By Dan Garodnick

In my tenure in the City Council, I have worked hard to push the envelope on ways to protect the environment — from authoring the City’s Green Energy Code, to requiring new commercial buildings to have sensors to turn out lights, to requiring better access to recycling in residential buildings.

And I am pleased to report some big progress on recycling, just from last week.

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn this, but New York City has consistently had notoriously low recycling rates. It’s my hope that that is about to change.

Last week, Mayor Bloomberg announced an important new recycling initiative which will save the City $600,000 each year, and lead to more than 50,000 tons of waste diverted from landfills. The best estimate is that we’ll raise our recycling rate from our current 15 percent to 30 percent by the year 2017.

The biggest change is that New Yorkers can now recycle hard plastics, including toys, shampoo bottles, coffee cups, food containers and hangers. You can find a full list of what you can and cannot recycle on the Department of Sanitation’s website. Quick tip: your old CDs and hummus containers are okay, but don’t recycle old cassettes or toothpaste tubes!

Don’t know what day to put out your recyclables? You can check refuse and recycling collection dates on nyc.gov.

This will not only save the City money and divert items from our landfills, but it’s also very important for our environment. According to the Department of Sanitation, for every ton of paper we recycle, we save four metric tons of carbon equivalent, which is the same as taking one car off the road for eight months.

Even better, by recycling metal items such as cans and tinfoil, we save the equivalent of five metric tons of carbon for every ton of material, which is the same as taking one car off the road for an entire year.

Of note, the City’s pilot composting program in public schools also cut the amount of garbage those schools sent to landfills by up to 38 percent. Did you know you can bring your compost to some greenmarkets? You can find participating locations on GrowNYC’s website, grownyc.org.

How else can you prevent greenhouse gas emissions?

• Did you know home solar panels can pay for themselves in six years? My office prepared a factsheet with incentives available if you adopt solar panels. And, if you have questions about installing solar panels on your roof, visit the Department of Building’s FAQ page.

• Switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs, will save you energy and money. In fact, you could save over $100 over the bulb’s lifetime. And of course, be sure to recycle old CFLs.

• Another tip to save money and energy: unplug home electronics when they aren’t in use. Seventy-five percent of electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while they are plugged in but turned off. By using a power strip you can save up to $200 each year off your energy bill.

Better recycling in residential developments
Starting next year, new apartment developments will need to set aside space for recycling. I authored a piece of legislation which I hope will change New Yorkers’ recycling habits by making recycling as convenient as possible.

A greener East Midtown
As we consider the Mayor’s proposed rezoning of East Midtown, I firmly believe that any new buildings that arise from this rezoning should be held to the highest environmental standards. In New York, it is our buildings that are the biggest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions (in fact, they account for 75 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions) and we need to be responsible stewards to future New Yorkers. For the first time ever, the Department of City Planning has included a sustainability requirement in a proposed rezoning resolution. Buildings that seek increased density under this rezoning would need to outperform the New York City Energy Conservation Code by at least 15%. This is a very good jumping off point for conversations about how the City can incentivize green design.

Dan Garodnick is a City Council Member and candidate for re-election representing the Upper East Side.

According to a recent New Yorkers for Parks’ survey which counted the amount of open space, and rated open space quality with 15 standards, the Upper East Side failed on all 15 counts. The Upper East Side has one of the smallest percentages of open space in the entire city. This was a sobering fact for the dozens of community members who came out to the open space forum last week. Only 44 percent of Upper East Siders live within walking distance of an outdoor space, and 20,000 residents are not within walking distance of a park.

Councilmember Dan Garodnick, Fred Kent, president of the Project for Public Spaces, Holly Leicht from New Yorkers for Parks and Dan Barish from the Lowline Project (a future subterranean public park) spoke about the problem.

The Andrew Haswell Green Park on the Upper East Side has been a work in progress for years.

“We are being deprived of greenery and public space that we need for our health and quality of life,” said Barbara Rudder, the co-chair of the Community Board 8 Parks Committee. “We need a community that’s more than just a blur of high-rise buildings, we need a place where adults and families can go to take a rest from urban life.”

Kent, who helped create the plazas in Times Square, riled up the crowd with inspirational images from street life in cities across the globe.

He said that open space does not necessarily have to lie within parks or playgrounds. In fact, Kent said that urban communities need to start small with public plazas and lively sidewalk spaces. He suggested creating unique seating and selling food in small public spaces, so that people linger, instead of just hurrying from one building to another.

“Public spaces are the only things we truly have,” said Kent. “Otherwise a city is just a bunch of streets and buildings.”

But creating these public spaces does offer several logistical problems, including getting funds and city government approval. Garodnick spoke mostly about these issues in terms of projects like the East River Esplanade, which desperately needs repairs and revamping, and Andrew Haswell Green Park, which will be refurbished if the Memorial Sloan Kettering-CUNY center is built. The Councilmember said that the City needs to figure out exactly where public spaces would be most beneficial.

“To find these areas of New York that don’t have as much benefit for cars, but would benefit people, that’s what we need to do,” said Garodnick.

Despite the clear greenery problems on the Upper East Side, Leicht feels all is not lost. She said that after doing a survey in the similarly greenery deprived Jackson Heights, the community got together and built a new plaza and a brand new park within one year of the survey’s release. She believes that they should hold the Department of Parks and Recreation responsible for the upkeep of already-existing public space, and encourage privately-owned institutions to open up their spaces to the public. She also suggested opening up schoolyards to the public, closing off certain street areas to create cafes and public plazas, and capitalizing on neighboring recreational spaces on Randall’s Island and Roosevelt Island.

What do you think? Email us at reporter@strausnews.com for ideas on how to improve the Upper East Side’s open spaces.

Lower East Side Teen Murdered for Parka
Last Friday night, 16-year-old Raphael Ward, a resident of the Lower East Side’s Baruch Houses, was shot and killed at the corner of Rivington and Columbia streets. According to several news accounts, the boy was wearing a pricey Marmot winter parka, and a group of teens had approached him earlier in the evening, trying to take his coat. He refused to give it up, and a short time later, at around 9 p.m., one of the would-be thieves returned with a gun and shot Ward, fatally, in the chest. He lived long enough to make his way, bleeding, into a nearby bodega and tell the shop owner that he was killed for his jacket.

The New York Post reports that the gunman, who is still being sought by police, was described by witnesses as 5-foot-6,- 120 to 140 pounds, wearing a dark wool hat and a ski mask.
State Sen. Dan Squadron and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver both released statements over the weekend expressing condolences to Ward’s family (he lived with his mother and younger brother) and friends and calling for tougher safety and gun control measures.

“We must continue to work together as a community to fight the scourge of gun violence and make our homes and our streets safer for our families,” Squadron said. “From stronger gun laws to improved safety at NYCHA developments, we are reminded far too often that the time to act is now.”

“As a father and a grandfather, it pains me greatly to see someone taken from us so young. My neighbors on the Lower East Side have suffered far too much from the scourge of gun violence,” Silver said. “We will continue to fight for tougher measures to keep guns out of the wrong hands and to make our neighborhood, particularly our public housing complexes, safer.”

Downtown to See Better Parking Signs
New York City drivers will soon hopefully have one less thing to distract and confuse them. The Department of Transportation, along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and East Side Council Member Dan Garodnick, announced the roll-out of 6,300 new parking signs, completely redesigned to reduce visual clutter and make parking rules more clear and understandable.

“You shouldn’t need a Ph.D. in parking signage to understand where you are allowed to leave your car in New York,” said Garodnick, who first proposed overhauling the signs in 2011 and has been a strong proponent of increased clarity. “The days of puzzled parkers trying to make sense of our Midtown signs are over.”

The simplified signs, which will be installed in Manhattan’s paid commercial parking areas, will soon be found in the area from 60th Street downtown to 14th Street and from Second to Ninth avenues, with additional areas in the Upper East Side, Lower Manhattan and the Financial District. The improved signs have reduced the number of characters from 250 to about 140 (they’re Tweet-able!), come in only two colors to delineate between commercial and regular parking, and all use the same fonts and layouts.

Mandell School to Open Downtown Preschool
The Mandell School, which had previously planned to open a preschool to serve Lower Manhattan families on Broad Street, announced this week that they’ve selected a new location and are on track to open downtown in September 2013.

The private school, which emphasizes experiential learning models, will open its newest location in the Archive, a historic landmark building on Greenwich Street between Barrow and Christopher streets in the West Village. The move comes after the Broad Street location was compromised by damage from Hurricane Sandy, and the new location will enable the school to stick to its timeline to open this fall.

“For New York City families, applying to schools is an uphill battle,” said Gabriella Rowe, head of the Mandell School, in a statement explaining the school’s expansion. “The number of independent school seats remains almost entirely stagnant and admission rates have hit record lows, even as the population of young children in our city increases.”

The Mandell School was founded on the Upper West Side in 1939 and currently operates a school from preschool through eighth grade.

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.

Hurricane Sandy outdid even the most aggressive projections of its impact on New York. In my district on the East Side of Manhattan, and some of the West 50s, we had severe flooding throughout Zones A and B, power and heat outages that lasted for over a week, and—as if that weren’t bad enough—a crane that hung precariously in Midtown, forcing residents from their homes.

The situation presented an important opportunity for local government to respond. The flooding left thousands of my constituents stranded in their apartments and in need of assistance, particularly in Peter Cooper Village, Stuyvesant Town and Waterside Plaza, home to nearly 30,000 right next to the East River. Residents—who include me and my family—lacked electricity, heat and hot water, and just as dangerously, any telephone service.

Without the ability to call in our out, seniors and residents with limited mobility were cut off from the outside world, with family members who were worried about them.

In response, we set up our volunteer operation starting on Thursday morning, and worked hand in hand with both properties’ management with the goal of knocking on every door in both communities every day until power began to be restored. We put out a call for volunteers; we secured donations of food, blankets, batteries and water with the help of Speaker Quinn’s staff; we set up a volunteer center (and City Council mobile office) in the Stuyvesant Town Community Center and in the Management Office of Waterside Plaza; and we got to work.

It was inspiring to see how many New Yorkers turned out to help, with hundreds of volunteers from New York Cares, religious groups, local tenants associations and many others, including my colleagues in government. We dispatched them door to door, checking on our neighbors, assessing their needs, and then sending volunteers back out immediately with the relevant supplies, to the extent we had them. This continued over several consecutive days, until the power and heat started coming back.

One of the most pressing needs was that of seniors who worried that their prescriptions were running out, and needed immediate refills. In response, we called for local nurses and doctors to arrange health visits for seniors who were trapped—and we had volunteers make runs to fill their prescriptions, and bring them up the dark staircases in the buildings.

We even had a couple of very nice surprises. We had generous donations of food from the Setai Hotel, Riverpark restaurant, which also offered hot coffee in Stuyvesant Oval, and a delivery of hot soup from celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito, which he had made himself. And we had countless volunteers who pooled their own funds and made emergency runs for supplies, including prescription refills and batteries. A particularly entrepreneurial group of volunteers at Waterside borrowed a shopping cart from a local store and wheeled 300 bottles of water across the FDR for residents at Waterside.

The most incongruous image that sticks out in my mind was 40 members of the Air Force National Guard showing up late on Thursday in the Stuyvesant Town Community Center, in full military fatigues and an army truck, passing boxes of “meals ready to eat” down an assembly line into the center. When they were done, we marched with them with flashlights through the dark and desolate Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper up to meet their truck in Waterside Plaza, where they did the same thing.

Another image was one that most New Yorkers won’t soon forget: a crane hanging dangerously above Midtown in 90 mph winds, also in my council district. While the City acted swiftly to evacuate hundreds of residents, many left their homes in a hurry, leaving medication, clothing and pets behind. We worked to help these residents gain safe, temporary access to their apartments to retrieve the items they needed. I’m happy to report that as of Monday night, the crane was secured and all residents in the West 50s who had been evacuated were allowed to return home.

While the communities in my district are slowly getting back to life as usual, there are still large parts of the city that are not so lucky. If you are able to get out to Staten Island or the hard-hit areas in Brooklyn and Queens, I strongly encourage you to lend a hand there.

Dan Garodnick is the City Council Member for District 4 on the Upper East Side.

Wight seized on a statement that Maloney made during a rally protesting the presence of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, at the United Nations.

“In the last year, Iran has grown ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon—we’re no longer talking about ‘if’—instead we’re wondering ‘when,’” Maloney said at the event. “Just last week, Iran’s vice president and head of its nuclear program admitted in an interview given to Al-Hayat that Iran gave foreign officials misleading facts about the state of their nuclear progress.”

Maloney went on to outline the reasons she believed that the UN should reject Ahmadinejad’s legitimacy at the assembly.

Her opponent was apparently riled by her statement and issued one of his own, saying that he has a much clearer and better plan for Israel.

“Carolyn Maloney is emboldening Iran and sending conflicting messages to the international community,” Wight said in a statement. “Instead of insisting that the U.S. stand by our policy of not allowing a nuclear Iran, Maloney conceded that it is only a matter of time.”

CONTRACTOR NAMED FOR MARINE TRANSFER STATION
The Department of Design and Construction awarded a contract to rebuild the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station, a project the city continues to move forward with even as residents and lawsuits attempt to throw up delays and roadblocks. The DDC announced that it will give the $181,640,000 contract to a joint venture between construction companies Skanska and Trevcon. A spokesperson reiterated that this is the first step in a process to retain final approval for the contract. It must be approved by the Office of Management and Budget and then move to the Comptroller’s office to be registered.

Meanwhile, local groups are keeping up the fight. On Thursday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m., the East Side Democratic Club is hosting a meeting at Brown Gardens Community Room, 225 E. 93rd St., with Assembly Member Micah Kellner and attorney Albert Butzel to inform residents about the lawsuit Kellner has brought against the MTS plan. For more information, call 212-861-2014 or email esdemclub@gmail.com.

GARODNICK PROPOSES SICK LEAVE COMPROMISE
Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer has been pushing to pass the paid sick leave bill that she authored, but has been thwarted thus far by Speaker Christine Quinn’s refusal to bring the bill to a vote. Mayor Bloomberg has made it clear that he would veto it, citing a negative effect on small businesses.

But now a new version may make its way to the floor of the council and could win over critics. Council Member Dan Garodnick proposed four amendments to the bill that so far have been well received, as the New York Times reported last week.

The biggest change would be to lower the number of paid sick days required for businesses with 20 or more employees. Currently, the bill requires businesses with more than five employees to provide five paid sick days annually, and businesses with 20 or more employees to provide nine paid sick days. Garodnick’s amendment to “remove the cliff” and simply require all businesses with over five employees to give five days quells small businesses’ concerns that the higher number would keep businesses from hiring more workers to avoid bumping up to nine days.

Garodnick also proposed exempting seasonal employees, allowing employees in the service sector to swap shifts if they’re sick without having to utilize a paid sick day, and limiting the time in which an employee could sue for paid sick leave benefits.

Fairway responded by calling the incident “unconscionable” and launching a rodent investigation along with renovations that the store says are costing them thousands of dollars. Management has suggested that the nearby construction is the source of the rat problem. Upper West Side shoppers may have some sympathy for Fairway, as residents have been dealing with an influx of the furry pests throughout the neighborhood.

LOCAL PARENT GRILLS ROMNEY
Upper West Side parent and vocal public education advocate Noah Gotbaum attended an Education Nation forum with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last week and was one of the few audience members able to ask him a question about his education policy ideas. After asking Romney about choice in public schools, Gotbaum said, “The parents here support the union to protect our kids three-to-one over the mayor and the chancellor. That’s a recent poll. So, to say that the unions are holding back our kids, as a parent and as parents in polls said, it’s the opposite.”

Gotbaum was citing a Quinnipiac poll released in February. The poll asked New Yorkers whether Mayor Bloomberg or the teachers’ union could be trusted more to protect the interests of public school students. Sixty-nine percent of respondents who have children in public school chose the teachers’ union, versus 22 percent who picked Blooomberg.
But Romney wasn’t interested in the poll numbers, apparently, and told Gotbaum, “I don’t believe it for a minute,” suggesting that the poll numbers could be manipulated.
“Having looked at schools, I know that the teachers’ union has a responsibility to care for the interests of the teachers,” Romney continued.

Gotbaum said in an email after the event that he felt Romney’s attitude was indicative of the bigger problems in public education.

“Romney’s dismissal of parents’ views and inability to handle the truth reflects the much larger problem in which education policy in this country is made largely by a small group of businessmen and corporate-backed elected officials and foundations who mostly send their kids to private schools yet brook no dissent whatsoever from public school parents, teachers, principals, students and educators who live in the system,” Gotbaum wrote.
GARODNICK PROPOSES SICK LEAVE COMPROMISE
Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer has been pushing to pass the paid sick leave bill that she authored, but has been thwarted thus far by Speaker Christine Quinn’s refusal to bring the bill to a vote. Mayor Bloomberg has made it clear that he would veto it, citing a negative effect on small businesses. But now a new version may make its way to the floor of the council and could win over critics. Council Member Dan Garodnick proposed four amendments to the bill that so far have been well received, as the New York Times reported last week.

The biggest change would be to lower the number of paid sick days required for businesses with 20 or more employees. Currently, the bill requires businesses with more than five employees to provide five paid sick days annually, and businesses with 20 or more employees to provide nine paid sick days. Garodnick’s amendment to “remove the cliff” and simply require all businesses with over five employees to give five days quells small businesses’ concerns that the higher number would keep businesses from hiring more workers to avoid bumping up to nine days. Garodnick also proposed exempting seasonal employees, allowing employees in the service sector to swap shifts if they’re sick without having to utilize a paid sick day, and limit the time in which an employee could sue for paid sick leave benefits.

As kids prepare to go back to school, classroom crowding and the fight for more schools continues

As students back their backpacks and get ready for the school year that will kick off next week, parents and education advocates are gearing up to fight the continuing battle for quality public school education on the Upper East Side.

While the neighborhood, part of Community Education Council District 2, enjoys many top-notch public schools, overcrowding and budget tightening are constantly threatening the balance.

The biggest concern in the district is over the lack of school space for future classes.

“I think the questions of overcrowding continue to predominate on the Upper East Side, and that’s what we’re hearing most from parents,” said Council Member Dan Garodnick. “The inclusion of new school spaces will certainly help, but it does not eliminate the challenges that we have today.”

The district recently won a long-fought battle in gaining a new elementary school at the Our Lady of Good Counsel building on East 91st Street. Over the summer, DOE Chancellor Dennis Walcott joined U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Assembly Member Dan Quart at the official announcement of the DOE’s deal with the Catholic Archdiocese to lease the space for 15 years. The building had been the temporary home to P.S. 151, the Yorkville Community School, before it moved into its permanent location on East 88th Street, and then P.S. 51, which had relocated from Chelsea while its building was under construction. The DOE’s lease on the building had been set to expire this fall, and parents in the community pushed hard to renew the lease for a longer term. Now the building will be home to P.S. 527, helping alleviate some of the area’s elementary school crowding.

“School overcrowding remains a critical problem on the Upper East Side,” Quart said at the ceremony. “As enrollment rates continue to increase, it is crucial that school construction keep pace with this growth.” Quart had a real-life prop to back up his claim—his 5-year-old son, Sam, who will be attending the school as a kindergartener this fall—standing at the podium with him.

Shino Tanikawa, the president of the District 2 Community Education Council (CEC), said in a letter addressing this year’s upcoming challenges in the district that overcrowding continues to be a major concern.

“District 2 schools continue to be overcrowded even with new schools that have started in the last four years,” Tanikawa said. “This coming year, we will be rezoning the east side of Midtown for a new school located on First Avenue at 35th Street. Plans are under way for a new school in Chelsea and another in the Financial District and negotiations to acquire 75 Morton St. are ongoing.”

Most new school plans are for elementary schools, which is what the DOE says the district needs. Some parents and elected officials, however, say that the numbers don’t indicate the real picture of what the district needs, since it encompasses many different neighborhoods—the Upper East Side as well as most of Lower Manhattan.

Assembly Member Micah Kellner has been leading the charge to ask the DOE for a new middle school, petitioning local parents to get on board. He said that many parents with middle school-aged kids feel that they face a choice between private school and moving out to the suburbs instead of relying on public middle schools.

“I wish the DOE would stop playing games with middle school numbers and admit we need another middle school on the Upper East Side,” Kellner said.

Community Board 8’s Youth and Education Committee has also been pushing for a middle school, specifically that the building that houses P.S. 158, which will soon have space for another school, will use that space for a middle school.

“We’re ever watchful about what’s happening with P.S. 158 that it becomes a middle school. All the electeds have spoken out that they don’t want it to be a charter school,” said Judy Schneider, co-chair of the committee.

“In September the DOE is expected to release Educational Impact Statements for co-location [of charter schools],” said Tanikawa. “While it seems the elementary and middle schools in District 2 are spared from co-location, we still need to voice our concern for having elementary students with high school students in the same building, and for potential overcrowding that could result from co-location.”
One small victory that parents around the city are celebrating is the reinstatement of a program that was recently cut—Wellness in the Schools, which pairs professional chefs with public school cafeterias to create healthy, scratch-made menus for the kids. Earlier this week, DOE officials said that they would have to cut the program to ensure that all schools would be able to meet more stringent federal school lunch regulations or risk losing federal money. Thanks to an immediate outcry from parents and elected officials, including Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the DOE announced that it would keep the program and work with the schools and chefs on keeping the menus within guidelines.

By Paul Bisceglio

“When you see banners that say ‘luxury housing,’ you know something has gone wrong.”

City Council member Dan Garodnick delivered this message in a news conference last week to a crowd of tenants in front of Independence Plaza North (IPN), a three-tower apartment complex along Greenwich Street in Tribeca. Garodnick was one of several city officials gathered to confirm their support of the tenants’ struggle to keep rents stabilized at the plaza, which was built as affordable housing in 1973 but now is leasing one- and two-bedroom apartments for up to $4,500 and $6,500 per month.

“We want the people who have made this neighborhood great to be able to stay in this neighborhood,” Council Speaker Christine Quinn told the crowd.

The long-term tenants cheered in agreement. After decades of petitioning for paved streets, traffic lights and schools in a neighborhood once full of empty factories, these residents say they ended up with a community so vibrant and popular that they can no longer afford to live in it.

The officials—who also included Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, state Sen. Daniel Squadron, Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, former Community Board 1 Chair Julie Menin and others—announced their filing of three amicus briefs (unsolicited court documents) to convince the state’s Court of Appeals to consider the request by the Independence Plaza North Tenants’ Association (IPNTA) to return the complex’s 1,349 units to rent stabilization.

The Tenants’ Association has battled the complex’s landlord, Laurence Gluck of Stellar Management, for years. Gluck removed the buildings from the state-subsidizing housing initiative Mitchell-Lama in 2004 to pursue market rates for some apartments, but received tax breaks from the Department of Finance’s J-51 affordable housing program for two more years. He eventually repaid the amount he received in tax cuts plus interest, but the tenants argued that he could not forsake their rents’ stability after he had received benefits to secure them.

A lower-court judge ruled in the tenants’ favor in 2010, but the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division reversed the decision last May on the grounds that Gluck actually should not have received J-51 tax breaks in the first place. The benefits were “merely the erroneous result of the [Department of Finance’s] failure to adjust IPN’s tax liability,” the judges said. “That error did not create rent stabilized status for a development that was not otherwise subject to the rent stabilization law.”

IPN’s tenants and the politicians supporting them see a dangerous precedent in this reversal. “By essentially making rent regulation optional for J-51 landlords,” said a conference press release, “[the court’s decision] may jeopardize the tens of thousands of New York City residents living in post-1973 buildings that receive J-51 benefits and are currently in any temporary, income-based program.”

Stephen B. Meister, a lawyer for the plaza, though, argues that this worry is unfounded. “The Appellate Division correctly held that IPN became ineligible for J-51 benefits upon exiting the Mitchell-Lama program, and therefore never became rent stabilized,” he told DNAinfo in a recent article.

If the Court of Appeals agrees to consider the tenants’ case, it would be their last chance to change the ruling. While some tenants will be affected differently than others if they fail, because some pay market rates while others’ rents remain protected, all would benefit from stabilized rents, argued the tenants’ lawyer Seth Miller at the conference.

IPNTA President Diane Lapson, a longtime resident of the complex, encouraged her fellow residents to be strong. “We built Tribeca. And we’re still building Tribeca,” she said. “Every great story has a great struggle.”

She said in an interview, “We made the neighborhood so great that other people wanted to move in, but now IPN is the diversity of Tribeca. Without it, this would be white-bread land. Without it, young people no longer have a choice of where to live [in the city] like I did.”

Community Board 6 Chair Mark Thompson said that while the board hasn’t taken an official position on the rezoning proposal, they are generally supportive of it. The biggest problem, he said, is that the city wants to plow ahead with the plan before allowing adequate time to answer the community’s questions and figure out how a potential business boom in Midtown would affect other city systems. Thompson said the board is concerned that the city isn’t giving enough consideration to ancillary factors like sidewalk crowding, an influx of subway and bus passengers and the impact on the electric grid and sewer systems that would come along with a rapid upward expansion of Midtown office buildings.

The board will be sending a letter to City Council Member Dan Garodnick requesting a meeting and his assistance in getting the DCP to steady the pace as they continue, and is working in conjunction with Community Board 5, which shares their concerns.

Renewed Calls for Pedicab Restrictions
Upper East Side Council Member Dan Garodnick, chair of the consumer affairs committee, has consistently called for stricter regulations of the pedicab industry, citing the high number of complaints that his committee has received from customers who feel they were ripped off. The New York Post reported earlier this week that one visiting family from Texas was charged over $400 for a 10-block ride in Midtown recently—and that the charge was completely legal. Garodnick introduced a package of bills last year that passed the Council and now require pedicab drivers to clearly post their rates someone in their cab, but the city doesn’t place any restrictions on how much pedicabs can charge, and some are getting around the rule by posting their rates in tiny lettering and not directing their passengers’ attention to it. Now Garodnick, along with many in the pedicab industry who don’t want their profession given a bad name, are calling for additional laws that will require drivers to state the charges clearly at the beginning of a ride, instead of springing a huge bill on riders when they reach their destination.

Summer Streets on the East Side
If you’ve always dreamed of zip-lining through the streets of Manhattan, your dreams may soon be fulfilled. The Department of Transportation will continue the fifth annual Summer Streets program for the next two Saturdays, Aug. 11 and 18, on the East Side, closing down Park Avenue from Foley Square downtown all the way up to East 72nd Street from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cars will vanish and the avenue will be free to roam on foot, bike, scooter, rollerblades or hoverboard, with activities like the zip-line, a rock climbing wall and a picnic food stand area from Whole Foods at various rest stops along the way. There will also be interactive art projects and a fire hydrant sprinkler, perfect for parched kids. Complete info at nyc.gov/summerstreets.

A Comic Consolidation
The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) announced this week that it will be consolidating its collections with that of the Society of Illustrators, located at 128 E. 63rd St. The two art institutions will merge their assets and become a single institution dedicated to celebrating illustration, comics and animation. The Society will continue to host the MoCCA Fest, an annual independent comics festival, and will dedicate one of their galleries to MoCCA’s permanent collection and draw from the collection for curated shows.
“The Society of Illustrators has a long, proud history of promoting the art and appreciation of all genres of illustration,” said Executive Director Anelle Miller in a statement. “We are honored to be able to spearhead the expansion and growth of the incredible foundation that MoCCA has created over the past 10 years.”

East Siders’ Ideas to Boost Second Ave.
While the businesses on Second Avenue near the subway construction have suffered in the past years, with foot traffic down by 30 percent in some spots, local residents say that they try their best to support those businesses and have ideas of how they can do even better, according to a survey conducted by Council Member Jessica Lappin’s office. Out of the 990 people who responded to the survey, 78 percent said that they shop in stores or dine in restaurants along Second Avenue. An overwhelmingly number—86 percent—also said that they’d be inclined to spend on the Avenue more frequently if merchants offered coupons or deals.

“Businesses have been hit hard by Second Avenue construction, so it’s wonderful that East Siders are supporting them,” Lappin said in a statement. “This survey also makes it clear that shoppers are looking for bargains. In this economy, who isn’t? So, going forward, this is something we can work on with Second Avenue merchants.”

The survey also found the best thing the MTA can do to help people who live around the Second Avenue construction is to provide better information for the community about what’s going on. Survey respondents chose that option 40 percent of the time, more than keeping the work spaces cleaner and being less noisy.

C Tops the List as the Worst Line in the City
Have a favorite subway line? So does the New York Public Interest Research Group, whose Straphangers Campaign released its annual State of the Subway report last week.

The Q line came out on top, with major points for a low breakdown rate, regular service, seat availability and cleanliness. Apparently, this line also has the best announcements in the system. It ranked relatively low, though, on the actual amount of scheduled service.
Probably to few New Yorkers’ surprise, the C line came in last. For the fourth year in a row, its notorious grimy cars, frequent breakdowns and infrequent appearances kept it at the bottom. It ranked second to last on in-car announcements.