. They turn to the gas industry, and the gas industry says, “We didn’t contaminate your well, but we will buy you out and give you water if you sign a nondisclosure agreement.” We will never know these people’s stories. You have people in Dimock, and some people in Wyoming now, these mothers whose children have come down with asthma and weird autoimmune-deficiency diseases, whose school is right next to compressor stations, and they’re getting together and they’re starting to get their stories out. They’re not taking the short money, which is what we’re seeing in Dimock. They’re saying, “No, we’re going to live through this, we’ve been wronged, and we’re going to get our stories out.” It’s very different now than it was even a year ago. Fracking is a national issue. There’s a lot of new information coming out, and the longer this goes on, the more we’re going to find out how damning it is.

To read the full interview at City & State click here.