Matthew Fischetti, Author at Queens Ledger

Shootings down, major crime up, cops say

Matthew Fischetti on June 9, 2022

Mayor Eric Adams credited the anti-gun crime unit he brought back earlier this year for a downturn in gun crime at a press conference in Brooklyn on Monday.

Recent NYPD stats show that shootings across the city were down 6.5 percent compared to this time last year. However, NYPD data also shows that major crimes—a category that includes seven different kinds of felonies including rape and grand larceny—-were up a whopping 38 percent from last year. Murder was the only individual major crime category that showed a citywide decrease of nine percent.

The anti-gun crime unit, dubbed the “Neighborhood Safety Team”, is a revamped version of the city’s plainclothes unit, which was disbanded due in 2020 to its involvement in shootings across the city. According to a 2018 report from the investigative journalism outlet, The Intercept, while plainclothes officers represented only six percent of the force they were responsible for 31 percent of all fatal shooting incidents.

Mayor Adams made good on his campaign promise of reinstating the unit back in January.

Adams stated that the teams will avoid previous mistakes by requiring officers to turn on their body cameras when interacting with the public and wearing windbreakers that make officers more identifiable as cops.

The Neighborhood Safety Teams have seized 105 firearms and effected 115 gun arrests since their start in March, according to NYPD.

“If we do the work to get it to the grand jury, to get that indictment, to make that arrest — then the other team must do their part,” Adams said at the press conference. “If we do the work to get it to the grand jury, to get that indictment, to make that arrest — then the other team must do their part.”

Mayor Adams placed blame on Albany lawmakers for not passing stronger restriction to bail reform.

“We would have liked to receive more, like the dangerousness standard. That’s so important. You have one of these guys that come in front of you or someone is arrested nine times. I think the judge should make the determination, this person presents an imminent threat to the city,” Adams said.

However, a report from progressive comptroller Brad Lander published last March, found that bail reform was not responsible for the increase in crime.

Adams noted that he will be pushing for the dangerous standard to be included in the next legislative session.

2022 Election Profile: Assembly Candidate Johanna Carmona

Matthew Fischetti on June 9, 2022

Johanna Carmona, a Sunnyside native and former Hispanic community liaison for outgoing Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan, announced her bid for the New York State Assembly’s 37th District.

Nolan, whose district whose district encompasses the Hunters Point, Sunnyside, Woodside, Maspeth, and Ridgewood communities in Western Queens, has held the position since 1984. Following the announcement of her retirement, four local candidates have opted to throw their hats into the ring.

Carmona, 32, is a lawyer who previously worked special victims for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. She has also been endorsed by Nolan, who has represented the area for decades and felt she is the most qualified to succeed her up in Albany.

The main reason Carmona is running for the Assembly is to help give her community substantive representation at the state level.

“The neighborhood’s growing, but at the same time, it still has the same values that I feel are there from when I was little,” Carmona said in an interview. She emphasized that the tight-knit community of Sunnyside has been instrumental in her own life, like when neighbors helped her Dad with everything from babysitters to cooking a decent meal after Carmona’s mother suffered a stroke.

Carmona’s three top issues she’d like to tackle up in Albany are public safety, education, and affordable housing.

“The rent increases are going to be a concern because it also affects someone like myself,” Carmona said about the Rent Guidelines Board potential increases, adding that she’s been a lifelong tenant. Carmona supports Good Cause Eviction, a bill that would strengthen tenant rights with certain clarification to the language of the bill, saying that some terms such as what is deemed ‘satisfactory’ to the court are too grey and needs more clear definitions.

While Carmona is generally supportive of bail reform, she says the legislation could have been written more robustly before passing. The former special victims prosecutor said that the bill lacked key provisions and that her experience as a lawyer will suit her to write effective legislation.

“And then there was also another one where they didn’t include which was obscene sexual acts performed by a child, why wasn’t that included? My biggest thing is that I’ve dealt with victims, and my biggest proponent is to make sure victims are protected. And, of course, it was amended and included that, but you know, people have to understand that the wording has to be careful when something that passes so quickly,” Carmona said.

Carmona plans to laser in on lowering class size, funding for after-school programs, and expanding college access programs.

“Making sure we have solid college access programs, I think will be very beneficial because it’s a nice way coming from a family of very low income to segue into a better job,” Carmona said, specifically highlighting how an NYU program helped her in her own life.

While Carmona has her main issues, she also would like to focus on otter topics like climate policy. Specifically, she’s looking at ways to revitalize Newton Creek, such as using the waterway as a source of renewable energy and utilizing discretionary funds to expedite the clean-up timetable.

Carmona has been hitting the district one door at a time, even giving her personal cell phone number to potential voters to make sure she is accessible to the community.

“The majority of people just want a better quality of life,” Carmona said about her conversations with voters across the district. “It comes down to people protecting their families, being able to afford their homes, and being able to just go down the street and say I can come back home safe. And honestly, it’s just that’s what’s been resonating throughout the whole district.”

Carmona will be facing fellow candidates Juan Ardilla, Jim Magee, and Brent O’Leary in the Tuesday, June 28 primary.

NYC goes ‘BIG’ for Biggie’s 50th Birthday

Matthew Fischetti on May 24, 2022

Biggie Smalls always repped Brooklyn to the fullest. And now his city is doing the same for him.

This past Saturday would have been the 50th birthday for the rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace, a Clinton Hill (then called Bed-Stuy) native who rose to prominence with searing lyrics and flows of his rags-to-riches story. He was gunned down in Los Angeles in 1997 and no one has been charged for the murder.

Starting at midnight on Saturday, fans waited for hours at subway stations to try and get a limited edition Biggie Smalls MetroCard. The Empire State Building was lit red and white in honor of the rapper. And Lincoln Center will be holding a tribute in June.

For many in New York, and especially Brooklyn, Biggie is as iconic as a Yankees fitted or a dollar slice of pizza. He’s long been a true staple of the city and a shining symbol for Brooklyn grit. But for many years, this level of institutional recognition was all but a dream.

LeRoy McCarthy with Congressman Jamaal Bowman and Senator Chuck Schumer inside the recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. Better known as the “birthplace of Hip-Hop,” this was where DJ Kool Herc performed to a crowd on August 11, 1973 (Credit: LeRoy McCarthy)

LeRoy McCarthy started a petition in 2013 to get the street corner on St. James Place between Fulton Street and Gates Avenue named Christopher Wallace Way.

“When I started this effort independently, I was saying that there was not recognition for hip hop as there is for rock and roll, or jazz or country. Hip hop is an indigenous and American creation – a composite of different music and art forms to create what we now know as hip hop,” McCarthy said in an interview.

That year, members of Brooklyn’s Community Board 2 reportedly rejected a proposal to rename a street corner after him due to his drug-dealing history, misogynist language used in his lyrics, and for being too overweight.

“And as a matter of fact, his mom [Wallace’s Mother] asked me not to do it, because the sentiment was so bad. And it was so distasteful the way that they spoke of her son, in these publications and in the community,” former Councilman Robert Cornegy said in an interview. Cornegy grew up in the same Brooklyn building as the late rapper, promising Wallace’s mother that he would someday honor her son’s legacy.

While explaining the contributions Biggie made to the community, Cornegy recalled a community board member interrupting his speech to read Biggie’s lyrics, in an attempt to sway people against voting for a street renaming.

“She [Wallace’s mother] didn’t want to do it, quite frankly. We backed off the first time, because she couldn’t take hearing the way that people felt about her son, which didn’t represent what 99 percent of the community and the culture understood the significance, but that 1 percent was very loud, who were vehemently against the street and the park naming,” Cornegy said.

Crispus Attucks Park was dedicated to Biggie in 2017, and in 2019 the street corner that he grew up on was renamed Christopher Wallace Way.

“It puts a little bit of a smirk on my face when I know how people initially felt and have we not stayed diligent with making sure that the world was aware of his contributions. I don’t know what would have happened. So there’s a whole bunch of people, not just myself on the ground, who really, really hammered this home consistently about the contributions,” Cornegy said.

Cornegy also emphasized the work that has been done by the Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation. While B.I.G used to stand for “Business instead of Game”, the foundation, which helps provide learning materials and fixies libraries, has transformed the definition to be “Books Instead of Guns”.

As an avid Biggie fan, McCarthy waited over an hour and a half to try and get one of the coveted 50,000 limited edition metro cards on Saturday morning. He wasn’t able to snag one. But as luck would have it, McCarthy met Barron Claiborne, the photographer who took the iconic photo of Biggie used on the MetroCard, at the block party he co-organized in Brooklyn.

McCarthy swapped one of his Christopher Wallace Way signs for a MetroCard autographed by Claiborne.

McCarthy says that he has been speaking with Speaker Adrienne Adams to get the NYC council to recognize August as Hip Hop recognition month as well as members of the Los Angeles City Council to pass a similar resolution. He was part of efforts that got the month recognized by the federal government, celebrating the genesis of hip hop by DJ Kool Herc on August 11, 1973 in the Bronx.

“But what I’m trying to do is have the intersection of St. James and folk history to be somewhat of an Abbey Road of hip hop – like a Graceland type thing or 56 Hope Road where Bob Marley’s house is. So it’s like an attraction, a part of Americana. Honoring hip hop is one thing, but this would also be a landmark for hip hop.”

School bus idling crackdown

Matthew Fischetti on May 18, 2022

Attorney General Letitia James announced a new lawsuit on Thursday against three bus companies that have allegedly violated idling laws, predominantly in low-income neighborhoods in Kings County for years.

State laws prevent idling for more than five minutes; city laws bar idling for more than three minutes and one minute in a school zone. Both laws have certain exceptions.

The lawsuit alleges that the three companies – Jofaz Transportation, Inc., 3rd Avenue Transit, Inc., and Y&M Transit Corp., Inc. – constantly violated City and State idling laws from 2019 to as recently as April of this year. James’ office is seeking monetary penalties and a court order to force the companies to comply with the laws.

The three companies, collectively known as the Jofaz Companies, are owned by Joseph Fazzia and his family. In total, they operate 614 buses throughout the city and three bus yards in Brooklyn, per the AG’s office.

A representative for Jofaz Transportation could not be reached as of press time.

The AG previously made an agreement with Jofaz Companies to train staff and comply with city and state laws. The lawsuit alleges that the violations continued well after the meeting, citing data captured by Geotab, a software management tool that the Department of Education installed on the buses.

“The data shows that a significant amount of the Jofaz Companies’ unlawful idling occurs at its three bus yards, two of which are located in or adjacent to communities that are low-income and/or where the residents are primarily people of color (environmental justice communities),” the lawsuit states. “Such communities already suffer from disproportionately high levels of air pollution and a correspondingly disproportionately high number of emergency room visits and hospital admissions for asthma and other respiratory illnesses.”

The Attorney General also found that in 2019, 30 different Jofaz school buses idled for at least 10 minutes each for a total of 285 different times over 65 days near P.S. K140, the same location where James hosted the press conference announcing the suit. Bed Stuy, the neighborhood surrounding P.S. K140 is in the 92nd percentile in the country for levels of diesel particulate matter and has childhood asthma rates in the 70th to 80th percentile, according to the AG’s office.

“I’m also grateful for all of the advocates have coming out to support the lawsuit against illegal idling,” Chelsea Miller, a Bed-Stuy high school student with asthma, said. “I’m glad that students who have asthma are being cared for, and that we as a whole are fighting against this and hoping for better air quality.”

Brooklyn debate league raises $1.3M after viral post

Matthew Fischetti on May 18, 2022

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

This quote is how coach K.M. DiColandrea would begin almost every debate team practice at Frederick Douglass Academy. He would urge his students to figure out their ‘why’.

At 15, Jonathan Conyers couldn’t answer the question.

Conyers, now 27, has figured out the answer. When he was selected to tell his life story with Humans of New York, he opted to talk about his teacher, nicknamed DiCo, instead. And that’s when over $1.2 million started rolling in to support the Brooklyn Debate League.

Through 12 different posts on the account, Conyers shared his life story, overcoming ‘hows’ like drug-addicted parents, getting evicted numerous times, and seeing his friend locked up at 14.

Conyers enrolled in Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem after avoiding charges for breaking into a home in middle school. The principal made him enroll in an extracurricular program. After sitting silently in the back of the debate room, Conyers finally participated when the topic of drug addiction was brought up.

“But one day they were discussing drug addiction, which is a topic I know a lot about,” Conyers said in the Humans of New York post. “So I stood up and shared my story. Afterwards Ms. DiCo asked me to stay behind. Mainly she just wanted to make sure I was OK. She was like: ‘Do you need anything?’ But after that, she was like: ‘You should join debate.’”

In hindsight, Conyers wishes he paid more attention to DiColandrea.

“She was white, from Manhattan. She’d gone to Yale. I just assumed she didn’t have any problems,” Dico said in the Humans of New York post.

But that wasn’t the case. DiColandrea revealed to his students that he was in the process of transitioning.

“They waited until I was ready to tell them,” DiColandrea said in an interview, explaining that some students had suspicions when Dico would bring his “friend” to school events. “And then it was just unconditional love.”

“DiCo could have told me he was a dinosaur, and I’d be like: ‘That’s cool. Just stay DiCo,’” Conyers said in the Humans of New York Post.

DiColandrea and Conyers knew the biggest tournament of the year was a real shot when the topic was announced: “Should juvenile offenders be tried as adults?”

While Conyers recalled feeling out of place at the tournament, he found his home on the dais. Conyers recalled in the post that there was nothing special about his opening speeches, but on cross-examination he destroyed his opponents asking his predominantly white and affluent opponents whether they should be the person making this argument if they don’t know anyone.

“Jonathan needs to stick to the facts. His life story gives him an unfair advantage,” Conyers recalled a judge saying, in the Humans of New York post.

DiCo taught all his students to be calm and collected. But that’s when DiColandrea snapped.

“You will not do this to him. These rich kids have access to every resource. But you’re penalizing Jonathan because his life is f***ed up?” Conyers recalled Dico saying, in the Humans of New York Post.

Ever since that tournament, DiColandrea has been working hard to break down those barriers in debate. A few years later, DiColandrea founded the Brooklyn Debate League – a group that seeks to eliminate the gatekeeping in debate by expanding programs and teams to urban areas.

“But it’s not always just about personal anecdotes, it’s like, it’s a more fundamental, personal confidence,” DiColandrea said about teaching students a more personal and unconventional debate style. “It’s helping students understand at a really visceral and deep level, that regardless of what neighborhood they live in, or how much money their parents make, or what school they go to, or what color their skin is, or who they’re attracted to, or how they identify. Regardless of any of those identity markers, they belong in a space where the only weapon is words because their words matter”

“And that’s priceless. Knowing your voice matters,” Conyers said. “Especially as a young Black man, presentation and how you articulate yourself are important.”

And although it’s priceless, it still costs.

DiColandrea started the GoFundMe to cover the $6,000 he personally invested to cover payroll for the small mostly volunteer staff. It was covered in 10 minutes. After two days, it already hit a million. Now over a week later, it has raised over $1.3 million.

“It feels like a mix of the day I got married, all of my birthdays combined, and the day that my student won Harvard,” DiColandrea said about the newfound attention and funds. “It feels like everybody in the world is just reaching out with this abundant outpouring of love and kindness.”

The Brooklyn Debate league operated on a small and scrappy budget, reaching around 250 people on their mailing list and about 100 students coming to tournaments.

“That’s chump change now. We can change our whole mission now,” DiColandrea said with excitement in his voice. DiCo said that he’s looking to reach every person, school and program he can throughout Brooklyn and other urban areas.

“You don’t need to look any further than the New York State Championship that was held two weekends ago, right? There were over 60 schools there. And there were five of them that were public schools in New York City. And three of those were specialized schools. And we are the biggest school district In the country, we have, what, 1.1 million students? They weren’t in those spaces. And they’re not in the speech and debate circuit,” DiColandrea said, explaining the still urgent need for something like Brooklyn Debate League.

While Conyers credits a lot of how he got by in life due to his coach’s help, DiColandrea disagrees.

“I don’t know how to express it. You know, that kind of selflessness is what’s always made him so special; he’s a very humble person,” DiCo said. “And he wanted me to have this moment. And man, am I having it?”

Conyers now says he has figured out his why.

“I learned that giving back and being selfless can change lives. And what he [DiColandrea] did to me has allowed me to help so many people,” Conyers said. He has been on the front lines of COVID working as a respiratory therapist at NYU. He also started a home for children who had been orphaned during the pandemic and owns juvenile rehabilitation centers in Virginia to give kids like him the resources and opportunities he didn’t.

For DiColandrea, it’s a wish come true.

DiColandrea originally gravitated to the quote when he was 16. His high school was only a few blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11. IN the weeks after, she asked for book recommendations for helping to understand and process her trauma. The teacher recommended Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

“As someone who experienced this firsthand, we then had an obligation to speak up about it, to make sure that it wasn’t forgotten to make sure that people understood what happened.”

And that became DiColandrea’s reason. Helping his own students to process their trauma and make sure they know that their voice matters.

“We’re talking about racism. We’re talking about,people who are undocumented. We’re talking about people who come from low income communities. There are traumas that kids are carrying from those communities as well. I want them to feel empowered to speak up about what is meaningful to them, what is their lived experience. To teach them about what matters and for them to feel empowered to share that on whatever level they want. That might be just in front of a friend or a classmate or it might be on a national stage at the Speech and Debate championship,” DiColandrea said.

“But that voice belongs to them. And that power belongs to them to use it, to speak up about what they think matters.”

Even though Coyners said he never had a good answer to what his “why” was – he always knew a bit of the answer.

“All I knew was that I wanted to be like Ms. DiCo,” Conyers said in the Humans of New York post.

“I just want the world to know that there is so much more to Jonathon Coyners, there’s so much more to DiCo,” Conyers said. “We pray that we can continue to share our story and continue to share the things we have been through in much more detail, and we hope the world is supportive.”

City votes to raise rents for thousands

Matthew Fischetti on May 11, 2022

The Rent Guidelines Board, the city regulatory agency that decides the prices of rent-stabilized units, preliminarily voted to increase rents in their largest single-year jump in nearly 10 years. The final vote will be held on June 21.

The RGB voted to increase rents by 2-4 percent for one-year leases and 4-6 percent for two-year leases in a 5-4 vote on Thursday. The last time the RGB raised rents by over 3 percent was in 2014; that year one-year leases increased by 4 percent while two-year leases increased by 7.75 percent.

A 2017 report from the Housing and Preservation Department found that Brooklyn comprises nearly 30 percent of the city’s rent-stabilized units; meaning that up to nearly 275,000 units in Kings County could be facing increases.

The jump in rents marks a shift from the freezes and modest increases the RGB pursued under previous Mayor DeBlasio’s more tenant-friendly board. Mayor Adams appointed a landlord lawyer and a self-proclaimed rent control skeptic to the board last month, as City Limits reported.

The RGB is comprised of nine different members who are all appointed by the mayor. Two seats are designated for tenant interests, two others to represent owners, while the other five are supposed to represent the general public.

“Inflation is hurting property owners as the cost of providing safe, clean, affordable housing continues to rise. Our analysis of the data is that an increase of rents it keeps up with inflation and rising property taxes is necessary to protect the housing stock,” said Robert Ehlrich, one of the owner representatives. Ehrlich continued to cite RGB research that found that 1/3 of rent-stabilized buildings are spending 70 percent of operating income on costs.

Sheila Garcia, one of the tenant representatives called for rent freezes and rent rollbacks on apartments.

“This is what the language of the statute reads. action is necessary to prevent exactions of unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive rents and rental agreements. And to forestall profiteering speculation and other disruptive practices tending to produce threats to the public health, safety, and general welfare. It goes on to say that this is because many, many owners, and I quote, ‘were demanding exorbitant and unconscionable rent increases.’ These are the underpinnings of why the RGB exists,” said Adán Soltren, the other tenant member of the board.

The New York City Council Progressive Caucus, which represents the majority of the council, denounced the rent hikes in a statement.

“We are at a loss as to why the recommended increases only have the landlord in mind, devised so as to maintain landlords’ net operating income at constant levels. Why should the maintenance of landlord income be privileged over the tenants’ ability to keep up with cost of living increases? Tenants have not experienced wage or salary increases of 9%, are paying more for everything due to inflation, and unemployment in the City remains nearly double the national average,” the statement reads.

The caucus also called for an immediate rent rollback to stave off evictions and that the board hold at least five public hearings, one in each borough. There are only two scheduled public hearings before the final vote in June, currently scheduled on the RGB website.

Mayor Adams, who is a landlord himself, refused to take a stance on the floated hike in order to maintain the independence on the board. Adams emphasized the responsibility of his appointed positions to strike the balance between landlords and what Mayor Adams described as small time renters.

The progressive caucus dismissed the notion of ‘mom-and-pop’ landlords being the primary provider of rent-regulated apartments. Their statement cited a 2017 analysis of Housing Preservation and Development data released by Justfix.nyc, a non profit organization that releases online tools for the housing movement. The report found that 91 percent of “mom-and-pop” landlords, defined as only owning one building by the Progressive Caucasus, do not own buildings with rent-regulated units and that 70 percent of landlords who own rent-regulated units own six or more buildings.

Queens firefighter killed in blaze

Matthew Fischetti on April 27, 2022

FDNY Firefighter Timothy Klein, 31, died in the line of duty while fighting a residential fire in Brooklyn that killed two people.

FDNY responded to the house fire at Avenue N in Canarsie five minutes after reports of smoke in the area. Conditions in the building worsened quickly before the Incident Commander ordered all members to evacuate the building, according to the FDNY Office of Public Information. Flames engulfed the building before part of the ceiling collapsed, injuring four firefighters inside. In total eight other firefighters, besides Klein, were injured in the three-alarm blaze.

“New York City has lost one of its bravest today – Firefighter Timothy Klein,” NYC Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement. “He lost his life doing the job we asked of him every day – bravely fighting to save others from fire. We pray for his family and his fellow Firefighters during this terribly painful time.”

Klein, a six-year FDNY veteran from Rockaway Beach, was first assigned to Ladder Company 170 in Canarsie after his graduation from the academy.

“The Department is heartbroken today at the loss of Firefighter Timothy Klein, who died risking his life to save others. His family has a rich history of service in the FDNY, and he bravely followed in their footsteps,” Acting Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said in a statement, “The hearts of the entire Department are with the Klein family and with the members of Engine Company 257 and Ladder Company 170.”

His hometown community in Queens was devastated upon hearing the news of Klein’s brave sacrifice.
“. Klein represented the very best of us, both on-duty and off-duty,” Councilwoman Ariola said in a statement about the Rockaway native. “He was a man who spent much of his free time involved with the Fight for Firefighters Foundation, which works to raise funds for and support firefighters in need, and he was well known throughout his neighborhood in Rockaway for his kind and giving nature. Klein gave his life doing what he loved – helping others – and for that he will always be remembered. He is a hero to everyone in this city, and while I cannot imagine the grief that the Klein family is experiencing right now, I want them to know that we will never forget Timmy’s sacrifice. The people of New York City are eternally grateful, and we are all forever in your debt.”

“It is always a tragedy for the City when we lose one of our brave first responders, but it really hits home when one of those people is a resident of your community,” New York State Senator Joseph Addabbo, Jr. said in a statement. “And that is the case with Firefighter Timothy Klein who died on Sunday after battling a blaze in Brooklyn. Klein grew up in Breezy Point and lived in Rockaway. Klein gave his life protecting others, and his bravery and memory will live on through his family and the people that he has saved. I want to send my condolences to Klein’s family and friends, as well as Ladder Co. 170, during this most difficult time, and I wish the other Firefighters injured in that fire a speedy recovery.”

Klein is survived by his retired FDNY Firefighter father Patrick Klein, his mother Diane and three sisters. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Members of the Canarsie firehouse paid tribute to the fallen hero on Monday, for his devotion and dedication to protecting those in the Brooklyn community.

Raised crosswalk proposal moves forward

Matthew Fischetti on April 21, 2022

A new raised crosswalk may be coming to an intersection near you.

Community Board 1 voted on Thursday to send a letter to study the proposal for a raised intersection on the corner of Olive Street and Maspeth Avenue. By having intersections that are flushed with the sidewalk, motorists are encouraged to slow speed and yield to pedestrians, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

Currently, there are only 17 raised intersections in the city as part of the New York City Department of Transportation’s in house raised crosswalk program, according to a DOT representative. The DOT also stated that they have installed another 13 raised intersections as part of other Capital projects.

Mayor Eric Adams has pledged to convert 100 dangerous intersections each year into raised intersections.

“DOT crews are working diligently to increase the number of raised crosswalk to meet the Mayor’s goal. We have identified a number of locations that will be built with our in-house forces, some of which are already in construction. DOT is also working with our partner agency Department of Design and Construction to identify additional locations for inclusion in the capital program,” a representative from DOT said in an email.

Paul Kelterborn, a transportation committee member of Brooklyn Community Board 1, believes that this Williamsburg intersection is a perfect candidate. Kelterborn, a member of Friends of Cooper Park, believes that this improvement is necessary in large part to the influx of new residents that will be coming to the community.

The Cooper Park Commons, a new building with 557 units of housing and 200 shelter beds, will be opening soon and Kelterborn believes the raised intersection is one of the policy proposals that will help accommodate the influx of thousands of new residents.

Kelterborn’s proposal advocated for the raised intersection to use different materials and colors to differentiate the intersection. In the interim, Kelterborn believes the DOT should add curb extensions for shorter crossing distances and increased visibility, install planters and granite blocks to keep cars out of pedestrian space, as well as remove parked cars that block visibility on street corners.

While the raised intersection is a new proposal, features such as curb bump-outs have been requested for over a decade. The first calls for safety improvement were proposed in 2008 when residents complained about the intersection’s “fast-moving and unchecked vehicle traffic.”
A pedestrian safety plan that advocated for bump-outs at the intersection was recommended in 2010 by the Cooper Park Neighborhood Association. The DOT made some minor traffic calming and signage changes in 2015 that critics say didn’t adequately address the street safety conditions in the area.

In 2019, the Greenpoint Renaissance Enterprise Corporation – a group of North Brooklyn community organizations – sent a letter to the DOT to express their concern about street safety.

But now, in 2022, over a dozen community organizations from the St. Nicks Alliance to elected politicians like Councilwoman Jennifer Gutierrez have endorsed the raised intersection as a solution for the Cooper Park area.

“I hope with a new administration that has a focus on street safety that we will be able to get something ambitious like this done. The DOT has been unresponsive in the past” Kelterborn said in an interview. “We need to be proactively making streets safer rather than reactive.”

Gifted and Talented programs given new life under revamped plan

Matthew Fischetti on April 20, 2022

By Matthew Fischetti and Evan Triantafilidis

Education Chancellor David Banks and Mayor Eric Adams announced an expansion of the Gifted and Talented programs to every school district in the city.

The program, which starts at the Kindergarten level with an opt-in citywide test, will have 100 seats added to the existing 2,400 enrollment slots.

The admissions tests administered annually to thousands of rising Kindergarteners will be replaced with a student evaluation and eventual nomination by their pre-K teachers to a lottery system, or through an interview process if they are not yet in school, or attend a private or parochial school program.

The Adams administration says this universal pre-K screening takes the initial burden off families and will increase access to the program, resulting in a more diverse eligibility pool.

At the third-grade level, 1,000 seats will be added to the program.

Although it is not clear yet which schools in Brooklyn and Queens will be receiving the additional seats, the revival of the Gifted and Talented program was met with mixed reactions from elected officials. The Department of Education did not identify which districts will receive additional seats, despite multiple requests for clarification.

With just weeks left in his tenure, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last October plans to phase out the Gifted and Talented program. De Blasio planned to replace the program with “Brilliant NYC,” which would allow students eight and older to participate in accelerated learning programs while remaining in their original classroom.
De Blasio envisioned a program that was touted to reach 26 times more students than the current Gifted and Talented program, and offer a more widespread approach to attain a more inclusive model.

Critics of the Gifted and Talented program argue that the diversity of the program does not reflect the student body population. While Black and Latino kids make up the majority of city students – at approximately 65 percent – the Gifted and Talented programs enroll more than 75 percent of students who are either white or Asian.

The Adams administration says the expansion of the program is the result of the Department of Education’s engagement with and feedback from parents and diverse community stakeholders.

“We’re doubling down on this administration’s commitment to our youngest New Yorkers by adding additional seats and removing inequities in the admission process to allow students throughout this city to gain access to accelerated learning,” Mayor Adams said. “And thanks to this expansion, for the first time ever, there will be a Gifted and Talented program in every school district in this city. This is how we give every young person an opportunity to grow, to learn, to explore their talents and imagination.”

Elected officials along with education advocates voiced their approval of the new Mayor’s plan, while others claim that the move simply expands an already inequitable initiative.

Councilwoman Linda Lee, representing the 23rd District in Eastern Queens, has been advocating for the expansion of the Gifted and Talented program since before she was elected. With her youngest son eligible to test-in next year, Lee applauded last week’s announcement from the Mayor and Schools Chancellor.

“Since the fall, parents, community leaders, and elected officials have consistently called for G&T to be restored, and today the Mayor and Chancellor demonstrated that they are listening,” Lee said. “By not just expanding the number of seats available citywide, but also expanding programs to every school district in the City, and allowing students to test into the program at later ages, this new program will prove that we can have equity and educational excellence at the same time.”

A number of Lee’s colleagues in the City Council, including Speaker Adrienne Adams, Sandra Ung, Lynn Schulman, Rita Joseph, Justin Brannan, Gale Brewer and Oswald Feliz have all praised the move to expand the Gifted and Talented program citywide.

New York State Senator John Liu, chair of the committee on NYC Education, said that he is happy to see “positive movement” on accelerated learning in public schools, but remains cautious to the lottery system and “nebulous recommendations” that are a cause for concern for parents and families.

“Going forward beyond this school year, the administration must be sure to engage parents and students who have long called for more accelerated learning in order to address these outstanding issues,” Liu said.

Critics of the program, like Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Comptroller Brad Lander, say that the revival and revamp of the Gifted and Talented program does not do away with the underlying tones of modern day segregation in the classroom.

Lander said that Elementary school students benefit from learning alongside a diverse group of peers, calling it one of the core virtues of public education.

“Segregating learning environments for elementary students, based on a teacher’s or test’s assessment of how smart they are, is not sound education policy,” Lander said in a statement. “We’ve seen repeatedly that stand-alone G&T programs lead to racial segregation.”

Other leftists like Public Advocate Jumaane Williams have released white papers criticizing the program and instead advocating for a “school enrichment model.”

The model would utilize “a broad range of advanced-level enrichment experiences for all students, and use student responses to these experiences as stepping stones for relevant follow-up,” according to Williams’ report.

“Adding more seats, more access, more opportunity is an improvement that will extend these benefits to more students. At the same time, it is also an expansion of a program that is inherently inequitable,” Williams said in a statement.

Public Advocate testifies about flood resiliency

Matthew Fischetti on April 13, 2022

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Councilwoman Carline Rivera have introduced legislation that would require the city to have more emergency planning in relation to flash floods.

The National Weather Service had to issue its flash flood emergency –, which is more severe than a “watch” or “warning,” for NYC in the agency’s history this past September after historic rainfalls from hurricane Ida. 13 people from New York City, primarily in Brooklyn and Queens, died due to being trapped in flooded basements.

The city estimates that there are over 50,000 basement units in the city. But the number isn’t reflective of the reality as most “basement” apartments are illegal and technically classified as cellars – which have worse health standards and safety qualities.

A basement is a story of a building partly below curb level but with at least one-half of its height above the curb level; while a cellar is an enclosed space having more than one-half of its height below curb level – according to the Housing Preservation and Development website. While there was a pilot program to convert units into fully legal basements, the funding was slashed by 92 percent in the 2021 budget under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The current legislation being pushed by Williams and Rivera wouldn’t change the legality of basement apartments but rather focuses on how the city responds to these emergencies. The bill would require the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) to establish a flash flood emergency evacuation plan for residents of multiple dwellings, post plans on the OEM website and conducting outreach, in coordination with the Department of Housing Preservation and Environmental Protection, that provides signage to residents regarding the flood risks and the evacuation plan. It would also require OEM to report on the implementation of the evacuation plan and post their reports on the OEM website.

“In the past decade, New Yorkers have been challenged by the hurricanes and floods that struck the New York City area leading to tragic consequences throughout the five boroughs…While New York City and the rest of the world grapple with the effects of climate change, we can put policies in place to prepare individuals who reside in flood zones,” Public Advocate Williams said during a committee hearing on Fire and Emergency Management and on Resiliency and Waterfronts. “Preparation is the key for maximizing best practices and minimizing tragedies.”

The bill would further require the OEM to release a report on the implementation of its plans within 60 days. The report would be required to give information on the number of multiple dwellings(including basement and first floor apartments evacuated during flash flood emergency), addresses and council districts of evacuated dwellings, challenges in implementing the evacuation plan and the number of people who were evacuated.

“We continue to talk about once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-hundred years storms as we now know. There will be much more than that. The horrors that I saw, in the City, during Hurricane Ida. Nothing is worse than losing lives that could have been prevented,” Williams said. “What we saw was the loss of homes, especially in southeast Queens, that we could have prevented and the lives that were lost with preventive intentions and communications. Because we had enough information to let folks know what was going to happen. We also know the areas that are continually flooded. Many of these residents have been complaining for many, many years without movement or response.”

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