STRANGERS ASSAULT MAN ON STREET AFTER ARGUMENT
On Saturday, Jan. 26, a 34-year-old man reported that he was walking near East 82nd Street when four or five suspects bumped into him. After an exchange of words, the suspects circled him and started to beat him, causing lacerations to their victim’s eye. The man walked to the hospital himself, and called police. But he had left the hospital by the time the police arrived. The case has been closed, although no arrests have been made.

THIS IS A STICKUP!
On the afternoon of Jan. 28, an unknown man entered a bank on Third Avenue and walked up to the teller window. He pushed a note under the window that said, “Don’t be stupid, just give me $100s, $50s and $20s.” The bank teller gave $1,800 to the perpetrator, who then exited the bank, fleeing down 88th Street. Surveillance footage is available.

INTERNET HACKING CASE
A 31-year-old woman who lives on East 63rd Street reported that her bank account was accessed remotely on Jan. 25, and $8,000 was removed from her account. After calling her bank, investigators traced the account activity to the woman’s workplace address. The theft occurred sometime between Jan. 2 and Jan. 25. Chase knows the recipient of the money, but will not disclose it at this time. The woman closed all of her accounts. No arrests have been made.

MEN ARRESTED FOR CELLPHONE THEFT
A 33-year-old man reported that in the middle of the night on Jan. 25, he was walking down East 85th Street when two men approached him and asked for the time. The two unknown men walked away, then started to circle back. The man walked into a deli to avoid them, and after he exited, the two perpetrators confronted him. One said, “Don’t freak out.” Their victim tried to back away, but the assailants punched and kicked him. One of the men took away his victim’s iPhone. Both attackers were arrested for robbery.

INTOXICATED MAN BEATEN AND ROBBED OF PHONE
Late at night on Jan. 30, a 33-year-old man was returning home from a night of carousing. He was approached by two unknown men on East 79th Street and shoved to the ground, where they repeatedly kicked and punched him. The assailants then removed their victim’s phone from his pocket and fled the scene. There were no cameras on the street. The victim described his assailants as two white men: one, bearded and about 5’8”, wearing a dark hat, and the other about the same height and bald. The Blackberry phone, worth $250, has not been recovered.

Cool Wheels: Lillian Vernon hands over the keys to Citymeals-on-Wheels' first ever refrigerated truck to Citymeals Executive Director Beth Shapiro on July 11. The new $54,000 truck has been funded by the Lillian Vernon Foundation in commemoration of Vernon's birthday, a Citymeals-on-Wheels board member.

Mayor Koch Endorses Mark Thompson
Mark Thompson is doin’ great after receiving the endorsement of former Mayor Ed Koch in his bid for City Council. Thompson, currently the chair of Community Board 6, will by vying for a seat on the council in the East Side’s 4th District when Council Member Dan Garodnick runs for comptroller, as he is expected to do.

In a letter announcing his support, Koch said that Thompson’s experience will be especially beneficial to a Council and city government with many newbies in 2014. “We need to elect people who understand how the city runs and how to get things done. I know that by electing Mark, we will be putting the city in good hands, no matter what challenges we face,” said Koch. He also noted that Thompson “has worked successfully for new school seats, reclaiming of parkland and many other issues.”

Thompson was happy to receive the support, saying it would make his run for City Council an “incredibly strong race.”

“The mayor is a true New Yorker who knows what it takes to govern successfully. His support will give my campaign the powerful push it needs to get started in these early days of the race,” he said.

Thompson works as a consultant for government relations firm Capalino+Company, where he helps not-for profits, cultural institutions and private companies “navigate through red tape.” He worked in the former mayor’s administration in what was then the Department of General Services.

Parking Garage Accident
Two people were hospitalized Tuesday morning after a car plummeted down the elevator shaft of an Upper East Side parking garage.
A parking attendant at the East 76th Street and 1st Avenue garage reportedly drove the vehicle into the car elevator on the building’s fifth floor, but the elevator was not there, CBS reported. He and the car plunged five stories before hitting the ground.

At around 9:45 a.m., the fire department arrived on the scene at 355 E. 76th St., which houses a Hertz Rent-a-Car location, according to NY1. Firefighters rescued the driver, who was trapped inside the vehicle, as well as an individual who was in the elevator on the ground floor at the time of the accident.

Neighbors reported that there were at least 10 emergency vehicles on the scene, in addition to a helicopter hovering over the building. Fire and police officials closed off the sidewalk to passersby on both sides of the street.

The rescued driver and victim were transported to New York Presbyterian-Cornell Hospital to be treated for what were believed to be non-life-threatening injuries.

Department of Buildings records show that the garage faced a code violation in May 2009 for noncompliance related to maintaining elevator service equipment. The complaint was later resolved.

Lappin Gets Cash for New RI Library
City Council Member Jessica Lappin announced last Friday that she has secured over $4 million for Roosevelt Island-based projects and organizations in the 2013 fiscal year city budget. Two million dollars are allocated to move the existing Roosevelt Island Library, which has been plagued by book-damaging water leaks, to a new location at 504 Main St. Another $1.85 million is slated to fund the completion of the FDR Four Freedoms Memorial, and $150,000 is for the FDR Hope Memorial.

“Roosevelt Island is going through a spectacular transformation, and I’m proud to support the groups that have been there in the past and will continue to shape the island in the future,” Lappin said. “It’s especially exciting that this funding will help build a new home for the island’s public library.”

Anthony Marx, president of the New York Public Library, praised Lappin, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Borough President Scott Stringer for their support of the new library, which he said will double in size and offer more access to programming, computers, classes and other library services.

Delivery Bike Crackdown
Cyclists flouting the law found themselves the targets of several attacks from the city last week. On Thursday, City & State reported that Upper East Side Council Member Dan Garodnick and Queens Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer called for legislation to double traffic violation fines for those riding electronic-assisted bicycles, which are illegal in the city. Even though the City Council overrode a mayoral veto to ban electronic bikes in 2004, both Garodnick and Van Bramer said at a press conference in Queens that motorists are still dangerously riding electronic bikes on the sidewalk, against traffic and through red lights. Noting that he had seen an electronic-assisted bike just minutes before the press conference, Van Bramer said there was an “epidemic of reckless driving” in his district and across the city. By doubling the fines, Garodnick said the city could step up enforcement.

“Navigating our city streets is dangerous and difficult enough without the reckless actions of many cyclists who are riding illegal electric bikes today,” Garodnick said. “We need to empower our law enforcement officials to help crack down on this illegal activity.”
The legislation, introduced by Garodnick and co-sponsored by Van Bramer and seven other council members in June of last year, is awaiting a hearing by the Council’s transportation committee this fall. In February, Council Member Jessica Lappin introduced a separate bill to double the $500 fine for selling or operating an electronic-assisted bicycle.

The next day, Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan held a press conference to announce the DOT’s new education and enforcement program for delivery cyclists. The commissioner was joined by Council Members Gale Brewer, Lappin, Garodnick and Council Transportation Committee Chairman James Vacca, as well as some restaurant owners, to introduce the efforts and explain the program that will target first the Upper West and then the Upper East Side.

A special six-person unit of the DOT will go door to door to businesses and explain to employers the legal requirements and safety information for their delivery cyclists. After a six-month period, businesses who violate the laws will receive fines ranging from $100 to $300.

The program comes after the Upper East Side community has called repeatedly for holding businesses accountable for delivery cyclists’ reckless behavior.

“New Yorkers believe they have a constitutional right to great food delivered to their door while it’s still hot—and they’re right,” said Garodnick. “That cannot mean that we will compromise the safety of our streets in the process.”

The education portion of the program will give businesses brochures on safety and the law as well as ID cards their cyclists can fill out and keep on them. Employers will be required to provide upper body apparel with the name of their business clearly identified as well as safety equipment like lights, reflective gear and helmets.

“We need to put the brakes on dangerous delivery bicycles,” said Lappin. “Education and enforcement will make us all safer on our streets.”

Students study Hebrew at another location of the Hebrew Charter Network.

A neighborhood that went to battle to fiercely oppose the opening of one charter school in the recent past is now set to welcome another with open arms.

The Hebrew Charter School Center is preparing to open its newest school in Community Education District 3, which covers the Upper West Side as well as parts of West and Central Harlem. Last year, many Upper West Side parents and politicians, as well as the community board and the Community Education Council (CEC), fought to keep a branch of the Success Academy Charter Network from opening there, mostly based on the fact that the school was to be co-located with the Brandeis High School complex.

Despite the vehement objections of education activists and two lawsuits, the school opened last fall and received 515 applications from within the district for 74 seats for the 2012-2013 school year.

But the Hebrew Charter school has received stamps of approval from the CEC and the community board and received its charter from the New York State Board of Regents in June, clearing the way for it to open in the fall of 2013 somewhere in southern Harlem. It will be called Harlem Hebrew Language Academy.

Mark Diller, chair of Community Board 7, said that one of the most attractive parts of the school’s application to the board was that it was committed to finding its own privately owned space and would not be co-located with an existing public school.

“It truly net adds seats rather than reallocating them,” Diller said in an email. “[The school also] has both a commitment to and a track record (at its sister school in Brooklyn) of encouraging applications from and actually enrolling and serving children with a variety of special needs, as well as English language learners.”

Diller said that the presentation made to the board focused on the value of bilingual education; how it can help those struggling with English as well as create a “level playing field” as all of the students learn Hebrew for the first time.

That element, the dual-language immersion program, is the other thing that sets the future school apart from other educational options in the neighborhood. The school will teach secular Hebrew, which board member David Gedzelman said is one of the ways they can attract a very diverse student body.

“We try to create integrated schools,” Gedzelman said. “We try to position our schools in geographic areas where the district itself is diverse so that we can create diversity.”

Gedzelman points to their school in Brooklyn, which he said has about 45 percent minority students, as an example of the makeup they hope to have for District 3.

“Our model of a dual-language program with modern Israeli Hebrew [means] there’s one constituency that naturally seeks out the school”—Jewish families—“and that helps to diversify the school,” he said.

Gedzelman said they’ve been working with churches and community-based organizations in Harlem to get the word out about the school and convince families that it’s not just for Jewish kids.

“Hebrew has gone through a lot of evolution over the last 30 years,” Gedzelman said. “It’s a modern secular language. It’s the language of the state of Israel, which has 7 million citizens—25 percent of the population is actually not Jewish.”

He said that Israel’s growing tech sector, as well as Technion—Israel Institute of Technology’s partnership with Cornell University to build a giant tech campus on Roosevelt Island in the next few years, makes Hebrew an attractive second language for any young children. One of the teachers at their Brooklyn school, an African American and a Muslim, learned Hebrew himself in order to teach gym classes in two languages, Gedzelman said.

The teaching model at the school will be based on immersive language learning as well as constant individualized assessment of students to tailor their learning. There will also be an emphasis on community service. The school plans to open with three sections of kindergarten students, 26 in each class. Its charter is currently K-5, but Gedzelman said they hope to expand up to 8th grade when they renew their charter.

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.

Locals up in arms over appointment of nonresident to operating board

“I’ve lived here all my life and I no longer consider myself a New Yorker,” said Matthew Katz as he strolled along the East River on a recent sunny day. “I consider myself a Roosevelt Islander.”

Katz is the president of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA). He and his wife moved to the island from the Upper East Side in 1989, into a Mitchell-Lama housing development that offered a more affordable alternative to the pricey neighborhoods they left behind. The island is home to both affordable and luxury housing residents and boasts an impressively diverse community, thanks in part to its proximity to the United Nations. It’s accessible only by the Roosevelt Island Bridge, which connects to Long Island City in Queens, via a stop on the F train or by the iconic tram that zips over the river to and from Manhattan. On a beautiful day, the views of New York are unparalleled.

Matthew Katz, president of the RIRA. Photo by Andrew Schwartz.

What Katz describes “the feeling that, smack dab between Manhattan and Queens, the island is its own world” is a common sentiment among its approximately 13,000 residents. And they aren’t just thinking whimsically.

Roosevelt Island has always occupied an in-between space, both geographically and figuratively. In the 19th century it was called Blackwell’s Island and housed prisoners, mental patients and disease-ridden souls who were quarantined from the rest of the city’s population. The Gothic Revival-style Renwick Ruins, once a hospital for smallpox patients, now sit crumbling on the southern tip of the island. In the mid-20th century it was renamed Welfare Island and a few hospitals opened there, but by the ’60s it was largely unused and undeveloped.

Mayor John Lindsay convened a committee to figure out what to do with the place and the city ended up leasing the island to the state of New York for 99 years, pursuant to the state creating and executing a development plan. Now, while the area is politically a part of Manhattan, it is technically a state property. Day-to-day life on the island is controlled by a public benefit corporation called the Roosevelt Island Operating Committee (RIOC), which acts on behalf of the state. The president of RIOC is appointed by the governor, as is the nine-member board that oversees RIOC. In other words, the people who make the decisions about daily life on Roosevelt Island, from public safety (part of RIOC, since no NYPD precinct will report to the island) to garbage collection, parking and maintaining the seawall that holds everything up, are not elected by the people they represent.

“Things that would normally apply everywhere else in the city don’t [here], things like ULURP [Uniform Land Use Review Procedure], things that the City Council would have a say over,” said Assembly Member Micah Kellner, who represents the island. “None of these things apply on Roosevelt Island, and the community for a very long time felt that the corporation and the corporation’s board members weren’t accountable in any way.”

Residents remember the days not too long ago when the RIOC board consisted entirely of nonresidents.

“People were coming to the island once a month, sitting in a two-hour meeting and making decisions that would affect us for the rest of our lives. It’s not fair,” said Katz, who describes the majority of his job as RIRA’s president over the past 14 years as “convening meetings and convincing people to do things they don’t want to do.” The association holds public meetings and passes resolutions, but has no official power. “All RIRA has really is our credibility as the voice of the island and the ear of the island.”

For many years, the position of RIOC president, which is currently a $150,000-plus gig, as well as board positions, which are unpaid, went to pals of the governor and state legislators with no regard for whom the residents wanted to represent their interests. After a lot of pushback from the locals, the law was changed to require that five of the board members be residents of Roosevelt Island. On top of that, governors Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson both chose board members from groups of nominees presented to them as the winners of popular elections on the island. While it wasn’t a perfect democratic structure, it worked. Until Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed an outsider to the board this June.

Salvatore Ferrera lives in Brooklyn and has worked for the past year as the executive director of The Child Legacy High School on Roosevelt Island. He was nominated to the board by State Sen. Martin Golden, also of Brooklyn, with whom he has worked in his history as a teacher and principal. (Golden’s office did not return calls requesting a comment on the nomination.) According to Ferrera, his appointment was a surprise even to him, but it was a bigger surprise to many people on the island and the elected officials who represent them.

“I find it sort of frustrating that this was done, not only without the consultation of the residents, but I didn’t get a phone call,” said City Council Member Jessica Lappin of Ferrera’s appointment. She stresses that her objection has nothing to do with Ferrera personally, but thinks that the governor should have respected the process that had previously been followed.

“We worked for years to get a process in place that Spitzer agreed to back in 2001, to hold these island elections just to suggest people, to give the governor a sense of who people would like to see on the board, with the understanding that they would have to be background checked and vetted,” said Lappin.

Ferrera admits he barely knew anything about the island’s governing structure before he was appointed (which he said happened following a series of phone interviews with members of the governor’s staff) and that he had no idea how upset people would be at his appointment.

“If I had known it was going to be this contentious before, I never would have taken that first step,” said Ferrera. But he insists that his position as the head of a major school and his plans to build a new athletic and equestrian center will enhance the island. “I see myself coming in from the outside with a different perspective. I’m able to broker compromises,” he said.

Others feel that his nomination is a clear step backward. Dick Lutz, a journalist who edits the local paper The Wire, has editorialized that Ferrera should step down from the board.

“People have worked for 10 years to democratize the island and move as expeditiously as possible toward an elected RIOC board,” said Lutz. “What do people who don’t live on Roosevelt Island know about our specific day-to-day and long-term concerns? Do they take the subway into the city in the morning? Probably not – they’re coming the other way. Do they use the red bus [that transports people up and down the two-road island]? Chances are they don’t; they drive and they have private parking for their vehicles, most likely they don’t use the rather badly maintained parking structure here. You can go on and on, literally for hours, about all the issues that a nonresident would have absolutely no acquaintance with.”

Leslie Torres, the current president of RIOC, is another nonresident; she has been in the job for about a year. She replaced Steve Shane, who was ousted by the board. While the board won’t comment on its reason for firing Shane, residents have speculated that it was because he was slow to move on privatizing the Mitchell-Lama buildings and revitalizing the decrepit retail zone on the island.

Torres oversees about 135 staff members and says her years of experience working in state government (her last position with the Health and Hospitals Corporation earned just over $30,000 a year) is crucial to her position now.

“I’ve worked with tenant organizations and owner organizations. I’ve worked with both sides of the equation to be fair and equitable, navigating between the different interests of constituents,” said Torres. She said she’s aware that some board members advocate for residency requirements, but believes her experience is just as important. Some argue that it’s less important for the president of RIOC to be a resident, since the board ultimately checks how RIOC operates.

While Ferrera hopes the dust will settle and he’ll be able to contribute as a board member, others are hoping to change the laws so similar appointments will not be able to be made in the future. Kellner passed a law requiring board elections a few years ago, but Paterson vetoed it. He said that this time around, he and State Sen. Jose Serrano will go to the governor’s office first to hammer out the kinds of concessions they would be willing to make, like requiring approval from other elected officials for the appointments. Ultimately, though, he’d like to see much greater transparency and oversight of RIOC for the people who live on Roosevelt Island.

“They’re running a small town,” said Kellner. “This is not something that should be done in the shadows behind closed doors.”