Still no place to call home

 

Queens Post 

 On a sunny day in early April, minutes before flames ignited across a 133-unit apartment building on 89th street in Jackson Heights, Andrew Sokolof Diaz returned home from a doctor’s appointment for his two-month-old son.

He opened the windows to get some fresh air, before leaving to take their dog out for a family stroll.

“So I remember opening the windows and feeling a little nostalgic, like aw, this is our little home. I actually remember that feeling,” said Sokolof Diaz, 33, a leader of the building’s tenant association. “And that’s it. The worst possible thing that could have happened, happened.”

Around 1 p.m., the electrical fire, which fire marshals said was sparked by an overloaded power strip, began burning on the top floor of one wing of the six-story, two-address building and spread rapidly, fanned by an apartment door left ajar.

Tenants scrambled outside, some exiting through the main entrance and others climbing down fire escapes, and watched the destruction from the sidewalk. Billowing plumes of smoke clouded the sky for blocks.

It took 12 hours for hundreds of firefighters to quell the eight-alarm blaze, which injured 21 people. Ultimately, the sprawling building’s more than 140 households — about 500 New Yorkers — were displaced from their homes.

 A season later, more than 100 residents of the rent-stabilized, block-long apartment building are without a permanent home. By the tenant association’s count, some 60 families remain in city-sponsored hotel rooms across Queens and Brooklyn, following Red Cross emergency relocation.

They were told they could stay for a month — two months ago.

After losing their homes and in many cases all their possessions, those former tenants are now confronting difficult choices on offer via the city’s affordable housing program. Some are being offered pricey new rentals in the neighborhood and others, apartments on the far side of the borough.

Meantime, displaced families told THE CITY, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has attempted to relocate them from the hotel rooms to homeless shelters — first on Father’s Day and then again this month.

For families, that would mean leaving Queens entirely, since HPD doesn’t operate any emergency shelters for displaced people in the borough.

“We are just waiting to see what HPD and other organizations are going to do. I really do not want to go to a shelter,” said 16-year-old Kimberly Sinchi, who’s living in a hotel room in Downtown Brooklyn with her parents and her dog.

 

Communties are sick of the restaurant shanties

 

 

 CBS New York

 The city’s plan to make outdoor dining permanent is meeting a lot of resistance from local residents.

They say noise, rats and lack of space are just some of the problems, CBS2’s Aundrea Cline-Thomas reported Monday.

Residents in the West Village sounded off to the community board that is tasked with providing input on what will be the regulations for the new law. They said they want to support their local businesses, but when the pandemic is over the outdoor dining structures should be gone, too.

The structures have been a lifesaver for restaurants. They are so popular, the city is making the pandemic additions permanent.

But some residents say they have become a nuisance.

“These sheds are creating a vermin habitat like we’ve never seen before,” Lee Arntzen said.

“Noise comes with this and it shouldn’t be on this street, certainly not on a narrow residential street,” Stu Waldman said.

“It’s like a bandshell pointing at your bedroom. That’s the kind of noise,” Leslie Clark added.

Cellphone video shows how the neighborhood transforms, especially on the weekends — music blasting as large crowds dance outside, structures leaving little room to walk on the sidewalk, and the mounds of trash left behind that residents say attract rats.

“I have to walk on the subway grates and with my cane it makes me fearful,” Dorothy Green said.

In a statement, the mayor’s office said in part, “Outdoor dining saved 100,000 jobs. A stance against outdoor dining is a stance against this city’s recovery. It’s here to stay.”

That’s a sentiment city leaders tried to reinforce during Monday’s presentation to Community Board 2.

“The program has been a massive success and in April the City Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill to make it permanent,” the Department of Transportation’s Judy Chang said to boos from the crowd.

Little boy run over by hit and run moped rider in Flushing Meadows Park

 

NY Daily News

A tough little boy is on the mend after a hit-and-run moped rider slammed into him in a Queens park, the youngster’s dad said Monday.

Jonathan Beauchamps, 4, is “definitely pulling through” after he was struck and critically hurt in the parking lot of the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park boathouse about 5:50 p.m. Sunday, his father, Christopher Beauchamps, told the Daily News.

“He’s doing better now. He’s pulling through. He’s a strong kid,” his dad said. “He doesn’t have any broken bones or anything.”

Jonathan suffered head trauma, and remains in critical but stable condition at Cohen Children’s Medical Center. The cowardly rider fled. No arrests have been made, police said.

Jonathan’s dad said he, his wife, his children and other friends and relatives were hanging out in the park, playing music, when a group of moped and dirt bike riders showed up to show off and do donuts.

“Bikes aren’t even supposed to be in that park. There’s kids. My son was saying it wasn’t even a dirt bike that did it, it was one of the mopeds,” he said. “It could have been worse.”

“If there were more kids, it could’ve happened to any (of them).,” he added.

The Blaz goes full anti-mask

 

 NY Daily News 

 Mayor de Blasio balked at the idea of reinstating an indoor face mask mandate in the city on Monday even though COVID-19 infections are ticking back up. Instead, he called for more vaccination efforts throughout the five boroughs.

“Masks have value, unquestionably, but masks are not going at the root of the problem. Vaccination is,” the mayor said during a live-streamed press briefing. “So we do not intend a mask mandate. We do intend to double down on vaccination.”

Over the weekend, some local public health experts and lawmakers began calling for a resumption of indoor mask wearing for all New Yorkers — regardless of vaccination status — citing a slow but steady rise in coronavirus infections driven by the Delta variant.

But de Blasio said in his briefing that it would be “a disservice” to heed those calls and argued all focus should instead be on boosting vaccinations.

“Let’s address the problem by getting more people vaccinated and going right at it, and knocking down this variant,” he said from City Hall. “You know, a mask doesn’t arrest the progress of the variant — vaccination does. So we’re gonna go where the real impact is. That’s the bottom line.”

Democratic Manhattan Councilmember Mark Levine, who chairs the City Council’s Health Committee, took issue with de Blasio’s argument and said an indoor face mask mandate could safeguard New York against a major COVID-19 outbreak while the vaccination campaign continues.

NYC Housing planning together again to develop in Far Rockaway

We want to bring a #CommunityLandTrust to the Rockaways!

Right now, we're accepting proposals to turn vacant, City-owned lots in Edgemere into affordable, shared equity housing and sustainable open space: https://t.co/9gGbGKwryp pic.twitter.com/arXqYLGvbH

— NYC Housing (@NYCHousing) July 17, 2021

Shared equity housing, sounds like the same 80/20 bullshit "affordable housing" that's been built since the Blaz stained City Hall with his presence. But you know Donnie Richards is unquestionably down with this

Sliwa on the street

The Brooklyn Mechanic

 

 

Politico

 When Eric Adams needed space to work on his mayoral campaign, an old friend set him up with a brightly-lit spot in his own downtown Brooklyn office, steps from Adams’ Borough Hall headquarters.

When he was setting up his campaign team, Adams hired the same confidante for legal advice and help putting together ballot petitions.

And when Adams was building a war chest to underwrite his victory in the Democratic primary last month, it was that friend, Frank Carone, who hosted fundraisers and, along with his wife, donated the maximum amount allowed under law. Their Mill Basin, Brooklyn neighbors followed suit, contributing $29,430 to Adams — the Brooklyn borough president who is now the odds-on favorite to become the city’s 110th mayor.

In fact, Carone has been such a constant in Adams’ political and personal orbit, he was summoned over a loudspeaker at an election night victory party a few weeks ago: “Frank Carone, we need you by the DJ area please.”

Carone is an attorney whose practice at Abrams Fensterman has exploded since he joined in 2011. The firm covers a bit of everything — divorce proceedings, criminal trials, medical malpractice cases.

And its more than 100 attorneys also represent real estate, nursing home and transportation companies that rely on city government for their businesses. That’s when Carone’s reputation as a well-connected litigator and man about town became a lucrative asset.

As head of the firm’s Brooklyn office, Carone offers clients strategic advice on government relations while also helping them accelerate the grind of municipal bureaucracy. He relies on a thick Rolodex built over the years, through a keen knowledge of city agencies and control over a piece of the Brooklyn Democratic political machine.

He makes himself a port in a storm, sticking by friends in tough times and inviting them for a home-cooked meal at his house in Southern Brooklyn, replete with neoclassical rooflines and a waterfront pool deck. But Carone can just as quickly exert pressure when he feels he’s been crossed, according to more than a dozen interviews with politicians and operatives who have dealt with him.

Now, after eight years of friendship with Mayor Bill de Blasio, Carone has an opportunity for an even closer connection to a government he readily does business with. Carone and Adams are so close, they’ve even spent Thanksgiving together.

“Frank is a very honest broker. He is a man of his word and he’s very public about who he supports. He’s been with Eric since day one,” Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, said. “He’ll continue to be a confidante of Eric’s when he’s mayor — he’ll be one of his top confidantes, one of his top friends in the world — and someone he can rely on.”

It's not far, not far for the D.O.B. and the D.O.H. to reach...

 

Well here we go again, the gentrification of Rockaway Beach continues with the resurgence of illegal hostels for fun and profit.

 For  $600 and $700 a night, you get to slumber in a cozy setup no different than how the homeless sleep in congregate shelters.

 

 

Complete with combination skate park and pool on the roof.

 

 

Here's another re-purposed house turned hostel's idea of a pool, but it really looks more like a sink.

  

 

For the thriftier hipsters out there (if there is such a thing) who don't have that much disposable income to splurge, they can spend a weekend in one of Rockaway Hideaway's "cozy" trailers. Complete with ample patio space and a combination dining room/stand up shower

 

 

 

 

 

 The hosts of these campers take in 4 guests, which must be a thrill for them to decide who gets to sleep on the mattress or the seats in the dining nook.

 

 

  

But at least this one has an open air shower and commode, with natural light and free soap!

 

 

 

 

Funny how they are able to get away with these set ups, not only for all the building and housing codes they are violating but also the health risks they are causing by clustering transients and tourists from other states or nations, since the pandemic isn't over as positive cases rise again from the spread of the vaccine resistant Delta Variant (ask the New York Yankees). But as of this writing, it looks like some concerned neighbors dropped a dime on them and all "hideaways" have cancelled future reservations.

 I wonder why...

 

 

 

 

Strolling through Ridgewood

 

 

 FOX 5 NY

So it is possible to build real, "deeply" affordable housing without one building monstrosity taking up a whole block. 

 

Stierville revisited

 

QNS

Most of the communities in our neighborhood have smaller subdivisions within them  such as Liberty Park in Glendale and Winfield in Woodside — and Ridgewood is no exception.

For years, people referred to the northern area of the community near the Brooklyn/Queens border as “Upper Ridgewood.” Howard Beach has a couple of subdivisions — including Hamilton Beach and Ramblersville — and Bayside has the communities of Oakland Gardens, Windsor Park and Bay Terrace.

Few people, however, know about the “Stierville” section of Ridgewood. This actually is an antiquated name for the area of Ridgewood northwest of Myrtle Avenue and Fresh Pond Road where Paul Stier built hundreds of one- and two-family brick rowhouses in the early part of the 20th century that have withstood the test of time.

The story of Stierville and the man behind it is quite fascinating, yet comes to a tragic and sudden conclusion.

Stier, who constructed more than 750 homes in Ridgewood and Glendale, was born in Germany in 1874 and emigrated the United States at the age of 17. He first settled in upstate Buffalo, where he worked as a mason. He traveled around the state for a while, working at various construction sites, until finally settling in our neighborhood.

In 1898, he married Anna Muller, and four years later constructed his first home. By 1905, he built a row of two-family brick houses on the east side of what was then called Yale Avenue (currently 64th Place). Three years later, he purchased land on Foxall Street (now 69th Avenue) between Forest Avenue and Buchman Avenue (now 60th Lane). He purchased additional land on Edsall Avenue (now 70th Avenue) between Anthon Avenue (now 60th Street) and Buchman Avenue.

On this land, Stier constructed two-family brick homes sold for $5,600 each (less than one percent of the market value of a similar home in Ridgewood today); buyers had to offer a $500 down payment, then paid the remaining balance over time.

Each home had 11 rooms on two floors, plus two tiled bathrooms, separate furnaces in the basement and hardwood trim throughout the structure. But this was only the beginning for Stier, who built 200 homes the previous two years and had plans to build another 144 in the immediate years ahead.

 

 

 

Forgotten sidewalks

 

 

Queens Chronicle 

 It’s almost been one year since Hurricane Isaias hit New York City, took out power for days and tore trees from their roots, but plenty of sidewalks throughout Queens look as though the storm ravaged them yesterday.

“We know that if this was in Manhattan, the issue would be fixed already. The outer boroughs, the last I checked are the real boroughs, so get this done,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said at a July 13 press conference to demand the city take responsibility for what he called a public safety hazard.

State Sen. John Liu (D-Bayside) called the Tuesday press conference in Bellerose as a “last resort” after he spent months calling on the city to repair broken pavement sprinkled across his district. Shattered sidewalks can be found there, as well as in College Point, Whitestone and Flushing separated from the public only by caution tape.

Kathy Parent’s Bellerose home, where the event was held, lies alongside 87th Road, where a tree was ripped from the city-owned grass space last August during the storm. The roots shredded the concrete, which has been left untouched since the city Parks Department removed the fallen tree months ago.

“I take pride in maintaining my property to the best of my ability, so I am very distressed by the fact that my sidewalk exists in this horrible condition, but more so dangerous condition,” Parent said, adding that children have attempted to ride their bikes over the mess.

Parent said she wouldn’t consider fixing the sidewalk herself and then billing the city for reimbursement because she believes she would end up waiting 20 years for the check. She said she replaced the sidewalk herself several years prior and refuses to put more money into it, especially when it is the city’s responsibility.

“Kathy, we know if the shoe was on the other foot, if this was your responsibility, every single person the city could send to find you would be here by now, so this is really about ensuring that the government practices what it preaches,” Richards continued.

According to Liu, the city promised to address the problem in the spring when the weather was warmer, but summer is halfway finished and he hasn’t seen any changes across Eastern Queens.

That morning, Mayor de Blasio was asked by reporters if he was aware of the situation and what action he would take to ensure the homeowners would finally see relief after a year.

“We’ll get to work on it immediately,” the mayor responded. “It really bothers me to hear that this much time has passed and anyone isn’t getting the help they need. So, we will expedite that.”

 

de Blasio beggingly calls for congestion pricing tax to be implemented

 

 Queens Post

Mayor Bill de Blasio called on state officials Thursday to enact congestion pricing by next year.

He urged the MTA to put its long-delayed plan to charge drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street in place by July 2022.

“It’s time for the state to get in gear, get congestion pricing done,” de Blasio said during a morning press conference.

The new tolls were slated to go into effect in January 2021, but the plan was held up by the Trump administration and delayed by COVID-19. The Biden administration has since given the MTA the go-ahead to conduct an environmental assessment of the plan.

The agency must complete this assessment before the plan can move forward and de Blasio said it has been dragging its feet. He wants the MTA to expedite the assessment.

The congestion pricing plan could generate $15 billion over four years for much-needed capital improvements to the New York transit system.

The fees to enter the congestion pricing zone could be around $11 to $14 for cars and $25 for trucks during peak business hours, state leaders previously told the New York Times. However, the actual figures will be set by the Traffic Mobility Review Board, a six-person panel created in 2019.

De Blasio, on Thursday, announced the he had appointed Sherif Soliman, the Department of Finance Commissioner, to that board. The board members are officially appointed by the MTA, with the requirement that one member is recommended by the mayor, one member resides in the Long Island Rail Road region, and one member resides in the Metro North region.

The mayor said the subway system desperately needs the money for repairs and upgrades as people begin to return to their workplace and school this fall.

“We cannot have a full recovery without the MTA getting stronger,” he said. “The MTA needs to get it together because right now we’re seeing too many problems.”

 The program would also help reduce traffic congestion in busy sections of Manhattan, improve air quality and boost public transit ridership.

“The pandemic caused a different problem — lots of people turning back to their cars,” de Blasio said. “We’ve got to stop that because that’s caused congestion on the streets, more pollution, it’s bad for the climate.”

 There have also been too many car crashes as well, he added.

“We’ve got to get people out of the cars,” de Blasio said. “Again, the solution [is to] get people back to mass transit, to make mass transit better — that means congestion pricing.”

 

Rockaway Rail Line extension might not be that expensive

  

Queens Post

Advocates who are calling for a north-south subway line in central Queens say the proposal is more feasible than what the MTA estimates.

A new report commissioned by supporters of the proposal, dubbed the QueensLink Corridor, found that the project would be billions of dollars less than what the MTA has pegged it to be.

The QueensLink Corridor would create a north-south subway line through central Queens that would connect Rego Park to Ozone Park by extending the M line. The line would use 3.5 miles of abandoned LIRR tracks that were once part of the Rockaway Beach Branch line.

The MTA published a study looking at the cost and feasibility of the project in 2019. The study, completed by Systra Engineering, estimated the cost would be about $8.1 billion.

However, the study commissioned by QueensLink supporters and completed by transportation firm TEMS Inc., found the cost to be between $3.4 and $3.7 billion.

The advocates’ report also included the cost of creating green space along the railway line.

The cost difference lies not in the actual price of construction, but in what the TEMS’ report calls “soft costs” — things like professional services and contingency factors.

TEMS said the estimates of such costs “are out of line with industry standards.”

Falafal Hebdo

 

 Queens Chronicle

A beloved falafel restaurant in Astoria has been getting sha-warmed by Saudi loyalist trolls in response to its owner’s criticism of the crown prince.

King of Falafel & Shawarma, a restaurant with a brick-and-mortar site at 30-15 Broadway and food trucks in Manhattan and Astoria, got over 37,000 scathing one-star reviews within a span of 30 hours earlier this week, according to its owner, Freddy Zeideia.

Zeideia said the reviews came from trolls who targeted KOFS after @Columbuos, a pro-Saudi social media account, shared a video of the restaurant’s social-distancing sidewalk decal with pictures of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, and an invitation to step on their faces.

The KOFS patron who originally filmed the video made an inflammatory attack on the people of Saudi Arabia in Arabic after entering the restaurant, according to a translation of the video that a Saudi Arabian Twitter user posted online.

The pro-Saudi influencer shared a link to the restaurant’s Google page and encouraged his followers to give it a one-star rating.

Zeideia, who is originally from the Israel-occupied Palestinian West Bank, has not shied away from openly displaying his political beliefs. In response to the Israel-Hamas violence in May, he displayed a Palestinian flag in the front window.

Earlier in the summer, he installed a similar floor decal with Andrew Yang’s face after the mayoral hopeful pledged solidarity with Israel in the conflict.

The floor piece that upset the influencer was aimed at criticizing the Saudi Arabian-led war in Yemen and the UAE’s military intervention in Libya’s civil war. Zeideia said that the trolls were also aggrieved that he had posted a Pride flag honoring the LGBTQ awareness month of June.

Contacted by the Chronicle last Friday morning, Zeideia was remarkably unflustered by the attacks on his business.

“I’m not gonna stress myself. I know my Astoria. I know my people out here and they know who we are. We’ve been serving them for the last 20 years,” he said.

City courthouses are pig stys and petri dishes

  

Queens Eagle

As Queens, Staten Island and Bronx courthouses resumed in-person day arraignments Monday, public defenders across New York City called out the city for what they say are “deplorable” conditions.

The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys condemned the Office of Court Administration and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services for unsanitary and unhealthy conditions that they say are rife throughout city courthouses.

“As ALAA members returned to ‘in-person’ arraignments, they found that OCA and the City had not only failed to remediate the dangerous and unsanitary conditions, they had failed to take a single measure to clean or upgrade these areas from their pre-pandemic levels to meet even minimum standards of health and safety,” the union said in a statement.

The calls to clean up conditions come not only because COVID-19 remains a threat but because as proceedings resume, people who work in the buildings are seeing its conditions again with fresh eyes, attorneys say.

“We've always known it was bad but I think with COVID we just had the separation from that environment,” said Julie Sender, the Manhattan Criminal Defense Practice vice president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys. “We don't have to just accept that we're going to get sick and that we're going to maybe bring roaches home or bring bedbugs home because we were at work and it was not cleaned.”

Sender, who mainly works out of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse building at 100 Centre St., said that nonpublic courthouse spaces, inlucing jail cells, pens and meeting rooms for defendants and their attorneys, are often unsanitary.

Surfaces are stained, ventilation systems are covered in dust and pests like insects and rodents are sometimes spotted, Sender said.

The conditions are present throughout criminal courthouses in the city, including in Queens, attorneys said.

NYCHA residents give green light to green energy hub

 

 Queens Eagle

 Over 1,000 residents from Western Queens NYCHA developments and leaders of the NYCHA branch of the NAACP endorsed a project that would bring renewable energy from upstate through the Ravenswood Generating Station on Monday.

The Catskills Renewable Connector is in the last phase of review by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority as part of an initiative to ease the city’s reliance on fossil fuel energy.

“Environmental justice is a civil rights issue,” said Lynn Spivey, president of the NAACP-NYCHA branch. “For generations, communities of color have been forced to live next to toxic plants – poisoning the air they breathe, spreading illness and asthma, and limiting the spaces where their children can play.”

“Now is the time for justice,” she added. “This proposal, this moment, is our opportunity to come together and create healthy, sustainable communities for everyone.”

The 1,200 MegaWatt project would transform the fossil fuel-powered plant into a conduit for renewable energy, slashing the city’s carbon emissions equivalent to taking nearly 400,000 cars off the road, according to Ravenswood Generating owners Rise Light and Power.

If the proposal is selected by NYSERDA, it would lower carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent in New York City and by 10 percent across the state by 2030 through the delivery of wind and solar power.

In addition to CO2, fossil fuel-powered plants emit other greenhouse gases and particulate matter which contribute to air pollution — a problem residents of the neighborhood dubbed “asthma alley” are eager to remedy.

Never underestimate Southeast Queens

  

THE CITY

 The mayoral candidates blazed their campaign trails with fervor in the final weeks before the primary election, shedding masks, embracing voters and hoping their non-Zoom facetime would pay off.

THE CITY traced the top four Democratic candidates’ whereabouts between April 1 and June 22, using public schedules released by their campaigns and social media posts.

The result provided insight into each candidate’s strategy to vye for New Yorkers’ votes — and offered hints on where priorities may be for primary winner Eric Adams, who is likely to become the city’s 110th chief executive due to the overwhelming Democratic voter enrollment.

Unlike his rivals, Adams didn’t spend much time campaigning in Brownstone Brooklyn or the Upper West Side, areas with perennial high voter turnout for Democrats. Instead the 60-year-old former cop frequently campaigned in Upper Manhattan, The Bronx and southeast Queens — home to significant numbers of Black and Latino working-class New Yorkers. 

“There’s a finite amount of time that you can have a candidate out there campaigning and any campaign will tell you you need to focus that time and energy on your base and your core constituency for a winning coalition,” said Evan Thies, Adams’ campaign spokesperson. “You also follow that plan based on the message of your campaign and the type of voter you’re attempting to appeal to.”

It’s a strategy that paid off.

In Assembly districts, including Queens Village and Laurelton, where Adams showed up much more often than other candidates, six out of 10 in-person voters ranked him in the top spot. 

 Thies said Adams’ campaign messaging on public safety and affordability resonated across neighborhood lines, speaking directly to the concerns of working-class New Yorkers.

“All of these things matter in a very real way to lower-income and middle-income, working-class communities and they’re going to respond to that message a lot more than wealthier communities,” Thies said.

As a seasoned politician and former activist cop, Adams entered the campaign with significant name recognition. But the campaign still relied on some high-powered surrogates with deep ties to their community to help boost Adams.

In Upper Manhattan, Adams was frequently flanked by Rep. Adriano Espaillat and Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, two local elected officials who represent a burgeoning Dominican diaspora in Washington Heights and Inwood. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. was also often by Adams’ side, joining him as he greeted voters.

Unlike his competitors, who largely ignored southeastern Queens, Adams made frequent stops in the area, particularly toward the tail-end of the campaign.

Adams grew up in South Jamaica, and voters in the area are exactly the type of constituency he was hoping to attract: Black homeowners who “are active in civic life and deeply concerned about public safety and motivated in this election by serious concern about the decline of the city,” Thies said.

The Blaz has made the comptroller's office irrelevant

 

Impunity City

Now that his disastrous mayoral campaign is over and 30% of registered voters chose Eric Adams to be the Democrat nominee for Mayor, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer has gone right back to full-time work and dad gum it he is not going to take it anymore.

 Stringer brought his stump back out and announced that Mayor de Blasio has held onto the city’s emergency powers and control of budget spending way too long, so he’s decided to take the Blaz to court to get them rescinded so he can manage the city finances again for the remaining 5 months of his term.

 

But for all the grand gesturing and authoritative shit talking, Stringer is just frontin’ like a punk, establishing once again why he got easily destroyed in the primary. Because the wimp allowed the Blaz to enact those emergency orders to control spending on a day one and did not say a peep about it knowing full well the mayor’s history of profligate wasteful and political patronage derived spending throughout his abominable two terms, enabling the Blaz to embark on a chronic gambler spending spree while exploiting his new authority throughout the pandemic.

 

What’s worse about Scotty’s sudden display of balls is that he hasn’t even literally got in the Blaz’s face about his chronic abuse of the emergency powe, which he revealed quite pathetically during a brief questioning from a  NY Post reporter who mockingly asked Stringer why it’s taking him so long to use his position as the city’s accountant to reclaim the reins of the city budget again from the unaccountable mayor’s idle hands.

Comptroller Stringer: “We have to come back time and time again to demand accountability and a court action is a last resort, common sense is a first resort, and we haven’t seen that in this administration and we are coming back with a court action because we have to get to the bottom of this”

 

NY Post: “have you actually spoken to him and (snicker) asked him if he (Blaz) was going to restore the actual safeguards that didn’t exist before?

 

Comptroller Stringer: “We gave him documentation and sent him no less than 4 letters and we can provide them”

 

NY Post: “But have you personally (chortle) spoken to him and asked him?

 

Comptroller Stringer: “I don’t have to speak to him to ask him by letter to do the right thing.”

NY Post: “But you haven’t spoken to him”

Comptroller Stringer: “No, I haven’t spoken to him personally”

Holy calamafuck, the NYC Comptroller never once confronted the NYC Mayor face to face and eye to eye about his repeated malfeasant emergency power grabs, which he reinstated 100 FUCKING TIMES  while spending 8 billion dollars on lousy contracts and financing dubious services that weren’t necessarily essential to the city during the “perfect storm of COVID19”. (Like open streets and bike boulevards)

 

For the last 16 months since The Blaz mimicked Governor Cuomo by assigning himself emergency powers, Stringer took pussy to a new level, letting the Blaz make his government appointed job irrelevant and sat there and watched him piss away the city coffers from the start of the pandemic and even this year in our alleged recovery now that andemic restrictions have been rescinded by the state and national levels and in the five boroughs by the mayor himself.

 

 

NY Post 

City Comptroller Scott Stringer attempted to block an $890 million contract for the takeover of a school bus operator once owned by a major donor to Mayor Bill de Blasio — only to have City Hall quietly override his veto, The Post has learned.

Stringer’s office tried to nix the deal after the Department of Education refused to provide key details about the takeover of Reliant Transportation and its 1,000 school buses, including the total purchase price or the startup costs for the new city-run nonprofit — NYC School Bus Umbrella Services — set to operate the fleet.

The DOE also refused to provide Stringer with any details about its independent appraisal of Reliant’s financial health, which found the company has just $16.6 million in assets while carrying $18.6 million in pension liabilities. 

 "The DOE has now chosen to skirt accountability once again and push through this nearly $1 billion contract without addressing numerous issues raised by my office, including the lack of details about long-term costs to New Yorkers,” said Stringer in a statement. “Students, teachers, parents, and school staff deserve far better fiscal responsibility and transparency from the DOE.”

It’s the latest entry in the months-long stonewall by the de Blasio administration — which once promised to be the most transparent in history — in response to questions from the press and government watchdogs about the deal.

Officials have repeatedly claimed they are unable to provide the price tag for the Reliant buyout and other key details because they have not yet finalized the takeover. 

 

 

Queens is still burning: Again on Jamaica Avenue

 QNS

More than 100 FDNY personnel extinguished an early morning blaze that broke out Tuesday, July 13, on Jamaica Avenue in a Richmond Hill storefront.

The fire broke out just after 1 a.m. at Maria’s Nail and Beauty Supply at 102-19 Jamaica Ave. beneath the J/Z subway line, according to the FDNY.

The blaze was classified as a two-alarm fire, bringing 25 units and more than 100 firefighters and EMS personnel. It was a tight squeeze for Richmond Hill’s Ladder 143 and Ladder 127 from Hillside Avenue. The fire was placed under control just after 2 a.m. and four firefighters suffered minor injuries. They were removed to area hospitals for treatment, according to the FDNY.

 Several families from second-floor apartments were displaced by the fire. This stretch of Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill is no stranger to devastating fires. Just five months ago, a five-alarm fire broke out at the Dollar Store at 109-25 Jamaica Ave. and destroyed six buildings.

 

Cuomo continues to hide the bodies

 

NY Post

 New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has continued publicizing a much lower state COVID-19 death toll count than the numbers being presented to and displayed by the federal government, a new report revealed.

The state and federal coronavirus death toll differential has even widened this year to a current reported gap of 11,000 — despite numerous investigations into the Cuomo administration for lowballing the number of nursing home COVID-19 deaths, according to a review by the Associated Press.

News of New York’s undercount comes months after Florida Gov. Ron Desantis was erroneously accused of doing the same thing.

As of this week, New York publicized a COVID-19 death toll of roughly 43,000, compared to the Centers for Disease Control public tally of about 54,000.

The total, higher federal count, includes people who have died with coronavirus as a cause or contributing factor listed on their death certificate, the report said.

Cuomo has refused to include “probable” coronavirus fatalities in the state’s reporting, but New York City has done so since April 2020.