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| Bloomberg talks with Stephen Katzman, a president of the Hunts Point Produce Market (Photo courtesy of the Mayor's office) |
The public hearing over the future of the Muller Army Center in Wakefield took place last night, at P.S. 21 on 225th Street.
BxNN reporter Alex Kratz was there and will post a more detailed account later, but he said the majority of those who attended--a strong showing of Wakefield and Woodlawn residents, and many members of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition--are against the city's plan to fill the building with a homeless shelter, and support the idea of moving the National Guard from an annex at the Kingsbridge Armory into the Wakefield site to free up school space (you can read some more background in yesterday's news roundup).
Kratz said that Father Richard Gorman of CB 12 got the crowd going with an impassioned speech that took several hilarious digs at Mayor Bloomberg. Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., who sits on a panel overseeing the building's redevelopment, also testified--you can read his full statement in the document below.
Faced with criticism from opponents who say the bill would squash jobs, backers of a proposed "living wage" mandate in the City Council are now reportedly willing to make some concessions.
"We're trying to take into account some legitimate concerns," Bronx Councilman Oliver Koppell, who sponsored the legislation with Councilwoman Annabel Palma, told the Daily News. "What we want is something that'll work and also something that will engender as little resistance as possible."
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| Bronx River Park is one of three in the Bronx that will be getting free Wi-Fi access this summer. (Photo by J. Evelly) |
Editor's Note: A version of this article first appeared in the May edition of the Tremont Tribune.
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| A fire at 2321 Prospect Ave. killed three people in April (Photo by David Greene) |
A public hearing to discuss the redevelopment of the Bronx's Sergeant Joseph A. Muller Army Reserve Center will be held next month as the fate of the vacant Wakefield-area building once again hangs in the balance.
It's been a while since we've talked about the Muller Center, so here's a quick refresher (for more background, click here, here and here.):
Last year, the local redevelopment authority (LRA) created to find a new use for the Muller Center fractured. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., one of three voting members of the authority (along with Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and the Tokumbo Shobowale, chief of staff for the deputy mayor for economic development) adamantly opposed a plan put forth by his two co-members to turn the building into an enormous homeless shelter. He declined to attend the late-year meetings of the LRA to prevent them from voting on the homeless shelter plan.
Joining Diaz, other Bronx elected officials, activist groups and local community boards also opposed the homeless shelter plan. Instead of a homeless shelter (the area already has it's share, opponents say), Diaz proposed transferring the national guard units currently housed in the annex buildings at the Kingsbridge Armory to the Muller Center, which would free the annex building up to become badly needed schools. The National Guard has said it would be willing to move the Armory-based units to the Muller Center, but with financial help from the city.
The deadline for agreeing on a plan was extended from the end of last year to the end of this June.
Diaz spokesman John DeSio said the borough president's hope is that the LRA adopts some of the suggestions and ideas raised at the public hearing -- scheduled for June 22, at PS 21, 715 E. 225th St. from 6 to 8 p.m. DeSio wouldn't comment on whether Diaz would again refuse to attend a vote if the other LRA members (read: the mayor's office) wouldn't budget on their desire to use the Muller Center as a homeless shelter. If the the LRA doesn't vote, the Muller Center's fate would be decided by the Department of the Defense, which could be swayed by influential members of Congress. DeSio said they might have better luck dealing with the DoD, then with the mayor's office.
LRAs for every former military building that is being closed as part of DoD's BRAC program are instructed to look at the needs of the local homeless population. But LRAs are not limited to transferring the property to homeless service providers.
Representatives of the city's Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which is managing the LRA process for the mayor's office, have said there's a glaring need for shelters in New York City and that's why they haven't budged on their desire to use the Muller Center to house the homeless.
Update: To see the draft plan for the Muller Center, click here.
Editor's note: A version of this article first appeared in this week's Norwood News, out today.
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| Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. at a rally last week in support of the living wage bill. (Courtesy Borough President's Office) |
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| Speaker Christine Quinn, Mayor Bloomberg, Borough President Ruben Diaz, Sen. Gustavo Rivera and tenants celebrate the sale of the Milbank portfolio at a press conference yesterday. |
At a press conference today earlier in Kingsbridge, I asked Mayor Bloomberg if his administration was willing to consider new plans for the Kingsbridge Armory, since Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. is expected to release, in the next several weeks, a report drafted by the NYU Wagner School of Public Policy with recommendations for redeveloping the vacant landmark .
"We're open to every good idea," the mayor said, exhibiting none of the bitterness some have attributed to him for having his preferred plan for the facility -- a mall developed by The Related Companies -- killed by Diaz and many of the very same people that were at the press conference to cheer him on for the Bloomberg administration's efforts to get a portfolio of 10 nightmare apartment buildings into the hands of a new, responsible owner.
(Diaz, who had been at the mayor's side for most of the press conference, left before I asked this question.)
An NYPD officer accidentally shot the elderly father of a suspected drug dealer during a raid on his home in Soundview early Saturday morning. The injured man, 76-year-old Jose Colon, was shot in the stomach after Detrective Andrew McCormack mistakenly fired his gun; he's in stable condition and expected to survive. His son, Alberto Colon, is in police custody for drug possession.
The Times takes a look at the family of McCormack, the officer in the incident, whose police officer father was killed in the line of duty during a standoff with a mentally disturbed man in Pelham Bay back in 1983.
A 16-year-old Bronx girl who was shot in the head last year during a gang shootout on her way to school says she feels a connection to Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who is recovering from a similar injury. Today, Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference at City Hall with dozens of gun violence victims to push for background checks for gun purchases.
The Arizona shooting has also sparked a local response, as Borough President Diaz and Bronx residents who've witnessed gun violence firsthand say that weapon laws need to be stricter.
A man who is already serving a prison sentence for an unrelated crime has been charged with the 1993 slaying of a young Bronx mother. The victim's 4-year-old daughter had identified the man, DeJohn Hoffman, as her mother's killer at the time of her disappearance.
Recognize these burglars? Police released this video that captured two bandits during a robbery of a Hunts Point apartment building, in hopes of catching the suspects.
A group of pro-choice supporters rallied outside a women's health clinic in Hunts Point on Saturday, the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade case, which legalized a woman's right to choose in 1973. The participants say they want to make sure abortion remains legal.
The MTA plans to shell out $455 million as part of a "renewal" plan to renovate 29 subway stations in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, including Zerega and Castle Hill Aves. on the No. 6 line.
More on the Theatre Arts Production Company School, where principal Lynn Passarella is under fire for supposedly letting students coast through with A's in order for the school to score high marks on the DOE's progress report reviews.
A woman accused of dressing like a nurse and kidnapping an infant from a Harlem hospital in 1983 is now in police custody. The child, Carlina White, now 23, was reunited with her biological parents in the Bronx last week.
Assemblyman Peter Rivera, and the nonprofit he funded for years whose executive director is being investigated on corruption charges, both owe their landlord thousands of dollars in rent for former office space at 7 Hugh Grant Circle. Rivera and the group also owe thousands in state and federal taxes. More background here.
According to weather.com, it's a biting 14 degrees in the Boogie Down right now. Here are some tips on staying warm.
[Editor's Note:] Just a reminder to our readers that the Bronx News Network is in the middle of our annual fundraising appeal. If you value quality local journalism, please consider donating so we can continue to bring you news and features like this daily roundup, or our borough events calendar. More details on how to contribute can be found here.
The state has banned former Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr., and his son from its Medicaid program. Espada is the CEO of the Soundview Healthcare Network, and was criminally indicted for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the string of clinics.
Speaking of Espada: investigators are trying to determine if he used Soundview money to pay a ghostwriter he'd hired back in 2006 to help pen an autobiography. "I think he wanted to be a hero character in his memoir," the writer told the Post of the book, which was never completed.
Don Kirshner, a Bronx-born music producer and television host, passed away yesterday at the age of 76. He had hand in some of the most popular songs and musical acts of the 1950s, including Manhattan's Carole King and fellow Bronxite Bobby Darin.
News for outer borough residents, where yellow city cabs are often hard to come by: Mayor Bloomberg plans to legalize livery cabs to make street pick ups. The proposal has yellow cab drivers irked, saying the move will cut into their income.
The Mayor is expected to make the announcement during his "State of the City" address today, at 1 p.m.
Police have ruled the death of a Bronx couple's 11-day-old baby an accident. The infant was smothered while being carried by her mother in a carrier harness during an outing.
The Bronx saw a shocking 107.7% jump on in the number of murders that took place in the borough's public housing complexes in 2010, compared to the year before.
A Bronx woman was busted trying to use counterfeit $100 bills for her purchases at the Palisades Mall.
Jurors in a Bronx Supreme Court will get to hear a tape of accused killer Daniel Carbuccia's plan to re-enact a scene from the mafia classic "The Godfather," to scare a witness out of testifying against him.
A gorgeous Mediterranean-style mansion in Riverdale's Fieldston Historic District is up for sale. Anyone with a spare $4.5 million want to buy it for me?
Craigslist has starting pulling ads from posters trying to sell the controversial drink Four Loko online. Bronx Sen. Jeff Klein has been on a mission to get the booze-and-caffeine mixed beverage off the market for good. Apparently, you can still buy cans of the stuff on eBay.
Workers at Woodlawn are trying to garner the support of plot owners at the cemetery in an ongoing union dispute over layoffs.
A man who was killed after accidentally plunging his truck into a Wisconsin lake earlier this week has been identified as 43-year-old Peter Ramanand, of the Bronx.
Mayor Bloomberg was in the Boogie Down today to announce a new housing initiative (see the story here) at a press conference in Kingsbridge Heights.
In a question-and-answer session afterwards, one reporter asked the Mayor if his stance on the City Council's Living Wage bill has changed, in light of new concessions proponents made this week to make the legislation more appealing to the business community. The Mayor, though, is staying staunch in his opposition.
"The marketplace is telling us that businesses can only afford so much," Bloomberg responded. "I don't think government should be in the businesses of setting wages."
"Here in the Bronx, we had an opportunity to fill a building, and it wasn't done," he continued.
The building in question, of course, is the long-vacant Kingsbridge Armory, where Bloomberg had pushed for the development of a shopping mall last winter. The controversial plan was killed by the City Council because the developer, Related Companies, refused to guarantee a living wage pay for workers.
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., and community groups like the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, were two of the Armory's biggest living wage proponents, and were present at today's press conference.
The living wage legislation that's been proposed in City Council came directly out of the Armory debate; it would require projects that receive taxpayer subsidies over a certain amount to pay workers $10 an hour, plus benefits.
Supporters of the bill are hosting a rally tonight in Harlem at Convent Avenue Baptist Church, 420 W. 145th Street, at 6:30 p.m.
Mayor Bloomberg Announces New Housing Initiative from Bronx News Network on Vimeo.
Above, Mayor Bloomberg discusses a new way the city plans to drive landlords to repair housing violations.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in the Bronx today to announce a new city housing initiative largely inspired by the Milbank properties--the now infamous 10 neglected apartment buildings in the northwest Bronx that have been falling apart since foreclosure two years ago.
The Mayor made the announcement this morning at Our Lady Of Angels Church, on Webb Avenue in Kingsbridge Heights, before a crowd of Milbank tenants and organizers from the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, who have been fighting for almost a year to draw the city's attention to the deteriorating buildings (here's a short summary for some background.)
The new "Proactive Preservation" program will essentially allow the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to more aggressively identify and inspect distressed properties, intervening to make repairs if necessary, in the hopes of preventing another Milbank scenario from taking place.
"While the work our housing inspectors do is very good, it can sometimes be too little, too late, or both," Bloomberg said.
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| The wheels of a backhoe are lifted up into the air as it attempts to pull a stranded sanitation truck at the intersection of LaSalle Avenue and Gillespie Avenue (photo by Lenny Shutterman) |
State Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr., is blaming Mayor Bloomberg for the mess made by this week's storm, saying the city was ill-prepared for Sunday's blizzard. The Rev. sent out these photos today of a stranded MTA bus stuck in the snow at West Farms Road and East 167th Street.
In order to block the Bloomberg administration's plan to turn the Muller Army Reserve Center into a homeless shelter, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. once again decided to boycott a scheduled meeting of the three member authority that controls the Muller Center's fate.
The Muller Redevelopment Authority (LRA) -- made up of Diaz, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and Tokumbo Shobowale, the chief of staff for Deputy Mayor Robert Steel and managed by the city's quasi-governmental Economic Development Corporation -- needs all three members to vote on a recommendation for the vacant army reserve center. So, no Diaz, no vote. This is the second time, Diaz has missed an authority meeting in protest.
That means the Muller Center's fate will fall back into the hands of the Department of Defense and the federal government. It could become a test of who has more support in Congress: Bloomberg or Diaz.
"We have a lot of friends in Congress," said Diaz spokesman John DeSio, who pointed to Representative Eliot Engel's opposition to the mayor's homeless shelter plan. Engel represents the Wakefield area where the Muller Center sits.
The deputy mayors have made it clear the mayor's office wants to make Muller a homeless shelter and have not been interested in negotiating the matter. "They aren't budging," DeSio said.
The mayor's office simply is not listening to the voices, or paying attention to the needs, of the community, DeSio said.
Those voices will be represented tomorrow, DeSio said, at a press conference on the steps of City Hall at 1 p.m. In addition to Diaz, he said Bronx elected officials, including Councilman Oliver Koppell, State Senator Jeff Klein and Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz, as well as Community Board 12 Chairman Richard Gorman and activists with the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and other Wakefield residents will be on hand to let the mayor know they're united against the shelter plans.
Under BRAC guidelines, which the LRA must follow, the authority is required to consider using vacant military buildings like Muller as homeless shelters. But that only means homeless assistance should considered. It doesn't mean it must become a homeless shelter.
Opponents of the shelter plan say the Wakefield area is already saturated with them.
Is it too early to say the Muller Center is this year's Kingsbridge Armory?
A few of our local representatives here in the Bronx are none too pleased with Mayor Bloomberg's updated financial plan, which contains cuts to jobs and services from nearly every city agency.
On Nov. 18, Bloomberg announced the new round of budget gap closing actions, including laying off thousands of city employees, measures he says will reduce the city's deficit from $3.3 billion to $2.4 billion for the fiscal year 2012. The plan's gotten its far share of negative reactions so far.
City Council Member Annabel Palma, whose district includes Parkchester and Soundview, sent out a statement earlier this week calling proposed cuts to the city's Administration for Children’s Services "troubling."
We hope everyone had a happy, and delicious, Thanksgiving! Here are some Bronx news headlines from the past few days:
Students from P.S. 51 on Jerome Avenue watched a live re-enactment of the first Thanksgiving dinner, transmitted via webcast from Plymouth, MA, and broadcast across the country. Bronx student Stephen Molina told ABC he learned "that the pilgrims didn't have any refrigerators," back then.
While our Thanksgiving predecessors were able to break bread in peace (even without a fridge!) a poll released this week says the majority of New Yorkers would refuse to share a turkey dinner with Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He's the least welcomed in the Bronx, where 60 percent of those asked said they wouldn't share a meal with the mayor.
Shoppers across the city are hitting the stores today in hopes of some Black Friday bargains, as the holiday shopping season officially kicks off.
While overall crime in the city is down this year, the number of violent crimes--muggings, rapes and murders-- is up. Nearly half of the robberies that took place in the city this year happened in the Bronx.
The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal offer different profiles of Corey Fisher, the Bronx native who's now a star player for Villanova's basketball team. As a teenager, Fisher once scored a stunning 105 points in a single game, according to the Journal. The Times contrasts Fisher to his infamous great-uncle of the same name, a Harlem crime boss during the 1970s.
A new report released this week says the demand for food in the Bronx has increased this year by 74 percent, while stimulus funding upped the amount of money for food stamps in the city by $458 million.
Merchants around 161st Street say business is still in the slumps since the new Yankee Stadium opened a few years ago.
Local bodega owners are still buying untaxed cigarettes from illegal vendors for their cheaper prices, despite the city's efforts to crack down on the trade.
Ongoing inspections of the dilapidated and now-infamous Bronx Milbank properties found 1,200 new violations in the 10 apartment buildings, according to HPD--that's in addition to the 3,577 open violations that were already on file.
A Bronx sanitation company says celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey owes them $25,000, the bill for several months of garbage removal at Ramsey's Manhattan restaurant The London.
A pregnant woman is suing the NYPD for what she claims was a false arrest and three days spent in jail. Stephanie Badillo, 19, was arrested in Tremont earlier this month in what police said was a drug bust; she was kept at the 48th Precinct station before later being released because of insufficient evidence.
Community Board 11, which includes Bronxdale, Pelham and Morris Park, is looking for a new district manager.
Two buildings in Riverdale--Cambridge Mews on Cambridge Avenue and the unfinished Tulfan Terrace on Oxford Avenue--were built by developers with ties to the mob.
Note: start a discussion about any of these stories, or anything else on your mind, in our readers' forum.
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| (Photo courtesy of the Mayor's Office) |
Mayor Bloomberg wasted no time in yanking Bronx teacher Melissa Petro from her classroom at PS 70 after he learned of her very public musings about her past as a sex worker.
Councilman Fernando Cabrera, whose district includes PS 70, chimed in about Petro--and her tenure--in a panel discussion on Fox News yesterday. Watch the video here.
A group of Bronx high school students are weighing in on the debate over the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory.
BronxTalk host Gary Axelbank was on the radio program The Perez Notes yesterday to talk about his show and Bronx politics.
A Parkchester man turned himself in to authorities yesterday for allegedly beating a traffic cop who gave him a ticket.
The Daily News has footage of two sets of baby tiger cubs born at the Bronx Zoo.
Vandals spray painted and etched swastikas into the green at Van Cortland Golf Course yesterday.
Cesar Mercado, the Nicaraguan diplomat who was found dead in his Mount Hope apartment last week, had ingested a bottle of Drano cleaner before he died, according to police.
A new breakdown of Census figures ranks Jose E. Serrano's South Bronx Congressional District as the poorest in the country, with 38 percent of residents living below the poverty line.
The much talked about change in street signs this week--where the DOT is replacing capital letters with lowercase ones--is part of a federal mandate intended to "improve readability." It'll cost the state a whopping $27 million to make all the required replacements.
The murder rate is up across New York City, with a particularly high rise in the number of killings in the North Bronx--the rate went up 46 percent this year.
Actress Rosie Perez, in a video released by gay rights group Fight Back NY, told Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. that she is "extremely disappointed" in him for his opposing stance on gay marriage. "You are not speaking for the majority of New York Latinos," she said.
Bronx-born actor Tony Curtis died yesterday at the age of 85.
The Department of Homeless Services has shut out hundreds of families from using the agency's "Homebase" program in an attempt to see how effective it is.
