Across Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently announced it is in the early design stages of a complete overhaul of its famous Fifth Avenue plaza.

One of the main features of the project is the design and installation of all new fountains, replacing the present fountains that have been in place since 1970.

Harold Holzer, senior vice president of external affairs, said another goal of the project is to improve access to the museum’s 81st Street and 83rd Street entrances.

“We have more than 5 million people visit a year and they all walk up the front steps,” Holzer said. “It’s difficult to direct people to 81st Street.”

“This exciting new outdoor environment will provide the perfect complement to the majestic spaces and exceptional collections found within the building,” said Thomas P. Campbell, director of the museum, in a statement.

Central Park will be decked out Victorian-style for its 14th annual holiday lighting event Sunday, Dec. 5. The Charles A. Discovery Center in the park on 110th Street overlooking the Harlem Meer will be lit up.

The free event will be held from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the north visitors’ center.

Symphony Space, at Broadway and West 95th Street, will celebrate American composer and musician David Amram’s birthday Thur., Nov. 11. David Amram: The First 80 Years will cover the prolific musician’s work, from a concert performance of his film scores such as 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate to the premiere of Amram’s “Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie,” introduced by Guthrie’s daughter Nora.

Filmed birthday wishes from Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Willie Nelson will be played.

The event begins at 7:30. Tickets range from $35 to $75. For more information on the event and purchasing tickets, go to www.symphonyspace.org.

Lincoln Center announced highlights from its study on the economic impact the performing arts complex has on New York City.

Lincoln Center estimates that $3.4 billion of economic activity is generated from its 12 resident organizations, which includes the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet.

For the surrounding Upper West Side neighborhood, Lincoln Center boasts of its “significant role” in the increased property values, which went up eight percent a year between 1962 and 2009. The study says that the bump in property values outperformed Manhattan as a whole, which increased on an average of five percent.

Lincoln Center’s resident organizations, which include the Juilliard School and School of American Ballet, employ 9,000 people and have more than 2,000 students.

The study estimates the five million visitors a year spend $220 million on local restaurants, hotels, transportation and shopping.

West Side elected officials want the Department of Education to quickly remove PCBs from P.S. 199 using recommendations from the school Parent-Teacher Association.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Borough President Scott Stringer, State Sen. Thomas Duane, Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal and Council Member Gale Brewer wrote a letter Nov. 3 asking for the expedited implementation of the PTA’s recommendations.

“We strongly believe that these and other recommendations included in the PTA’s letter are sensible, practical and should be implemented and followed immediately,” the elected officials wrote to Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm and School Construction Authority Vice President and General Counsel Ross Holden.

The Oct. 20 letter from the PTA to these officials includes 10 recommendations, mostly calls for new testing. The PTA wants PCB testing for new caulk, brick near the PCB-contaminated caulk, soil around the building and school building materials. Also on the list of recommendations is improved ventilation in the school.

Previous PCB remediation at the school caused a drop in the level of the chemical.

“Everything that the PTA has recommended has led to a decrease in contamination,” Duane said. “There is absolutely no downside and only upside to continuing to follow the PTA’s recommendations.”

The cancer-causing chemical was found in caulk at P.S. 199, 270 W. 70th St. between West End and Amsterdam avenues, in May 2008. Since then, there has been a demand for a quick removal of PCBs. In March, P.S. 199 was one of five schools selected for a city and federal Environmental Protection Agency pilot program to study PCB-removal efforts that would then be used citywide.

The Environmental Protection Agency has previously stated that the PCB levels pose no immediate health risk.

“We are seriously troubled by comments of late that continue to stress that ‘short-term’ exposure to PCB contaminated air is not problematic, when the exposure facing our community has been over a period of years, not months or days,” PTA co-presidents Diane Brush and Michelle Ciulla Lipkin wrote.

Natalie Ravitz, press secretary for the Department of Education, said in a statement the city is gaining valuable information on testing and remediation from the pilot program.

“Experts have said there is no immediate health threat, and we believe it would be irresponsible to move forward with a city-wide plan—which potentially carries a billion dollar price tag—before we have better information and complete this pilot project,” Ravitz said in her statement.

The Upper West Side charter school shuffle continues.

The plan to open a Success Academy charter school in P.S. 145, 150 W. 105th St., between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, seems to be scuttled, according to Noah Gotbaum, head of the local Community Education Council.

Now, West Prep Academy—a middle school on West 77th Street and Columbus Avenue—may move into P.S. 145’s building to open up space in the heavily overcrowded schools in the southern part of the Upper West Side.

“This new proposed plan is better news for P.S. 145,” Gotbaum wrote in a letter he emailed to the Upper West Side school district community.

Moving West Prep would open up needed room for the new school—P.S. 425—created to relieve overcrowding at other Upper West Side public schools.

“Where [West Prep is] located now is very crowded,” said Council Member Gale Brewer. “P.S. 145 is a perfect place to go.”

As the Department of Education undertakes the rezoning of Upper West Side schools, there was a plan to keep the boundaries for P.S. 145—currently under capacity—intact. Though the Department of Education and Success Academy—run by former East Side Council Member Eva Moskowitz—had yet to devise a firm proposal, P.S. 145 was considered a prime spot for the first Upper West Side charter school.

Gotbaum wrote in the letter that P.S. 145’s zones are expected to grow, allowing more students to enroll. But he suspects that the new location for Upper West Success will be P.S. 165 on 234 W. 109th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

The issue is likely to be brought up at a Nov. 17 meeting of the Community Education Council—the parent group for the Upper West Side and West Harlem school district.

The Department of Education and Success Academy are mum on the location for the charter school, and are ruling nothing out.

“We think Success Academy charter schools are doing great work in New York City—we support their expansion and are committed to finding this new school a home,” said Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, a spokesperson for the Department of Education. “While no decision has been made yet, we’re currently considering a few ideas and will propose one soon.”

A spokesperson for Success Academy, in a statement, is leaving the location up to the Department of Education.

“There’s overwhelming parent demand for this school and for more options on the Upper West Side,” said Jenny Sedlis, a Success Academy spokesperson. “It’s up to the DOE to decide what siting will meet that demand.”

The Upper West Side is on track to getting a new charter school after the State University of New York’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved Success Academy’s application Oct. 27.

Upper West Success—part of the Success Academy chain of charter schools—already has a website running and is taking applications. The Success Academy’s CEO Eva Moskowitz pitched parents in an Oct. 24 New York Post­ op-ed.

The early campaign for an Upper West Side charter school will be fighting against opposition: Success Academy is seeking co-location in P.S. 145, a school on 150 W. 105th St., between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, that the city considers underutilized.

The Department of Education intends to keep the school under capacity as it rezones Upper West Side schools, maintaining P.S. 145’s building as a possible spot for a Success Academy charter school. P.S. 145, however, wants to expand its boundaries to grow and accept more students.

Local elected officials, P.S. 145’s principal and the parent group for the West Side school district are leading the opposition to the controversial co-location.

Council Member Gale Brewer is worried that the charter would sap students from good schools in her district.

“To put a charter school in the middle of a neighborhood and pull from schools already doing well is wrong,” Brewer said. “That’s just destroying good schools and that’s not the purpose of public education.”

Moskowitz believes West Side parents are clamoring for another school option. The good schools in the southern part of the Upper West Side are overcrowded and the private schools or gifted and talented programs may be out of reach for some students.

“A lot of parents feel they work hard, they pay their taxes. It’s supposed to be the case that you can send your kid to get a great, free public education,” Moskowitz told the West Side Spirit in October.

Now that the State University of New York gave the OK to Upper West Success, the Department of Education must create a proposal to locate the school. While a Department of Education spokesperson said that a formal proposal for co-locating Upper West Success has yet to be made, P.S. 145 is a possibility.

“The fact is local parents are choosing other options over P.S. 145, which is why the building has more than 300 empty seats,” the Department of Education said in a statement. “We must work hard to make this school successful and better utilize this space.”

Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, is now advocating in favor of Riverside Center. De Blasio gave his conditional support a day after the City Planning Commission approved the mega-development with a near unanimous vote.

De Blasio praised the mixed-use retail and residential project for adding affordable housing, creating jobs and, perhaps most importantly, a new school.

“There is a crying need for a large school on the Upper West Side,” de Blasio said in a statement. “

The school has been a football in the review process. Extell, the developer, would provide 75,000 square feet for a new school. If the city wants a full 150,000-square-foot school, the School Construction Authority would have to foot the bill. Some community leaders and elected officials want the developer to pay and construct the school on its own.

The issue will likely be revisited as Riverside Center moves to the final leg of the approval process; City Council Member Gale Brewer—whose support is critical to the project’s approval—wants Extell to finance the new school.

“We must use the City Council process to hold the city and developer accountable for providing the full 150,000 square feet of school space,” de Blasio said.

With the amount of dissatisfaction and disappointment that many have expressed toward New York State government, it’s clear we need a governor who has a strong vision for the office and who can take control of a Legislature that has caused embarrassment on a national level. The choice for voters is between Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and the Republication businessman from Buffalo, Carl Paladino. We wholeheartedly endorse Cuomo for governor.

Paladino has little to offer and has run a campaign filled with bigotry and bluster. While we recognize the strain of populism that has appealed to those disgruntled with government and the way politicians have been behaving, we do not want our state governed by anyone who has so little respect for his fellow citizens.
But this is not simply a Cuomo-by-default decision. As attorney general, Cuomo has a strong record as the state’s chief lawyer, investigating the pay-to-play scandal that led former Comptroller Alan Hevesi to plead guilty.
His blueprint for ethics reform includes a section that would legislate that lawmakers would have to disclose their earnings from outside jobs, something we think should also happen. While we are wary of family “dynasties” in all levels of politics, we feel Andrew Cuomo has shown a clear path and ambition in politics separate from his father’s, while also learning from his time working with him.
We do, however, hope that Andrew Cuomo stops playing it safe when it comes to his stated principles, coming out strong in favor of marriage equality (something that nearly all New York City politicians agree it is time for) and other progressive legislation. Getting any of his reforms passed with an obstinate Legislature will not be easy. But we feel Cuomo can make good on his promises to restore trust and create transparency in government.

Attorney General: Eric Schneiderman

The next New York attorney general has big shoes to fill. Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo were both crusaders who were able to balance complex issues of national importance as well as move the reform ball forward. The next attorney general must have the experience to be able to tap dance his way through the minefield of Albany corruption as well as find new ways of protecting consumers. That’s why we endorse Eric Schneiderman, a state senator from the Upper West Side, as our next attorney general.
While our state government has increasingly started resembling a Saturday Night Live skit, Schneiderman has been one of the few bright stars at the state level. He’s a smart, effective, reform-minded legislator who has stood up to his party when required, as well as crafted important legislation that promotes equal justice under law, such as ending the draconian Rockefeller drug laws.
Cleaning up Albany has become something of the mantra of this election. But Schneiderman has actually done it by convening a bipartisan panel to expel fellow Democrat Hiram Monserrate after he was convicted of assault against his girlfriend. In addition, he has spent many years standing up against Republican senators that have blocked his progressive reform-minded legislation.
We are confident that his background and experience plus core philosophy of equal justice will ensure that the interests of all New Yorkers are heard. He has a broad agenda that protects consumers, prevents the pollution of the environment and fights discrimination.
Mr. Schneiderman’s opponent, Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, has a record that he can be proud of. As the Staten Island DA, he has amassed a high conviction rate for dangerous felons; he has also served respectably under Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau. Donovan has a competent, nuts-and-bolts plan for the attorney general position. What he doesn’t have is the sweeping vision needed to implement the changes as well as the reform-minded vision of Eric Schneiderman.

Comptroller: Harry Wilson

Officially, the state comptroller is responsible for the nearly $130 billion pension fund, auditing agencies and releasing economic reports. But former State Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s recent guilty plea in a pay-to-play scandal put a spotlight on the sleepy, unglamorous office. Now, New Yorkers need a state comptroller that is pragmatic, vigorous and innovative. We endorse Republican Harry Wilson for state comptroller.
The current comptroller, Democrat Tom DiNapoli, has implemented necessary reforms and protected the pension fund since he was appointed to the seat in 2007.
But Wilson, the Republican candidate, is a Harvard-educated investor with an extensive and unique background in the public and private sectors.
His resume includes Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Capital and, most, recently Silver Point Capital. He was the only Republican on President Barack Obama’s auto-industry task force, where he led the successful restructuring of General Motors.
Wilson has the investment and managerial background needed to make the comptroller’s job integral to fixing New York’s economy. He is a moderate Republican who has a proven record of bipartisanship and pragmatism. Much like his work saving General Motors, we believe Wilson would work well with unions, rather than conveniently blaming them for all of the state’s fiscal problems. He believes in a low-tax burden for business rather than spending tax dollars on corporate welfare.
After Hevesi’s resignation, the State Legislature tapped DiNapoli, an Assembly member from Long Island, to become the new comptroller. While DiNapoli had no prior investment experience, he has the vision to continue being an able comptroller. He also instituted important ethics reforms in the office, from banning pay-to-play practices and placement agents from the investment fund.
But Wilson has the vision, skills and temperament to be an excellent comptroller. Though he is a Republican, this is one of the few races where Upper West Side voters can cast a ballot for the GOP without voting for a conservative ideologue.

State Legislature

The Upper West Side has quality, progressive legislators in Congress and in Albany. The Republican alternative in these races are either nonexistent or not a credible choice. We endorse State senators Bill Perkins, Tom Duane and Assembly members Linda Rosenthal, Daniel O’Donnell for re-election. In the open State Senate seat that covers parts of the Upper West Side, all of Northern Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, we endorse Adriano Espaillat.
In the House, Jerrold Nadler and Charles Rangel deserve re-election to their seats.

Ballot Measures:

Earlier this year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called a commission to study and recommend changes to the city charter. This Nov. 2, voters in New York City must approve the changes at the ballot.
The questions are printed on the back of the ballot, on the other side of the candidate list. If approved, the changes would bring back two-term limits for city officials and make running for office easier. Voters should vote “yes” on these two questions.
Upper West Siders should vote “yes” on the question that would limit the next mayor, public advocate, comptroller, borough presidents and Council members to two, consecutive four-year terms. Voters established these limits through two ballot initiatives in the 1990s. But when Bloomberg wanted to run for a third term last year, the Council passed a law that overturned the two referendums.
Bringing the term limits law back to two terms would respect the voters that chose two terms for local elected officials. Most importantly, the new law would also block the City Council from again changing the term limit law through legislation.
The second question contains seven parts that, in part, will help more candidates get on the ballot. Voters should say “yes” to the question, which would approve all seven changes to the charter. These changes would lower the onerous ballot laws that inhibit competitive elections and insurgent candidates running for office.

The changes include:
• Greater disclosure of campaign spending from independent groups.
• Cutting the number of petitions needed to get on the ballot in half for each elected office.
• Increasing the fine for violating the city’s Conflicts of Interest law to $25,000 from $10,000.
• Consolidating the number of “administrative tribunals,” where people charged with violating a law or regulation can contest the charge.
• Creating a commission of appointees from the mayor and City Council to review the necessity of Charter and Administrative codes that require agency reports.
• Adding government-operated transportation and waste-management facilities in the annual map of the city’s property used to site new city facilities.

CUNY launched a voting drive aimed at battling apathy among young voters and students.

CUNY students are encouraged to wear their school’s colors and apparel to the polls. The university system got Barnes & Noble to give students a 25 percent discount on collegiate apparel to help. Campus stores are giving out “CUNY VOTES” buttons every day until the election. Faculty members have been recruited to encourage students to vote Nov. 2.