SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

I wasn’t able to attend last night’s public hearing on MTA cuts, but luckily Allan Rosen, the former MTA official who critiqued the plans earlier this week, sent us the dispatch below. I encourage anyone who went to add their two cents to the report.

As for me, I’ll be submitting testimony online based on what I’ve seen and heard from residents. Also, at the Sheepshead Bay/Plumb Beach Civic Association meeting on Tuesday, board members asked to get a hearing in the area, which State Senator Marty Golden’s office is looking into.

Here’s Rosen’s report:

Brooklyn had their turn last night at giving the MTA an earful regarding their proposals to cut subway and bus service as well as the free or reduced-fare student MetroCards.  The meeting turned tumultous as a brawl broke out when one student tried to speak out of turn and four people were arrested.

Students were frustrated at having to wait hours for their turn to speak because of the MTA’s policy to allow elected officials to speak before the registered public speakers.  Finally, one elected official suggested that the MTA alternate one elected official with one member of the public, which the MTA finally heeded. Still, even pre-registered speakers, who registered weeks ago, such as Allan Rosen, didn’t get a chance to speak until 8:45 PM; the meeting began at 6.  Those registering on the night of the hearing had to wait much longer.  Many went home before their turn as the hour turned late.  One of them was CB 15 Chairperson Theresa Scavo.  A few speakers from Sheepshead Bay did get a chance to speak. The meeting was expected to last until midnight.  It is unknown if the meeting actually lasted that long or even longer.

The main points brought out my speakers were the need not to cut student passes, the need to use a portion of the federal stimulus money to fill the deficit gap until more permanent funding can be found, a sweetheart deal between the MTA and Ratner which allowed the Atlantic Yards to be sold at below market value with terms of up to 80 years for him to complete payment to the MTA and how the MTA is wasting money by allowing 370 Jay Street to remain empty for years.

The disabled also spoke against proposals to cut Access-a-Ride services; some mentioned ways to improve how the current system works.  Others protested cuts to specific bus and subway routes.  The MTA stated that the complete video of the hearing will be made available on its website one week from today and all sumitted written testimony will be prepared in book form and be made available to Board members for their review.

Also, some people criticized the location of the hearing claiming it was a difficult location for them to get to, requiring multiple buses and trains. They suggested that in the future additional meetings be held at more locations.

Courtesy of jrcompton.com

Well, it appears the Belt Parkway overpass at Nostrand Avenue (and Shore Parkway) is once again a safe place to film a John Woo flick.

In response to yesterday’s post, “NYC DOT Murders Babies,” a crew has been dispatched to cut holes in the wire mesh and free the trapped, starving pigeons.

Sheepshead Bites makes a motion to rename this DOT team the Rainbow Division. Anyone second this motion?

Baby pigeons, anyway.

A group of city animal advocates is criticizing the Department of Transportation for carelessly snaring birds in a Sheepshead Bay construction site, preventing them from foraging for food or roosting with their mates.

“No matter what you think of pigeons, trapping them inside to slowly starve to death is cruel,” said a Gerritsen Beach resident who tipped us off to the issue.

On Tuesday morning, Jennifer Dudley arrived at Nostrand Avenue and Shore Parkway from her Manhattan home to scope out the situation for New York City Pigeon Rescuce Central, an animal-rights organization she volunteers with. At least half a dozen birds were trapped behind wooden planks put in place by the DOT to prevent debris from falling from the Belt Parkway bridge’s decaying seams.

According to Dudley, the birds had been stuck there at least since Friday, when a distraught resident alerted the organization to the situation. The resident told her that baby birds could be heard squeaking, but that ceased over the weekend as they likely starved to death.

Since then, Dudley and five others took up the cause to get wire meshing around the planking cut open so the pigeons could go free. But they’ve been met with apathy.

Dudley spent several hours on her cell phone making calls to the ASPCA, the DEC, the New York Animal Care & Control, the NYPD, and the FDNY, but found little help. Of them, only the ASPCA has a history of helping pigeons, but they require photos and specific reports. Dudley had a difficult time snapping clear photos in the dark underpass of the Belt Parkway.

Pigeons caught behind meshing is a pretty common occurrence, Dudley said. But while many may think of pigeons as pests, their separation from their mates and eventual starvation is a cruel punishment.

“This kind of thing happens a lot and nobody notices,” she said. “It’s not like there’s a huge community of pigeon advocates that can rally together” to pressure those with the equipment and authority to save them.

During last Wednesday’s Manhattan Beach Community Group meeting, Community Board 15 Chairperson Theresa Scavo urged residents to attend the March 3 hearing on MTA service cuts. The all-important hearing is being used by MTA commissioners to judge opposition to their plans, so a light showing from certain neighborhoods could be interpreted as a sign of community approval.

Don’t let that happen! Attend the hearing even if you don’t plan to speak. Let them know that striking out the B4 service along Emmons Avenue will suffocate businesses and leave Plumb Beach residents and several senior homes without service. And let them know, too, that you believe these plans are ill-conceived and rely on faulty data.

To give a little more oomph, you’ll see in the video above that Scavo believes eliminating the student metrocard will lead to increased crime rates. She says struggling students are “going to be stealing the money to get to where they are going, or they’re going to be jumping the turnstiles. They are not going to put their hand in their pocket rather than going and buying sneakers or their cell phone to pay to get on a train or a bus.”

I’m not sure if I totally buy the increased crime argument, but asking families to pay nearly $100 a month for their kids to get to school for their supposedly free education is ludicrous. It will certainly lead to increased drop-out rates and further hurt New York City’s education standings.

It’s stealing opportunity from an entire generation of low-income students and their families.

Learn what you can do to stop the cuts from suffocating Sheepshead Bay!

Photo courtesy of a-NeRo86 via Flickr

Allan Rosen, a Manhattan Beach resident and former Director of Bus Planning for New York City Transit, has fired off a 2,600-word missive at the MTA for its latest round of cuts.

Rosen posted his planned testimony for this Wednesday’s MTA hearing, in which he lays into the befuddled agency for poor planning. And he should know – in addition to his role as Director of Bus Planning, Rosen wrote his masters thesis on the “Inefficiency and Ineffectiveness of Brooklyn Bus Routes” at Columbia University. He’s also a 25-year veteran of the MTA, retiring in 2005 after recovering the authority millions of dollars as Director of Asset Recovery.

The scope of Rosen’s challenge to the MTA is breathtaking. His years of experience afford him an advantage few critics of the MTA have, including a deep knowledge of criteria and guidelines used to determine “acceptable” cuts. And he uses that knowledge to do an almost point-by-point decimation of the MTA’s plan.

Among Rosen’s critiques, which he explains at length, are that the MTA:

• overestimates the cost savings provided by cuts
• assumes inconvenience is not a factor in determining whether someone chooses to use the system or not
• grossly understates the negative effects … [which include for some] no mass transit option at all
• based its cuts on faulty criteria (which Rosen picks apart well)
• routinely chose cuts over optimizing efficiency

He also hints that the plan being put forward now is not based on fresh data, but has been a “go-to” plan shelved for many years until deficits grew too deep.

Notably, one of the bus cuts that Rosen singles out for examination is the B4, which will have service eliminated east of Coney Island Avenue. Not only has he observed much higher ridership than the MTA’s data claims, but the service elimination leaves residents with a walk much longer than the MTA’s own planning guidelines allow. The cut will sever mass transit options to the Emmons Avenue waterfront, including a shopping and dining district, major movie theater, and several senior homes.

Rosen is submitting his full testimony electronically, but he’s also planning on attending Wednesday’s hearing and delivering a three-minute version. “I have not been this upset about service cuts since 1993, which was the last time I testified at a hearing,” he told Sheepshead Bites.

He urges all of Sheepshead Bay’s residents to attend the hearing or send comments by e-mail, because he says the MTA is attempting to “overwhelm” with cuts and make it impossible to fight.

Below I excerpt pieces of Rosen’s post, but I strongly advise residents to read his entire testimony.

Read Allan Rosen’s testimony about MTA Bus cuts

A street sign honoring Iraq War veterans appears to have been stolen from a Brighton Beach corner, leading residents to point the finger at anti-war activists.

The sign renamed the corner of Corbin Place and Oriental Boulevard as Heroes of Operation Iraqi Freedom Way in 2005. According to the Daily News, residents took it as a “symbol of the contributions to the war effort made by local immigrants from Russia and former Soviet countries.”

The sign vanished in December, and Raisa Chernina, founder of Be Proud Foundation, which lobbied for its installation, claimed unpatriotic critics of the Iraq War stole the sign because it appeared to support President Bush.

“I have no doubt about it, because so many people were against the war,” Chernina told Daily News. “But they mix people fighting the war with the war itself.”

Supporters are rallying at the corner today to demand the sign’s replacement. The Department of Transportation has already said they will install a sign soon.

Theresa Scavo, Community Board 15 Chairperson

The New York City Community Boards – the 50 member panels forming the hyper-local level of city government – are accepting applications until Monday, February 22. For nearly half a century, the Boards have served as a go-to resource for residents who need help from the city government, and they also serve an advisory role to city decision-making including land use, zoning, and project funding. Though many of their functions have recently been duplicated by the launch of the citywide 311 system, advocates around the city continue to laud local community boards for their personal, human service and their role as the first line of community advocacy – while the 311 system is mired in criticism.

Last week, Sheepshead Bites teamed up with BK Southie to pick the mind of Theresa Scavo, the Chairperson of Board 15 (Sheepshead Bay, Gerritsen Beach, and Manhattan Beach). We discussed the importance of the Boards to the communities they serve, the benefits of community service, and where Boards need to be strengthened. Scavo has been a member of Community Board 15 since the 1990s, and has been the Chair since 2006, a run she described as “sometimes weird but always rewarding.”

If you don’t know what Community Boards are, or you’re interested in getting involved in your community’s future, this interview is the place to start.

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Ronnette Gleizer was one of more than 20 residents of 2800 Coyle Street protesting the co-op board
in the building's lobby

Residents of a Sheepshead Bay co-op apartment building have turned a series of disagreements into an ugly, bitter, and personal fight pitting neighbor against neighbor.

The worst part is, it can happen in almost any co-op.

The entrance to 2800 Coyle Street sits about halfway up the block, between Emmons Avenue and Shore Parkway. Last Tuesday, January 26, all was quiet on the sleepy street. But inside, about 20 disgruntled residents gathered in the lobby donning protest signs and trading war stories about the building’s overseers.

They said they were there to oppose the “Tyranny and Corruption of the Majority Board of Directors,” specifically five members of the eight member board that they say run the gamut from incompetent, to corrupt, to an organized crime syndicate. (Technically the board has nine members, including one appointed by the sponsor, LeFrak organization, who remains neutral.)

“It’s just amazing the tactics that they use,” said Diane D’Agostino, a former vice president of the board. “It’s like I’m not even living in the United States of America. I have never been treated so horrendously as I have been by this board. It’s terrible.”

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Back in May, Sheepshead Bites spoke up about the importance of neighborhood libraries as the city considered cutting a whopping $17.5 million dollars from the Brooklyn Public Library system. If those cuts passed, it would have ushered in a layoff of one of every six employees, reduced operational hours of most branches to five hours a day, five days a week, and caused a drop in available book, audio and video resources.

Luckily, with your help and the aid of countless others, the Brooklyn Public Library was able to stave off such a severe threat to its existence for at least another budget cycle.

But now a $7 million budget shortfall looms, and the Brooklyn Public Library is rattling the tin cup towards patrons. In an e-mail alert, the library writes:
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Assemblyman Cymbrowitz with Madelaine Cleaners’ owner, Eric Lederman.

New York may have had a slow start entering its winter wonderland, but as the holidays approach, Sheepshead Bay’s priorities have shifted to keeping warm. Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, in league with Met Council and Madelaine Cleaner’s, are spearheading efforts this year to collect winter coats for the needy.

Noting that this year’s state of economic duress may contribute to more of us going cold this year, Sheepshead Bay’s Cymbrowitz states, “We’re in a community where most of us can afford to purchase new coats,” and urges us to “please look through your closets for coats that you will no longer wear. As long as they are wearable, Met Council will accept them and put them to very good use.”

Though last year’s collection was considerable, this year they expect not as many people will purchase new threads because of the economy. The hope is that our community’s generosity will continue, if not increase. Madelaine Cleaners’ owner Eric Lederman has expressed his desire to do “whatever it takes” to collect more coats. The bottom line is without community support, there are no coats for the less fortunate.

Want to warm some hearts this holiday season? Drop your donations off at either Assemblyman Cymbrowitz’ office at 1800 Sheepshead Bay Road or to Madelaine Cleaners at 1616 Avenue M. If you’ve gotten something sportier and trendier this season, why not make some room in your closets before spring arrives?