P.S. 150’s new location would be a 37-minute walk from the current location.

Bonnet provided a number of reasons for the move, including the decreased viability of a small school.
Parents were shocked and outraged by the announcement, particularly the decision-making process behind it, and vowed to fight the school’s move.
The City’s Panel on Education Policy will vote on the issue in mid-June, though DOE proposals typically pass the panel.

By Emma Lockridge

The collective spirit of financially beleaguered Detroiters mirrors a declaration from Celie in The Color Purple: “I’m poor, black, my situation is ugly, but God, I’m still here.” While the people stay put in Motown, will the city’s art museum survive a fiscal meltdown or be dismantled?
In response to ongoing deficits and long-term debt, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has used an unpopular state law to appoint an Emergency Manager [EM] to right the ship in Motown. The EM supplants Detroit’s elected officials, including the mayor and city council, and can renegotiate union contracts, eliminate departments, declare a municipal bankruptcy and sell city-owned assets.
Assets? The Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the nation’s finest urban museums and a most beloved gem for Detroiters, could be put into play. People are concerned that the museum’s coveted collection could fall prey to art vultures to lower the city’s deficit. With more than a billion dollars in city-owned artwork that includes Van Gogh, Monet and Cézanne, speculation is brewing about whether the art would be sold, or pillaged as some think, to help meet Detroit’s deficit. Clarity on the art’s fate is hard to find.
“Anything of value will be looted. Detroiters will have nothing left,” is the view of longtime Detroit artist/activist Ifoma. “New Orleans had a natural disaster and got help. We’re having a disaster by neglect.”
Ifoma may have a point. When New York City was on the brink of financial ruin in 1975, then President Gerald Ford approved a $2.3 billion federal loan during a national recession. That same loan would total around $10 billion today. Detroit allegedly has a $327-million accumulated deficit and $14.1 billion in long-term bond debt, but there is no talk of a lifeline from Washington.
Detroit’s economic demise has registered on the radar of a street artist who has taken credit for a controversial sign reading “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” installed at the defunct Packard Automotive Plant in the city. Translated from German, the “Work Will Set You Free” was posted over entryways of concentration camps. The activist artist, using the pseudonym Penny Gaff, issued an explanation on Facebook.
“ARBEIT MACHT FREI was cruelly placed at the entrances of the labor camps in irony, with the knowledge that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no hope, only death,” Penny Gaff posted. “We whore our lives away day after day for corporations and the empty promises of the powers that be. We have become wage slaves, with no alternative, essentially reinstating forced labor.”
It was Detroit’s labor that wildly enriched some of the 20th Century’s wealthy manufacturing barons who donated artwork to the city’s main museum. Manufacturing has significantly dwindled and now the art may follow the painful exodus along with the sanctity of the people’s vote and their hope for self-determination.
Emma Lockridge is a freelance writer based in Detroit. She enjoys street art and visiting the Detroit Institute of Arts.

By Sophia Rosenbaum

The postponement of last Wednesday’s land use and zoning meeting provides the committees with only one more chance to vote on the controversial Hudson Square rezoning package – March 13 at 9:30 a.m.
The committees were supposed to vote on the Special Hudson Square District, which will convert a 34-block area in lower Manhattan from a manufacturing district to a mixed-use district that will bring an influx of residents, a new school and retail development.
But Wednesday’s meeting was delayed two hours before it was deferred. Committee members said they were waiting on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s written recommendation for the rezoning. That letter never came.
One of the most contentious aspects of the rezoning package is whether it will include preserving the South Village adjacent to Hudson Square. Proponents of the preservation are worried the nearby rezoning will put pressure on development in the area.
Micki McGee, who has lived in a rent-stabilized apartment on Sullivan Street for 22 years, cares about preserving the South Village neighborhood’s character.
“If they don’t approve the landmarking of the South Village, we’ll probably move,” she said.
McGee, who was one of the few Hudson Square residents present at Wednesday’s meeting, is not the only person who feels strongly about pairing the South Village’s preservation with the rezoning package. She is joined by the ranks of members of Community Board 2, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, preservationist Andrew Berman and Hudson Square residents.
The decade-old rezoning proposal, spearheaded by Trinity Real Estate, which owns 40 percent of the property in Hudson Square, has been working its way through the rezoning process known as ULURP since August.
Trinity has been working on the package with the Department of City Planning for about five years.
Both Stringer’s and Community Board 2’s recommendation, while non-binding, say the rezoning’s approval should be contigent on landmarking the South Village, appropriate building height limits and ample open spaces.
But the proposal is facing a major hurdle in its home stretch that includes the City Council’s Land Use Committee, a brief look-over by City Planning and a final vote by the City Council at the stating meeting March 20.
The land use committee’s recommendation must be completed prior to City Planning’s monthly meeting on Thursday, March 14.
Berman, who is an advocate for historical preservation in Greenwich Village, has high hopes that the committee will vote in favor of landmarking the area and reducing the building heights for the proposed Hudson Square District.
“We’re less concerned about the delay and more concerned about the outcome,” Berman said.

Before Father George Witt, S.J. was prepping for his services at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, he was teaching English and religious education at Saint Agnes Boys High School for 10 years. Though Witt says there is certainly teaching involved with ministry, the church offers a broader and more inclusive subject matter.

“There was this sense that the teaching was good and I enjoyed it but God was calling me to something more, a life of ordained ministry in the church,” he said.

Father Witt, who earned his master’s degree in divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, Calif., has been serving as a pastor at St. Ignatius Loyola Parish since 2009. And since then, he has been adjusting nicely from teaching to preaching.

When Witt came to St. Ignatius Loyola Parish in the Upper East Side, the church was going through major restorations that started with the previous pastor. Witt made sure the restorations were completed and he oversaw a revamping of the heater and air conditioning units in the church, a $2.4 million project.

Aside from restoration, Witt is also heavily involved with community outreach, especially among other parishes. The church holds food collections with Saint Gregory the Great Church and recently held a toy drive during Christmas for a parish in Staten Island in light of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation.

And within St. Ignatius Loyola Parish, Witt wanted to make sure there was ministry for people of all ages. Originally the parish had young adult ministries and a ministry for families with their children. But Witt started a group for people in their 40s and a group for people 50 and over called “Boomers & Beyond.”

“The place is really alive. Our enrollment, the number of parishioners over these last five years has really gone up,” he said. “Physically the place has been revamped. That’s the kind of stuff that I think is really a contribution here to the community on the Upper East Side.”

  Witt emphasizes the importance of interfaith work and started an adult group that meets with the Park Avenue Synagogue. He also participates with My Faith Your Faith, in which Catholic youth from St. Ignatius Loyola Parish along with Jewish and Muslim youth go to different places of worship on Sundays. Afterward they get together to discuss what they learned.

“We may have some distinctions on how we understand God, how we understand what exactly happens in worship, but you’re talking about good people who are seeking God,” he said. “And if we can’t talk to one another and try to understand one another, we’re in deep trouble.”

In the past, Witt has served as a deacon and spiritual director at St. Benedict’s Parish for the Deaf in San Francisco. He also served for two years as a retreat minister at the St. Ignatius Loyola Retreat House in Long Island, leading people on days and weekends of prayer.

Witt says St. Ignatius Loyola Parish will continue to work with other parishes and organizations to better the community and the lives of the people living in it.

“It’s very gratifying,” he said. “I can’t imagine a better work that anybody would have than to be preaching God’s word.”

Upper East Side residents have proved that they are willing to vote single issue in the upcoming mayoral race to stop the Marine Transfer Waste Station from being built in Yorkville, amidst low-income housing and the Asphalt Green Recreation Center.

Last week, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney held a mayoral forum on the Upper East Side to discuss important issues in the upcoming race. The space was crowded with community activists who expressed an outpouring of protests and anger against building the Marine Transfer Station.

Comptroller John Liu flipped on his previous position, telling the crowd that “it doesn’t make sense to proceed while turning a blind eye to simple fact.” Former Comptroller Bill Thompson and Public Advocate Bill De Blasio both admitted that they were on the fence about the issue. After the forum, Mayor Bloomberg expressed surprise at their statements, since all three mayoral candidates had previously voted for the Marine Transfer Station in 2006.

But many community leaders do not believe that the candidates necessarily flip-flopped.

“Is it flip-flopping? Well, they voted on this proposal many years ago and I would think the next mayor wouldn’t want to be locked into the former mayor’s plan particularly since the price has gone up astronomically,” said Assembly Member Michah Kellner. “Do they really want to be saddled into their big capitol project being a garbage dump?”

Besides the impact on the quality of life, said Kellner, the concern has become an economical one. The estimated price tag on the Marine Transfer Station ballooned from $45 million at the start of the proposal, to $300 million.

But despite new concerns of mayoral candidates, one candidate has not backed down. Council Speaker Christine Quinn was booed when she asserted her position that building the Marine Transfer Station at Asphalt Green would be the best solution.

“If you want an answer you have to listen,” she said over the jeers of the crowd in a video of the event taken by Capital New York reporter Azi Paybarah. “You can scream and yell, but you have got to let me answer if I listen to your question with attention.”

One woman in the crowd actually yelled that she would not be voting for Christine Quinn in the primary. “That’s fine!” responded Quinn.

“People are saying, ‘oh yeah she’s such a stalwart that she didn’t back down from her position,” said Jed Garfield, the president of Sane Trash Solutions, an organization that has been fighting the building of the Marine Transfer Station.  “But it’s hardly heroic that she wants to put a dump near low-income housing.”

And it looks like in the upcoming mayoral election, that this garbage dump will have a significant impact on voters, at least on the Upper East Side.

When asked if she would ever vote for a candidate like Christine Quinn, Lorraine Johnson, a resident at Stanley M. Isaacs low income housing, right next door to the possible location of the Marine Transfer Station, said she would absolutely not.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “I have respiratory problems, and my asthma went down and became manageable when the previous MTS was finally closed in 1999. My asthma has been stable since, but I am scared that my asthma could be much worse if the city builds the planned MTS.”

Jed Garfield is not surprised that the community is willing to vote single issue to get the garbage dump out of residents’ hair (and noses) once and for all.

“People always vote single issue whenever you’re dealing with issues of health that affect children and seniors,” he said. “Based on the meetings and people I’ve met, they’re absolutely not going to vote for anyone who is not socially and fiscally responsible, and this is an example of that.”

Since the release of 2008′s astoundingly mediocre Modern Guilt, Beck has all but stepped away from conventional rockstardom. He’s spent the past few years on idiosyncratic projects like the Record Club,  a collaboration with such luminaries as Annie Clark, Angus Andrews, Devendra Banhart, Thurston Moore, Jeff Tweedy, and, uh, Giovanni Ribisi. Beck assembled these Superfriends of Indie at his Los Angeles studios to cover classic albums like The Velvet Underground & Nico, Songs of Leonard Cohen, and Yanni Live at the Acropolis, because why not. The results were ramshackle and frequently annoying, but you get the impression that the Record Club re-imaginings were always meant to be things that were more fun to make than to listen to. Beck was also remixing everyone from Lykke Li to Philip Glass, as well as writing songs for Charlotte Gainsbourg, comic book movies, various vampire-based media, and video games, amongst other things. Last year, he released an album, but only  in one nigh-obsolescent format: sheet music.

So it seemed that while Beck was interested in staying busy and producing music, he was done with the spotlight. No more crazy touring and break-dancing and puppet shows; it was now time to jam with your friends, contribute to soundtracks, and let the new kids get a chance to shine. But last week, Beck stepped back out of the shadows. Well, sort of.

To launch Lincoln’s “Hello-Again” campaign (a vain attempt to get twentysomethings interested in buying Towncars, now that their customer base has all but died off), they commissioned a cover of David Bowie’s classic “Sound & Vision” from the ’90s Indie darling. But, as the above video proves, this was no mere cover. Beck enlisted the help of 160+ musicians, including a gospel choir, a drum line, a gamelan orchestra, horn and string section, neo-soul group the Dap Kings, a harpist, guitarists playing everything from fancy electro-acoustics to flying vs, a bunch of mandolinists, a dude playing a singing saw, another dude playing a theremin (aka the sci-fi singing saw), and a frigging yodeler, all conducted by noted composer, Scientologist, and Ron Paul supporter David Campbell, who, by the by, is also Becks father. All of this is staged 360º around a slowly rotating audience (watch the video; it’ll make sense) with Mr. Beck Hansen strumming and singing his heart out in the dead center.

The whole thing is an experiment in maximalism that goes beyond the absurdly large backing band; Beck & Co. stretch Bowie’s pared-down proto-new wave song (which, by my count, lyrically consists of less of fifty words) into a nine minute plus, multi-movement opus. Yet it’s not decadent or tacky (okay, maybe a little, but in a good way); the elaborate, intertwining arrangements and Beck’s radical reinterpretation of the original turn it into something bold, new, and truly moving. It never feels excessive, and each instrument and voice is in service of the song. While it wouldn’t work without those 160+ musicians, it’s all really about our man Beck at center stage, not just singing but performing, basking in the spotlight for the first time in a good long while.

That’s Now Take Them Out, Devils for ya. If you want to see what Simon Lazarus Vasta finds funny at three in the morning, you can follow him on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc