Don't get bitten by Snake Road!

From the Columbia Journalist (old but interesting):

Just east of John F. Kennedy International Airport sits one of the largest protected marshlands in all of New York City—Idlewild wetlands, a network of ponds, creeks, and marshes that are a vital part of the Jamaica Bay ecosystem. The sole development on this plot of land, which is protected under environmental laws, is a stretch of Brookville Boulevard known by the local Rosedale community as “Snake Road.”

As an island of concrete in a sea of tall grass, this isolated portion of Brookville Boulevard is a rarity for the five-borough metropolis. Besides being a unique plot of land, the area provides a source of political tension, especially after the recent accident.

The District 31 City Council member, James Sanders Jr., has made an issue out of the road’s condition saying that it should be widened with divider installed. The Council member’s chief of staff, Donovan Richards, said that widening the roadway would eliminate the existing danger and help prevent future accidents.

However, widening the road “would be no easy task,” said Richard Hellenbrecht, chairman of Queens Community Board 13, which presides over 13 square miles of eastern Queens on the border of Nassau County. Hellenbrecht explained that his community board is pushing for the city to redo tight and winding sections of Little Neck Parkway, but does not anticipate the work being completed for 10 to 15 years. And that is without factoring in the wetlands.

The disputed portion of Brookville Boulevard, which lies between 149th Avenue and Rockaway Boulevard, is flanked by the remnants of a once-vast Jamaica Bay ecosystem. Nearly 80 percent of that system has been destroyed by residential and commercial development. Amid the seeming tranquility of the wetlands, a closer look reveals broken bottles of Captain Morgan’s rum and paper cups with images of golden arches and the red-headed Wendy’s logo. The sound fluctuates between melodic birdcalls and the reverberating roar of low flying jets, and the smell is a mixture of ocean air and noxious gasoline. (See a slideshow of images from Snake Road.)

Aside from making for decent kayaking and bird watching, Idlewild is a convenient hangout for birds on the Atlantic Flyway, a migratory bird route following the Atlantic coast from Canada down to Mexico -- this wetland helps prevent erosion and runoff pollution. Barbara Brown, the chairwoman of the Eastern Queens Alliance, a civic association that seeks to cultivate and protect the park, explains that Idlewild Park serves as a natural sponge, providing flood protection by trapping and slowly releasing surface-water. For nearby communities like Springfield Gardens and Rosedale that have flooded so extensively in the past they have been declared federal disaster areas, a natural sponge is something to be preserved, Brown says.

Bloomberg nervous about creeks' Superfund status

From City Hall:

Superfund designations at Newtown Creek on the Queens/ Brooklyn border in October and at the Gowanus Canal last March incited panicked waves among developers and city administrators worried over the impact the label could have on growth in the city's most populous borough.

And the worries have only continued to fester, like the gonorrhea in the Gowanus.

The designation at Newtown Creek did not spur as much vocal debate as the Gowanus designation, but there is still potential for the label to have an adverse impact on the city’s hopes for economic development in the area, in Brooklyn and Queens, according to Marc LaVorgna, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office.

The Bloomberg administration openly opposed the Superfund designation at Gowanus, advocating for an alternate cleanup plan that would allow prospective developers to voluntarily contribute funds for the work.

The 140-year-old, four-mile-long canal is lined with thick sludge from years of toxic dumping, most from untraceable sources.

At Gowanus, Toll Brothers planned to stop building a $250 million development if the designation were approved, and when it was, they did. The Bloomberg administration was not pleased.

The parties responsible for the pollution at Newtown, on the other hand, are well known—ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron, along with several industrial companies along the waterfront. The city supported the designation at Newtown because there was “no other way to clean it up,” Lavorgna said.

But the city is still concerned over the future of development near Newtown Creek, according to the mayor’s office. There are 184 blocks and two miles of waterfront still developable in Greenpoint, as well as the possibility for up to 7,000 additional units of housing and 7.9 acres of open space along less than a mile of waterfront, LaVorgna wrote in an e-mail. Those plans are contingent on private investment to reactivate the East River and Newtown Creek waterfront.

One part of the designation that has received little consideration is how it will affect the Queens side of the creek, specifically Hunter’s Point South, which was rezoned for development in 2008, LaVorgna wrote.

The area is cited for 5,000 housing units, a new public school, $175 million worth of utility and road infrastructure and 10 acres of waterfront park, he added.

Perhaps most crucial are $500 million in planned capital improvements for the area. Those projects could stall as the area comes under federal control, Lavorgna said.

Queens as a "destination point"?

From the Daily News:

The all-time Kings of Queens will soon have a throne.

Plans are nearing fruition for a Queens Hall of Fame, with events and exhibits honoring the most accomplished actors, musicians and athletes in borough history, Queens News has learned.

Borough President Helen Marshall is partnering with local business groups on the ambitious venture - set to start next year with an induction ceremony and museum-like displays across Queens.

Organizers said the project will rely heavily on research from two Queens News series on significant sites without city landmark status or historical markers, including the ongoing Queens Heritage Quest articles.

They hope to run the inaugural induction gala in May in conjunction with a festival - perhaps titled "Queens Week" - designed to lure tourists to events at parks, libraries and other borough spots.

By calling attention to Queens' undervalued history, the hall's planners seek to generate civic pride among residents. They also want to attract outsiders to the borough and pump cash into local hotels, eateries and shops.

"We don't do anything in this borough to distinguish ourselves as a destination point," said Jack Friedman of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, which is collaborating on the project.

It's not a "destination point". It's where people live and work. Maybe if you folks got that through your thick heads, quality of life would be a lot better in this town.

We're funding Vito's newspaper

From the Brooklyn Paper:

Assemblyman Vito Lopez and his political allies have found a nifty way of ensuring good press: publishing their own newspaper — and you’re paying for it!

The Bushwick Observer, a newspaper founded in 1995 and published by the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, receives about $70,000 a year in state funding for its budget — not including revenue received from ad sales.

More than 9,000 issues are distributed for free in Ridgewood Bushwick-controlled senior centers and housing developments, businesses and government offices throughout Bushwick every month.

The paper, which operates out of a building owned by Ridgewood Bushwick, is a more sophisticated version of the kind of mailers that elected officials typically send to constituents, consisting of short articles and photographs of city and state leaders attending Ridgewood Bushwick-sponsored events in Lopez’s district.
Mac Support Store

Lopez’s girlfriend, Ridgewood Bushwick Housing Director Angela Battaglia, reviews every issue personally before it goes to press, according to Ridgewood Bushwick sources. And Lopez is the publication’s primary focus.

Nearly all of the newspaper’s budget is funded from a member item earmarked by Lopez ally, state Sen. Martin Dilan (D–Bushwick), who contributed $70,000 in funds last year to the enterprise — about half of his $135,000 total allocation to Ridgewood Bushwick programs.

The practice of using a state member item to fund a newspaper is extremely rare. Records show that only one other allocation has gone to a newspaper, a $500 award for an upstate high school to start its own paper in the 2009-2010 school year.

Vito's also butting into the Catholic Church's business.

And let's not forget City Hall loves him, too.

Happy birthday, Queens Midtown Tunnel

From the Queens Gazette:

A fter 20 years of lobbying and planning and four years of hard labor, the Queens Midtown Tunnel, linking Manhattan and Long Island City, Queens, opened on November 15, 1940 to the public. At the time it was the largest, non-federal public works project in the nation.

To commemorate the tunnel’s 70th anniversary, MTA Bridges and Tunnels will have a collection of historic photographs from the construction of the tunnel on display in the lobby of its Lower Manhattan offices at 2 Broadway through the end of the month.

On November 8, 1939, LaGuardia pulled a switch to blast the last six feet of rock between the Manhattan and Queens shields in both tubes. A year and one week later, opening ceremonies were held on the Manhattan toll plaza, attended by Roosevelt, who was the first person to drive through the new tunnel. Other attendees included Mayor LaGuardia, state Senator Robert Wagner and the tunnel’s Chief Engineer Ole Singstad, a wellknown tunnel builder who finished building the Holland Tunnel after the death of its original engineer.

In its first full year of operation, 4.4 million vehicles used the tunnel, while in 2009 that figure was 27.7 million.

Now, 70 years later, the tunnel appears much the same as it did when it opened in 1940, with the exception of the original brick roadway, which was replaced with asphalt in 1995, and the addition of EZPass technology. The last major rehabilitation project, a $126 million project completed in 2001, replaced some of the original 1930s materials that created brighter lighting, new ceilings, new tiles along the walls and an entirely new traffic control system, including electronic message signs and traffic control lights and signals.

It apparently CAN be done!

From City Journal:

...if you think that America no longer encourages long-term dependency or underclass poverty, you haven’t been paying attention to public housing. Like cash welfare before the reform, public housing is dominated by extremely poor single-parent families (53 percent of public-housing households nationwide earn less than $10,000 a year, and only 13 percent have two adult residents). Like welfare, public housing offers recipients a disincentive to marry: because rents are fixed at 30 percent of household income, there’s good reason not to put a second wage earner on the lease. And like welfare, public-housing projects—and the closely related voucher programs run by housing authorities—impose neither a work requirement nor a time limit on recipients. So not only do 2.2 million people live in public-housing units in America; they spend an average of more than eight years in them. And dwarfing their ranks are the 5 million living in private, voucher-paid housing, where the average length of residency is six years.

In short, American housing policy encourages the formation of households in which low-income single women raise children—exactly the sort of homes where kids’ prospects are bleakest. Crime rates, moreover, are consistently high in and around public housing, and voucher units have been widely implicated in the spread of social problems to formerly safe areas. The problem is financial, as well: housing vouchers alone, which didn’t even exist until 1974, now cost taxpayers $18 billion, more than the $16.9 billion that we spend on welfare. And it’s a policy that disproportionately affects the African-American poor. Nearly 45 percent of public-housing tenants are black, as are 42 percent of voucher recipients.

All this makes what Renee Glover is doing in Atlanta so important. Since 1994, Glover, a child of Jim Crow–era Jacksonville, Florida, has led the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA)—the nation’s fifth-largest public-housing system, with 50,000 tenants and voucher recipients, 99 percent of them, like her, African-American. She has drawn national recognition for the fact that during her tenure, Atlanta became the first city in the United States to tear down virtually all its projects. But Glover’s plan is far more ambitious than demolition: she has set out to transform the dysfunctional behavior that condemns people to languish for years in public housing. Her approach is the most dramatic change in any city’s public-housing system since Franklin Roosevelt created the program in 1937.

Glover’s tool kit includes much more than demolition, construction, and the work requirement, as complex and unusual as they are. Her least-known but most ambitious effort is what she unabashedly calls “human transformation,” an effort to instill in the public-housing poor the habits needed to join the social and economic mainstream. Glover’s memory of her childhood in the segregated South inspires the program. “We had a very strong and very strongly knitted community,” she recalls. “There was never a day that passed that we didn’t hear that we were being prepared to be the next leaders of the country.”

To re-create that culture of ambition and discipline, the AHA has invested nearly $27 million in what amounts to intensive counseling for public-housing tenants. The counselors—twenty-first-century versions of the Victorian “friendly visitors” who sought to encourage independence among the poor—follow the relocated tenants to their new homes and check up on them there, verifying that they’re employed or in school. They try to teach them the things that most Americans learn from their families: how to get a job and then get a better one; why it’s important to meet your children’s teachers and go to PTA meetings; how to live frugally and save for the future. It’s a striking example of what political scientist Lawrence Mead calls “the new paternalism.”

Charlie unhappy with censure but Dems not defending him

From the NY Post:

A day after suffering the humiliation of having the House ethics committee recommend he get a formal censure, Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel isn't getting any lifelines from the White House or from powerful Democratic allies.

With a House floor vote set to come up after Thanksgiving on censure, Vice President Joe Biden said the decision was "hard to argue against."

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens) said committee Democrats might have gone for censure -- the strongest punishment short of outright expulsion -- because "they want to avoid a floor fight" with Republicans, who could have tried to force the graver punishment if the committee had gone for a wrist slap or reprimand.

Rangel had been hoping for a lesser punishment, but instead he got hit with a report calling for censure and ordering him to pay back taxes after being found guilty of 11 charges.

Rangel's Harlem political allies seemed resigned that the punishment of censure would stick but insisted that the stinging rebuke would not damage the congressman's standing among his uptown constituents.

Lots of drunks in Queens

From the Times Ledger:

Residents of northern Queens, put down that beer! You might have an alcohol problem, according to a new study released by the city.

Neighborhoods such as Corona, Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst, Flushing and, of course, bar-laden Bayside have some of the highest rates of alcohol-related emergency room visits in all the five boroughs.

The report, released by the city Department of Health Monday, detailed alarming increases in drunken injuries for the 42 percent of all New Yorkers who consume alcohol. Since 2003, citywide drunken emergency room visits tripled for legal drinkers and quadrupled for underage drinkers.

And specifically for northern Queens, increasing numbers of drinkers — both legal and underage — have been hospitalized with ailments such as liver damage, car accidents and injuries incurred from falling or fighting while imbibing, the report found.

In total, 1.5 percent of emergency room visits were alcohol-related for underage residents and 4 percent for 21-to-64-year-olds in 2009 — numbers that are alarming both residents and officials.

St. John's students target of bus stop robberies

From Eyewitness News:

Police are alerting Queens residents and St. John's University students about a band of bus stop bandits who appear to be getting bolder.

Officers from the 107th Precinct have stepped up their patrols with a new sense of urgency.

Detectives have released surveillance images of the three suspects.

Police say the victims were attacked moments after they stepped off the bus near Union Turnpike in Fresh Meadows.

The suspects approached the victims from behind and, in some cases, punched and kicked them before stealing cell phones, iPods, Blackberries and cash.

The bus stop bandits struck first on October 20 at 9.40 p.m. and again the next day. They then struck two weeks later, and just this week have struck four more times. Police say there were three muggings Wednesday night.

A familiar story from Brooklyn

Courtesy of Pardon Me for Asking:

Is 100 Luquer, the vastly out-of-context 11-story Carroll Gardens finger building designed by architect Karl Fischer, showing signs of life after months and months of inactivity at the construction site?

After a few stop work orders, new permits have been issued on November 3, 2010 and for the last couple of days, workers have been observed behind the plywood fence. Yesterday, as I was walking by, someone was measuring a balcony (see photo above.)

Construction of the building began in 2007 and has been stop-and-go ever since. The site has racked up 54 complaints and 7 out of 20 Environmental Control Board (ECB) violations are still open, with some hefty financial fines now due.

That did not prevent the NYC Department Of Buildings from issuing post-approval amendments in early November. Permits attached to the fence at the site suggest that work can resume on electric and plumbing, but does not allow concrete work.

Unfortunately, the construction of this building began before the Carroll Gardens Contextual Re-Zoning was passed in October 2009. The re-zoning limits the height of buildings in the neighborhood.

Group helping illegals get tax refunds

From the Daily News:

A Manhattan group is helping illegal immigrants recoup unclaimed state tax refunds - even if they used fake Social Security numbers to work.

The Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project got back thousands for a dozen undocumented New Yorkers who overpaid.

One bodega worker from Jackson Heights had been paying taxes since 2002 but never got a refund - until the group helped him get back $670 from his 2008 return.

"It really helped - we have two young kids," said his wife, who says they pay taxes because "it's the right thing to do."

Thousands more could be due a windfall from the Department of Taxation and Finance.

Verenda Smith, interim executive director of the Federation of Tax Administrators, notes that stealing a Social Security number is not a victimless crime.

"The person whose number is stolen ends up not being able to file a return, not being able to file electronically - getting notices from the IRS that you have unreported income. ... It's a massive headache," Smith said.

But Del Rio says most illegal immigrants use numbers that are made up and don't swipe someone's identity. Either way, labor laws protect all workers - undocumented or not.

More of Ridgewood calendared for landmarking

From the Times Newsweekly:

Having approved Ridgewood’s third landmark district two weeks ago, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) now has its sights set on a fourth district that, if approved, would cover more homes than all other landmark areas in the neighborhood combined.

The Times Newsweekly has learned that the LPC has “calendared” a review of the proposed “Central Ridgewood Historic District,” an area of approximately 940 brick rowhouses built during the early 1900s in the heart of the community. An LPC spokesperson told this newspaper on Monday, Nov. 8, that the agency that a public hearing on the plan would be forthcoming, but no specific date for it has been set.

...the Central Ridgewood district, if enacted, would protect more than three times the total number of buildings in Ridgewood landmark districts. Most of the structures in the proposed district are brick rowhouses designed by the architectural firm Louis Berger and Company and developed by August Bauer and Paul Stier between the turn of the 20th century and the mid-1920s.

Why? Easy explanation. The LPC is concentrating on landmarking rowhouses because they generally aren't targets of developers. They also can brag about the thousands of Queens buildings that they designated while the historic detached ones get torn down left and right and replaced with crap.

NEW YORK CIVIC TO SEEK PUBLIC REFERENDUM TO MAKE TERM LIMITS LAW EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

Good Government Group to Join Councilman Ulrich, Charter Commissioner Cassino and a Coalition of Former City and State Officials to Close “Grandfather” Loophole That Exempts 34 Elected Officials from Two-Term Law

New York Civic, a nonpartisan good government group founded by former NYC Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, will announce Monday morning on the steps of City Hall that it will pursue a public referendum to eliminate the controversial “grandfather” clause of the recently passed term limits ballot question, which delays the effective date of the law until 2021 and exempts 34 city incumbents from being restricted to two consecutive terms.

Joining New York Civic in undertaking this landmark public referendum will be a grassroots coalition of community leaders and activists, including Councilman Eric Ulrich of Queens, who is one of the 34 elected officials the term limits loophole would benefit; Anthony Perez Cassino, one of the Charter Revision Commissioners who objected to the inclusion of the grandfathering clause in this year’s referendum; former New York State Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey; Director of the Hugh L. Carey Center for Government Reform, former State Senator Seymour P. Lachman; and Michael Meyers, President and Executive Director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. Former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, who will serve as legal counsel in pursing the public referendum, will also be present at the 10 a.m. press conference on November 22nd.

“This referendum is not about term limits, it’s about respecting the will of the people,” explained Henry J. Stern, the founder and president of New York Civic. “It was bad enough that the City Council ignored the voters in 2008 to extend term limits for itself. It is outrageous that, after 74 percent of New Yorkers voted for two terms for the third time in a generation, 34 incumbents can still serve a third term because of a loophole snuck into the last referendum to benefit a handful of officeholders.”

“Although I supported the recently passed term limits referendum, I was very disappointed that the Charter Review Commission created this loophole for me and my colleagues,” stated Councilman Ulrich. “That’s why I am acting, contrary to my self-interest, to restore the trust of the voters who clearly intended for there to be two terms. This referendum will allow us to make things right again.”

"This campaign is about respecting the will of the people and ensuring that their votes count on term limits and their decision stands unless they vote for a change,” said former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, who was the counsel for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit opposing the term limits extension in 2008. “Our local democracy still hasn't recovered from the harm done by Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council two years ago to the true two-term limit that the voters twice imposed by referendum and that they have still not had the opportunity to restore. This campaign will finally afford them that opportunity."

Anthony Perez Cassino, one of three members of the Charter Commission to sign a minority report objecting to the grandfather clause, agrees with Councilman Ulrich’s concerns. “The Charter Revision Commission did the right thing by returning term limits to the ballot for the voters to decide, but we didn’t go as far as we needed to regain the trust of the public. Getting rid of the grandfather loophole is the only way to heal the wounds of 2008.”

Cuomo hits Bloomie's pet with civil fraud case

From the NY Times:

Steven L. Rattner, the financier who oversaw the federal rescue of the auto industry, was formally accused by New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, on Thursday of engaging in a kickback scheme involving the state’s pension system.

On the same day that Mr. Rattner was being celebrated on Wall Street for his role in turning around General Motors, he found himself embroiled in a bitter public battle with Mr. Cuomo, he settled similar charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission and he escalated a separate legal fight against his former investment firm.

Even as a resurgent G.M. went public again in a huge stock sale on Thursday, Mr. Cuomo sought to banish Mr. Rattner for life from the securities business in New York.

The civil fraud claims, which Mr. Rattner fiercely contested, came within moments of news that the financier had settled a related dispute with the S.E.C. In that case, Mr. Rattner accepted a two-year ban from certain Wall Street businesses and, without admitting or denying wrongdoing, agreed to pay a $6.2 million fine.

Mr. Cuomo, New York’s Democratic governor-elect, is seeking stiffer penalties, including $26 million. While other major figures in the pension investigation had already resolved their cases and Mr. Rattner had been expected to reach a settlement with the S.E.C., the charges from the attorney general’s office amounted to a public showdown between Mr. Cuomo and a man who is not only a prominent figure on Wall Street but also a powerful Democratic fund-raiser.

Funny how Bloomberg's connection to this creep was completely omitted from this article.

SkyView Parc is really Mussed up!

From the Wall Street Journal:

In one of the largest cases of buyers remorse in New York, scores of people who agreed to purchase apartments in a new development in Queens filed suit Monday seeking the return of their deposits.

The suit, filed in federal court in Brooklyn, could throw a wrench into the marketing efforts of Sky View Parc, a huge shopping center and condominium development that is planned to eventually include nearly 1,100 apartments in six towers.

The complex is a few blocks from the heart of the Flushing commercial district. It has been controversial because of its size and the impact it might have on local business and traffic.

When the development was first marketed in 2008, prices ranged from $385,000 for studios to more than $1.2 million for three-bedroom units on a high floor. Some prices have been raised slightly and some trimmed slightly since.

The complaint was filed on behalf of 67 would-be buyers in contracts to buy 41 condos. The complaint said that buyers wanted their money back because they were unable to obtain loans after the "collapse of the mortgage market" and were unable to close.

Their lawsuit said that the developers failed to file a disclosure statement. Such a statement is required in large developments under a federal law enacted in 1968 intended to help protect buyers from fraud in new real-estate subdivisions.

7 to NJ?

From Eyewitness News:

The plan to build a tunnel under the Hudson was killed last month by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, but Tuesday night it was in a way, reborn.

The Bloomberg administration is quietly planning a proposal to ease the commute for folks from New Jersey into Manhattan by extending the number 7 subway line from Times Square, under the Hudson River, all the way to Secaucus.

The plan calls for building the 7 line all the way across the Hudson into Hoboken and then on to the Secaucus Transfer Station.

The plan would achieve many of the goals that would have been accomplished by that other tunnel that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie killed because of the cost.

Extending the 7 train would also be a much cheaper alternative.

It would shave billions off the final price tag.

City considers expensive plan for Brooklyn trench

From the Brooklyn Paper:

Designers unveiled three ways to tame the cavernous Brooklyn–Queens Expressway trench on Monday night — but city officials are already expressing concern over how to pay for any scheme bold enough to “fix the ditch.”

The three concepts are part of an Economic Development Corporation-led plan to reconnect neighborhoods balkanized by the Robert Moses-built highway, including Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and the Columbia Street Waterfront District — a portion of the area whose very existence was spawned by the roadway’s creation.
Brooklyn Bridge Realty

The cheapest plan, about $10 million, involves a massive tree-planting effort along the highway-created chasm — creating one of the greenest stretches in all of Brooklyn.

Another option calls for the construction of six, lightweight bicycle and pedestrian bridges over the ditch, costing between $20 million to $45 million.

And the most expensive plan calls for the construction of an iconic, $85 million, energy-generating “green canopy” along the length of the trench, from Atlantic Avenue to Hamilton Avenue.

Well isn't it nice that Brooklyn gets all the love?

Our voter turnout is worst in the union

From the NY Times:

Despite contests for every statewide office for the first time in decades, a smaller share of eligible voters turned out two weeks ago in New York than in any other state. New York turnout was lower than in any midterm election for at least three decades.

On the basis of unofficial returns, about 40 percent of registered New Yorkers voted on Nov. 2. But an analysis by the United States Election Project at George Mason University found that only 32.1 percent of the 13.4 million who were eligible — citizens 18 and older who are not convicted felons — actually voted.

New York ranked lowest, just below Texas and Utah. Minnesota recorded the highest turnout (55.4 percent), one of six states in which more than half the eligible population voted.

New York ranked among the 10 lowest turnout states in 2006 and 2008, but this was the first year since then that it sank to the very bottom.

Turnout in all 50 states and the District of Columbia averaged about 40 percent this year.

Locals want donation used to restore carousel

From the Daily News:

LOCAL residents are calling on city parks officials to earmark donated cash from a Forest Park film shoot for the shuttered, historic carousel.

Crews filming the "The Sitter" took over the park and the carousel in recent weeks to shoot scenes for the comedy.

A spokesman for 20th Century Fox, the film's production company, said it made a "substantial" donation to Forest Park.

Both the film company and the Parks Department have refused to disclose the amount.

The carousel, called priceless by experts, has been closed for two years while the Parks Department searches for someone interested in operating it as a concession. It was crafted more than 100 years ago by Daniel Carl Muller, considered a master woodcarver of the genre.

Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski pointed out that the crews also filmed at other locations in the park.

"I understand people's concerns for the carousel, but that donation is for use of the park," she said. "The movie crews did some cleaning and repair work to the carousel and the concession stand. You have to consider that an in-kind donation."

Bloomberg to close firehouses at night

From the NY Post:

Mayor Bloomberg today is expected to order thousands of layoffs next year in bruising budget cuts intended to close a massive gap, sources told The Post last night.

Bloomberg will announce the widespread job reductions and service cuts as he tries to close the nearly $3.3 billion budget deficit the city is facing next year.

In September he directed all agency heads to cut 5.4 percent from their current budgets and 8 percent from their spending plans for next year.

The cuts were lower -- 2.7 percent this year and 4 percent next year -- for the Department of Education and the four uniformed agencies, the NYPD, FDNY, Sanitation and Correction.

The total cuts over the next 18 months will total at least $1.5 billion.

One source familiar with what the mayor will announce today said Hizzoner will drop the budget ax hard on services for seniors, libraries and cultural centers, while trying to spare the NYPD and Department of Education.

The mayor also is expected to propose closing 20 fire companies at night -- a tempered plan after his suggestion to completely shutter 20 fire companies last year faced resistance.

Awesome! Don't burn the midnight oil, folks.

I still find it fascinating that we have all kinds of money for Willets Point, Atlantic Yards and dead weight at City Hall, but none for vital services that affect our safety. More fascinating is that the public and their elected reps are content with being bitchslapped.