Three towns in Staten Island got blacked out from Con Ed substation fire

NY Post


Power outages hit Staten Island Tuesday evening when a fire erupted at a Con Edison substation — just days after mass outages hit tens of thousands of customers on the West Side of Manhattan, officials said.

About 2,000 Con Edison customers in New Dorp, Grant City and Oakwood lost power after the fire at the facility on Railroad Avenue soon after 6 p.m., a Con Ed spokesperson said.

The outages are scattered across about a five-mile radius of the substation and are expected to last until about 2 a.m., the spokesperson said, adding that two generators were working to reinforce the system.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, but it is not believed to be related to the heat, he said.

Affordable housing study reveals Mayor de Blasio as a segregationist

New York Times

For more than two years, lawyers for New York City have fought to keep secret a report on the city’s affordable housing lotteries, arguing that its release would insert an unfavorable and “potentially incorrect analysis into the public conversation.”

The report was finally released on Monday, following a federal court ruling, and its findings were stark: The city’s policy of giving preference to local residents for new affordable housing helps perpetuate racial segregation.

White neighborhoods stay white, black neighborhoods black, the report found.

The findings by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College, presented a far different picture than the one offered by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has touted his record on housing as he runs for president.

Indeed, they suggested that Mr. de Blasio’s vast expansion of affordable housing might well come with an asterisk: It is deepening entrenched racial housing patterns.

Professor Beveridge analyzed data from 7.2 million affordable housing applications for 10,245 city-subsidized apartments from 2012 to 2017. He did so on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought by three black women from Brooklyn and Queens who said they were not given a fair chance to win affordable apartments in city-managed lotteries.

The report looked at 168 city-administered lotteries along with demographic and other information about applicants, comparing that to census data for the areas surrounding the affordable housing apartments being offered.

In each case, Professor Beveridge found that the majority group — whether white, black Hispanic or Asian — enjoyed a strong advantage over the other racial groups because of the city’s policy.

Moreover, because it is a first-come-first-served system, by the time applicants from other areas of the city might want to move into an area, the apartments that they would qualify for have sometimes already been taken by local residents, he found in the 31-page report, a preliminary version of which was first filed in 2017.

After being opaque about the cause of Saturday's blackout, Con Ed is being glib about potential blackouts

NY Post


Con Edison warned Monday that New Yorkers may have to endure another blackout this weekend, when the temperature is expected to reach a sweltering 97 degrees — and feel like 106.

“We expect that there could be service outages — those things happen during heat waves,” company spokesman Mike Clendenin said.

Later in the day, Con Ed further fueled fears of a potential power outage when it completely backtracked and blamed a fault in a 13,000-volt power cable that caught fire for triggering Saturday’s blackout.

On Sunday, company President Timothy Cawley had called the idea of tying the incident to the failed cable “sort of a non-starter.”

AccuWeather predicted four straight days of 90-plus degree temperatures beginning Friday, with a 97-degree peak on Saturday, when humidity and other factors will make it feel even worse.

Surely, these things happen and will continue to happen when you have energy devouring billboards like the new ones in Times Square that are about 3, 5 and 20 stories and are a block wide. And also deriving from massive tower development by the Hudson, particularly the brand new Hudson Yards.

How is Con Ed going to handle Google's expansion and Disney's new studios on Soho's west side?

Maybe this is why they are being glib. Con Ed's VP for "government relations" used to work for the city's Economic Development Coporation. (Thanks to Kristin Theodos)

House in Howard Beach is teetering into the drink

News 4 New York

You know what is also horrible about this story, when the anchorman says "Look at this". Well what do you think we are doing you moron?

Tiffany Caban has her own machine to help with the recount

THE CITY

Tiffany Cabán has marshalled a volunteer army of attorneys to fight for votes in the Queens district attorney Democratic primary recount.

The insurgent candidate has actively recruited helpers to monitor the tallying of some 91,000 votes. 

The process officially began earlier this week at a Board of Elections voting machine facility in Middle Village after a paper ballot count left Borough President Melinda Katz holding a razor-thin lead of 16 — triggering a full recount.

The Cabán campaign on Thursday said about 165 lawyers have enrolled pro bono to aid the ballot review. That’s on top of more than 200 volunteers charged with providing administrative support.

Meanwhile, Katz bolstered her legal team by hiring top election lawyer Martin Connor, a former Brooklyn state senator.

“I’m joining their legal team, but 99 other people aren’t,” Connor said, taking a shot at Cabán’s swelling volunteer ranks.

Experts noted the size of Cabán’s volunteer legal squad is unusual.

“I can see having shifts of watchers,” said Sarah Steiner, a former chair of the Election Law Committee for the New York City Bar Association. “But it’s the having that many that is impressive. I’ve never heard of that many volunteer lawyers for a recount… You’d normally be lucky to get a single volunteer lawyer.”

Steiner said the volunteers could come in handy with counting sessions as long as 12 hours a day, giving the lead campaign lawyers a chance to take breaks and rest their eyes

.“In that position, they can be very helpful,” she said of the volunteers. “They are getting a crash course on the short list of legal objections and how to spot them. They don’t need to know any other election law.”