Serrano applauds new “Summer Streets” initiative but urges the city to bring it Uptown
New York, NY - Senator José M. Serrano (D-Manhattan/Bronx) today applauded Mayor Bloomberg’s “car-free recreation corridor” but asked a fundamental question: “Why not Uptown?”
“Our city is leading the way with environmental initiatives,” said the Senator. “But let’s start putting these pilot programs where they really belong, in working class neighborhoods like East Harlem and the South Bronx.
“My constituents suffer asthma hospitalization rates that are five times the national average. We house more industry and take in more garbage than anyone else. In fact, six of seven diesel bus depots in Manhattan are located north of 96th Street.”
He added: “If anyone needs a summer vacation from automobiles, it’s the top half of New York City.”
In a press conference yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg announced his plan to close off to traffic a seven-mile corridor stretching from the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street. The so-called “Summer Streets” are scheduled for three consecutive Saturdays in August, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
DEP Seeks Rate Hike As Institutions & Co-Ops Owe Millions
Call it Law and Water.
While the city Department of Environmental Protection turned off the water at nearly 100 single-family homes earlier this month, the agency has left the water running at dozens of Bronx institutions and co-op buildings that owe millions in unpaid bills.
To make matters worse, many of those institutions say they struggle to pay the bills because the DEP is charging them for years of misread meters and other billing mistakes.
The chaotic billing situation exists even as the DEP seeks a 14.5% water bill hike.
City Council opponents of the hike fume it would not be necessary if the DEP collected the $600 million owed by 15% of its customers.
The DEP says it did not have the ability to recover the money until last December, when Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council gave it authority to impose property liens on deadbeats.
In early April, the DEP announced it was shutting the water off at 93 homes across the city that owed between $1,342 and $2,330 - a total that amounted to no more than $220,000.
Meanwhile, according to a list of delinquent payers the DEP released after receiving it via a Freedom of Information Act request, the top 10 debtors in the Bronx owe $6 million - most of them exempt from the lien sale.
They include St. Vincent De Paul, a nursing home which owes $844,465; Leland Gardens, a condo building on Leland Ave. which owes $961,642, and a housing development fund co-op building at 2089 Arthur Ave. which is $870,813 in arrears.
Many of the largest unpaid Bronx bills are from nursing homes that say they are strapped for cash and dependent on government funds, including St. Vincent de Paul, Workmen’s Circle MultiCare Center and the Hebrew Home for the Aged.
Soloman Rutenberg, Workmen’s Circle’s executive director, said the home was hit with a $400,000 bill after the DEP found it had been misreading the home’s meter for several years. Read more..
Express Select Bus Service route will run between northern Manhattan and Co-op City in the Bronx.
MTA Is Onboard With Prepay Plan
A plan to speed up bus travel by having riders pay before boarding will be launched in June - but declining tax revenues may delay other promised transit upgrades, officials said Monday.
The first Select Bus Service route will be between 207th St. and Broadway in northern Manhattan and Co-op City in the Bronx, Metropolitan Transportation Authority staffers said at a committee meeting at the authority’s Madison Ave. headquarters.
Helping to speed the trip, specially marked buses will have the technology to extend green lights at intersections on Fordham Road and 207th St. initially so they don’t have to stop as often.
Mayor Bloomberg’s administration and the MTA hope to later expand the fast-track service to four other routes, including 34th St. in Manhattan. Bus-only lanes will be painted terra cotta for higher visibility and officials will seek “an extraordinary level of enforcement” by police to keep other vehicles out, according to a summary released by the MTA.
Bus trips are significantly slowed by the time it takes riders to pay one by one while boarding. Select Bus riders will pay at curbside machines that give receipts before the bus arrives.
Mayor & MTA Announce New Express Bus Routes .. IF…
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Metropolitan Transportation Authority Executive Director and CEO, Elliot G. Sander today announced what could be a new express bus route from the Throggs Neck Section of the Bronx to Lower Manhattan, if - and only if - the congestion pricing plan is approved by the State Legislature and the City Council.
One of the new proposed routes, the BXM-19, would run from Throggs Neck down to Battery Place, serving as an extension to the existing BXM-9 which currently terminates at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. Currently, passengers of the BXM-9 who work in Lower Manhattan must transfer to a different bus or subway to continue below 23rd Street.
The BMX-19 would provide Bronx residents with a one-seat ride to Lower Manhattan. Taking place at a bus stop at the intersection of Layton and Vincent Avenues, the Mayor noted that he can not yet cut the ribbon on a service that would benefit thousands of Bronx residents because funding does not exist without congestion pricing.
The new express route, along with 44 other new and enhanced routes and over 300 new buses, would be funded under the Urban Partnership Agreement, which would award $354.5 million in federal funds to the City if the Mayor’s congestion pricing plan is adopted.
The Mayor was also joined by Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, City Councilman James Vacca, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Gene Russianoff, Senior Attorney for the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign and local resident Audrey Izzard.
“Legislators in every community must keep in mind the benefits congestion pricing will bring and what we give up if they fail to act,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “We face a real need for mass transit improvements, and congestion pricing offers the rare opportunity to fund them.
Without that funding, the MTA will not be able to make these projects happen.
The new BXM-19 bus route is one of hundreds of improvements that depend on the federal funding we will be given if we enact a congestion pricing plan.”
“If we’re serious about encouraging people to use public transportation, we must increase travel options for underserved areas,” said MTA Executive Director and CEO Sander. “This route, for example, would speed Bronx residents from Throggs Neck to jobs in Manhattan.”
“Congestion Pricing is critical to the future of New York City,” said Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “That is why we are traveling to many neighborhoods around the city to demonstrate just what kind of mass transit improvements, like new express bus routes, they could expect to see with this new source of funding.”
Students attend an accounting class at the career-focused Bronx School of Law and Finance in the Marble Hill section of the Bronx.
Vocational Is Old School! They Are Now Called ‘Career Schools’
Eyeing a scrolling stock ticker flashing the latest prices, a 16-year-old high school junior, Raymond Rodriguez, said the other day: “That’s like my morning coffee.”
Wendys International was down; Intel was down; Allied Waste was down, and then another announcement rolled across the ticker:
Graduation is June 5. It was 10:30 a.m. at the Bronx School of Law and Finance, a small high school on the eighth floor of the gigantic John F. Kennedy campus in the Marble Hill section of the Bronx where students choose between two majors — law or finance — and then rack up a laundry list of practical skills, from how to wear a suit to how to trade stocks. (Mr. Rodriguez, a finance major, has invested about $100,000 in virtual dollars in Coca-Cola, Kellogg, and Xerox.)
This is the new face of vocational education, updated for the 21 st century, where securities class replaces shop and, rather than heading to factories, students serve summer internships at places such as McKinsey, Deutsche Bank, and Citi.
“Vocational — that word is out. They’re now career schools,” the school’s principal, Evan Schwartz, said.
Having posted among the most remarkable results in the city — Regents scores and graduation rates are well above the citywide average — the new schools, known by the name career and technical education, could also become the new face of New York City’s public schools. In his State of the City address this year, Mayor Bloomberg named expanding CTE schools a main priority, announcing that three CTE “demonstration” schools would be opened by 2009.
“Traditionally, such career and technical education has been seen as an educational dead-end,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We’re going to change that.”
Although not technically accredited as a CTE school (that requires going through a Byzantine process the state Board of Regents is looking to revamp), Law and Finance is part of the National Academy Foundation, a national umbrella group for CTE, and it receives federal vocational education grants.
It has also caught the attention of CTE’s chief proponent at City Hall, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, who dropped in unannounced for a visit last month.
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