Bronx News Roundup, June 21

Happy summer solstice! The season will kick off with some rain showers later this afternoon, and temperatures around 80 degrees. Scattered thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow.

Story of the Day: Armory Report Released
The Kingsbridge Armory Task force released a 267-page report today detailing plans for how the long-vacant building should be filled (ideas: a hockey arena, a culinary center and a mega-church). For more on the report, see our previous post here. Feel free to go there and share your thoughts/suggestions in the comments section. For example: what do you think of TV evangelist Creflo Dollar's proposal to take over the building?

Bronx BP Diaz Offers Up Alternative to 'Unacceptable' Taxi Hailing Situation

Acting as a mediator between the city and an irate livery cab industry, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. attempted today to provide some middle ground for negotiations on a plan to bring legal street hails to New York City's outer boroughs. 

In a conference call with reporters, Diaz said the current extremes in the debate -- between the "status quo," which makes it illegal for livery cabs to pick up streets hails (only licensed "yellow" taxis are allowed to pick-up random people on streets throughout the five boroughs, but they operate almost exclusively in Manhattan), and the city's new plan to create a new fleet of street hail-able taxis that could operate in outer boroughs (as well as Manhattan) -- were both "unacceptable."

[In the morning, before Diaz spoke with reporters, livery operators and elected officials rallied on City Hall to protest the current plan, which would add 6,000 new taxis and allow many of them to pick up passengers in all five boroughs.]

Instead, Diaz offered an alternative "framework" for a new plan that might not please everyone, he said, but might lead to a compromise that would please enough people to get passed and have an impact on the industry and customers.

Bronx News Roundup, Monday, June 6

Welcome back to the program ladies and gentleman of the Bronx and beyond. Lots of great stories and information on tap for this week, so let's get to it. To the news!

Weather: In a word: Perfect. Sunny, 80 degrees with a lovely cooling breeze from the northeast. Could be looking at some rain tomorrow afternoon.

Story of the Day: Bronx Livery Cab Drivers Rally Against New Taxi Fleet
Good luck getting a cab in the Bronx this morning. On my way into BxNN headquarters today, a small army of livery cab drivers swarmed the Kingsbridge Road 4-train station, carrying signs and literature and talking strategy. An estimated 1,000 drivers and car service operators are expected to descend on City Hall to protest a city plan to create a new fleet of hail-able taxis that would operate exclusively in the outer-boroughs. The city would auction off 1,500 new taxi medallions that could legally pick up street hails. Livery drivers and business owners say this plan will do serious damage to the livery cab industry, which includes an estimated 38,000 drivers (according to literature I picked up at the train station). They say that, despite its illegality, livery drivers have picked up street hails for years and that most drivers couldn't afford to buy into the new fleet. A coalition of livery associations have come up with an alternative: create borough permits that existing drivers could sign up for and also develop livery stands where cabs can pick up street customers without the threat of receiving a summons. NY1 talked to a couple of drivers who work for Prestige car service, which operates out of Norwood here in the northwestern section of the Bronx.

Quick Hits:
On early Saturday morning, while driving with a female companion, Michael Robles, a Bronx Democratic district leader, careened off the Bronx River Parkway and dropped some 30 feet onto the top of a truck in the West Farms area. Miraculously, neither passenger was injured. It's unclear whether, for his next trick, Robles will attempt a swan dive off the High Bridge.

Erica Diaz, the lesbian granddaughter of State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr., is becoming the face for marriage equality in New York. In Sunday's Post, Diaz writes that Diaz's outspoken and hateful rhetoric is too much for her to stomach: "You cannot tell someone that you love them and stay silent when people call for their death. "Love" is empty when you say someone's life isn't natural. He could quietly vote "no" if that's what he believes is right. But I want him to know that every word he utters hurts his own blood."

Headline of the Weekend: "Uzi does it at Bx. gun buyback." An Uzi machine gun was one of 354 guns turned in for cash at three Bronx churches on Saturday as the NYPD conducted its periodic gun buyback outreach effort. BP Ruben Diaz, Jr. told the Post: "Any day that you get an Uzi off the streets of The Bronx is a good day." Amen.

The Times' Clyde Haberman writes about how the Bronx ticket-fixing scandal has made police testimony, already a problem for Bronx prosecutors, that much less credible.

Here's more on the life of Bronx native Rosalyn S. Yalow, a Nobel prize winning physicist, who died in late May.

If City Island needed extra help on Memorial Day weekend, then why is the city looking to shut down it's only firehouse?

A missing 12-year-old Wakefield boy was reunited with his family, but his nine-day absence remains a mystery.

More on the pair of aspiring Bronx brew companies.

BxNN buddy David Gonzalez of the Times hangs out with Latin jazz flutist and Bronxite Dave Valentin for the paper's Sunday Routine feature.

Here's a video preview of Pete Rock and Bronx duo Camp Lo's new album: "80 Blocks from Tiffany's," which was inspired by (and shares a name with) the recent documentary about the South Bronx:

Bronx News Roundup, Thursday, June 2,

Weather: Blissfully not as hot today in the Bronx with a nice cool breeze.

Story of the Day: New Housing Designed to Battle Bulge
It's no secret that the Bronx has an obesity problem. The latest statistics say one in every four Bronx adults suffers from being extremely overweight. With that in mind, a new cooperative apartment complex in Longwood called the Melody, which was designed to encourage an active, healthy lifestyle, was unveiled to the public yesterday. The $18 million project, with financing provided by the city, state and borough, is meant for families making $90,000 or less. The building incorporates many of the suggestions contained in an Active Design Guidelines report published by the city in 2010. It has a well-lit gym and a backyard, with climbers for kids and exercise equipment for adults. It also has perhaps the coolest stairs (there are two sets  in the history of Bronx apartment buildings: lime-green railings, artwork on the walls and, here's the kicker, jazz playing from stairwell speakers. A sign on the entrance to the staircase reads: “A person’s health can be judged by which they take two of at a time, pills or stairs.”

Quick Hits:
Fatoumata Diallo, a 21-year-old Mt. Hope resident, was killed after fainting on a Manhattan subway platform and falling in front of an oncoming train.

Livery cab drivers would not be served well by the city's new plan to introduce a new fleet of street hail-able taxis, says a spokesman for a coalition of livery cab drivers. Instead, he says, the city should just provide borough permits that existing outer-borough livery drivers could apply for.

Despite yesterday's agreement to keep the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx for the next three years and a deal that gives New York exclusive negotiating rights with the market cooperative for the next nine months, New Jersey isn't giving up hope of landing the market in the future.

PS 73 in Highbridge was victimized twice recently by technology stealing burglars.

A stretch of Van Nest Avenue has been re-named for Bronx sculptor Carl Paul Jennewein whose work can be found at Rockefeller Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the White House.

City officials and housing organizers are going after a neglectful landlord in Pelham Bay.

The Fire and Buildings departments say they will inspect a Kingsbridge Heights house that is suspected of having illegal subdivisions.

A day after a 2-year-old Bronx girl fell out of her fifth story apartment window, a new audit by City Comptroller John Liu says the city has dismissed an alarming number of window-guard violations without doing any follow up.

Because of no-fault scams, Bronx drivers pay the highest amount ($723 per year) for the portion of their auto insurance that covers no-fault accidents. District attorneys in the five boroughs are pushing for a legislative remedy.

Bronx News Roundup, May 26

Weather: Another warm one. Partly cloudy for most of the day, with temperatures in the high 70s.

Story of the Day: Budget Cuts Threaten Firehouses (Again)
Mayor Bloomberg's proposed city budget could shutter 20 FDNY firehouses across the city, three of which are in the Bronx: Engine 60 in Mott Haven, Engine 46 in Bathgate and Ladder 53 on City Island. The move has spurred neighborhood protest rallies and one angry column from Daily News Bronx bureau chief Patrice O'Shaughnessy, who says the mayor should focus on fixing his budget instead of his "Orwellian" city park smoking ban (which went into effect yesterday).

It's not the first time the city has threatened to shut firehouses: much like the budget dance over senior center closures, Bloomberg has threatened the FDNY before only to restore funding at the last minute. Eddie Brown of the Uniformed Firefighters Association called it a "budget game the mayor plays with the Council, using the people as pawns."

Quick Hits:

A first-class hotel and banquet hall could be coming to the Hutch Metro Center in Pelham Bay, according to director Joseph Kelleher, per Bob Kappstatter's column. bringing a major hotel to the borough has long been a dream of Bronx political leaders, including Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.

Two Bronx high schools--John F. Kennedy and Herbert Lehman--are among five chosen by the city to get solar panels installed on their roofs. 

The Bronx River Art Center is showing off its students' work with a free reception and opening exhibit tomorrow afternoon,  at 4 p.m. at the BronxArtSpace, 305 E. 140th St.

Livery cab drivers in the outer boroughs are worried about competing with yellow cabs, as the city looks to increase their number outside Manhattan.

A fire broke out on the third floor of a Claremont nursing home yesterday, injuring two people.

In a poll, researchers at Baruch College found more people in the Bronx fear becoming the victim of a hate crime than in the rest of the city. The survey also found that Hispanic New Yorkers are the most fearful of being attacked.

A Bronx man was sentenced to seven years in jail for sexually abusing one of his patients at a nursing home in Morningside Heights, where he worked as a nurse's aide.

Editor's Note: BxNN will keep posting this clock in our daily news roundups--tallying the days until the NYPD releases neighborhood sector crime stats, which we requested from them via a Freedom of Information Law request last year. For some background, see our Norwood News' editorial here.