The recent news of the DOE’s decision to drop the proposal to move IDP is a victory not only for all four high schools co-located in the campus, but for all public schools in the city.
In my experience as an involved parent, PTA president and previous member of the Community Education Council, I have seen the DOE at many times make decisions on rezoning, co-location, moving and closing schools without the support of the community. I am thrilled that this time we were able to join together, raise our voices and say “NO MORE!”

I appreciate that many of us spent endless hours in our efforts to keep IDP “home.” We have spent valuable time needlessly, much of it parent volunteer time. It is time we would rather have spent bettering our schools and communities. More importantly, I hope the DOE realizes that we don’t want to do it again.
— Robin Klueber President, Frank McCourt High School PTA

Only Adopt
I was pleased with much of Cori Menkin’s story educating readers regarding pet shops and their relationship to commercial breeding facilities known as puppy mills [“Don’t Be Fooled By Deceptive Puppy Mills,” Jan. 17], but I do have one major point of contention: Menkin writes of making adoption the “first option” when looking for a companion animal. I say it should be the first, second, third and only option.

There is no reason to purchase an animal via pet shop, over the Internet or from those whom Menkin labels “responsible breeders.”

For the thousands of animals living and dying every year in shelters and breed-specific rescue groups, I suggest that “responsible breeders” put a temporary halt to their puppy/money-making operations, and, instead, lead all potential customers to the many shelter animals already looking for homes.

Menkin, an ASPCA employee, understandably mentions only the ASPCA facilities, but there are many other shelters and small rescues to visit, including Animal Care & Control at 326 E. 110th St., where you will save a life and a great deal of money.
—  Mickey Kramer, President and founder of Iadoptedmypet.com

Saving the Horses
Many people want to see the horse carriage trade come to an end in NYC, and with the looming mayoral election, now is the time to get serious and support legislation that could make it happen. We started this campaign in 2006, and all online polls done since that time show between 75 and 80 percent of respondents favoring a ban of this trade.

Most people who support a ban just want to see the horses off the street and have not analyzed the electric car bill—Intro 86A. But the money does not exist for these cars. I know, because I have analyzed the bill and the financials behind it. It will cost $4,000,000 the first year to put 23 cars on the road to substitute for 23 horses. The overall cost will be close to $12,000,000. Politicians, who may not realize the funding does not exist, have said that they will leave it up to the tourists to decide which they like better—the cars or a carriage ride. This is not what anyone who supports getting the horses off the street wants. How much longer are politicians going to look the other way and try to shift responsibility for doing the right thing? Are they waiting for a human death to occur as it has in other parts of the country?

Besides, a ban of this business should not be dependent on the success of an untried business.
Continued support for this Emperor’s New Clothes bill is hurting the legislation that actually would make a difference: New York State Senate Bill S667 and Assembly Bill A997, sponsored by Sen. Tony Avella and Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, respectively.

These bills are are not glamorous and not surrounded by celebrities but nevertheless have a better chance of passing and becoming law if legislators have the courage to support them.
It is time! Horses do not belong on congested city streets. There have been too many accidents to mention here, and many continue to go unreported.

Please get involved and visit us at www.banhdc.org.
—  Elizabeth Forel, Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages

CORRECTION: In last week’s cover story about the Westside Rifle & Pistol Range, the weapon cocked by Howard Kwok’s rifle class was a rifle not a shotgun, as stated.

Fast-forward to today, and you can see how MTA public transportation is still one of the best bargains in town.
—Larry Penner

DEFYING COMMON SENSE
To the Editor:
It defies common sense that any municipality would place a transfer station of this scope in a densely populated residential neighborhood. The number of garbage trucks alone will overwhelm the narrow streets. No other facility of this kind is anywhere near a New York City neighborhood, especially one with so many children and schools. This area of Yorkville is a beautiful, quiet corner of the city with Carl Schurz Park and Gracie Mansion only a few blocks away. Has the mayor or Christine Quinn ever really spent any time here? The existing facility has been closed for years because of its negative impact on the community. No amount of modernization can deflect its impact. I feel that the community is actually being victimized because there are no powerful development interests here. Can you imagine the mayor trying to place this facility in the “hot” Tribeca area or near the new West Side developments? In addition, trying to paint this neighborhood as part of the elite Upper East Side is disingenuous. This is a working-class Manhattan neighborhood. Not that it matters. This does not belong near anyone’s home or school. Everyone needs to continue to remind our mayor that this facility is unacceptable, and to remind Quinn that we vote.
—Sharon Wolf Horowitz

I pay a lot of money to live on the Upper East Side, and between the fruit carts, halal food stands and the peddlers of junk on 86th Street, I’m starting to think that this city is turning into something that is less chic and metropolitan and more Third World. Think about it: We already have something that resembles rickshaws on Fifth Avenue (pedicab, anyone?).

We’re more concerned with being politically correct than keeping our city as beautiful as it was during the days of the Giuliani administration. Oh well, I guess somewhere along the way, people stopped caring.

—Concerned UES Citizen

Rose Garden Strategy
Too many incumbent elected officials on the federal, state and city level follow the infamous Rose Garden strategy of ignoring their respective challengers—by refusing to participate in any public debates until the last minute. They end up agreeing to one or two, knowing full well that their election is preordained.

In the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, both Democratic and Republican primary candidates participated in numerous television and newspaper editorial board debates. Voters could look beyond the 30- or 60-second TV commercial sound bites to learn about real views and issues among the candidates.

Those candidates who refused to participate in these debates would be subject to critical newspaper editorials. They ended up losing any chance of newspaper endorsements and usually went down to defeat in either the primary or general election.

In the 1980s, a new Rose Garden strategy emerged. Incumbents or officially designated incumbent candidates of both parties refused to debate lesser-known, under-funded opponents in either the primary or general election.

Let us hope that enlightened newspapers such as Our Town call for an end of incumbents and officially designated organization candidates’ use of the Rose Garden strategy in future elections. Intelligent voters deserve frequent debates prior to both the primary and general election as opposed to canned TV commercials.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has been following the Rose Garden strategy of ignoring her conservative challenger Wendy Long. Candidates who refuse to participate in debates should be subject to critical newspaper editorials. They should forfeit any chance of endorsements by media outlets.

—Larry Penner

I do not know where John Jeannopoulos got the idea that Sugar and Plumm was “granted a sidewalk café permit prior to opening” (Letter, Sept. 27). As a member of the Business and Consumer Issues Committee of Community Board 7, I can assure him no such thing occurred.

The only “permit” considered, and approved, by the committee was Sugar and Plumm’s application for a liquor license. In fact, not only did the BCI Committee not pre-approve a sidewalk café for Sugar and Plumm (which it could not do anyway, since no formal plans for it have been submitted to CB7), but quite the opposite: At the public meeting at which the liquor license was approved, the co-chairs merely asked the applicant if they were planning on eventually coming back for a sidewalk café permit. And when the applicant responded in the affirmative, the co-chairs of the committee—acutely aware of the uniquely lengthy frontage of the establishment, and thus the potential for a truly huge sidewalk café—specifically requested that Sugar and Plumm not seek a permit for the entire length of the frontage, but for only a portion thereof, and the applicant agreed.
Mr. Jeannopoulos is equally incorrect in his suggestion that CB7, or committees thereof, make decisions without community input. Indeed, he is well aware that all board and committee business is done at open public meetings, the schedule for which can be found at CB7’s website.

As a longtime Upper West Sider who has interacted regularly with CB7 for over 30 years, including being a member of the board at various times, I can assure Mr. Jeannopoulos that CB7 takes its commitment to the community very seriously on all issues—from land use and zoning to transportation, from parks and libraries to health and human services, and from preservation to sidewalk cafés.

—Ian Alterman
Upper West Side

Housing Shortage?
To the Editor:
For no other reason than on general principle, landlords should be taxed until they bleed white—with corollary incentives of tax reductions if they decrease rents. Concomitantly, all rentals under $3,000 per month should be re-regulated: absolutely no increases across the board for five years. By this mechanism, tenants won’t have the tax increases passed onto them. Would this plan assuage the alleged housing stock deficit? Not sure, but it wouldn’t hurt it.
—Noir Diaz

Public Menace
To the Editor:
This woman is a menace (“Wild Woman of 77th Street”). I live on 83rd Street, and see her every morning while walking my dog, who she spits at every time. Lately, I see her coming and just bolt into the street, with seconds to spare before I get hit with one of her famous lugies. It’s disgusting, and I have extreme anxiety walking around my neighborhood. It isn’t fair. She is terrorizing everybody who crosses her path. I googled “spitting woman UES,” because I was having a hard time trying to explain this nut job to everyone. I’m very pleased to see that this is an issue of concern to fellow residents.
—Upper East Sider
Neighborhood Treasure
To the Editor:
Thank you for this article (“The Heidelberg’s Hail Mary”). I live very close by and had no idea that Heidelberg is in such dire straits. It is much loved—I will for sure be getting my Oktoberfest on there this season.
—Asakasan

Bad News Smiles
To the Editor:
Like Bette Dewing (“Olympian Principles for Everyday Life,” Aug. 2), I don’t buy smiling when hearts are breaking—including when you’re breaking them. If you don’t want to pick a fight, don’t deliver bad news with a smile. You might think you’re softening the blow, but the hearer might see your smile as meaning “I’m pleased to be displeasing you.”
—Alan R. Brown

Big Business Quality
To the Editor:
Regarding the column “Small Business Is Best, Except When It’s Not” (June 28), I have some comments.
This article is unfair to small businesses. Every problem Mr. Moore describes has happened to me in chain stores/large businesses as well as to many people that I know.
Duane Reade has more issues to complain about as far as customer service and quality. Barnes & Noble’s staff is known for a lack of knowledge about books.
Your paper needs to balance this article with the other side of the story.
—Name Withheld

A Manhattan Townhouse. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Life in a Box
To the Editor:
I was extremely disappointed to see Our Town (“Could You Live Here?” Aug. 9) not just reporting, but essentially hyping, the downgrade or waiver of current zoning regulation minimums for rental apartments from 400 to 300 square feet for “micro units,” even if such a policy is endorsed by a billionaire mayor who couldn’t be bothered to move out of the comfort of his townhouse for Gracie Mansion, by a Department of Housing and Development which has overseen the scandalous deregulation of hundreds of thousands of apartments with thousands of backlogged cases concerning pricing and habitation violations, as well as real estate brokers and agencies who wouldn’t mind putting tenants to live in refrigerators or coffins if that could be made to seem acceptable and marketable.

Rental regulation (of both amenities and cost) has undeniably proven to be the single best, if not the only, means of preserving affordable, livable housing for New York’s middle and working classes given a pampered, enormously wealthy, politically powerful and subsidized industry that knows no limits of greed in controlling what should be a human right. Instead of caving in to permit smaller units at even higher (unregulated) prices, the mayor, the DHCR and a responsible media should require and promote affordable housing to be built as a condition for any building permits, as well as universal regulation. This would serve the public’s interest instead of that of a voracious, corporate monopoly which currently and very profitably reaps all the benefits of loopholes, tax breaks and subsidies while selling or renting on the basis of a “free” market which they, in actuality, control.

The article demonstrates that tenants will resourcefully and desperately try to make the best out of anything, but in the marketing of such a necessity of life, responsible authorities should be protecting the public interest for the good of the city, not assisting an industry to fleece its inhabitants.

If Mr. Thompson, chair of Community Board 6, says, “There is simply too much demand and not enough supply,” the answer is not diminishing the product further but demanding more and better. His enthusiastic endorsement makes me rather wonder what space Mr. Thompson enjoys.

And one last point, would Our Town please refrain from the demeaning term “renters” for tenants currently being promoted by the landlord industry until you call them “mortgagers” which is, of course, what they do, thus giving them yet another write-off.

—Edward Maloney

To the Editor:

Kirsten Gillibrand is a political hack and opportunist if ever there was one. (“Why Kirsten Gillibrand Could Have It All,” July 26). She shamelessly scouts for headlines to jump on and take what her handlers advise are “populist” positions. An example is Gillibrand jumping on the “Miracle in the Hudson” incident to call for an all-out war on Canada geese that resulted in the roundup and destruction of 751 geese just a couple of weeks ago from the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge—a refuge-turned-slaughterhouse, thanks to the political ambitions of Gillibrand. She should be road out of town on her broomstick come November.

—Patty Adjamine

Double Standard 

To the Editor:

Reading “Brewer Intros New Bike Legislation” (July 26), I would like to commend Council Member Gale Brewer and Queens Councilman James Vacca for new legislation, but was disappointed that they can only see one side of this problem of lawbreaking bikers. Why only concentrate on commercial bikers? Whatever laws they break are also broken by other bikers who do the exact same things—going through red lights, against traffic and on the sidewalk, shaking up pedestrians, especially the elderly. Why are these other offenders exempt from punishment? Why the double standard?

—Bunny Abraham

To the Editor:
Re: “Not All Is Fair in Street Fairs, Some Say (May 10), one of the major fairs in CB8 was left out of the listing: The 37-year-old Manhattan Chamber of Commerce Second Avenue Community Benefit Festival on Sat. June 2 from noon to 5 p.m. on Third Avenue (due to Second Avenue Subway construction) from 66th to 86th Street.
In addition, the article talks minimally about the benefits to nonprofits and focuses on the costs to city, etc., of street fairs in general. Has anyone done an analysis of how much support the nonprofits in CB8 garner in critical funding from all the fairs? ESNA noted the financial support from their fair, but that is only one nonprofit that benefits.
The MCC Community Benefit Fund has contributed over $3 million in funding for 100+ nonprofits through our two street fairs over the past years, and nonprofits get free booths to let the community know about their initiatives, recruit volunteers and take donations for raffle tickets. And we pay 20 percent of our revenue to the city to underwrite the cost of our fairs.
With regard to closing down the streets for fairs where only the same sock and sausage vendors participate, it may not be the cup of tea for some but the vendors keep coming back, which means people in the community are buying from them!
Also, let’s discuss the cost of parades, which also cause traffic problems, congestion in CB8 and cost the city a great deal of money. How much do they pay the city to underwrite their costs? I think very little! And what is the actual cost to the city? I think a lot! That is a piece of the equation no one is discussing and is equally costly—if not more so—to the city.

—Nancy Ploeger
President, Manhattan Chamber
of Commerce

Impact by Example

To the Editor:
I was completely interested and absorbed in “An Unorthodox Rebellion,” (May 17) for many reasons. I am from a family of Conservative Jews, with quite a few extended family members practicing Orthodox Judaism. When I was out on my own, I withdrew from much lesser constraints than Deborah did. Over the years, I have slowly built a foundation of many different spiritual avenues that sustain me. I don’t know Deborah personally, but I am proud of her and happy for her. She has made a huge impact by example and by reaching out and helping others in similar situations. BRAVA!
—Lanie

Bicycles in a crowded, large city should never go fast (“Pedestrians, Bicyclists Need to Get Along,” Oct. 14). Is it a race, or is it recreation that takes place while others—young children, pedestrians, mothers with infants—are also enjoying the scene?
By the way, the mere fact pedestrians get into the bike lanes shows the utter senselessness of placing one in proximity to the other.

Nicholas Arena
Upper West Side