The midtown district is undergoing a rezoning to accommodate a new zoned school, PS 281, which is currently being built on East 35th Street. The school will hold K-5 students only, to make way for an influx of kindergarten students, and will eventually reach enrollment of between 580 to 610 students, according to DOE projections. The school is slated to open next fall.

The proposed zone lines take a sizeable chunk out of the current zone for PS 116, the Mary Lindley Murray School, which now enrolls students who live east of Fifth Avenue between East 25th and East 43rd streets. The new zone line for PS 281 runs up Second Avenue, splitting that zone in two parts, while also taking small pieces from PS 40, the Augustus Saint-Gaudens School, in the south and PS 59, Beekman Hill International, in the north. The zone for PS 267, a new school that currently only has kindergarten, first and second grade but will grow to fifth grade, will expand by several blocks to the south while the other affected zones shrink.

The changes have left some PS 267 parents saying that their under-enrolled school’s zoning hasn’t expanded enough, while parents at the other schools have expressed concern that their zones have shrunk too much.

“Our zone being too small will absolutely create funding issues,” said Jane Thompson, co-chair of PS 116’s PTA, at a recent District 2 Community Education Council meeting to discuss the proposed zoning. “We won’t be able to provide programs our families are used to receiving.”

Other parents expressed similar concerns—that their schools will receive less of the per-child allotted funding from the DOE when their enrollment decreases. The DOE maintains that they have accounted for shifts in the populations of the neighborhood and that no schools will face under-enrollment. Not all the parents were buying this argument, however.
“The zoning is flawed, and the data is unclear,” said Michael Kaushansky, a father of two small children in the neighborhood. “All the zones are actually horizontally zoned except for PS 281. There are a lot of questions with the data, and there are a lot of questions with the methodology.”

Another frustrated parent said that he and his wife scrimped and saved to afford an apartment in the PS 40 school zone so that their kids could attend the well-regarded school. Now, despite not upgrading their cellphones or taking a vacation in years to achieve that goal, the couple will be forced to send their kid to a new school if the zoning changes are approved. Others echoed the call for more advance notice in changing zones, but the CEC asserted that they can’t do anything but react to population changes.

“It’s virtually impossible to do the rezoning a year and a half ahead of time,” said Michael Markowitz, who has been on the CEC for six years and has dealt with many rezoning processes in that time. “The population of kids is going up faster than we can build our way out of it.”

The Office of Portfolio Management, within the DOE, creates the zoning proposals, and based the latest updates on the current overcrowding at popular East Side schools, especially PS 116. The DOE also contends that the rezoning will allow principals more flexibility in their programming and give schools smaller average class sizes, at least in the short term.

The new zoning, if approved by the CEC, would take effect for the 2013-14 academic year. Those who still wish to provide feedback to the CEC on the proposal can email comments to d2zoning@gmail.com.

LES Residents Sue City Over Carrying Charges
Masaryk Towers, a Lower East Side co-op, offer hundreds of New Yorkers affordable housing in its six high-rises. All of its residents are low- to middle-income, and almost half of them are senior citizens. So it came as a shock to many when the New York City Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) raised the building’s carrying charges by 11 percent in March 2011, and then 15 months later by an additional 18 percent. New York housing law states that there must be a two-year gap between increases in carrying charges.

According to the Urban Justice Center, nearly 200 residents have now filed a suit against the HPD, saying that not only was the hike illegal, but it occurred without notifying residents or allowing them to partake in a public hearing, to which they have a legal right.

“Masaryk Towers is supposed to be affordable housing. If HPD won’t follow its own laws, what protections do residents have against arbitrary increases?” resident Maria Muentes said in a statement. Under the announced hikes, shareholders of two-bedroom apartments will have to pay $150 more a month, on top of last year’s 11 percent increase.
Attorneys from the Urban Justice Center’s Community Development Project filed the suit last week in the Manhattan Supreme Court, aided by housing advocates from the Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES). GOLES is a local housing and preservation organization founded in 1977. Members of the Community Development Project (CDP) have come out strongly in defense of the residents.

“The Mitchell-Lama corporation flagrantly violated the city’s rules that are supposed to protect certain due process rights,” said Shafaq Islam, a member of the CDP. Shareholders explained in a statement that such hikes were particularly unwelcome amid a recession.

Report on MTA Shows Tough Fare Hikes Planned
The New York State comptroller released a report last week showing that while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s finances are in better shape than they were two years ago, there’s still a long way to go; unfortunately, the MTA’s prospective path to fiscal sustainability will include more fare hikes. In 2010, fares went up by 7.5 percent. The report announced that over the next three years, fares are expected to increase by 14 percent. That means MetroCard prices will reportedly rise at three times the rate of inflation.

The first increase is planned for March of next year, and is expected to bring in an additional $450 million a year. But just to keep the transit system in safe condition, the MTA will need to raise an estimated minimum of $20 billion between 2015 and 2019, the report detailed.

The transit authority will also be cutting expenses by charging one dollar for each new MetroCard, which they hope will be an incentive to refill used cards and waste less material. While the report suggests that the MTA’s budget may require such hikes, it seems many New Yorkers will soon be tightening their own wallets to adapt to the higher costs.

City Celebrates Warship
On Saturday, Oct. 6, the USS Michael Murphy became the Navy’s newest commissioned warship, and the occasion was marked with a week of celebrations including parachute jumps over the Hudson River, cannon salutes at Pier 88 and bell ringing at the New York Stock Exchange.

According to the commissioning committee’s website, the festivities bring the ship to life and mark the entrance of a new man-of-war into the nation’s naval forces.

The name of the warship honors a Navy SEAL who died in 2005 while serving in Afghanistan. Murphy, the first winner of the Medal of Honor for the war in Afghanistan, was shot while trying to transmit a call for help. The crew of the newly launched guided missile destroyer paid respects on Oct. 2 by visiting commemorative sites in Smithtown, Murphy’s hometown.

Murphy is also honored with the name of a park and post office on Long Island, a combat training pool in Newport and a veterans’ plaza at Penn State University, his alma mater.

Redistricting Could Divide Minority Communities
By Nick Powell for City and State
A controversial proposal to redraw New York City Council district lines could violate the city charter and split African-American and Latino communities, critics say.

Community Voices Heard—an organization that advocates for low-income New Yorkers—warned that the proposed redistricting map would create smaller council districts in the Bronx and Queens in favor of larger ones in Manhattan and possibly disenfranchise some voting blocs, such as East Harlem. Under the proposal, East Harlem would be divided roughly in half, with part of it falling in Council District 8, and part in Council District 9.

“When you look at communities of interest and keeping the Latino vote together and the African-American vote together, it seems like the Latino vote here, while on paper it would hit the 50 percent-plus-one mark that meets the Department of Justice standards, it would break up the community in East Harlem,” the organization said in a statement.
Hearings will be held all month, allowing the public to comment on the proposed changes, followed by an up-or-down vote by the City Council in November. If approved, the maps will first be used in the 2013 citywide elections, when many council seats will be up for grabs because of term limits.

“Only a nonpartisan solution accurately reflects the voting publc,” – Liz Krueger

by Liz Krueger

Liz Krueger, (D) Senator, NY

Two years ago, I committed to vote against any redistricting plan unless it was developed through a nonpartisan redistricting process. I stand by that commitment, and not just because our current process is flawed. Not surprisingly, both houses’ majority parties are pushing their own partisan plans, despite the fact that every Republican senator and a majority of Assembly members made the same pledge I made: to vote against partisan redistricting and support real reform. It is now up to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to veto the plan and allow a federal court to draw districts without the interference of self-interested legislators.
Some have argued that instead of sending the matter to the courts, Cuomo should allow a bad map this year in exchange for the promise of a better redistricting process in 2022. Unfortunately, this can’t work. Albany leaders have already welched on promises of reform—as the New York Times asked, “How can we trust this gang?”
Even if we could be guaranteed a better system a decade from now—which I believe is hardly certain—a decade is a long, long time to wait for reform. And make no mistake, the lines Albany’s partisan leaders have drawn are bad. They are designed for one purpose: benefiting the majority parties in each house at the expense of equal voting rights and rational representation for communities and neighborhoods.
The proposed state Senate lines are particularly egregious, but that’s to be expected; it is much harder to draw lines that protect Republican senators in New York because our state has been trending Democratic for years. To protect their vulnerable majority, the Senate Republicans’ proposal gives New York City one less district than the census figures warrant and adds an additional 63rd District upstate. They manage this—in spite of the fact that the state’s population has shifted downstate over the last 10 years—by once again putting many more people in New York City and Long Island districts than in upstate districts.
In addition, the plan once again creates Senate districts that systematically split the African-American and Latino communities on Long Island, despite dramatic growth in these communities over the last 10 years. Dividing, or “cracking,” these communities into multiple districts is a tactic clearly aimed at protecting the nine Republican incumbents who represent Long Island in the Senate.
The argument for accepting these maps is that we will fix the problem in the future. But the proposed constitutional amendment is simply too weak to work. The amendment would set up a commission appointed by politicians whose work could be edited or even rejected by the legislature. Even worse, the commission would be susceptible to deadlock and political pressure.
Furthermore, we would be accepting these bad lines on a promise, since the constitutional amendment would have to pass the legislature again next year before the voters could consider it. Since so many legislators have broken their promises on this subject already, I don’t understand why we are so sure they will keep their promise and vote for an amendment again next year, when the pressure is off.
Compare the Legislature’s political machinations, last-minute announcements and strategic heel-dragging to the work of magistrate judge Roanne Mann, the special master already overseeing our congressional redistricting after the Legislature failed to develop congressional lines in time to prepare for a June congressional primary. Judge Mann has announced clear deadlines, has openly named the experts she will be consulting and has articulated legitimate, explicit criteria for the maps she will produce. She has set a standard for what New Yorkers should expect in redistricting, a standard the Legislature has refused to meet.
Newsday’s editorial board stated it perfectly: “New York could still get fair political boundaries this year, but for it to happen, the special master, the judges and Cuomo are going to have to stand tall and make the difficult, proper decisions.”

Liz Krueger is a State senator who represents the Upper East Side.

A memo being circulated by Todd Breitbart, a Democratic redistricting attorney expert who has worked closely with the Senate Democrats, states that the proposed redistricting constitutional amendment released late last night would bring back prison-based gerrymandering.

In 2010, the practice, which had counted prison inmates in the largely upstate communities where they were held, rather than in the downstate communities where many of those inmates hailed from, was ended through legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate. The Senate Republicans, who have since regained the majority, sued to overturn the law, but eventually dropped the litigation.

But Breitbart says the constitutional amendment, as proposed, would get rid of the 2010 law abolishing prison-based gerrymandering:

The amendment would reverse the one significant reform of New York legislative redistricting since the one-person-one-vote decisions of the 1960’s – the end of prison-based gerrymandering.

The reform enacted [in] 2010 specifically requires LATFOR to create a database in which inmates of state and federal prisons have been subtracted from their places of incarceration, and reallocated insofar as possible to their prior home addresses. LATFOR is further required to use the adjusted database in recommending Senate and Assembly districts to the Legislature.

The prisoner subtraction-and-reallocation law is in the Legislative Law, Section 83-m, Subsection 13, which would be completely superseded by the proposed amendment. The amendment abolishes LATFOR, but does not impose the prisoner subtraction-and-reallocation rule upon the new commission or the Legislature. It thus repeals the rule, and brings back prison-based gerrymandering.

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