Kids, Parents Take Action: Bring Budget Message to Foster, Mayor

PS 64 parents and students, who are members of the New Settlement Parent Action Committee in Mt. Eden, delivered a giant dollar sign yesterday to Council Member Helen Foster’s office. Written on the sign, according to the group, were a list of things they don’t want cut from their school as outlined in the mayor’s budget. Foster’s chief-of-staff Jim Fairbanks said that Foster would deliver the statements on the dollar sign to the mayor.

(Photo courtesy New Settlement Parent Action Committee)

School and Community Center Being Built in Mt. Eden

In what was described by many as “a great day in the Bronx,” the Settlement Housing Fund, a non-profit organization, began construction on its New Settlement Community Campus in the Mt. Eden neighborhood. Located on Jerome Avenue between West 172nd Street and Globe Place, the site will include a pre-K – 12th grade public school, community center, and a state-of-the-art indoor swimming facility.

Pricilla Henegen, a 19-year resident of the neighborhood, who plans to send her grand niece to the school, could not contain her excitement for the new complex. “I wish they had it when I moved in,” she said.

The project is expected to be completed by 2012 and create over 1,000 new seats for students in a neighborhood characterized by overcrowded schools. The Department of Education will own the school, but New Settlement Apartments (located adjacent to the site and a project of the Settlement Housing Fund) will provide facilities management for both the school and community center. Total development costs for the school, center, and pool are estimated to be $83 million.

New Settlement Apartments' executive director, Jack Doyle, credits the collaboration of several government and private funding sources for the realization of the complex in a community that has been the scene of many rehabilitation efforts on the part of the organization over the past twenty years. Since 1987 the Settlement Housing Fund has been running affordable housing buildings and offering youth and parental development programs to the community.

“The future of many children and generations of children to come rests in large part on our success,” Doyle said. “We have no choice but to be successful.”

Lt. Governor Richard Ravitch and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott attended the groundbreaking ceremony and both echoed praise for the organization and its vision. Ravitch called the school and community center the perfect combination that he hopes to see repeated. “[The Settlement Housing Fund] always manages to rise at a problem with a solution,” Ravich said. “They have made life better for tens of thousands of citizens.”

Top photo: Deputy Borough President Aurelia Greene (left); Jack Doyle, New Settlement Apartments executive director (second from left); Councilmember Maria Baez (center). Bottom photo: Lt. Governor Richard Ravitch

Engineer Facing Charges in Bronx Fire

The big New York story in the Times today is about an 82-year-old engineer who is being charged with perjury for making false statements to officials who were investigating a deadly fire in the Mt. Eden section of the west Bronx.

In 2001, according to an investigative report on the fire, Jose D. Vargas approved renovations at the Walton Avenue building and then failed to inspect them after they were completed.

During the blaze, two Bronx firefighters were killed "when rotting support columns gave way, the floor collapsed and they were trapped," according to a fire department report.

Vargas' lawyer says he's being used as a scapegoat.