Cloudy with a chance of 20 pound chunks of metal from the Liberty Avenue el train tracks

 NY Post

A giant piece of iron fell from the elevated A train tracks in Queens and smashed through the roof of a black cab Tuesday afternoon — narrowly missing the terrified driver inside.

Driver Ana Leonardo was waiting to pick up a passenger on Liberty Avenue at 100th Street in Ozone Park when she heard a loud crash through her Camry’s rear window.

 “I was stopped here because I had to pick up a customer,” she told The Post, adding in Spanish that she was “asuste mucho” — very scared.

“If something like that comes through the head of people, they’re going to die right away,” said her husband, Manuel Mendoza.

Mendoza told The Post that the two of them share the vehicle, lugging passengers around the city for fares.

“Thank god my wife is fine, but the car is crazy,” he said. “We use it 10 hours a day, so we have no job right now.”

Leonardo is just the latest near-victim of falling subway parts, after multiple similar incidents in Queens in the spring.

Update:

This is from the comments section and I hope Governor Cuomo, NYC Transit, The MTA and Andy Byford reads it, because what this man says has validity and something this catastrophic will happen at the pace these chunks are flying off the rails.

Especially to Byford, you should have quit when I told you to last year and when you had the chance a few weeks ago.


Ceramic track tie bushing, the snap on spring clamp came off and that's likely been launched atop some rooftop perhaps a block away.
 
They need to go back to the wooden ties and spikes
 
That MTA jackass from England & Canada thinks he's running trains on the ground with ballast rocks.
--Not so in New York City.
 
Trains running faster, vibration, excessive torque from harder braking is causing all European style new hardware to break loose like bullets going right threw the netting baskets or flying elsewise.
Its also causing life & death damage to the 100 year old steel structures.

These "IMPROVEMENTS" are for the worse here.
Last week a bolt went flying, the nut had cleanly snapped of at the thread from the excessive force and torque from the vibration and swaying.

Send Byford, his suits and computer apps back to England and hire somebody actually qualified with NYC's train hardware before a section of elevated & 10 car train of people ends up down in the street or a city block of homes !!
 
Go below any station on the 7 train, the noise & vibration being transferred down the structures is horrifying. It was and never so intense, like a Saturn 5 rocket shaking street, rattling storefront windows.

-Gino

7 years after Hurricane Sandy, homeowners and public housing residents in flood zones are still not protected

THE CITY

Seven years after Superstorm Sandy deluged New York City, more than eight out of 10 properties in coastal areas the federal government deems extremely vulnerable to the next disaster are without flood insurance, an investigation by THE CITY found.

Meanwhile, the number of flood insurance policies protecting New Yorkers has dropped markedly since the end of 2013 in two of the boroughs hardest hit by the storm: Staten Island, which saw an 18% decline, and Queens, which experienced an 8% decrease.

Residents of roughly 250,000 houses and apartments within red-flagged flood zones are left exposed — thanks to the high cost of insurance policies and a protracted disagreement between local and federal officials.

City and Washington bureaucrats are at least five years away from forging a common set of flood maps that will determine who must buy insurance — leaving New Yorkers reliant on risk ratings little changed since the 1980s.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is disputing the map the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) created in 2015, which significantly expanded areas identified for high risk of flooding, based on Sandy’s path of destruction.

So for now, only property owners with federally backed mortgages who are living within the old, pre-Sandy zone — last updated by FEMA in 2007 — are required to purchase flood insurance.

Homeowners end up mired in confusion over seemingly contradictory rules: In some cases, people whose properties were devastated by Sandy are living without flood insurance while new or rebuilt homes next door must be made floodproof.

As it all gets sorted out, many homeowners are rolling the dice — skipping often-pricey flood insurance and praying another storm doesn’t send the waters of New York Harbor, Jamaica Bay or Buttermilk Channel barrelling into their living rooms.

“I know the danger. Trust me, I know,” said Semyon Krugolets, 66, a retired cabinet maker whose Staten Island home took on two feet of water during Sandy. “But sometimes you have to make these decisions.”

THE CITY

In March 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio trekked to Brooklyn’s Red Hook Houses to announce what he dubbed the biggest single Federal Emergency Management Agency grant in history: $3 billion to rebuild and upgrade city public housing developments slammed by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

He declared construction would begin right away in NYCHA complexes still reeling from the storm that left more than 80,000 tenants without electricity, heat and elevators for weeks — making some residents virtual prisoners in their homes.

But a review by THE CITY found that seven years after Sandy damaged 200 buildings in 35 developments along waterfronts from Red Hook to the Rockaways to the Lower East Side, work has been completed in just two complexes, with a third development nearly done.

And while the mayor pledged that the federal money would be used to stormproof entire NYCHA developments slammed by Sandy, his promise proved premature: FEMA ultimately agreed to pay only for specific buildings battered when the superstorm hit on Oct. 29, 2012.

 Meanwhile, records show city investigators flagged an alarming spike in costs at one NYCHA Sandy rebuild project at the very site where the mayor announced the FEMA grant: the Red Hook Houses.

A vendor’s project proposal jumped from $89,000 to more than $500,000 — and a manager told investigators this happened because de Blasio was pressuring them to get the job done faster, according to a city Department of Investigation report.

Among the findings of THE CITY’s review:

• Construction projects at 31 of the 35 damaged developments missed their original start dates, in some cases by a few months, but in most instances by a year or more. Work at the Lower East Side’s Riis Houses, for example, was scheduled to begin in the fall of 2015 but didn’t start until six months ago.

• The FEMA-funded fixup has been completed at only two NYCHA developments: Lower East Side Rehab and Ocean Bay (Oceanside) in the Rockaways. Work at Harlem’s Rangel Houses is 99% complete, while NYCHA just awarded a contract for the Lincoln Houses in East Harlem. The rest are now under construction, including seven that NYCHA promised will wrap up by year’s end.

• Records show NYCHA hired one contractor later caught cheating workers on wages, another that ended up barred from doing city school construction, and another arrested on charges of stealing heating oil from a competitor when he had an emergency Sandy contract selling heating oil to NYCHA.

Bill de Bastard

Impunity City


“This is your city”. When Mayor Bill de Blasio ran for re-election in 2017 barely a year after he dodged charges for running an anarchic pay-to-play system with corporations and agencies with municipal business with this city, this bland platitude was his campaign slogan. It looked like it was supposed to mean that his vow on his first day in office back in 2014 to end the tale of two of them had been achieved and it singularly belonged to all us New Yawkers.

As everyone is aware, it is 2019. And it’s still an inequitable fucking mess for this city’s working poor and middle class who still make it run. But it’s crystal clear who the Mayor was talking to when he said “your city” and it’s not only who you would expect by default meaning the benefactors and profiteers of the Gentrification Industrial Complex, the overlords of real estate development or even the transplants that stupidly overspend for their studio and one bedroom apts (and gut converted tenement ones in their portfolios). Nope. The one he was talking about was himself, Bill de Blasio.

Since his farcical presidential run ended, Bill has been a real huge dick lately. Actually it was just a week before he decided to terminate it, when he went on WNYC for his weekly Friday bloviating interview with the sappy host Brian Lehrer. A citizen called in concerning the affordable housing program that he runs has not made it out to the lower income earning people or the ballooning homeless population that need it the most. And this is how this monster responded:

“We can’t just do affordable housing for the lowest income folks,”

Now I have been thoroughly critical of this mayor since the start of this digital publication 3 years ago mostly because of what his morally bankrupt decisions have had on his constituents, but with that tone-deaf statement and with yours truly being a full-time working poor low income folk, now it’s fucking personal.

de Blasio ordered NYPD to drive his son to school

NY Daily News

Mayor de Blasio ordered his NYPD security detail to repeatedly take his son back and forth from Yale University during his first years at school, the Daily News has learned.

Executive Protection Unit detectives drove Dante de Blasio to or from New Haven, Conn., at least seven or eight times, the sources with direct knowledge said. Members of the detail also took Dante to visit his uncle, who lives nearby, sources said. Dante faced no security risks at the time, the sources said.

“If the commanding officer of the 75 (precinct) said, ‘move my kid to college,’ do you really think that wouldn’t kill his career? But because it’s the mayor, everyone just does it,” a former member of the detail said.

The revelation comes four months after The News exclusively reported that members of the unit moved de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, out of an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

 Sources said Dante — who the mayor hired as a paid policy analyst for his failed presidential campaign — only made the 75-mile trip to Yale with cops during his first year at the Ivy League university.

 At some point during his sophomore year, Dante decided he preferred traveling on his own by train, sources said. Members of the detail often picked him up from Penn Station when he returned to town.

Another former member of the unit described the trips as “a courtesy” that were not questioned.

“There was no justification,” the former member said. “If you were told to bring him home from Yale, that’s what we did.”

The Hunters Point Library is a $41,000,000 shithole

NY Post


A long-awaited $41-million Queens library that opened last month is plagued with an encyclopedia’s worth of issues — including leaky ceilings and a not-so-soundproof quiet room, The Post has learned.

Long Island City’s decade-in-the-making Hunters Point Library is already showing signs of wear, with a Post reporter recently eyeing large cracks on multiple floors — including one that stretched about 10 feet — and water damage in some areas.

“When it rains, we have leaks,” a librarian said, blaming the problem on an as-yet-un-opened rooftop “reading garden” with panoramic views of the city.

The new building’s sorry state is the culmination of nearly 10 years of design and construction. Plans for the branch were completed in 2010, but the ground-breaking did not come until 2015. The book-lender finally opened Sept. 24.

The lit house, designed by Steven Holl Architects, came under fire earlier this month because a fiction section could only be reached by a steep staircase — in violation of federal accessibility requirements.

Staffers have since moved the tomes, but that area is now just dead space. A frustrated librarian said she didn’t know if it would be remodeled “but we won’t be putting any books there again.”
“We might turn [it] into sitting areas, but no one knows yet,” she said.

Queens Library spokeswoman Elisabeth de Bourbon said the branch is assessing the situation with the architects and the city’s Department of Design and Construction, which oversaw and managed the project.

But that’s not the only design flaw librarians have had to deal with.

A curved wall in the children’s section resembling a quarter-pipe skateboard ramp had to be blocked off by rolling bookshelves to make sure kids didn’t hurt themselves climbing it.

de Blasio and Banks exporting homeless crisis to other states

NY Post

 
New York City generously shares its homeless crisis with every corner of America.

From the tropical shores of Honolulu and Puerto Rico, to the badlands of Utah and backwaters of Louisiana, the Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.”  Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it.

City taxpayers have spent $89 million on rent alone since the program’s August 2017 inception to export 5,074 homeless families — 12,482 individuals — to places as close as Newark and as far as the South Pacific, according to Department of Homeless Services data obtained by The Post. Families, who once lived in city shelters, decamped to 32 states and Puerto Rico.

The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800.

Add to the tab the cost of furnishings, which the city also did not disclose. One SOTA recipient said she received $1,000 for them.

DHS defends the stratospheric costs, saying it actually saves the city on shelter funding — which amounts to about $41,000 annually per family, as compared to the average yearly rent of $17,563 to house families elsewhere.

But critics says the “stop-gap solution” has been wrought with problems, and ultimately has failed to help curb the city’s homelessness.

Not only are officials in towns where the city’s homeless land up in arms, but hundreds of the homeless families are returning to the five boroughs — and some are even suing NYC over being abandoned in barely livable conditions. Multiple outside agencies and organizations have opened investigations into SOTA.

“We were initially seeing a lot of complaints about conditions. Now that the program has been in operation long enough that the SOTA subsidy is expiring, one of our main concerns is it might not be realistic for people to be entirely self-sufficient after that first year,” said Jacquelyn Simone, policy analyst at Coalition for the Homeless.

DHS said 224 SOTA families have ended up back in New York City shelters. The agency did not answer The Post’s repeated requests for the number of families who wind up in out-of-town shelters.

“We suggested that DHS reach out to people as their subsidy runs out to confirm they will be secure and not have to re-enter shelter, but the agency told us they have no plans to do that,” said Legal Aid lawyer Joshua Goldfein, whose firm represents SOTA families who say the city pressured them to move into New Jersey slums, then ignored calls for help.

Still racing in the street

NY Post

Around 2 a.m. on a recent Sunday at a gas station in Queens, heavy-duty auto engines rev conspicuously. Clutches of twentysomething guys — and a few young women — group around customized, low-to-the ground Hondas, Mustangs and BMWs. They pass joints, talk about horsepower, and issue challenges to race.

Most every weekend, racers meet up — as The Post has previously reported, the areas with the most 311 complaints are Richmond Hill’s 124th Street, Frances Lewis Boulevard in northern Queens and Leo Fracassi Way in The Bronx — to race illegally, at speeds of up to 160 mph.

“This is the thing I’m passionate about,” said one racer, alongside his Acura Integra, its hood removed to reveal a spotless engine. “I’m not letting anyone get in the way of my passion.”

At the gas station — colloquially known as “E-85” for the racing fuel it sells — word spreads that two contenders are ready to go. Suddenly, cars skitter onto the street, spewing exhaust as they head for Nassau Expressway. Leading the way is Jimmy, a 22-year-old from Jamaica, Queens, behind the wheel of a 225-horsepower 1994 Honda Civic with the gas tank re-situated in the trunk to enhance fuel flow.

Out on the highway, all cars brake to a stop, blocking traffic.

At the front of the pack, Jimmy spins his front tires (a procedure known as a “burn out”) to improve traction. His opponent, also in a Honda, does the same. Standing between the two cars, a man forcefully drops his arm in a simulation of a starting flag.

The opponents scorch down a quarter-mile of blacktop, getting up to 120 mph and leaving behind smells of burnt rubber and spent E-85. The race lasts less than 30 seconds, then the expressway traffic is allowed to resume its normal flow.

Back at E-85, Jimmy accepts a fist bump in celebration of his win. Although he sometimes races for money — as much as $600 per run — this one “was for competition,” he said.

A regular participant told The Post that racing has led to crashes on the Belt and Southern State parkways.

In January, at a hot street-racing spot along Review Avenue in Long Island City, a racer nicknamed Mello smashed into a street pole at high speed. Paramedics pronounced him dead on the scene. 

Spookily, the spot, in the shadow of the Kosciuszko Bridge, is known as “Cemetery” for the Calvary graveyard that lies alongside it.

“Racing has gone on there for at least 30 years,” said NYPD Capt. Michael Gibbs, of the 108th Precinct, which counts the avenue in its turf. He actually grew up in the neighborhood. “Maybe, when I was a kid, I allegedly went there and watched [racing],” he admitted. “I never thought I would be on the enforcement end.”

But not long after he became captain of the 108th in January, Gibbs prioritized putting a stop to the racing. His most recent action was to order the ­deployment of speed bumps along ­Review Avenue.
Hearing about the speed bumps, one racer at E-85 shrugged it off and mysteriously said, “We have ways to work around [that].”

Homeless men get evicted from house they built by the Grand Central Parkway

NY1


A wooded area off the Grand Central Parkway was once known as the "Parkside Hill Community Garden." But's it's been a long time since residents planted anything there.

"Honestly, this has been a dumping ground for quite some time," Swarovski Beaumont said at the location.

Tires, shopping carts, and trash are common now. Sometime last year, neighbors said, two men planted themselves here, pitching tents behind the thicket:


"They're building a tiny home on city property," the resident said.

A @NY1 exclusive: Two men began constructing their own well-crafted shelter in the thicket off the GCP this week. Concerned neighbors say the area used to be a community garden but became a homeless encampment and dumping ground over the years pic.twitter.com/j913aHlriK

— Van Tieu (@Van_Tieu) October 18, 2019

 "They definitely have a power saw and a power drill," she said. "They have already built flooring, and started to build insulation."

When we returned two days later, after asking the city parks department about the encampment, the city had stepped in.

Several city agencies, including the Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Sanitation, came together to clean up the site Friday morning.

The city's response included dozens of workers in protective clothing. An official, who declined to be identified, said one of the men was taken to a shelter, but that the other refused services an outreach team offered.

Advocates for the homeless say the encampment is a sign of just how bad the homeless crisis has become.

"This story is pretty incredible, that people are opting to build their own housing in a city where we are one of the richest places on earth," said Paulette Soltani, of VOCAL-NY.

The mayor's officer told NY1, "The Mayor has been clear — we will not tolerate encampments.  Our outreach teams have met with these individuals, offered them services, and are working to connect them with further resources."

 

LIC clock tower gets dwarfed

LIC Court Square


The last time we stopped by 29-37 41st Avenue a/k/a 29-23 Queens Plaza North, we saw that pipe scaffolding was up at the LIC Clock Tower and construction on the new residential building had risen above the construction fence. When we stopped by last week we saw that construction is moving along quickly, and that the LIC Clock Tower is now dwarfed by construction, as seen in the photo below.

Here’s more information about the project from The Real Deal:

Queens Plaza Park, located at 29-37 41st Avenue near the landmarked Long Island City Clock Tower, will be a 978,000-square-foot mixed-use tower. It will have 958 residential units, 300 of which will be affordable. Handel Architects is designing the project — its latest renderings reveal a concave, glassy exterior — and Selldorf Architects is designing its interior, lobby and amenities.

City Council approves Rikers Island shutdown and borough tower prisons

NY Times

 The City Council approved a sweeping $8 billion plan to close the troubled jail complex and replace it with four smaller jails by 2026, an aggressive timeline that will prove challenging. 

 One 886-bed jail will tower over shops and restaurants in Downtown Brooklyn. Another will be next to a subway yard in Queens. In the Bronx, a jail will replace a Police Department tow pound. And another jail will rise in the shadow of City Hall in Manhattan.

That is at the heart of a plan for a landmark overhaul of New York City’s corrections system, which will culminate with the closing of Rikers Island, the jail complex with nearly 10,000 beds that has become notorious for chronic abuse, neglect and mismanagement.

The City Council decisively approved the proposal on Thursday, taking a step that seemed improbable just a few years ago. Supporters say the plan places New York City at the forefront of a national movement to reverse decades of mass incarceration that disproportionately affected black and Hispanic people.

Still, the aggressive timeline — closing Rikers by 2026 — could prove very challenging.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, embraced the jails plan, throwing their political weight behind the measure despite steady opposition from neighborhoods whose residents worry that towering new jails will harm their quality of life. Corrections officers also criticized the plan as unrealistic.

“What we are doing today will reshape the city for generations to come and impact the lives of every New Yorker,” Mr. Johnson said on Thursday. “For decades, our city was unfair to those who became involved in the justice system, and the overwhelming majority who were caught up were black and brown men.”

With two years left in office, Mr. de Blasio also secured perhaps his most progressive achievement so far as mayor with the vote to close Rikers — an idea that even he dismissed a few years ago as impractical.

“This is about valuing our people, no longer condemning people and sending them on a pathway that only made their lives worse and worse,” Mr. de Blasio said. “Today we made history: The era of mass incarceration is over.”

What mass incarceration? Crime has been going down for over 20 years. As for Dancing Cojo's boast, it seems that besides the big windfall cash cow the developers will get from this gift from our representatives, another reason seems to be for these people to grandstand about being the first city to do this. At the expense of neighborhoods were the towers will be built and the communities they disrespected and undermined. And will eventually disenfranchise.

Shootings rise in Southeast Queens and there is only one hospital to treat the victims

THE CITY

 During the first 2020 presidential debate in June, then-candidate Mayor Bill de Blasio touted New York City’s drop in crime. But even as the number of shootings has dramatically decreased across the city over the past decade, a troubling trend has emerged: The proportion of people dying from gunshots has been rising in some pockets.

Data obtained from the New York Police Department and analyzed by The Trace/Measure of America/THE CITY shows this problem has been most severe in Queens.

We mapped the 12,000-plus shootings recorded by the NYPD between 2010 and October 2018, and our analysis found that the further away someone was from a Level I or II trauma center when they were shot, the more likely they were to die.

Nowhere fared worse than neighborhoods in southern Queens, particularly those below Hillside Avenue, where more residents live further than three miles from a trauma center than anywhere else in the city.

There used to be more trauma coverage in the borough. But in February 2009, two hospitals closed, and one of them contained a Level I trauma center.

In the following two years, the gunshot fatality rate in Queens jumped from under 16% to more than 23%. That put the borough’s gunshot fatality rate 30% higher than in the rest of the city.

Since then, every year except for 2016, the death rate from gunshots in Queens has been higher than in the city as a whole.

 “How well your trauma system works, and how good your care is across the country is a big mosaic, and where you are will determine your outcomes,” said Dr. Robert Winchell, the former chair of the trauma systems committee for the American College of Surgeons.

Today, most areas of New York City have access to multiple trauma centers while southern Queens has only one: Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. But financial documents, audits and state reports indicate the facility is ailing.

The hospital was in the red 12 of the 13 years between 2005 and 2017. It finished that year with a deficit of more than $66 million, according to IRS filings and an independent audit.

“I’m not sure how you keep the doors open with that,” said Winchell, who is also chief of New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center’s trauma division.

I'm not sure you can either when the city would rather spend $11,000,000,000 on tower jails.

Elected officials and their donors doing business with the city exploit campaign finance loophole.

NY Daily News

A glaring loophole in New York’s campaign finance rules allows people doing business with the city to steer thousands to candidates for office despite limits on how much they can personally donate.

The glitch means lobbyists, developers and others who stand to profit from government action can curry favor with current and future decision-makers — and skirt donation limits ― by bundling donations from their wealthy pals and sending them to candidates for city office.

Twelve people who have city business, prohibiting them from giving more than a few hundred bucks themselves, have already bundled $112,405 in donations for 2021 candidates, an analysis by The Daily News found.

Anyone considered to be doing business with the city — like lobbyists and those with municipal contracts — can’t give more than $400 to any one candidate for mayor, public advocate and comptroller. They’re barred from giving over $320 to candidates for borough president and $250 for pols running for City Council.

Yet that doesn’t stop them from bundling hundreds of fat checks.

"Some donors circumvent NYC's doing business contribution limits by bundling contributions from others, which can result in more influence than giving contributions directly,” said Alex Camarda, a senior policy adviser at good-government group Reinvent Albany.

So far, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. leads 2021 candidates in bundled cash from the conflicted donors, collecting $49,700 from two people with city business as of July 11, the end of the most recent filing period.

He’s followed by Councilman Rafael Salamanca, Jr., with $14,525 from bundlers with city business, 
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams with $12,040, and Comptroller Scott Stringer with $10,800.

 The amount of bundled cash from those with municipal business is likely to skyrocket in the next two years before the 2021 election, when term limits open 41 of the city’s 59 elected positions that more than 500 candidates are expected to run for.

During the last wide-open election in 2013, a whopping $1.7 million was bundled and given to candidates for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, borough president and city council from 93 people doing business with the city at the time, according to a Daily News analysis of campaign filings.

Another $875,098 was bundled by 70 people with city business during the 2017 election, The News found.

Movie and TV production tax credits brings diminished results for local jobs

Times Union

  Billions of dollars to subsidize film and television projects in New York hasn't had a statistically significant impact on employment in the entertainment industry, according to a new study.

University of Southern California associate professor Michael Thom conducted a peer-reviewed analysis of a handful of state's that offer the bulk of motion picture incentives in the country and found that — when controlled for economic factors such as the growth in the labor market — there is "not much" of a link between job creation and the lucrative credit offered in New York, which was created in 2004.

The study represents a continuation of scholarly analyses questioning whether the refundable tax credit, which was recently extended by state lawmakers and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, is a prudent investment.

Thom determined that employment in the entertainment industry, which increased in New York by more than 60 percent from 2004 to 2017, based on federal jobs numbers, was largely the product of trends in the overall economy and national growth in the industry. He also found a low correlation between the credit and wages paid in the below-the-line jobs that benefit from the credit.

“It’s not the incentives, its simply the normal ebb and flow of the labor market," Thom said.

This conclusion is vociferously disputed by organized labor groups working in film and television, who point to their own studies and anecdotal evidence that the credits have led to a flourishing sector with wide ripple effects.

de Blasio offers to build affordable housing by Bronx tower jail and concessions to other boroughs to get Rikers shutdown plan approved

NY Daily News

Giddyup!

Horse-trading is in full swing as the City Council readies to vote on Mayor de Blasio’s controversial plan to close the notorious jail complex on Rikers Island and replace it with four new facilities.

The plan calls for jails to be built in Downtown Manhattan, the South Bronx, central Queens and Downtown Brooklyn by 2026, at an estimated cost of $8.7 billion.

That’s a bitter pill to swallow for some residents of those nabes. So the de Blasio administration is offering a proverbial spoonful of sugar to Council members rep’ing the areas.

The city is committing to building up to 233 units of affordable housing next to a new jail sited at 320 Concord Ave. in the Bronx nabe of Mott Haven, according to Councilwoman Diana Ayala.
 

She hopes new housing might mollify residents in the area, where the community board unanimously rejected the mayor’s plan in May.

“I’m sure that they’re not going to be excited about this, either,” Ayala said of the new jail’s opponents. “In an effort to try to do the best thing by both the community and shutting Rikers, this is the best place I can get to.”

In spite of pockets of opposition from pols like Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer — who’s been tormented by socialist activists as he seeks the Queens borough president’s seat — the Council is expected to pass the mayor’s plan. The Land Use Committee will conclude a review process known as ULURP on Wednesday, followed by a full Council vote Thursday.

Council members in districts where the new jails were sited were likely “yes” votes from the start of the debate.

But an insider noted the ULURP process, in which the Council tends to defer to the votes of colleagues rep’ing areas where projects are proposed, gives members in Ayala’s shoes lots of leverage.

“If you’re a member who’s going to vote yes, then why not secure benefits?” the Council insider remarked. “The ULURP provides a rare occasion to provide community benefits. Why not?”

de Blasio's and Banks' DHS covers up the severity of violence and drug dealing in city shelters

NY Post


City officials covered up nearly 120 “serious incidents” at homeless shelters by downgrading their severity so they wouldn’t have to be disclosed to state regulators, according to the city Department of Investigation.

The DOI conducted a yearlong probe into allegations that the Department of Homeless Services wasn’t “adequately” reporting arrests and other problems to the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, which is responsible for ensuring that shelters are safe.

The investigation revealed that DHS created its own “priority codes” that minimized “life-threatening injuries,” mental-health emergencies and some arrests of residents, visitors or staffers, according to an April 8 DOI memo obtained by The Post.

There were “approximately 117 internal reports” from January through June 2017 that contained information that should have been reported, the memo said.
City Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-The Bronx), who tipped off DOI to the situation, told The Post, 

“There’s only one word for the conduct of DHS: inexcusable.”

“DHS adopted a dubious definition of serious incidents that it knew would lead to the under-reporting of incidents consisting of serious injuries, mental health emergencies, arrests and situations affecting the safety of its own residents and staff,” Torres said.

NY Post 

 Security at the city’s homeless shelters is so shoddy that one Harlem facility had its own in-house heroin dealer, according to records and fed-up workers.

Parkview Inn resident Alice Cuesta, 52, was finally busted last month with 60 glassines of heroin after clumsily dropping them right in front of an NYPD sergeant inside the elevator at the West 110th Street shelter, prosecutors said court papers.

Before her fateful fumble, Cuesta had held free rein at the shelter “for a long time,” law-enforcement and DHS sources told The Post — adding that the situation is similar at shelters across the city.

Security gaps, as well as overworked DHS officers who simply don’t have the time, training or help to conduct thorough investigations, have left some residents wondering if they wouldn’t be better off taking their chances on the street.

Architects and engineers have a way to save Rikers plus provide it with ferry service.

Queens Chronicle

 
Can ferry boats be the way to stop a bruising battle over New York City’s jail problem?

A group of designers and engineers who live and work in Downtown Manhattan unveiled a plan last week that outlines in detail how to rebuild Rikers Island and use secure buses aboard ferries to transport prisoners to and from court.

It is one of the first specific, workable alternatives put forward by opponents to Mayor de Blasio’s sweeping plan to replace Rikers with four borough-based jails, including one in Kew Gardens behind the Queens Criminal Court building.

The City Council has scheduled a crucial vote on the mayor’s jail plan for next Thursday.

At bottom, the 49-page ferry proposal was drawn to upend the mayor’s $11-billion plan — $9 billion for the jails, plus $2 billion to repurpose Rikers as a multiuse city facility — that would take a decade to complete.

Local groups are bitterly opposed to the proposal that calls for the new jails in largely residential neighborhoods, as are criminal-justice reformers who want to see Rikers closed but oppose constructing new lockups.

The reimagining of Rikers calls for the city to demolish “every building” on the island and build a series of smaller, low-rise jails — each with a different level of security.

Renderings for a reconfigured Rikers include open spaces, sports facilities, a family center and a small farm.

Connecting a rebuilt island jail system with the boroughs by ferry “liberates Rikers” from the necessity of moving hundreds of prisoners being held on charges before conviction each day on long bus rides through city streets to the courts, said architect Bill Bialosky, a spokesman for the group.

A group of about a dozen volunteer architects and engineers has been working on the plan for about a month, meeting regularly at the Lin Sing Association, the century-old Chinese-American organization on Mott Street, with community leaders.

 Ferries, said Bialosky, are “the answer to the problem.”

Ferries would also be a good commuting alternative for the families and friends of prisoners.

Why didn't de Blasio and his bullshit city Economic Development Conspirators provide a ferry pier at Rikers in the first place? Well now you know. 

de Blasio offers city services as a bribe to get Kew Gardens tower prison approved.

Forest Hills Patch

 In a private meeting this spring with Kew Gardens residents to discuss hotly-contested plans for a new jail in their neighborhood, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised they would be compensated for the jail's incursion, but he didn't provide specifics.

Now, a tentative list of those specifics has come to light. 

 Koslowitz has also pressed city officials to reduce the size of the Kew Gardens jail, which current plans say would be 27 stories tall and have a capacity of 1,150 detainees.

The proposed jail — one of four new jails the city wants to build to replace detention facilities on Rikers Island — is expected to be smaller than that by the time the City Council votes on the plan next week, according to Koslowitz's spokesperson, Michael Cohen.


Cohen pushed back on using the word "exchange" to describe the list of items City Hall is promising 
Koslowitz, who represents Kew Gardens, to secure her vote in favor of the jail plan.

He declined to specify other items being negotiated because he said the list hasn't yet been finalized.


Asked how he would describe the deal, he said, "I would describe it as the Mayor making good on his word that he understands that the community is sacrificing something here and his administration would like to do something for the community."


Koslowitz's vote is critical to the passage of the city's controversial jail plan, which calls for building a new lockup in every borough but Staten Island by 2026.


That's because members of the City Council, whose binding vote on the jails is scheduled for Oct. 17, tend to vote in lockstep with the council members whose districts are affected by a given land-use plan.


Koslowitz has already pushed de Blasio's office to nix plans for an infirmary in the Kew Gardens jail that would serve all four new detention centers.


In the private meeting earlier this year, de Blasio indicated he would go even further.


"When we ask a community to do something for the whole city, which is what we're doing here, then the community has a right to say, here are things that would help our community, including things we've been trying to get for a long time and haven't gotten," de Blasio said, according to a recording of the March 27 meeting reviewed by Patch.


"How can we say to the community, we're asking you to shoulder a burden but we want to do something back that's really going to make a difference?" de Blasio added.


Still, the jail proposal is intensely controversial among Koslowitz's constituents as well as advocates for No New Jails NYC, who say the city should close Rikers but not build any new jails.

Koslowitz's response? "Whether I supported it or not, that jail was happening."

 The elected in NYC do not represent the people anymore. What the mayor wants, the mayor gets it. Got it.

City Council draws up pointless resolution to prevent building more jails on Rikers Island to assure approval for borough tower prisons.

NY Daily News

The city will prohibit construction of new jails on Rikers Island under a proposal approved by the Council’s land use committee on Thursday.

The resolution allows the Council to submit an application to the Department of City Planning to remap the island so that the land can’t house inmates after 2026, when the troubled complex is expected to close.

Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the map change, which must go through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, ensures the island will cease as a correctional facility after the new jails are built even after they leave office.

“We’re making our commitment ironclad and ensuring no future administration can reverse all the progress we’ve made,” de Blasio said in a statement. “Mass incarceration did not begin in New York City, but it will end here.”

The 17-member Council land use committee passed the resolution 11 to 2, with two other lawmakers abstaining and two absent from the vote. Councilman Bob Holden, who is not on the land use committee, said the vote “sets an extremely dangerous precedent in New York City, with the Council essentially turning the ULURP process on its head and neglecting the voices of our citizens.”

Bipolar homeless man attacked a child in front of his house

NY Post

 A homeless man with a history of mental illness randomly attacked a 6-year-old boy in front of his grandparent’s house in Queens on Thursday afternoon, seriously injuring the boy, police and sources said.

The child was sitting on the steps of his grandparent’s house on Metropolitan Avenue near 123rd Street in Kew Gardens at about 5 p.m. when the vagrant walked into their driveway, said Rabbi Naftali Portnoy, the boy’s grandfather.

The 35-year-old vagrant then grabbed the child, picked him up and threw him to the concrete, slamming his face on the ground, police said.

His brother rushed into the house and told his grandfather about the attack.

Portnoy called 911 and tailed the vagrant, who was shirtless, while he walked away from the scene down Metropolitan Avenue.

Cops arrived soon after and arrested the suspect, who sat down on the street and said, “I’m bipolar,” the grandfather explained.

The kid was rushed to Cohen Children’s Medical Center and treated for hemorrhaging to the brain and facial contusions, a source said.

Quick First Lady McCray, send some simps to hand out Thrive pamphlets on Metropolitan Ave.

Council Member Holden gets blown off inquiring officials about Thrive program's ineffectiveness

NY Post


A Queens lawmaker accused the head of first lady Chirlane McCray’s embattled “ThriveNYC” mental health initiative of refusing to explain why the city ignored so many warning signs surrounding the vagrant who bludgeoned four homeless men to death in Chinatown last weekend – because she has no answers.

Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) initially called out ThriveNYC Director Susan Herman and other city officials during a council hearing Tuesday. He was asking them how Randy Santos, 24, went under the city’s radar despite having a history of unprovoked violence – including a November arrest for allegedly biting a man on the chest.

“There were certainly a number of red flags over the years,” Holden said. “There was a trail of violence all involving random people.”

“These signs were here with this individual for years, and he was in and out of the system,” added Holden. “This is again happening all over the city – random attacks. Does this kind of thing red flag your agencies at all to say ‘we should step in’?”

Neither Herman nor Myla Harrison, assistant commissioner for the Department of Health, directly answered his questions during the hearing on mental health services for immigrants.

Instead, they tried to shift focus by insisting most homeless New Yorkers don’t suffer from mental illness and that they’re limited from discussing Santos’ treatment history.

“We were all horrified by what happened, and we are all looking at it, and we will learn from this incident, “ Herman said. “[But] I think you are aware of the fact that we can’t talk about specific services this particular individual accessed [by law].”

Holden tried to ask follow-up questions but was cut off by Councilman Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn), chairman of the immigration committee, who claimed he wanted to give other legislators the chance ask questions.

Holden left the hearing fuming and later accused Herman of “dodging” his questions, adding McCray’s $250 million Thrive initiative “lacks a real plan to deal” with emotionally disturbed persons like Santos.

“[Herman] could have said, ‘I can’t speak about this case, but hypothetically we do this when this happens,’” Holden said. “But she didn’t want to because she couldn’t — and that’s the whole thing.”
“They are not helping the seriously mentally ill,” he added. “The city is not doing its job with all the money they are putting towards ThriveNYC.”

But let's focus on a few citizens saying inappropriate things about homeless people and not on what officials who are supposed to help them are not saying and are blatantly avoiding addressing the issue.

Mayor de Blasio and DHS switches successful homeless shelter for women into one for men

WPIX

 A homeless shelter on West 107th Street in Manhattan Valley, currently housing women, is expected to transition to single adult men in October. And much of the neighborhood is not happy. 

"Once men are involved here, the landscape could potentially change and everybody is concerned," neighbor Ali Jafry said.He lives next door to the shelter and said in recent years the women have been good neighbors.

The New York City Department of Homeless Services recently announced the change and Manhattan's Community Board 7 held a meeting Tuesday night to address it. But a DHS representative didn't come.

 "Up until 4 o'clock they were coming. At 4 o'clock they called the office to say they can't come," CB 7 Chair Roberta Semer told PIX11 News. This did not sit well with the shelter's neighbors. 

One man at the open meeting said, "Why are they not here? Why are they hiding from us?" The current shelter houses 120 women and most have jobs. Tari Wheeler said this shelter helped her get her life together. 

The Department of Homeless Services said it will move the women to permanent housing or another shelter. 

While Wheeler doesn't know where she will be sent, she is also worried about the kids in the neighborhood. "No offense on the men, but there are small children around here. We have to look out for the small children besides ourselves," Wheeler said.

Homeless shelter in Glendale has residents and advocates at loggerheads

 

 Queens Eagle

Two days after four homeless men were brutally beaten and killed on the streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown, hundreds of central Queens residents packed a high school auditorium in Middle Village to condemn a planned homeless men’s shelter — and to demonize the New Yorkers who would live there. 

There are legitimate critiques of large-scale homeless shelters and the multi-million dollar city contracts awarded to shelter providers as the city contends with a record-high homeless population and a widening income inequality chasm.

But complex issues and possible solutions went unexamined Monday night at Christ the King High School — in part because speakers who attempted to address them were immediately booed and cursed at. The public hearing was the latest phase in the saga over a proposed 200-bed men’s shelter that the city plans to build inside a vacant warehouse at 78-16 Cooper Ave. in Glendale.

At the beginning of the event, hecklers interrupted a moment of silence for the four men killed while sleeping on the sidewalk early Saturday morning. 

From there, the dialogue devolved into discriminatory denunciations of people, particularly men, who experience homelessness. Roughly 60,000 people, including 21,694 children, slept in a New York City municipal shelter on Oct. 6, according to the Department of Homeless Services’ most recent daily census.

”These homeless men are ‘tranks, lobos and zipheads’ … They’re drug addicts and sexual offenders,” said one woman who quoted a line from “Back to the Future.” “Put them in a separate area away from society. They should be locked away forever and out of sight permanently.”

Another woman went even further.

“I hope someone is going to burn the place down,” she shouted into the microphone.

Mike Papa of the anti-shelter group Glendale Middle Village Coalition criticized the nonprofit organization Westhab, which will receive a lucrative city contract to operate the shelter on Cooper Avenue. He then turned his attention to shelter residents, implying that they are criminals. 

“Homelessness is their business and thanks to Mayor de Blasio, the Department of Correction will supply all the customers that companies like Westhab want,” said Papa, garnering applause from the crowd.

Moments later, the same attendees screamed at a Crystal Wolfe, a local resident who runs a nonprofit providing food for the homeless, when she said that “homelessness is a complex issue that is the result of problems that have been ignored for decades.”

Tousif Ahsan, a member of the Ridgewood Tenants Union, also attempted to speak “in support of our homeless neighbors.”

“Get the [expletive] outta here,” one man screamed. Most of Ahsan’s speech was inaudible amid the jeers.

District 30 Councilmember Robert Holden, whose 2017 victory over incumbent Elizabeth Crowley was driven by anti-shelter sentiment, did not condemn his constituents’ commentary. Instead, he stoked their anger.

Church holds mass in honor of Mother Cabrini, the saint who won and got screwed out of the city's women's statue program

NY Post


More than 1,000 parishioners packed a Brooklyn church on Sunday to give Saint Frances Cabrini her dues — after the city passed her over for a statue, despite a groundswell of support.

The overflow crowd at Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary & St. Stephen church was the latest outcry from Catholics and Big Apple Italian-Americans after Cabrini was snubbed by First Lady Chirlane McCray’s “She Built NYC” statue program.

Cabrini, an Italian immigrant who founded 67 institutions to help the needy, finished first in a citywide poll asking who should get an effigy — but McCray and former Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen nonetheless decided not to grant her the honor.

“That’s a disgrace,” said Connie Gessler, who said Cabrini taught her grandmother. “Why did they have an election if they weren’t going to give one to the person with the most votes? How would she like it if we didn’t make her husband mayor if he got the most votes.”

The mass came after hundreds of Cabrini supporters gathered at Mother Cabrini Park on President Street and to the church.

NY Post 


Brooklyn Catholics are waging a holy war against First Lady Chirlane McCray.

After McCray enraged the faithful by ignoring the public’s top choice for her women’s statue program — Mother Frances Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants — the Brooklyn Diocese has launched a campaign to build its own monument to her.

“Mother Cabrini recently received the most votes in the ‘She Built NYC’ competition, which aims to build more statues honoring women,” the Diocese wrote in a press release. “But despite earning this top ranking, a public statue honoring her life is not being planned.”

The flock felt compelled to act after The Post revealed McCray’s statue snub, according to Monsignor 
David Cassato of the Italian Apostolate, which is leading the fundraising effort along with the diocese.

“There was a story in the New York Post about Mother Cabrini, that she did not receive a recognition of a statue, and that’s what precipitated our honoring her,” said Cassato, who plans to donate $1,000 to the cause.

Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio noted Cabrini is deserving of the “She Built” honor because she literally helped build New York City.

“Her work to establish orphanages, schools, and a hospital, along with her commitment to immigrants, absolutely should be recognized,” he said. “The failure to honor Mother Cabrini with a public statue would be an affront to many New Yorkers, especially Italian-Americans, who see her as most deserving.”

McCray, meanwhile, insisted through a spokeswoman that she is not “anti-Catholic.”

“To claim that the First Lady is anti-Catholic is a falsehood and outrageous,” said spokewoman Jaclyn Rothenberg.

“She was invited to speak at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and has worked with Catholic Charities on a variety of mental health issues. Every one of the monuments for She Built go through the same process and the decision-making on this one was no different.”

Cabrini was public’s top choice for a statue, garnering 219 nominations, but she, along with two ohter top-5 vote-getters — Emily Warren Roebling, who directed the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, and Manhattan Music School founder Janet Schenck — were tossed in favor of more women of color and an LGBTQ activist.

The woman who finished in second place was journalist and author Jane Jacobs. So it makes sense why her and Mother Cabrini were blown off by the craven phony first lady/co-mayor and the neoliberal developer crony and fixer Alicia Glen. Because if they were alive they would be excoriating the policies affecting the affordable housing and homeless crisis those two elitist women are complicit with.

.”

The Queens Machine is suffering from AOC derangement syndrome

NY Post

 If the Queens Democratic establishment was badly rattled by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning victory against incumbent and kingmaker Joe Crowley last year, then a largely ignored civil court race this summer shook the city’s most powerful political machine to its core.

During primary elections in June, a Hispanic woman from the Bronx routed the candidate hand-picked by the Queens County Democratic Party for a seat on the county’s Civil Court — a race that had not been contested in nearly four decades.

“It was an incredible moment, and it was as important as AOC’s victory,” said a political strategist active in Queens and the Bronx. “Suddenly, people smelled blood.”

Insurgent candidate and lawyer Lumarie Maldonado Cruz, 47, beat Wyatt Gibbons, 56, with nearly 62% of the vote compared to 38% for Gibbons, a Queens attorney.

“AOC’s victory reminded me of my obligations to stand up for what is right,” Maldonado Cruz said when she entered the race earlier this year.

Still reeling from the victory of Ocasio-Cortez over Crowley, a 10-term Congressman and longtime Queens party boss who was also chair of the House Democratic Caucus, the party was again caught “asleep at the wheel” with no discernible strategy during the June primaries, said the strategist. He, like many of the political consultants and elected officials interviewed by The Post, did not want to be identified for fear of antagonizing the Queens party or AOC.



In addition to the judicial race, the party nearly lost the election for Queens district attorney. Party-backed candidate Queens Borough President Melinda Katz should have trounced little-known, late-to-the-race progressive Tiffany Caban, but instead squeaked by, after a month-long series of recounts, by 60 votes.

“They hate AOC,” said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio, referring to the leaders of the Queens County Democrats. “She killed their meal ticket.”

But as they battle for relevancy against a progressive wave, the moderate Democrats in the Queens party are still mired in the past, observers say.  The party is still controlled by Crowley’s old backers — “the three white men in the room” who have controlled Queens politics for more than three decades and reaped the benefits.

Michael Reich is the longtime executive director of the political party, and Frank Bolz is the law chairman. Gerard Sweeney has held his appointment as counsel to the Queens public administrator since 1992. In that capacity, he has raked in tens of millions of dollars for the law firm, administering estates of those who die without wills in Surrogate’s Court.

In March, party delegates elected a scandal-scarred lawmaker as the new kingmaker. But observers told The Post that Rep. Gregory Meeks, an 11-term Congressman from southeast Queens, is a lightweight.

“Meeks is essentially a backbencher in Congress, who lacks Crowley’s gravitas,” Muzzio told The Post. “He’s their puppet.”

The true political powerhouse in Queens is obvious.

AOC has national stature, demanding the attention of the House Speaker and the president. She has more than 5 million Twitter followers.

de Blasio draws up tax break for landlords following state overhaul of rent regulations

The Real Deal

 
Landlords are finally getting some love from the de Blasio administration.
The city is preparing a proposal to overhaul a tax break program, in part to make it more appealing to owners of apartment buildings.


Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Louise Carroll said the J-51 tax break needs to be “right sized” because the incentive hasn’t kept up with the market.

“We’re looking at the program holistically, both as to what would be an appropriate reimbursement for the work done, what would be an appropriate tax exemption to incentivize people to take it and what would be the right tax abatement so that the program works,” she said during a Crain’s event Wednesday.

It’s not clear what the city agency wants to change, but state legislation would be required. A representative for HPD said the proposal will aim to make the benefits “more targeted and cost-effective” for owners while making sure tenant protections are as strong as possible. The agency expects to deliver its proposal to the state Assembly at the start of the next legislative session.

The tax break, which is set to expire next year, is provided to landlords who renovate apartment buildings in exchange for their keeping units rent-stabilized for the duration of the benefit, which can be from 14 to 34 years. In a bill signed by the governor in July, state officials expanded the types of condo and co-op properties eligible for the benefit and extended the J-51 program through June 2020.

Hunters Point library makes it hard for the handicapped and elderly people to get to the books

NY Post

A state-of-the-art new Queens library that took $41 million to build over more than a decade isn’t fully accessible to people with disabilities — and bookworms are outraged.
 
The Hunters Point Library in Long Island City features a three-tiered fiction section that can only be reached by a steep staircase.
 
But the design fails to consider wheelchair-bound users, some elderly folks and anyone who isn’t able-bodied, advocates say.
 
“I’m appalled,” Christine Yearwood, founder of the disability rights group Up-Stand, told The Post. 

“Everybody — young, old, able-bodied and disabled — should be able to enjoy it.”
Yearwood, who lives in Astoria, added: “With all of the delays they had a chance to do this the right way … It’s off-putting.”
 
 The eye-catching lit house opened on Sept. 24 to much fanfare, complete with a sleek modern facade facing East River. Its design began in 2010 and construction started in 2015.
 
The library has one elevator but it doesn’t stop at the fiction section, which is on three separate levels above the lobby, according to Gothamist, which was first to report the accessibility problems.
 
By law, public buildings must meet accessibility requirements in the American Disabilities Acts. And the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has a checklist noting “All parts of the library should be accessible.”
 
On Friday, elderly library visitors called it a major screw up.
 
“[It’s] an unfortunate oversight, clearly,” said Dottie Jeffries, 68, who was browsing for books. “I hope there’s a way to remedy this.”
 
A 74-year-old man, who lives across the street from the building, added, “I’m disappointed. It should be accessible to everyone.”
 
Queens Public Library President Dennis Walcott said the library is aware of the issue and plans to move the books.

 The issue with this "library" is that it's more designed to hold gilded events and galas for city officials, lobbyists, corporate owned local news reporters, business executives and myriad plutocrats. The book and the bookshelves are obligatory.

It's a big club...