tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-124035382024-03-13T23:44:03.736-04:00The Neighborhood Retail AllianceProtecting Neighborhood Business For Over 20 YearsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-1423764075587671832011-03-09T08:49:00.000-05:002011-03-09T08:49:17.056-05:00Cart Wheeling and DealingAs the WSJ <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704758904576188523780657688.html?mod=WSJ_NY_MIDDLELEADNewsCollection">is reporting</a> today-and it comes as no great surprise to us-there is a thriving black market in food cart permits: "Monawara Sultana says her rent is going up: $14,000 for a two-year permit to run a food cart where she sells $1 hot dogs outside of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. And it's not the city levying the increase or recouping the money. It's the permit holder, who is asking for double what she previously paid, according to Ms. Sultana. "It's not fair," said the Bangladeshi immigrant and mother of three. "Why did it go up so much?"<br />
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Can you say black market? WSJ can: "The city's competitive street food culture has created a thriving black market for mobile food vending permits issued by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The city charges a mere $200 for most food-cart permits, which must be paid every two years when they are renewed. But it only issues 3,100 year-round permits plus an additional 1,000 seasonal permits—not enough to satisfy demand. Transferring or renting these permits to another vendor is illegal but everyone, including the city's Health Department, acknowledges, that it happens."<br />
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Which is just another indication that the entire food vendor system needs to be overhauled-from licensing and street placement, all the way to an enforcement that is almost nonexistent. Still, even after<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/12/ibos-peddler-ibs.html"> the IBO's expose</a> on the subject-and the fact that millions of dollars of fines were going uncollected-the Bloomberg administration remains stuck in the mud. <br />
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On top of this, all of the cries of legitimate store owners about how veggie peddlers are cannibalizing their produce business has fallen on deaf ears. We have also been pointing out that it appears that certain individuals-contrary to the law-hold multiple permits and illegally rent them out for exorbitant profits. Often for a 24 hour cycle to more than one vendor license holder.<br />
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Here's the DOH comments: "Elliott Marcus, an associate health commissioner, said the black market was a source of "big concern." Still, in a statement, the Department of Health noted: "While the Health Department suspects that in some instances permits are being transferred illegally, it is extremely difficult to prove an illegal sale in a particular case because the law does allow a permit holder to employ other licensed vendors to work his or her cart." To help remedy that, the department will soon propose changes requiring that permit holders appear when renewing permits and carts are re-inspected every two years."<br />
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How about a total overhaul-with an agency or task force dedicated to just this issue? "Meanwhile, demand for permits and their black-market prices continue to climb as street food's popularity soars with blogs like Midtown Lunch chronicling vendors' moves and some gourmet food trucks developing cult-like followings. Some permits fetch as much as $20,000 for two years, vendors say. In the case of Ms. Sultana, the Bronx food vendor, she says the permit holder told her someone else was willing to pay $15,000 for the permit she previously paid $7,000 for two years ago."<br />
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This is an area that is replete with corruption-and it appears that Public Advocate de Blasio is looking to propose some major changes in the vendor system-to both insure fairness and to protect the city's tax paying store owners. When his reforms are proposed, they should be given a fair hearing along with swift action. For too long local communities and neighborhood stores <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/01/truckulent-response-to-food-vendors.html">have been victimized</a> by an out of control street vendor system. The chaos has gone on long enough.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-61446238220332266892011-03-09T06:00:00.000-05:002011-03-09T06:00:26.421-05:00Reckless Lane ChangeThe law suit that's been brought against the Prospect Park bike lanes-lanes that we have no personal interest in-is still of utmost importance to all New Yorkers. The importance lies with the manner in which NYC DOT, and its ideologically driven commissioner, may be manipulating data to prove that the lanes are good for public safety. As the NY Post <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/suit_rips_nyc_bike_safety_spin_LgMBwS2aIhFMlBBHemuXWI">reports</a>: "A scathing lawsuit filed against the city this week turns the Department of Transportation's own data against the<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Bloomberg"> Bloomberg </a>administration's push for a bicycle lane along Brooklyn's Prospect Park West -- showing crashes and injuries actually increased after the two-way path was installed there last summer. The suit, filed Monday in Brooklyn Supreme Court by a group of well-heeled Park Slope residents, seeks the lanes' immediate removal. "This was a massive effort to distort the facts and force community support," said Norman Steisel, a former deputy mayor in the Dinkins administration."<br />
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We'll see how this plays out, but our first instinct is to believe the accusations because we have seen how the city agencies-across the board-from the DOE, and the DOH, all the way to our favorite, EDC, routinely cook the books in their favor to justify often misguided policies. So whether it is <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/educational-enron.html">teacher bonuses</a>, the <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/questionable-calorie-counting-part-ii.html">evaluation of</a> menu labeling, or <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/deceit-suits-edc.html">the analysis of</a> traffic from the proposed Willets Point development, we see how policy makers proffer corrupted data to make their initiatives look better.<br />
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The NY Daily News <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/03/09/2011-03-09_riding_and_rithmetic.html">weighs in</a> here: "New Yorkers who've long suspected that when it comes to <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Janette+Sadik-Khan" title="Janette Sadik-Khan"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan</span></a>'s bike lanes, somehow the numbers just don't add up, may well be right. A lawsuit filed Monday challenging the bicycle path on <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Prospect+Park" title="Prospect Park"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Prospect Park</span></a> West in <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Brooklyn+(New+York+City)" title="Brooklyn (New York City)"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Brooklyn</span></a> is chockfull of statistics wrested from Sadik-Khan's own agency through Freedom of Information Law requests. Comparing the numbers with those the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/U.S.+Department+of+Transportation" title="U.S. Department of Transportation"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Department of Transportation</span></a> has issued publicly makes for a fascinating read. According to court papers, when DOT proposed the lane to Community Board 6 in April 2009, the department reported there had been 58 crashes on Prospect Park West and side streets from 2005-07 - proving a need for so-called traffic calming. That number was inflated; a more honest accounting wouldn't have included 12 accidents that did not occur on the thoroughfare."<br />
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What the department has done it appears, is to hide the raw data and dishonestly message what is released: "The plaintiffs allege more shenanigans: At a followup meeting six months after the bike lane was installed last June, transportation officials declared the path a rousing safety success. How? They used a three-year average culled from the second halves of 2007, 2008 and 2009 - purportedly showing a decline in the number of accidents from 29.7 to 25 in the second half of 2010. That was heavy spin - papering over a jump in accidents from 22 in late 2009 to 25 in late 2010. Why didn't DOT present the raw numbers? Because they didn't help make the case for the lane?"<br />
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As the Post also points out: "But Steisel's group ran the DOT numbers on a yearly basis and found crashes and injuries had been steadily declining -- but then slightly increased in the second half of 2010 once the lanes were installed."<br />
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What all of this underscores is that there is a need for a <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/01/bloomberg-talking-walk.html">full and independent</a> environmental review of all of DOT's efforts to radically alter NYC's streetscape-and if it is proven in court that Sadik-Khan consciously doctored the data then she should be jettisoned as fast as possible. New York doesn't need a policy maker who needs to make her case with fraudulent statistics.<br />
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While we're at it, though, it is now time for the city council to enter this argument-not in the microcosm of Prospect Park, but in the larger evaluation of the Sadik-Khan schemes. It should demand from the mayor all of the department's raw bike lane data from each and every installation city wide-and throw in the 42nd Street transformation for good measure. Once done, the council should hire an independent traffic expert to see how the department's numbers square with reality.<br />
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By doing this, the legislature would be laying the ground for a legislative initiative that would compel the city to conduct environmental reviews of all of these proposed changes-with the council getting the opportunity to vet the consultants' work. The city loves to mark its own exams-never a good idea for the public interest. A system of checks and balances most be instituted so that better policy making can ensue-and dishonest ideologues sent packing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-75909582952863683412011-03-08T17:38:00.001-05:002011-03-08T19:06:50.067-05:00Van WickedFor those of you who have been downplaying our concerns about the traffic impact of the Willets Point development, today's NY Daily News<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/03/08/2011-03-08_ny_drivers_in_a_jam_region_is_rapidly_catching_up_to_la_in_traffic_backups_cross.html"> article on</a> NYC traffic should be a real eye opener-the city traffic is so bad that we are rapidly approaching Los Angelos levels, and may soon pass smog city. Even more interesting to us, of course, is the role that the Van Wyck plays in this traffic nightmare-two of the five worst hot spots are on this one expressway.<br />
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As the News reports: "<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/New+York+City" title="New York City"><span style="color: #015fb6;">New York City</span></a> is on a highway from hell, poised to creep past <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Los+Angeles" title="Los Angeles"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Los Angeles</span></a> for a dubious honor: the country's gridlock capital. The New York-<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/New+Jersey" title="New Jersey"><span style="color: #015fb6;">New Jersey</span></a> metro area has been deemed the second most congested in the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/United+States" title="United States"><span style="color: #015fb6;">U.S.</span></a> - and the slow-speed gap with smogged-and-clogged L.A. is narrowing, a new report on highway travel reveals. "The level of congestion in <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/New+York" title="New York"><span style="color: #015fb6;">New York</span></a> is worsening at a faster rate than L.A.," said traffic expert <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Sam+Schwartz" title="Sam Schwartz"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Sam Schwartz</span></a>, who writes the Daily News' Gridlock Sam column. "If this continues, within one year we very well may be the most congested city in America."<br />
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How could this possibly happen with the <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/comissioner-arrogance.html">Bicycle Queen</a> in charge of NYC transportation? You know, Ms. <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/01/bike-brakes.html">Carbon Footprint</a> Reduction herself, good old pedestrian mall Sadik-Khan: "The data come from the 2010 National Traffic Scorecard compiled by INRIX, a technology and traffic information company based in <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Washington+State+University" title="Washington State University"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Washington State</span></a>. It calculates travel times using anonymous Global Positioning System devices.The New York region's congestion was equal to 86% of that experienced by L.A. drivers in 2009, but rose to 99% last year, the report shows. Schwartz said that may be the downside of an improving economy."<br />
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Gridlock Sam is onto something, but is, at the same time, missing the crucial variable-it isn't only a generic improvement in the city's economy that pushing folks into their cars to shop. The X factor is the number of<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/12/green-neighborhood-and-rose-colored.html"> suburban style malls</a> that EDC has been successfully promoting-and the bogus traffic studies used to justify their zoning applications. As Schwartz hints: "I think more people are working, more people are spending money and more people are traveling," Schwartz said."<br />
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But just take a look at the <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramp-cramp.html">Van Wyck gridlock</a> that is pictured in the story-and Willets Point United's Brian Ketcham <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/city-ramps-up-its-willets-point.html">has documented</a> how that roadway is simply unable to accommodate the 80,000 car trips a day that the Willets Point project will bequeath to it. But is precisely this reality that NYC EDC and DOT are trying to avoid-making an end run of the review process for the construction of ramps to and from the development from off of the Van Wyck.<br />
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Unable to justify the ramps to state and federal regulators, the EDC bait and switchers are moving to condemn and construct without the ramp approvals that the agency-and the former deputy mayor-had said were prerequisites to doing just that. And this is without considering-as Brian Ketcham has done-the building of Flushing Commons and 20 million sq.ft. of additional development for in and around Willets Point.<br />
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One other important point. It is quite likely that the traffic estimates for Willets Point and Flushing Commons-as large as they are-may in fact be low balled numbers. That's because Ketcham has identified in the official traffic studies, an inordinate estimate of the number of mass transit trips that both projects will generate-underestimating car ownership and usage to get these numbers. <br />
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There are two possible scenarios we can deduce from this-neither of them pretty. In the first instance, the low car estimate and high mass transit numbers are righteous-which means that there will be <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/07/straphangers-questions-flushing-commons.html">thousands of additional daily bus and subway riders</a> that simply can't be accommodated by the infrastructure (think Train). The other scenario is, of course, that car ridership is considerably higher than the official numbers would have us believe-meaning that the highway gridlock will be almost exponentially greater.<br />
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Whatever the scenario, however, the efforts of EDC <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/city-ramps-up-its-willets-point.html">to avoid oversight</a> and regulatory review have profound implications for all those folks who are suffering on both the Van Wyck and the Grand Central. It is exactly why SDOT has been strongly resisting giving the ramp application the green light that Sadik-Khan has been pressuring it to do. <br />
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EDC and NYC DOT need to be reined in-just as <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/hitting-for-cycle.html">the locals</a> in Park Slope are trying, on a smaller scale, to do with their bike lanes. The Bloomberg malling of the city has had a disastrous impact on NYC small business-and now we find that it may be having a similar impact on the overly congested roads. Willets Point United <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/deceit-suits-edc.html">shouldn't be alone</a> in the effort to put brakes on this wrong headed policy that is exemplified by the plan for the Iron Triangle-it should be everyone's concern, especially those who pretend to worry about Global Warming and the city's carbon footprint.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-44532233902377446512011-03-08T07:04:00.000-05:002011-03-08T07:04:56.498-05:00Hitting for the CycleThe NY Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/nyregion/08bike.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion">is reporting</a> that local Park Slope residents are bring a lawsuit against the Prospect Park bike lanes-and it's about time that some folks challenged the arbitrary and capricious actions of Commissioner Sadik-Khan: "Well-connected New Yorkers have taken the unusual step of suing the city to remove a controversial bicycle lane in a wealthy neighborhood of Brooklyn, the most potent sign yet of opposition to the <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Michael R. Bloomberg."><span style="color: #004276;">Bloomberg administration</span></a>’s marquee campaign to remake the city’s streets."<br />
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And while the action is only directed at these particular lanes, it could have repercussions for all of the commissioner's schemes: "But while the suit seeks only the removal of that particular lane, it incorporates criticisms of the administration’s overall approach in carrying out the high-profile initiatives of its transportation commissioner, <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/janette_sadikkhan/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Janette Sadik-Khan."><span style="color: #004276;">Janette Sadik-Khan</span></a>, including placing pedestrian plazas in Times and Herald Squares and rededicating dozens of miles of traffic lanes for bicycle use."<br />
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What the suit will hopefully do is to expose the corrupt nature of the methodology used by DOT-and underscore the need for full environmental review of measures such as these that have a significant impact on traffic. The Times doesn't get fully into the legal theory, however, but does suggest its outline: "The lawsuit, filed by a group with close ties to Iris Weinshall, the city’s transportation commissioner from 2000 to 2007 and the wife of Senator <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/charles_e_schumer/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Charles E. Schumer."><span style="color: #004276;">Charles E. Schumer</span></a>, accuses the Transportation Department of misleading residents about the benefits of the lane, cherry-picking statistics on safety improvements and collaborating with bicycle activists to quash community opposition."<br />
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The latter suggestion raises some interesting issues of collusion between the Bloombergistas and the not-for-profit sector. As the paper points out: "The opponents also produced e-mail correspondence that they sought to portray as an effort by the Transportation Department to coordinate criticism of the lane’s opponents. In an exchange from June, Ryan Russo, the department’s assistant commissioner for traffic management, told Aaron Naparstek, a leading bicycle advocate, that the lane “is under serious attack,” and he asked whether Park Slope Neighbors, a neighborhood group in favor of the lane, was “counterattacking” the criticism. “There are enough important people talking to other important people for me to worry and to require neutralizing,” Mr. Russo wrote in the e-mail."<br />
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Wow, coordinating with a non profit, who would have suspected? But the larger issue is one of rooking the residents and cooking the books: "The opponents, however, disputed that safety had improved, and their suit argues that the department presented “deceptive” statistics. They also accuse transportation officials of ignoring required environmental reviews and subverting a public review process by presenting a full report on the lane only after the decision was made to make it permanent."<br />
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Just as we have<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/01/bike-brakes.html"> been arguing</a> all along-as <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/comissioner-arrogance.html">we said</a> yesterday: ""Data-driven?" Cooked books is more like it-and if her data is so righteous why is most of what DOT plans concocted in secrecy worthy of the old Soviet Union? And, aside from the bicycle brigade, Sadik-Khan is pretty much universally-and deservedly-despised: "Council members have found her dismissive and confrontational,” said Letitia James, a councilwoman from Brooklyn who described herself as a friend of the commissioner’s. “Other than Brownstone Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan, she is pretty much despised by my colleagues.” <br />
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So, it's about time that Her Haughtiness was challenged-and our only regret was that the action wasn't brought by the city council, the folks that should be in the middle of the oversight of all of Sadik-Khan's majestic visions. As far as TA goes, we owe the group an apology for accusing it of being on the Bloomberg pad. Clearly, the payoff here was pure policy and no donation was needed to grease the wheels. <br />
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It does, however, underscore just how creepy the commissioner's ideological bent really is. To have a mayoral administration riding in locked wheels with this helmeted brigade is the one truly frightening thing that has come out of this so far. We do anticipate that once the opponents get a chance top review the books, they will find-<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/edc-outdoes-itself-on-willets-point.html">just as we found</a> with Willets Point-that both the figures lie, and the liars figure.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-46272596251890142702011-03-07T05:31:00.012-05:002011-03-07T05:52:03.162-05:00Commissioner ArroganceWhile we're on the subject of our favorite commissioner, the wild and wacky Sadik-Khan, let's take a longer look at the NY Times profile we alluded to in an earlier post. What comes through for us is the blithe arrogance of Sadik-Khan-and her cavalier and brusque treatment of those around her underscores this: "But among the city’s political class, Ms. Sadik-Khan has also become notorious for a brusque, I-know-best style and a reluctance to compromise. In public screeds and private whispers, many city leaders say they have felt rebuffed, alienated or outright dismissed by Ms. Sadik-Khan, with several recounting in interviews having picked up their phones to find her yelling on the other end. And she recently set City Hall atwitter by appearing to deflect criticism over the response to the December blizzard to Police Commissioner <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/raymond_w_kelly/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Raymond W. Kelly.">Raymond W. Kelly</a>."<br />
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Public Advocate de Blasio highlights this: "Even if one appreciates some of Janette’s goals, it’s clear the approach has been very alienating all over the city,” said <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/bill_de_blasio/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Bill De Blasio."><span style="color: #004276;">Bill de Blasio</span></a>, the city’s public advocate. “There is a needless level of conflict. A lot of communities have become distrustful of the approach that the mayor and Janette have taken.” <br />
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The commissioner's problems devolves from her out sized sense of rectitude-something that doesn't go down well in the nabes: "In the past several months, even members of the Bloomberg administration have begun to acknowledge that Ms. Sadik-Khan’s aggressive style, so effective at first, may have morphed into a liability. The mayor, who found himself booed over bicycle lanes at a town hall meeting in Queens in January, spoke with Ms. Sadik-Khan, and they agreed she would solicit more opinions from neighborhood leaders."<br />
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Hence the backdown on 34th Street-as we pointed out earlier. What the city doesn't need is an imperial commissioner-especially since the chief executive has similarly abrasive qualities: "Sharp elbows and strong words are nothing new in city government, and some have wondered whether the backlash against Ms. Sadik-Khan has become unusually ferocious and personal in part because she is a woman. Cindy Adams, the venerable gossip columnist, has taken to calling her the “wacko nutso bike commissioner,” and the tabloids have showcased City Council members and borough presidents who have taken the rare step of publicly criticizing a prominent member of the Bloomberg team."<br />
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If any one feels that Sadik-Khan is being unfairly treated because of her gender, then they should do so on the record-the Times doesn't do itself any favors by sneaking this anonymous accusation into the mix. Just listening to the commissioner defending herself is enough to leave one queasy: "In an hourlong interview last month, Ms. Sadik-Khan said that she believed her initiatives had saved hundreds of lives on the city’s streets, and that she had pursued precisely the type of innovative, data-driven thinking that Mr. Bloomberg prides himself on. But she also conceded that mistakes had been made."<br />
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"Data-driven?" Cooked books is more like it-and if her data is so righteous why is most of what DOT plans concocted in secrecy worthy of the old Soviet Union? And, aside from the bicycle brigade, Sadik-Khan is pretty much universally-and deservedly-despised: "Council members have found her dismissive and confrontational,” said Letitia James, a councilwoman from Brooklyn who described herself as a friend of the commissioner’s. “Other than Brownstone Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan, she is pretty much despised by my colleagues.” <br />
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Nothing is more emblematic of the haughtiness of Khan than the following anecdote: "Then and now, City Hall officials considered Ms. Sadik-Khan a brilliant innovator with a sharp mind for data and details. But she has repeatedly stumbled on the political side, making errors that, some officials fear, threaten her ability to pursue her department’s agenda. The trouble began early. At a get-to-know-you session on Staten Island, the politically crucial borough where transportation troubles are legion, Ms. Sadik-Khan listened for about 20 minutes before making it clear that, in her mind, the meeting had come to an end. “Three minutes, gentlemen,” Ms. Sadik-Khan informed the group, which had not yet finished its presentation, according to several people in the room at the time. Three years later, “three minutes, gentlemen” is still a joke among the politicians who were part of the meeting, invoked whenever they believe the Bloomberg administration has ignored their interests."<br />
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And the Times underscores what the Post <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/khan_game_sU5XxF5unCLWqqcya6h6HJ">editorialized on</a>-the commissioner's penchant for eschewing oversight: "Inside City Hall, Ms. Sadik-Khan developed a reputation as a difficult colleague who resisted oversight, according to current and former administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the mayor’s distaste for public discussion of internal business. Friends allow that she has a temper."<br />
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When overweening rectitude is melded with an abrasive personality you have-quite appropriately-a witch's brew: "She couldn’t care less whether you like her or not,” said a city official who has been close to Ms. Sadik-Khan for years and insisted on anonymity for fear of straining the friendship. “She doesn’t suffer people who don’t support her lightly. She’ll scream right back.” Another high-ranking official, fearful that being named could get him fired, recalled a heated conversation that culminated in Ms. Sadik-Khan’s announcing that she planned to remake New York City’s streets, “and people are going to have to get used to it.” “She has an absolute certainty that she’s correct,” said Lewis A. Fidler, a council member from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, who has clashed with Ms. Sadik-Khan over bicycle lanes. “I guess it’s nice to go through life with that kind of certainty, but I don’t know if it’s appropriate in government.” <br />
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Which gets us to Sadik-Khan's role in the fiasco over the Willets Point/Van Wyck ramps-an involvement that dramatizes all of our previous characterizations of the once and future queen. When it became apparent that SDOT was not going to simply roll over for the city and approve the ramp application that was supported by <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramp-cramp.html">deficient data</a> (data driven?), Sadik-Khan went into full boil mode that was captured in an <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/01/concerns-at-nys-dot.html">email exchange</a> between the local DOT administrator and the acting state commissioner. As we pointed out last year:<br />
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"When <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/12/sadik-khans-two-faces.html"><span style="color: #de7008;">last we looked</span></a>, there was friction between NYC DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan, and the local regional head of the state agency who felt that the commissioner was threatening him if he failed to act expeditiously (read: hastily and without real oversight). As he said in an email: "<em><strong>JSK</strong> <strong>noted that she will be sending me a letter holding me personally responsible for holding the Willets Pt project hostage. I'm okay with that as we need to ensure that we have thoroughly reviewed the issues and that they are resolved satisfactorily."</strong></em><br />
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Well, well, well. What an interesting situation. Commissioner Carbon Footprint, the person who persuaded the mayor to try to limit cars in midtown, an action that "catapulted Ms. Sadik-Khan to celebrity," was upset because the state wanted stricter oversight over a project that would generate 80,000 car trips every day! Which underscores the larger hypocrisy of the Bloombergistas-and the collusion of Sadik-Khan in it.<br />
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Put simply, the Bloomberg economic development policies have pretty much exclusively been characterized by the promotion of auto-dependent malls-from Gateway in the Bronx to Gateway in Brooklyn, with a <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/08/questions-on-flushing-commons.html">Flushing Commons</a> in between. Willets Point, however, is <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/12/green-neighborhood-and-rose-colored.html">the center piece</a> of the hypocrisy because there is not only no way to mitigate the traffic, but the assumption that over 50% of the traffic generated will use an overtaxed mass transit system is, at one and the same time, a <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/07/straphangers-questions-flushing-commons.html">unachievable goal and a conscious lie.</a><br />
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Talk about Khan jobs! So while this Sadik is making the life of motorists miserable through her experimental intrusions into our everyday lives, she is simultaneously silent or shilling for the mayor's development policies that put people in their cars; taking them away from the walk to shop neighborhood commercial strips-a classic example of hypocritical misdirection.<br />
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All of which-along with the mayor's tarnished reputation-has started to change. And the retraction on 34th Street may just be the beginning-something that Sadik-Khan herself is beginning to slowly realize: "The recent travails seem to have left Ms. Sadik-Khan more guarded and on edge — and more attuned to her public image. Asked in the interview if she believed her standing with the mayor had fallen, she said: “I really can’t speak to that. I think you’d have to ask him.” As the conversation came to a close, Ms. Sadik-Khan slumped in her chair, exhaled deeply, and crossed her arms. “A 30-year career,” she declared, with a snap of her finger, “can go like that.” <br />
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We're not interested in where her career goes. We'll be happy if she just exits from the municipal stage as soon as possible.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-14321723760119085952011-03-07T05:18:00.002-05:002011-03-07T07:43:00.034-05:00Willets PointmanThe NY Daily News' Adam Lisberg <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/columnists/lisberg/index.html">focuses</a> his column on our lobbying work on Willets Point-and beyond: "Lobbyist Richard Lipsky, who has been a thorn in the side of mayors and governors and their megaprojects for decades, is leading the charge against <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michael+Bloomberg" title="Michael Bloomberg">Mayor Bloomberg</a>'s dream of redeveloping <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Willets+Point" title="Willets Point">Willets Point</a> in Queens."<br />
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But Lisberg also points out what he implies might be a conflict owing to our work on Atlantic Yards: "The city wants to create jobs in a forlorn section of Queens by shutting down the businesses that have been there for decades. Sound weird? How’s this: The chief lobbyist against using eminent domain on those businesses in Queens also works for a developer using eminent domain on homes in <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Brooklyn+(New+York+City)" title="Brooklyn (New York City)"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Brooklyn</span></a>."<br />
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Now, we<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2006/05/support-for-atlantic-yards.html"> dealt with this</a> issue six years ago-emphasizing the importance of the Nets coming to Brooklyn: <br />
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<em>"From the Alliance's perspective the most salient reason to join hands with FCRC, Build and Acorn is the bringing of the Nets to Brooklyn with a brand new arena. When the Alliance's Richard Lipsky was an up and comer plying his basketball wares all over the city, Brooklyn was a mecca for all BBall pilgrims. It still is, and the love for the game is beyond what even we would have imagined when we first began to evaluate the AY proposal.<br />
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The Brooklyn Nets are going to galvanize the entire borough and the team and its ownership is going to play a major role in working along with the youth leaders of Brooklyn in their tireless and unacknowledged efforts on behalf of the kids. That is why the support has been so unequivocal from these community folks."</em><br />
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A position that we reiterated when we talked with Lisberg: "Eminent domain allows government to seize a private owner's property to serve the greater public good — if you consider a basketball stadium or a shopping center to be a public good. Lipsky said he's usually against it, but the Nets arena and its benefits for neighborhood kids make it worthwhile in Brooklyn. "I don't have an absolute position on [eminent domain] but I do have a strong disposition against it," Lipsky said. "It takes a lot to push me in that direction." He also said he only worked on Atlantic Yards' youth sports efforts programs, not its eminent domain work efforts."<br />
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But Lisberg sees something else afoot in the representation: "Of course, Ratner could have hired him to work for Atlantic Yards just so the opponents couldn’t hire him to work against it. "That's true," Lipsky acknowledged. "You'd have to ask them why they hired me." An Atlantic Yards spokesman said Lipsky was hired strictly for youth sports programs."<br />
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All of which takes nothing away from the righteousness of the opposition to the massive Willets Point development: "The so-called Iron Triangle is a dilapidated maze of body shops and junk piles, a muddy morass in the shadow of <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Citi+Field" title="Citi Field"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Citi Field</span></a>. It's the kind of place where the city never paved the roads or fixed the sewers — then called the area blighted. City officials want to use eminent domain to clear out the small businesses there and replace them with a huge complex of stores, hotels and homes. Into the fight stepped <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Lobbyist+Richard+Lipsky" title="Lobbyist Richard Lipsky"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Lipsky</span></a>, who has long represented small business groups against big business plans. He is a tenacious lobbyist and a loquacious blogger, lately trying to stop <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Columbia+University" title="Columbia University"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Columbia University</span></a> from expanding into <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/West+Harlem" title="West Harlem"><span style="color: #015fb6;">West Harlem</span></a> and stop <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Wal-Mart+Stores+Inc." title="Wal-Mart Stores Inc."><span style="color: #015fb6;">Walmart</span></a> from opening in Brooklyn."<br />
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Some of which was <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e6z8ftwWVo&feature=player_embedded#at=152">captured by</a> this WPIX video of our presser last week-as WPU and the workers came out in force at the illegal eminent domain hearing. Expect more of this as we get closer to the upcominf court battles.<br />
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All this points to, we hope, is that our work-wherever it takes us-has a degree of effectiveness that people of all stripes recognize. But what Lisberg misses here-and should pursue in our view-is that our representation of WPU has always been straightforward and above board. The proponents of this massive boondoggle, however, have been underhanded from the start-<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-it-legal.html">improperly hiring</a> Claire Shulman's local development corporation to engage in a successful lobbying of the city council when such advocacy is proscribed by law.<br />
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Lisberg and his Albany colleagues should be asking the NYS Attorney General, what is the status of <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/06/ag-targets-rancid-e-claire.html">the investigation</a> into the Shulman matter? It is bad enough for small property owners when the city comes down on them with threatened condemnation-but when the effort is rife with illegalities and improprieties, the press should take notice. This is the real newsworthy lobbying story-and our role becomes interesting only to the extent to which we have been able to expose how the city has gone about gaining approval for Willets Point<br />
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The city now realizes, however, that its effort to throw the little guys out of the Iron Triangle will not be smooth sailing-and the degree that this is a result of our advocacy, gives us a sense of well being. If it ends up with the project going down, so much the better-not particularly for us, but for those fighting property owners getting the shaft from EDC.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-89767619923809923172011-03-07T05:10:00.001-05:002011-03-07T05:10:00.353-05:00Bursting Bloomberg's BubbleIn yesterday' NY Post, Fred Siegel and Sol Stern <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/bloomy_bubble_bursts_rBwqNm47nQzoGDW0gHWEUM">get to display</a> their Bloomberg deconstruction project that appears in a fuller form in this month's Commentary-and the authors don't disappoint. First, the mythology: "In the narrative crafted by Michael Bloomberg’s public-relations team throughout the first nine years of his mayoralty, he was the fabulously successful businessman who saved New York’s economy after the 9/11 attacks and then went on to master urban governance without breaking a sweat. Along the way, we have been told relentlessly,<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Bloomberg </a>became the nation’s leading education reformer, responsible for reducing by half the black-white achievement gap, while also launching lifesaving public-health and environmental initiatives."<br />
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For those of you who are frequent readers of this blog, the Siegal/Stern takedown is not anything new-we have been <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/03/bloombergs-disastrous-legacy.html">inveighing against</a> the Myth of Mike for the past six years. But it's good to see some of what we have been <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/12/mikes-miracles.html">pointing out</a> get a wider dissemination-and we <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/01/by-all-means-investigate.html">all agree</a> that the snowfu of last Christmas was the turning point: "But all that was before the Christmas 2010 snowstorm, when this protean genius of 21st-century politics somehow forgot the first rule of New York City governance: The mayor must make sure the streets are cleared before he sets upon saving the world. As a powerful blizzard bore down on the city, Bloomberg, as was his weekend custom, was relaxing at his sunny Bermuda hideaway."<br />
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The emperor was finally be de-frocked: "The outrage surging up in the city’s neighborhoods was so palpable that even Bloomberg’s most reliable boosters began making fun of the great manager’s performance. The mayor’s approval rating plummeted to 34%, according to a Marist poll. The rumors planted in the media about his running for president finally, and mercifully, ceased."<br />
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In the authors' most trenchant analysis, they point out that this Fall from Grace was no Greek tragedy-precisely because, despite all of the myth making, there was no heroic prelude: "It is tempting to depict Michael Bloomberg’s reversal of fortune in his third term in office — a term he secured by muscling through a change in the city’s term-limits law before spending $150 million to win only 50.7% of the vote — with hubris metaphors drawn from classical tragedy. But this assumes there was glory before the fall. In reality, there never was greatness. There have been no lasting fiscal or education reforms. The story of Bloomberg’s mayoralty is this: There is no there there."<br />
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The article goes on to point out how Bloomberg initially went back on his no tax pledge to raise the commercial real estate levy in 2002-a point that we <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2008/03/zoning-out-small-business.html">have emphasized</a> because it placed a real hardship, an across the board rent increase, on all of the city's neighborhood retailers. Bloomberg, forgetting his faux fiscal integrity campaign promise, added insult to injury with his haughty response to the criticism of his about face: "This was fitting, he believed, for a metropolis that, he said in 2003, “isn’t Wal-Mart. It isn’t trying to be the lowest-priced product in the market. It’s a high-end product, maybe even a luxury product.” You want to live in and around a luxury product? You have to pay more."<br />
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Siegel and Stern also underscore Bloomberg's lost opportunity after 9/11 to rein in the cost of government-one of the reasons <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/12/john-vliet-bloomberg-reprised.html">we have called</a> the mayor, John Vliet Bloomberg: "The aftermath of 9/11 was an extraordinary lost opportunity for the city. It could have been a moment when, in the name of shared responsibility for bringing the city back to life, spiraling labor costs could have been addressed. Public-sector employees working for the city labored but 35 hours a week and contributed nothing to their own health-insurance premiums. Rather than take up the matter, Bloomberg simply retained the status quo when it came to negotiating with the city’s most important voting bloc. A routine was established: Bloomberg would start out by talking tough about how new contracts could be paid for only with increased productivity, and in response unions would reply in a patented and choreographed “anger” mode. This false confrontation would be followed by a renewal of the old contracts and their counterproductive work rules with a few cosmetic improvements. Thus the need for new borrowing."<br />
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Of course, where would a Bloomberg deconstruction project be without a discussion of the educational reforms that were built on a solid sand foundation. This is an area that Stern has been <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_ny-education-testing.html">most incisive</a> about in his essays in the City Journal-and the focus here on the Bloomberg educational spend-a-thon is most instructive. First, the false rhetoric: "Bloomberg said that the $12 billion the city was then spending on the schools should be enough to provide a decent education for all children because he and Klein were now going to “make sure we get the most value for the school system’s dollar.” Bloomberg also seemed to be rejecting the progressive-education approach to curricular issues and classroom pedagogy and casting his lot with education traditionalists."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Then, the reality: "But soon it became clear that, in this area as in others, it was necessary to pay attention to what this mayor did rather than what he said. Bloomberg began dipping deeper into the city treasury for more and more tax dollars for the schools. From fiscal 2003 to 2011, the education budget grew from $12.7 billion to $23 billion annually — almost a 70% increase in inflation-adjusted dollars. Most of the money was paid out in 43% across-the-board teacher-salary increases in just the first six years of Bloomberg’s tenure."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Gee, and now Mike wants to let go teachers because the city is tapped out? At the time, it was politically expedient to buy off the UFT-<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/compulsive-miseducation.html">much as he had</a> Al Sharpton: "Indeed, the purpose of the extra spending could not have been to improve student performance, since he said very plainly that he didn’t believe there was any connection between the two. Rather it was to shore up his political prospects and help make his reputation as the nation’s “education mayor.” Instead of insisting on changes in teacher-compensation packages that might have reduced the city’s long-term pension and health-care costs,<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Bloomberg </a>cashed in his chips in the coin of either direct political support from the UFT or its calculated neutrality."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">And the <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/item_Ijz8RtFhnhbUr1bkjXYKlL;jsessionid=BD89A0EDA6291D9133218C6CDC80F507">UFT delivered</a> for Bloomberg when it didn't stand in the way of the renewal of mayoral control in 2009-but then came the real earthquake level tremors in the form of school test fraud revelations: "And then, in early 2010, the Bloomberg education bubble burst. State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner David Steiner acknowledged that over the past several years, the test scores had been grossly inflated...Bloomberg’s administration tried to put the best face on the news. It was true, Klein conceded, that the extent of student gains in recent years had been much exaggerated, but it was still true that New York had done better than the state’s other big-city districts. After boosting the city’s annual education budget by $11 billion, the<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Bloomberg </a>administration was effectively saying, “We’re better than Buffalo.” That isn’t much of a legacy for a once-upon-a-time would-be presidential candidate who had put his education accomplishments at the top of his political résumé."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">No it isn't, and even the mayor's own <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/03/gift-giving.html">payola system</a>-using his billions to buy off opposition and nurture support-couldn't save him when snow started to fall heavily last December. Not when the folks started to realize that the entire Bloomberg achievement edifice was little more than a Potemkin Village of expensive hype: "Bloomberg’s ability to buy off potential critics partially explains why the illusion of his managerial competence and reputation as the “education mayor” lasted for so long. All the mayor’s billions, however, couldn’t protect him from the consequences of last year’s crash of the city’s test scores or his malfeasance during the Christmas weekend snowstorm. Thus the question of the mayor’s legacy is now finally open for serious debate."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
In sum, Siegal and Stern give the Post readers a lot to chew on-and our only criticism would be that they did leave out the mayor's <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/11/empty-rooms-at-edc-inn.html">disastrous economic development legacy</a>, one that has made him, in our view, the worst mayor for small business in our memory. But, to be fair, there is so much there to critique that one could never do complete justice to the subject in just one article.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">We'll give these two mavens the last word-although we're certain that there will be more revisionism to come from a wide range of previously star struck quarters: "When<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Michael Bloomberg </a>leaves office in 2014 — assuming he leaves office in 2014 — the city will be saddled long into the future with the massive borrowing and school spending he required to maintain his political reputation. Citizen Bloomberg will have a significant role in how<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Mayor Bloomberg </a>is judged. Already the master of an expanding media empire, he is now setting up his personal charitable foundation, which may rival the Gates Foundation in financial assets. That foundation will no doubt have the resources to place the Bloomberg legacy of debt, boondoggles and bicycle lanes in the best possible light."</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-39284803455391897522011-03-07T04:59:00.003-05:002011-03-07T05:35:15.796-05:00No Khan-DoWith much of the public up in arms over the arbitrary actions of DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan to unilaterally transform the NYC streetscape, it good to know that Mayor Tone Deaf has her back. The NY Post has<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/mike_loves_khan_job_CYQ1vfc3k3m532UmrdI2LN"> the story</a>: "He's got his commissioner's back. Mayor<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Bloomberg </a>offered a spirited defense yesterday of embattled Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, two days after she withdrew a controversial proposal to plop down a pedestrian mall in the middle of 34th Street. "This woman has made some real innovations here in this city that will last and will be a very big deal," the mayor declared, speaking of the sweeping streetscape changes undertaken during his administration."<br />
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And Bloomberg sees her backing down-not as a result of the tumultuous public blowback-devolving from Sadik-Khan's sensitivity to the pulse of the people: "He argued that Sadik-Khan should be given credit for backing off the original 34th Street plan, saying that indicated she had listened to community concerns about closing the street to all traffic except buses and emergency vehicles between Fifth and Sixth avenues. "That's what she's supposed to do," said the mayor." <br />
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All of which is unsurprising given since it is the mayor who is ultimately to be held responsible for this runaway train-but Bloomberg's public defense of the transit czar contrasts sharply with some of his reported private remarks about the embattled commissioner. The NY Times reports on this in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/nyregion/06sadik-khan.html?ref=nyregion">its profile</a> of Sadik-Khan last week-and it is revealed in a reported exchange between Congressman Weiner and the mayor: “When I become mayor, you know what I’m going to spend my first year doing?” Mr. Weiner said to Mr. Bloomberg, as tablemates listened. “I’m going to have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes.” Mr. Weiner, a brash Democrat from Queens, had expected a bit of banter with his longtime adversary. Instead, Mr. Bloomberg adopted an exasperated, welcome-to-my-world expression. “His answer was, ‘Tell me about it,’ ” said a person who was there, one of two who recounted the tale. The mayor, some guests said, made it clear that Ms. Sadik-Khan was off on her own.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
If the exchange is true, however, it is an indication to us that the 34th Street backdown came right from the mayor himself-and the NY Post's <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/khan_game_sU5XxF5unCLWqqcya6h6HJ">observations about</a> the need for continual vigilance over this rogue commissioner rings true to us: "City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan says she's backing off her radical remake of 34th Street -- but she's never played straight with New Yorkers before, so why take her at face value now? <br />
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The Post hones in on the commissioner's hubris: "Her plan to redirect traffic on 34th Street may also be in flux -- though it's hard to say, because with Sadik-Khan everything is a secret until it isn't. But there is no doubt that any significant traffic manipulation will create a permanent nightmare for nearby side streets."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
The paper doesn't have much good to say about all of those, "innovations," that the mayor referred to: "Not that she hasn't <em>committed</em> a boatload of costly mistakes -- starting with turning over vast swaths of city streets to delivery boys on bikes and the occasional cool dude peddling along in his Day-Glo tights. The 34th Street plaza was a humongous mutation of her other <em>tour de force</em> -- the tourist refuge that cut the heart out of the former crossroads of the world, Times Square."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
But what struck us most about the Post's commentary was its focus on the lack of oversight and accountability at the transit agency-something that we also have remarked on in the past: "And it's not remotely clear whether residents and businesses will continue to have curb access all along 34th Street -- or, if they do, what restrictions will remain. Sadik-Khan says she'll make more details public on March 14. If she follows form, much of it will be on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. And, if Mayor Bloomberg's past indulgence of his transportation commissioner maintains, that'll be the end of much of the discussion. Sure, the department <em>promises</em> to publish traffic and environmental studies later this year -- <strong>but the agency conducts such studies itself, and previous "reviews" generally have simply ratified its original proposals.</strong> In the rare instances when the studies produce inconvenient results, they are either paid lip service or ignored. So if any municipal agency has earned vigorous independent oversight, it's the Department of Transportation." (emphasis added)</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
Which is why all of this <em>mishogos</em> should be subject to<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/01/bike-brakes.html"> rigorous environmental review</a>-an official ULURP process where the city council hires its own traffic engineers to review any data that the DOT submits. That's what independent oversight looks like. What is accurate about DOT holds true for EDC as well-and for too long the city council has swallowed whole the drek provided by EDC's, and the leading developers'-<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/01/known-rcognized-flunky.html">favorite consultants</a>, AKRF. </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
The <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramp-cramp.html">blistering critique</a> that Brian Ketcham did of EDC's traffic ramp application to SDOT dramatizes our point-and for too long the ULURP process has been suborned by fraudulent studies designed to bolster the inaccurately rosy picture of one development after the other. It's now time to <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2007/05/zoning-out-need-to-reform-ulurp.html">fundamentally alter</a> the entire SEQR process in this city.</div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-6235840915205060742011-03-04T09:09:00.000-05:002011-03-04T09:09:27.370-05:00Deceit Suits EDCWe are now coming close to the moment of truth for EDC, the city's rogue development agency-as WPU's lawsuit is getting ready to challenge its illegal bait and switch tactics. The NY Daily News <a href="http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2011/03/03/queens/qns_willets_folo_20110303.txt">along with</a> the Flushing Times) <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2011/03/04/2011-03-04_iron_will_at_forum.html">lays out</a> the imminent legal battle: "The stage has been set for a legal battle between <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Willets+Point" title="Willets Point">Willets Point</a> property and business owners versus the city. Willets Point United is preparing to file two lawsuits against the city, attorneys for the group said. One challenges its use of eminent domain to wipe the slate clean for developers in the gritty industrial zone and another claims the city skipped key regulatory steps to fast-track the project."<br />
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What the suits will dramatize is the city's disregard for regulatory procedures and the basic tenets of the environmental quality review act-not to mention the lobbying and not for profit laws that started this whole process with an illegal foundation: "Noted environmental attorney <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michael+Gerrard" title="Michael Gerrard"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Michael Gerrard</span></a>, who is also representing Willets Point United, said the redevelopment cannot start until the ramps off the Van Wyck Expressway are built. But McKnight said the ramps are not needed until the first phase of the development is completed. After Gerrard read his statement, he looked to McKnight and said, "We will see you in court," prompting cheers from dozens in the audience."<br />
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EDC's assertions about the non essential nature of the ramps will be at the heart of the challenge-and all of the agency's technical memoranda that have been set forth to justify its position on this crucial variable lack one important feature: any supporting data. To our view, that's not especially surprising-this is one agency that should stay away from data generation, if its initial <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramp-cramp.html">faulty traffic submissions</a> to the state DOT are any indication.<br />
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And the team of Gerrard and Brian Ketcham will attack the illegal segmentation that is at the core of EDC's bait and switch: "All of their documentation shows it's a single project for which the ramps are needed," Gerrard told the Daily News after his testimony." But the EDC switcheroo should concern all of the stakeholders who were gathered together back in 2008 to support the project. If we remember back, we saw how numerous labor unions came to city hall to endorse the Willets Point project-citing concessions that, if the current EDC behavior is a guide, don't amount to a hill of beans. Our advice to some of our friends: Don't try to cash any Bloomberg promissory notes.<br />
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This chapter in the Willets Point saga <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2008/06/26/2008-06-26_unions_love_willets_point_land_grab-1.html">was captured by</a> the Daily News' Juan Gonzales: "Some of <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/New+York" title="New York"><span style="color: #015fb6;">New York</span></a>'s biggest union leaders lined up on the steps of City Hall Thursday to cheer <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michael+Bloomberg" title="Michael Bloomberg"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Mayor Bloomberg</span></a>'s new mega development plan - the $3 billion <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Willets+Point" title="Willets Point"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Willets Point</span></a> project in <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Queens+County" title="Queens County"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Queens</span></a>. One after another, they gave glowing praise to one more giveaway to real estate developers - one that had been opposed by a majority of the City Council. The labor leaders touted the "historic" concessions on future jobs at Willets Point they claim to have secured from City Hall in return for backing the project."<br />
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The essence of a verbal contract, it seems to us. But what is really striking in the Gonzales piece is the accompanying photo of none other than Claire Shulman-something that will also become an important aspect of the WPU challenge: "We're going to show how unfair this whole process has been," said <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michael+Rikon" title="Michael Rikon"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Michael Rikon</span></a>, one of the lawyers representing the group. Rikon said his firm completed a 62-page report yesterday detailing numerous problems with the redevelopment push at Willets Point, a 61-acre area known as the Iron Triangle currently filled with auto repair shops...Rikon's report includes what he called "an illegal lobbying effort by the mayor to use funds to sway the City Council into voting for the Willets Point project." Rikon was referring to the city's funding of a group headed by former <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Claire+Shulman" title="Claire Shulman"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Queens Borough President Claire Shulman</span></a> to lobby lawmakers. In July 2009, Shulman's group was fined a record $59,090 because Shulman forgot to register as a lobbyist."<br />
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If we go back to that period we find that opposition to the development was beginning to really coalesce-and it was Shulman's <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-it-legal.html">illegal lobbying</a> effort that brought the labor muscle into the equation; a factor that became the linchpin of the political turn around that eventually saw the project win the support of the council. Without labor, and the role that Shulman played in galvanizing its support, WPU would likely not be in the position it finds itself today-in fact, it is quite possible that the group wouldn't even exist if the project failed to gain council approval.<br />
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WPU's Rikon will also focus on EDC's invidious treatment of the property owners-as the Queens Tribune <a href="http://www.queenstribune.com/deadline/Deadline_030311_Willets_Foes_Plan_Suit_Over_Eminent_Domain.html">reports</a>: "...Rikon plans to argue against the EDC's handling of property buy-outs. The process, which Rikon said should be numerically equitable in terms of price per square foot, has been stilted in favor of larger property owners - ones Rikon claims the City targeted in order to quickly reach its greater-than-50-percent target of ownership."<br />
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So, if this is an end game, the end ain't coming anytime soon. And the more that WPU uncovers-through FOIL and discovery-the more all of the city will be treated to the underhanded manner in which this rogue EDC element operates. Not everyone gets a second act in life, but in this case the property owners at Willets Point will be the exception. We feel strongly that this will not end well for the powers that be-and the mayor's legacy, whatever that is, will be forever tarnished by what has transpired during this entire process.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-6329231122222368692011-03-04T05:07:00.007-05:002011-03-04T05:34:29.042-05:00Sadik-Khan Blinks!In a rare victory for sanity, the Bloombergistas have apparently thrown in the towel on turning 34th Street into a vast pedestrian mall. The NY Post reports<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/miracle_on_th_st_herald_plaza_axed_DBB89qdLNDGmmbj2WX8cYL"> in a story</a> aptly headlined, The Miracle on 34th Street" "City officials are walking away from their controversial plan to turn 34th Street between Herald Square and Fifth Avenue into a pedestrian plaza -- citing repeated criticism of a scheme that would have shut down yet another major Midtown intersection. "There isn't going to be a plaza . . . The changes we are talking about reflect what we have heard from the community," Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said yesterday."<br />
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So we are finally getting some push back on the Bloombergistas' Copenhagen modeling: "The city's decision to scrap the plaza was welcomed by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer as "a step in the right direction." "Clearly, discussions between the various stakeholders are having an impact," Stringer said. Residents and small-business owners in the neighborhood were outraged by the proposal, and said yesterday they were glad the city will let traffic keep flowing through the area. "It was a silly idea to start with. Why would you need to close it down?" said Sarah Mercer, 37. "It's a busy block. I'm glad they've come to their senses." <br />
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Sometimes people need to have sense knocked into them-and the WSJ<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704005404576176833877200662.html?mod=WSJ_NY_MIDDLETopStories"> chimes in</a>: "Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has attracted international attention with the city's pedestrian malls. But she ran into stiff opposition on 34th Street. Residents complained the pedestrian mall would snarl traffic; businesses said they would be unable to receive deliveries if the mall were created."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">We expressed <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/bike-lane-schizophrenia.html">our view</a> earlier on the NYC Sadik, and the decision to pull back doesn't mitigate that sentiment in the least-although we are pleased with the pull back. She is still ill-equipped to handle the transportation department-hampered as she is, both philosophically and temperamentally. The city's about face does not represent the commissioner's newly acquired sobriety-but rather the strength of the growing opposition to her arbitrary and capricious policy making. </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">The NY Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/nyregion/03bus.html?ref=nyregion">reporting</a> gets the last word-but even the paper of record understands the role<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/debacle_on_th_st_Hvdbi0H8UlIWOnqCfbM7BI"> played by</a> the NY post's Steve Cuozzo (and Andrea Peyser <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/sick-transit-gloria-sadik-khan-job.html">as well</a>) in exposing the stupidity of the plan: "The decision to abandon the plaza plan is a stark contrast to the fate of previous unorthodox ideas put forward by Ms. Sadik-Khan, who has banned cars from parts of Times, Herald and Union Squares. The 34th Street plan came under sustained attack this week in The New York Post, where one columnist deemed the project a “budding Titanic.” </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-15036885631603889812011-03-04T04:45:00.002-05:002011-03-04T05:36:14.929-05:00Pity Bloomberg's Poor ImmigrantCity Room <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/city-invites-groups-to-help-immigrants-start-businesses/?ref=nyregion">is reporting</a> that Mayor Bloomberg is looking to devise a program to aid in the formation of immigrant businesses-this from the is he kidding department: "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg <a href="http://nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http://nyc.gov/html/om/html/2011a/pr071-11.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1" title="http://nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http://nyc.gov/html/om/html/2011a/pr071-11.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1"><span style="color: #004276;">announced a competition</span></a> Thursday aimed at helping immigrant entrepreneurs finance their businesses and overcome language barriers and other obstacles hindering their growth.The program comes as part of the city’s wide-ranging push to assist immigrant start-ups, which fail at a higher rate than businesses begun by native-born Americans. Roughly half of the city’s self-employed workers are immigrants."<br />
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Perhaps the mayor should start with discarding initiatives that put existing immigrant businesses at risk-like the Willets Point development that will shunt scores of mostly Hispanic business owners into the gutter. Or maybe, instead of encouraging the entry of Walmart into the city, he should tell the giant retailer to stay away rather than put thousands of immigrant food store operators in jeopardy.<br />
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And while we're at it, how about cancelling <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/08/koo-detat.html">Flushing Commons</a> before that mega development harms hundreds of Asian store owners in that hub of immigrant commerce? In fact, the involvement of EDC in this faux pro immigrant effort gets the Chutzpah award, since it is that agency that has launched scores of mega developments that have made it more difficult for small, mostly minority, businesses to survive. Remember the Bronx Terminal Market that housed 22 minority food wholesalers? EDC quite <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2005/10/ny-times-nails-btm-sweetheart-deal.html">expeditiously dispatched</a> these hapless little guys to make way for a Related mall.<br />
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NYC has become a center of successful immigrant entrepreneurship-in spite of city policies that have retarded its growth.The reality is that the best way for NYC to encourage immigrant entrepreneurship is to reduce the tax and regulatory burden here-something that the mayor has made much worse in his nine year tenure. In fact, the Bloomberg administration has been the most anti-small business governments we have seen in our thirty years of representing these role models.<br />
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If you own a supermarket you are a <em>piñata</em> for the Department of Consumer Afairs and its army of useless inspectors. How about a Korean or Mexican restaurant? Watch out for the DOH's regulators looking to brand you with a scarlet letter. If you run a fast food outlet-one of the most successful minority business niches-you have to spend thousands of extra dollars to comply with the ineffective menu labeling regulation-and so it goes. And we haven't even mentioned the mayor's jacking up of the commercial real estate tax in his first year-a huge rent increase for all neighborhood retailers.<br />
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So our advice to the mayor-and those that uncritically report his grandiose plans of misdirection-is to follow the Hippocratic Oath, and simply do no harm. Pilot programs of questionable efficacy are no substitute for sound economic, small business friendly, policies. Focusing attention on this kind of grandiose non sequitors, only serves to help Mike Bloomberg camouflage his anti immigrant business record.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-15972902258923533882011-03-03T15:05:00.000-05:002011-03-03T15:05:52.379-05:00SenioritisJosh Robin at NY1 has a <a href="http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/politics/134886/mayor-takes-swipe-at-city-s-veteran-teachers/">fascinating take</a> from Mike Bloomberg on the issue of teacher seniority-and questions the mayor on the inconsistency of his position: "Teachers Peter Lamphere and Julie Cavanagh have 19 years in the classroom between them -- enough time to believe there's no substitute for experience."All of us know that we get better at our jobs as we go along. I think it's extraordinarily true with teaching," Lamphere said. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, though, isn't so sure veterans in the classroom are the best. On the one hand, he admits seniority gives teachers the ability to learn more. But while speaking to reporters Wednesday he added, "The length of time that you have worked is irrelevant to whether or not you can do what our children need."<br />
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To which teacher Cavanagh shoots back: "If you look at the schools that Cathie Black and Mayor Bloomberg sent their own children, they boast about the number of years experience that their teachers have," Cavanagh said." <em> Touché </em><br />
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But the mayor hasn't always been down on experience: "As for Bloomberg, some see a troubling irony in his knock on experience. After all, he cited just that in his successful bid to over turn term limits and win another four years at City Hall." But, to be fair, we have seen how well that argument has worked out-so maybe both sides are wrong.<br />
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But the experienced Mr. Bloomberg has shown an extraordinary ineptitude when it comes to dealing with the state legislature-something you'd expect he might have picked up in over nine years on the job. Not so says the NY Post's Fred Dicker, who accuses Bloomberg of colossal bumbling in his attempt to change seniority rules for the city's teachers.<br />
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As Dicker <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bloomy_bumbles_big_time_trying_to_fB4PrgzVUx0YHzDWjYPcXN">points out</a>: "You'd think after nine years in office,<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Mayor Bloomberg </a>would know how Albany works. But he obviously doesn't, as Gov. Cuomo made clear for all to see late Tuesday when he pulled the rug out from under a<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Bloomberg </a>press conference called to crow about Senate passage of the mayor's bill ending "last in, first out" protections for underperforming city teachers. The scope of Bloomberg's miscalculation was breathtaking."<br />
<div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Gee, maybe he needs another term? But Mike has never done well with the old system of checks and balances-and as long as he can do things unchallenged, he does just fine. The problem in Albany for the mayor, is that their are other elected officials who are not bedazzled by his good looks and charm: "But Bloomberg's most difficult move to fathom is his ongoing attempt to get Democrat Cuomo -- battling his party's left wing on spending restraints and the "millionaires tax" -- to jam a LIFO bill into his proposed budget, a provocative assault on the Democratic-controlled, union-friendly Assembly. Cuomo has made it clear to the mayor that such an effort would be illegal, since the city-specific proposal has no direct relevance to a statewide spending plan, insiders said."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Bloomberg, however, is used to skirting the borders of legality-as we have pointed out with the <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/edc-outdoes-itself-on-willets-point.html">Willets Point ramps</a> and the <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-it-legal.html">Claire Shulman LDC</a>. When you're living in a political echo chamber, you never get to adjust to effective cognitive dissonance: "As a source close to Cuomo put it, "Does Bloomberg really believe the governor would endanger his budget to satisfy [the mayor's] desire to lay off teachers who may not have to be fired?" </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
So, once again, Bloomberg falls flat on his face dealing with grown ups-and yet again we get to witness the rancid hypocrisy that has come to characterize his tenure. On the City Room blog, Fran Liebowitz <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/lebowitz-for-mayor-in-2013/?ref=nyregion">expresses</a> our view of the mayor rather eloquently: "She decried life in New York under Mayor <a class="tickerized" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Michael R. Bloomberg.">Michael R. Bloomberg</a>, accusing him of pulling off a “coup” <span id="more-282502"></span>when he undid the term limits law in 2009, and saying she had proudly informed the mayor in person that she voted against him three times. She seemed offended that after last year’s election Mr. Bloomberg had expressed anger over voting machine foul-ups, given his lack of interest in the voters’ will during the term limits debate, and suggested that he should never discuss voting or elections again, given his history."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">The countdown to his imperial exit has begun-as we labor to deal with the sad fact that, "a watched pot never boils."</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-50688135101944580062011-03-03T08:56:00.001-05:002011-03-03T08:57:13.831-05:00City Ramps Up Its Willets Point DishonestyLast night's eminent domain hearing was the culmination of 15 months of utter frustration for the Bloombergistas-despite all of the city's huffing and puffing at NYS DOT, it was unable to move the Van Wyck ramp application that was supposed to be, and was self-described as, a prerequisite for any move to condemn properties at Willets Point. Stymied in this fashion, the city simply threw up its hands and said, the hell with waiting-hence the concocting of a Phase I for the development of Willets Point that, mirabile dictu!-doesn't need those stinkin' ramps.<br />
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The NY Times is on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/nyregion/03willets.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion">the story</a>: "At the emotional hearing, opponents of the city’s plans for the $3 billion development project vowed to try to kill it in court, while city officials said they would forge ahead with plans to rejuvenate Willets Point, a 61-acre expanse of junkyards and auto-repair shops — and one resident, Mr. Ardizzone — so blighted that locals <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/nyregion/28willets.html" title="A New York Times article.">refer to it as Iraq</a>. The four-hour hearing was the latest showdown in a four-year battle that has flared tempers and inspired furious lobbying. It was peppered by loud heckling from a crowd of Hispanic workers who say they stand to lose their jobs when the businesses at which they work are seized by the city for the project."<br />
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Mike Gerrard made the case for why the ramps are going to be the Achilles' heel of this ill conceived venture: "But opponents said Wednesday that they would fight on and that they planned to reopen a case against the city in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on the ground that the project breached environmental rules. Michael B. Gerrard, a lawyer representing a group of small business owners, said his case rested on a seemingly arcane but decisive issue: two ramps that the city had pledged to build to connect Willets Point to the Van Wyck Expressway and help offset the up to 80,000 vehicle trips a day that experts say the entire development will generate. Opponents of the development insist the city cannot use eminent domain unless the ramps are approved by the Federal Highway. Administration and the State Transportation Department. In August, the State Supreme Court in Manhattan <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/judge-rejects-challenge-against-willets-point-project/" title="A City Room blog post."><span style="color: #004276;">turned down a request</span></a> for an injunction by Mr. Gerrard that focused on the two ramps. But Mr. Gerrard said Wednesday that the city had reneged on its promise to gain approval for the ramps, thereby breaching its assurances to the court. <br />
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And the Times lets the city lead with its chin on those pesky ramps: "City officials said that the city’s initial pledge to build the ramps had been based on development of all 62 acres of Willets Point and that subsequent environmental assessments undertaken by the city had determined that the traffic generated during the first five-year phase of development would not make construction of the ramps necessary in the short term. “We are continuing to work toward the necessary regulatory approvals for the ramps and anticipate approval in the coming months,” Mr. McKnight said at the hearing."<br />
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Well, as we<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/edcs-day-of-reckoning.html"> have said</a> repeatedly, the city has never even hinted that it would proceed with a partial development of Willets Point sans ramps-not once, either in city council testimony or in its court pleadings. But what struck us the most about the statement above was the city's allegation that it, "had determined that the traffic generated during the first five-year phase of development would not make construction of the ramps necessary in the short term."<br />
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Just how ballsy is this assertion? Consider the fact that this is the same group of prevaricators that submitted traffic data to the state for the Van Wyck ramp application that was exposed as <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramp-cramp.html">either fraudulent or woefully inadequate</a>-take your pick. Put simply, EDC's consultants were undressed by the righteous critique of their work by WPU's Brian Ketcham-and State DOT sided with the critic. <br />
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That this same gang that can't calculate straight is now claiming that they, "have determined," the ramps are unnecessary for this new Phase I, is simply risible-as Mike Gerrard has cogently argued. The basis for the legal challenge lies with the fact that the city needs to demonstrate that its allegations have some merit-as Gerrard <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/crains-covers-willets-point.html">told</a> Crain's: "Mr. Gerrard said if he succeeds in his attempt to force the city to compile a new environmental impact statement assuming the highway ramps were not built, the project would be set back “probably a year, at least.”<br />
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Of course, when the city brings out its bulldozers, it isn't arcane issues about ramps and environmental niceties that are most compelling-it is the people who are impacted by the land grab. At Willets Point, one man stands as a symbol to the arrogance of the mayor and his minions-and we'll give Joe Aridizzone the last word: "He came dressed as a revolutionary soldier, complete with tights and a cap reminiscent of George Washington’s. But Joseph Ardizzone, 78,<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/nyregion/17willets.html" title="article about Mr. Ardizzone"><span style="color: #004276;"> the last remaining resident of Willets Point,</span></a> conceded on Wednesday that the fight against the <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Michael R. Bloomberg."><span style="color: #004276;">Bloomberg administration</span></a> for a bedraggled piece of real estate in the shadow of the Mets’ new stadium in Queens was not a battle for the faint-hearted. “I’ve been in the same block for 78 years,” he said, accusing the mayor of a shameless land grab. “Where will I go? The city should be ashamed of what it is doing.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-12541220578837026452011-03-03T05:22:00.002-05:002011-03-03T05:42:16.336-05:00Crain's Covers Willets Point CondemnationCrain's online edition <a href="http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20110302/REAL_ESTATE/110309951">is reporting on</a> the city's effort to create a new Phase I of the Willets Point development-and condemn 13 property owners after telling one and all that no condemnation would be utilized until ramps off the Van Wyck were approved. The story does a fair job at covering the position of property owners-although we take issue with the editorializing that opined that WPU's chance of success was, "remote;" along with the header that calls this effort, "last ditch."<br />
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As Crain's points out: "Queens property owners whose land would be condemned to pave the way for the redevelopment of Willets Point announced Wednesday that they will reopen a legal challenge that they lost last summer. They did so as the city began formal proceedings to acquire their sites through eminent domain. A condemnation hearing to take testimony on the government's bid to buy blighted private property at fair market value to use it for a public purpose began at 4 p.m. Wednesday and was expected to continue for several hours."<br />
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The essence of the lawsuit is outlined: "The plaintiffs' case hinges on a pledge by the city that it would not seize any land until it got state and federal approval for the construction of two highway ramps that it considered essential to the project. Those Van Wyck Expressway ramps have yet to be approved, but the city is moving forward anyway. It argues that it can do so because it has split the redevelopment into two phases, and the first phase does not rely on the ramps."<br />
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Here's the city's argument: "Phase I will be completed and the substantial Phase I benefits will be realized even if the connections are not approved by the Federal Highway Administration and the New York State Department of Transportation,” a city official testified." But, as Mike Gerrard tells Crain's: "...the judge who dismissed their lawsuit last summer never heard of any two-phase plan. Mr. Gerrard has filed a motion with the same judge, Joan Maddon of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, to reopen the case."<br />
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Here's where Crain's gets into murky waters-conflating eminent domain challenges with what Gerrard is trying to accomplish: "Such legal challenges rarely succeed. In fact, Mr. Gerrard could not name the last time an eminent domain condemnation was successfully challenged in New York City. Despite lawsuits by opponents, eminent domain was used to remake Times Square and to clear room for a basketball arena in Brooklyn, where construction is now under way. It was also used for the proposed expansion of Columbia University."<br />
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As <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/condemning-condemnors-willets-point.html">we pointed out</a> yesterday-citing Gerrard's formal statement for the hearing-it is the ramp approval fiasco, the failure to get them approved, and the city's about face on the issue that faces legal scrutiny. An environmental challenge before the same court that took Deputy Mayor's sworn statement about the necessity of prior ramp approval should be worrisome to the Bloombergistas: <br />
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"<em><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The City has been pledging for years that this approval was imminent, but it has not arrived, and it is obviously nowhere in sight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus the City has violated its pledges to the Court and its representations in the FGEIS, and in desperation is attempting to start the project without this essential approval.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is also attempting to start the project with no one having any clear idea what impacts the project would have with the ramps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are two prior analyses by the City of traffic conditions with the ramps -- the FGEIS and the Access Modification Report (AMR).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we have previously shown in detail, the results of these two studies were radically different."</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">To its credit, however, Crain's does present the legal challenge as a serious obstacle: "Still, the case is significant because it threatens a signature project of the Bloomberg administration and the most advanced attempt to redevelop Willets Point, a busy but woeful industrial backwater at the edge of Flushing that has defied efforts to improve it for more than 40 years."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">So, this might not be as, "last ditch," as Crain's would have its readers believe. In fact, it may be EDC that has driven the Willets Point development car right into the ditch-stalled no because of the agency's own frustration, devolving from its disingenuousness before state and federal regulators. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In our view, what should be ditched is the city's unintended devolution into stand up comedians. Take its statement to Crain's-please: "A Bloomberg administration official testified at Wednesday's hearing that the plan is “aimed at transforming a largely underutilized approximately 61-acre site with substandard conditions and substantial environmental degradation into a lively, mixed-use, sustainable community and regional destination.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Only total hypocrites could characterize a development that will-at the very least-generate 80,000 car trips a day as the ultimate creation of a, "sustainable community." There is nothing sustainable about the Willets Point project-least of all the arguments used to support it. We'll see if Judge Madden finds the city's comedic patter amusing-but if she doesn't, this boondoggle will be sent reeling.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Mike Gerrard gets the penultimate last word: "The current redevelopment effort began in 2001. Mr. Gerrard said if he succeeds in his attempt to force the city to compile a new environmental impact statement assuming the highway ramps were not built, the project would be set back “probably a year, at least.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">At least! And the clock is ticking on these dishonest development divas-it won't be long before Mike Bloomberg becomes the lamest of lame ducks.</span></span><em><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-84805548393524200612011-03-02T13:19:00.004-05:002011-03-02T13:26:42.945-05:00There is No Public Use at Willets PointWPU is represented by attorney Mike Rikon at today's condemnation hearing in its effort to stymie the city's effort to use eminent domain for the displacement of property owners at Willets Point. Rikon, in the full statement printed below makes the distinction between the Willets Point case and the numerous other condemnation cases-from Atlantic Yards to West Harlem and East Harlem-that focused on a challenge to the designation of those areas as blighted. Here's the Rikon money quote:<br />
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<em>"<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">PUBLIC USE MUST BE PRESENT IN ANY CONDEMNATION IN NEW YORK STATE. THE RECENT CASES, IN OUR COURT OF APPEALS, ATLANTIC YARDS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, UPTOWN PROPERTIES ALL WERE BASED ON BLIGHT CHALLENGES. BUT THE COURT OF APPEALS HAS MADE CLEAR OUR STATE CONSTITUTION STILL REQUIRES A PUBLIC USE BEFORE PROPERTY MAY BE TAKEN THUS FOR ANY CONDEMNATION TO GO FORWARD IN WILLETS POINT, THERE MUST BE A PUBLIC USE FOR THE PROPERTY TO BE TAKEN.</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Put simply, without a developer and a plan, there is no public use-and this speculative condemnation is illegal (read the entire statement)</span><br />
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">STATEMENT OF MICHAEL RIKON ,</span></u></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">ATTORNEY FOR WILLETS POINT UNITED, INC. AND</span></u></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY OWNERS EDPL SECTION <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>201</span></u></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">PUBLIC HEARING MARCH 2, 2011</span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">MY NAME IS MICHAEL RIKON, MY LAW FIRM GOLDSTEIN, RIKON & RIKON, P.C. REPRESENTS WILLETS POINT</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">UNITED, INC. AND INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY OWNERS. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THIS PUBLIC HEARING VIOLATES THE EMINENT DOMAIN PROCEDURE LAW, THE CONSTITUTION AND DUE PROCESS. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>WILLETS POINT UNITED, INC. IS A COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION CONSISTING OF 12 PROPERTY AND BUSINESS OWNERS </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE 62 ACRE PROJECT WILL AFFECT 255 BUSINESS AND SOME 55 PARCELS OF LAND. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">AT THE OUTSET, THE NOTICE GIVEN FOR THIS PUBLIC HEARING VIOLATES THE DUE PROCESS CLAUSE. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE HEARING “LEGAL NOTICE” STATES THAT THE PUBLIC HEARING IS TO CONSIDER THE PROPOSED ACQUISITION BY CONDEMNATION OF CERTAIN PROPERTY IN FURTHERANCE OF THE WILLETS POINT DEVELOPMENT PLAN. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE NOTICE GOES ON TO DESCRIBE THE AREA ENCOMPASSED BY THE PLAN AS A 61.4 ACRE INDUSTRIAL SITE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>IT THEN DESCRIBES A SMALLER AREA WHICH IT CALLS PHASE I, BUT IT ONLY IDENTIFIED AND GAVE NOTICE TO THOSE PROPERTY OWNERS IN PHASE I, THIS VIOLATES THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS TO DUE PROCESS OF ALL THE OTHER OWNERS. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THIS HEARING AND ANY DETERMINATION AND FINDINGS ADOPTED BASED ON THE HEARING WILL BE CONTRARY TO THE LAW.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>THERE IS NO PUBLIC USE FOR THE WILLETS POINT CONDEMNATION</u></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">BOTH OUR UNITED STATES AND NEW YORK STATE CONSTITUTIONS REQUIRE THAT FOR PRIVATE PROPERTY TO BE TAKEN BY THE EXERCISE OF EMINENT DOMAIN IT MUST BE FOR A PUBLIC USE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THAT LIMITATION IS FOUND WITHIN THE FIFTH AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION. “…NOR SHALL PRIVATE PROPERTY BE TAKEN FOR PUBLIC USE, WITHOUT JUST COMPENSATION.” THESE LIMITATIONS ARE MADE APPLICABLE TO THE STATES BY THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">PUBLIC USE MUST BE PRESENT IN ANY CONDEMNATION IN NEW YORK STATE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THE RECENT CASES, IN OUR COURT OF APPEALS, ATLANTIC YARDS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, UPTOWN PROPERTIES ALL WERE BASED ON BLIGHT CHALLENGES. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">BUT THE COURT OF APPEALS HAS MADE CLEAR OUR STATE CONSTITUTION STILL REQUIRES A PUBLIC USE BEFORE PROPERTY MAY BE TAKEN.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>THUS FOR ANY CONDEMNATION TO GO FORWARD IN WILLETS POINT, THERE MUST BE A PUBLIC USE FOR THE PROPERTY TO BE TAKEN</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE PROPOSED TAKING IS WITHOUT LOGIC OR REASON.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN A FIGMENT OF MAYOR BLOOMBERG’S IMAGINATION</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>QUITE SIMPLY, YOU CANNOT TAKE PRIVATE PROPERTY ON SPECULATION.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THERE IS NO DEVELOPER</u></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR THE WILLETS POINT DEVELOPMENT PLAN FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MAYOR, DATED FEBRUARY 10, 2011 ADMITS “THERE IS NO SPECIFIC DEVELOPMENT PLAN.” </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE ENTIRE DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT AS IS SET FORTH IN AN ILLEGALLY PREPARED TECHNICAL MEMORANDUM FOR THE WILLETS POINT DEVELOPMENT PLAN DATED FEBRUARY 10, 2011, IS A HOPELESSLY OBSCURE DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT WHICH CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE PROPOSED CONDEMNATION IS ALSO SPECULATIVE BECAUSE NOTHING CAN BE DEVELOPED UNLESS THE EXTRAORDINARY TRAFFIC PROBLEMS ARE DEALT WITH BY OBTAINING APPROVALS TO BUILD NEW RAMPS TO THE VAN WYCK EXPRESSWAY.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE PROJECT IS ALSO SPECULATIVE BECAUSE THE CITY HAS INTENTIONALLY DEPRIVED WILLETS POINT OF ESSENTIAL MUNICIPAL SERVICES.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THERE ARE NO WASTE SEWERS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THERE ARE NO STORM WATER SEWERS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THERE HAS BEEN TOTAL NEGLECT IN MAINTAINING STREETS AND ROADWAYS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THERE HAS BEEN NO CODE ENFORCEMENT.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>INDEED, THE CITY HAS INTENTIONALLY CREATED BLIGHT AND NOW WISHES TO USE IT AS A PREDICATE FOR CONDEMNATION</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">BUT IT IS THIS LACK OF ESSENTIAL SERVICES THAT WILL PREVENT THE IMAGINARY DEVELOPER FROM CONSTRUCTING ANYTHING IN THE PROJECT AREA.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">ANOTHER PHYSICAL BAR WHICH PREVENTS DEVELOPMENT OF THE SITE IS THAT THE SOIL CANNOT SUPPORT STRUCTURES DREAMED OF WITHOUT EXTRAORDINARY EXPENSE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THEN THERE IS THE ALLEGED CONTAMINATION WHICH WOULD HAVE TO BE REMOVED.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THE CITY OF NEW YORK ALSO STATES THAT UP TO 7 FEET OF FILL WOULD BE REQUIRED.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>WE DO NOT KNOW IF THE AMOUNT OF FILL WOULD INCREASE AFTER REMEDIATION.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>WE ARE TALKING ABOUT 61.4 ACRES. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">WHO WOULD PAY FOR THIS? HOW MANY BILLIONS WILL IT COST THE CITY OF NEW YORK?</span></u></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">IT HAS NOT BEEN SHOWN THAT ANY DEVELOPER WOULD UNDERTAKE ANY PART OF THE ILLUSORY PROJECT WITH THE ATTENDANT EXTRAORDINARY COSTS. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THERE IS NO PUBLIC USE OF THE LAND NOW OR IN THE NEAR FUTURE </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; line-height: 200%;">THE PROPOSED CONDEMNATION IS SPECULATIVE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-11785975052291653752011-03-02T09:02:00.002-05:002011-03-02T09:04:24.629-05:00Condemning the Condemnors: Willets Point Eminent Domain Hearing Today<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The city is holding a condemnation hearing today for those property owners in what it has called, Phase I, of the Willets Point development. Phase is an excellent term because EDC, the city's rogue development arm, is certainly not at all fazed by bending the law-where it doesn't outright violate it. Today's hearing is a case in point.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Put simply, Phase I is a fiction that has been </span><a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/edcs-day-of-reckoning.html"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">created out of whole cloth</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> by EDC because it cannot easily garner approval of the ramps that the agency had claimed were a necessary prerequisite for any development at Willets Point. Here is a draft statement from Willets Point United's Mike Gerrard, arguably the city's leading environmental lawyer. Gerrard's testimony today foreshadows the legal case that WPU will bring against the city's untoward attempt to proceed with the eminent domain hearing today:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Statement of Michael B. Gerrard</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Arnold & Porter LLP</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On Behalf of Willets Point United and Individual Property Owners</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">EDPL Public Hearing on Willets Point Development Plan</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">March 2, 2011</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>The City’s proposed actions violate the law in at least four separate ways</u>:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s proposed actions violate binding pledges that the City previously made to the New York Supreme Court, on which the Court relied.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s proposed actions amount to segmentation, which is impermissible under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s failure to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement violates SEQRA and CEQR.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>4.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s proposed actions are a violation of federal law -- the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As a result of these numerous violations of law, my clients Willets Point United and individual property owners who are members of WPU plan to institute legal action against the City in New York Supreme Court.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Violations of Pledges to Court</u></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the <u>Ardizzone v. Bloomberg</u> litigation, Robert Lieber, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, submitted an affidavit dated June 29, 2009 in which he stated in Paragraph 20, "The City will not acquire title to any property through Article 4 of the Eminent Domain Procedure Law (“EDPL”) until after ramps for the Van Wyck Expressway are approved by FHWA." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In her decision of August 16, 2010 deciding the case, Justice Madden stated (on pp. 18-19), "At oral argument [for WPU's Article 78], counsel for respondent [City] stated that if the ramps are not approved, the respondents cannot 'proceed with the plan as conceived and approved.' Transcript at 33.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the purposes of this review, this court assumes that if the ramps are not approved, additional review under SEQRA will be required." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thus the City represented to the court, in a sworn affidavit, that it would not take my clients’ property by eminent domain until the FHWA has approved the ramps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Counsel to the City told the court at oral argument that the project cannot proceed unless the ramps are approved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The court relied on these representations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are binding on the City.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Moreover, the attempt to condemn properties prior to approval of the ramps violates several statements made in the Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The City will not take possession of property acquired by eminent domain before the NEPA process is complete and the ramps are approved.” – Willets Point FGEIS, Chapter 29, General Comments, Response G-8, September 12, 2008.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The City has maintained communication and close coordination with NYSDOT from the inception of the project, outlining a range of conceptual design options and working with options that NYSDOT determined were preferable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is fully expected that such approvals will be obtained and the design will be progressed in light of design suggestions to be made by both NYSDOT and the FHWA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, the proposed ramps are an integral part of the Willets Point Development Plan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The developer’s agreement would stipulate that following approval of the Van Wyck Expressway ramps but prior to completion of ramp construction, no buildings would be occupied unless the developer demonstrates that earlier occupancy of such buildings would not result in significant adverse impacts that have not already been described in this GEIS.” – Willets Point FGEIS, Chapter 29, Section 17 (Traffic and Parking), Response 17-6, September 12, 2008.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The FHWA has not approved the ramps. Nor has the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), whose approval is also needed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Segmentation</u></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The City’s Technical Memorandum for the Willets Point Development Plan FGEIS, Updated Plan, February 10, 2011 (“TM004”), makes clear that the City intends to proceed with the full plan for Willets Point, and that the construction of ramps connecting with the Van Wyck Expressway is an essential part of this plan. (E.g., -- “the City remains committed to the new Van Wyck connections,” TM004 p. 5; “Like the Approved Plan, the Updated Plan would include new connections to the Van Wyck Expressway,” TM004 p. 7.) The City has been pledging for years that this approval was imminent, but it has not arrived, and it is obviously nowhere in sight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus the City has violated its pledges to the Court and its representations in the FGEIS, and in desperation is attempting to start the project without this essential approval.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is also attempting to start the project with no one having any clear idea what impacts the project would have with the ramps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are two prior analyses by the City of traffic conditions with the ramps -- the FGEIS and the Access Modification Report (AMR).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we have previously shown in detail, the results of these two studies were radically different. No further illumination is supplied in TM004, yet the City wants to go forward with the condemnation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The SEQRA regulations prohibit considering only a part or segment of an action. 6 N.Y.C.R.R. § 617.3(g)(1).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s current attempt is remarkably similar to a situation that the New York Court of Appeals found to be impermissible segmentation, where the reconstruction of a highway interchange was closely linked to the widening of the one of the highways connecting there, but the two efforts were not considered together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Village of Westbury v. Department of Transportation</i>, 75 N.Y.2d 62 (1989).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Numerous subsequent decisions have likewise struck down the comparable segmentation of intimately linked undertakings. E.g., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">AC 1 Shore Road, LLC v. Incorporated Village of Great Neck</i>, 43 A.D.3d 439 (2d Dept. 2007); <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Island Pine Barrens Society, Inc. v. Town Board of Riverhead</i>, 290 A.D.2d 448 (2d Dept. 2002); <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">City of Buffalo v. New York State Department of Transportation</i>, 184 Misc.2d 243 (Sup.Ct. Erie Co. 2000).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Appellate Division has previously endorsed the consideration of modifications to a highway access ramp as part of the underlying project. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Coalition Against Lincoln West Inc. v. Weinshall</i>, 21 A.D.2d 215 (1<sup>st</sup> Dept. 2005), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">leave to appeal denied</i>, 5 N.Y.3d 715 (2005).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was not done here, as it should have been.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Failure to Prepare Supplemental EIS</u></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">SEQRA requires a supplemental EIS whenever there are significant adverse environmental impacts not addressed or inadequately addressed in the EIS that arise from changes proposed for the project, newly discovered information, or a change in circumstances related to the project. 6 N.Y.C.R.R. § 617.9(a)(7)(i). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">All of these situations are present here. The attempt to institute condemnation without the essential approvals for the Van Wyck ramps is a change to the project, and a change in circumstances; the inability to obtain the essential approvals by now, despite the City’s promises that they would be in hand, is newly discovered information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A supplemental EIS is required.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The need for a supplemental EIS is especially compelling where, as here, there have been substantial unexplained discrepancies between the City’s two prior studies of the traffic implications of the ramps -- the FGEIS and the AMR -- and the public should have a full opportunity to comment. That opportunity has not been provided under SEQRA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Making matters worse, TM004 does not provide the information necessary to understand these discrepancies, and the City has failed to fully answer numerous Freedom of Information Law requests aimed at obtaining the documents that would</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">illuminate this and other questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This hearing is premature in the absence of full compliance with FOIL.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Further enhancing the need for a supplemental EIS are the admissions in TM004<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that many of the significant traffic impacts of the revised project are unmitigatable (Appx. C p. 13), and that there would be numerous significant adverse impacts on the Van Wyck mainline and existing ramps (Appx. D p. 31).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Violations of NEPA</u></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Since the Van Wyck ramps are an essential part of the project, and they require federal approval, the project is subject to NEPA. The<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>City has long acknowledged the applicability of NEPA. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">See, </i>e.g., TM004 p. 4.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">NEPA, like SEQRA, prohibits segmentation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>40 C.F.R. § 1508.25.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That prohibition has been violated here.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We will submit more detailed comments during the written comment period.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-11576706250540251432011-03-02T04:56:00.005-05:002011-03-02T07:46:33.250-05:00Greg David: Willets Point TrutherIn yesterday's Crain's web edition, commentator Greg Davis purports to <a href="http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/greg_david_on_new_york/2011/03/important-truths-about-willets-point.php">set the record straight</a> on Willets Point with an article inaptly titled. "Important Truths about Willets Point." As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own set of facts. So, in the service of a bit of cognitive dissonance for David-someone who has demonstrated <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/walmart-and-letting-marketplace-decide.html">little concern</a> or regard for any one's constitutional property rights in NYC-we offer a rebuttal.<br />
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What was particularly irksome in the David piece was his lack of interest in understanding just what it is that opponents of the Willets Point development have been arguing-something that would have been accomplished with a simple phone call to us with his questions. By not doing so, however, he makes some rather basic errors of fact.<br />
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He begins by asserting that today's eminent domain hearing is the, "end game." "It may appear Wednesday at a public hearing that there is considerable opposition to the Bloomberg administration's plan to clean up and redevelop the hazard waste site known as Willets Point, Queens. Don't be deceived. Tomorrow is the end game of a decades-long effort to made Willets Point a generator of jobs and business activity. Also don't forget that the last-ditch efforts of the few holdout businesses have extracted a steep cost: preventing the city's economy from being as prosperous as it could be.<br />
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Where to begin? As we have <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/hold-up-not-holdouts.html">pointed out</a>, the term,"holdout businesses" is simply a canard and a calumny that thoroughly distorts reality. Shame on you Greg! You can't be holding out if the city has never even given you an offer. And if there has been no offers proffered, how can these, "holdouts," be preventing anything? If there's been a delay here it is because of the city's own malfeasance and missteps.<br />
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In addition, to say there are a few businesses left is also to do violence to the truth-since there is a large majority of businesses who have not sold their property: "The opposition has been greatly overstated. In a 2007 survey, Hunter College researchers found exactly one resident in the area. At the time, there were 225 businesses, mostly auto parts and repair business. They employed 1,300 people. Most of the major businesses in the area have reached agreements with the city to relocate elsewhere, mostly to nearby College Point. The numbers of remaining businesses and workers is much smaller today." <br />
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Well, some twenty odd businesses have negotiated sales with the city-<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/edcs-day-of-reckoning.html">sweetheart deals</a>, in our view-which means that over 85% of the businesses, land owned and/or tenanted, remain. Not our definition of a few at all. So what the city has tried to do is to pay through the nose for the big guys so it could be free to beat up on the woman and children left standing-but, so far, it hasn't worked out as planned. <br />
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But if the "holdouts' haven't prevented the development from proceeding, what has been the holdup? Here David remains totally confused-mangling the environmental issues in one dismissive sentence: "Meanwhile, opponents keep inventing strategies to derail the city. For a while, it was the idea that planned highway ramps somehow violated the environmental impact statement. A judge dismissed the claim summarily.<br />
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This is flat out wrong. Willets Point United brought an Article 78 lawsuit that challenged the city's SEQR review of the development-saying that the ULURP process <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/edc-outdoes-itself-on-willets-point.html">was premature</a> since the crucial ramps off of the Van Wyck had yet to be approved. Judge Madden ruled for the city based on the alocution-a sworn affidavit-of then Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber that the city would not do what it has started to do today: condemn any one's property before the ramps were approved. In other words, there was no harm, no foul for the aggrieved property owners because they would be able to challenge the ramp approval before having to worry about condemnation.<br />
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But the city has gone back on its word. Why? Because <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramp-cramp.html">we have demonstrated</a> that the traffic data submitted to the state was insufficient-fraudulent in our view. It has been over 15 months since that application was essentially bitch slapped by State DOT. This, Greg, is the holdup-and the critique we made of the city's shoddy environmental data was no invention since the state responded by utilizing the information to send EDC back to the drawing board.<br />
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Facts are stubborn things, no? The only party doing any inventing has been the EDC consultants-dummying data that proved to be inadequate. Faced with being stymied at the regulatory level, EDC decided that it would go back on its word to the court-and in all of its testimony to the city council-and begin development without a ramp approval that it claimed was essential. It is in fact, then, EDC's so-called Phase I that is the mother of all inventions-a totally new version of the Willets Point project that needs a supplemental EIS, and can't go forward without it This is the grounds for the lawsuit that WPU will file.<br />
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David also errs by saying that the opposition to Willets Point development has been overstated. It only appears that way since the relatively small band of little guys has put an effective monkey wrench into the EDC pipe dreams. In reality, the support-however misguided-has been widespread among the political class. But by refusing to truly engage with the opposition's cogent argument, what else does David have left but <em>ad hominen</em> attacks and mischaracterization?<br />
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David, like the blind squirrel, does find one nugget of truth, but relegates it to an almost throw away line at the end: "There are questions about Willets Point--how much can the financially strapped city invest in the cleanup, and what will the interest of private sector developers be in building the housing and commercial space the city envisions?"<br />
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Gee, Greg, perhaps we should examine this with 2011 eyes to determine feasibility-before commencing a condemnation proceeding that could lead the City of New York straight down the garden path-t<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/11/willets-point-empty-lots-of-questions.html">o New London and its fiscal fiasco</a> post Kelo. Having introduced this nugget of wisdom, however, David shrinks back from following it to its logical conclusion-caution, not full speed ahead.<br />
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As a result, he concludes with the following: "But those are not reasons to give up and leave Willets Point as it is. Whatever happens will be better than what exists today and will create jobs and help diversify the economy."<br />
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Not having the financial wherewithal to successfully complete the development of Willets Point is no reason to give up? It's OK for David to advocate taking away people's property based on sheer speculation? Nothing could demonstrate his lack of appreciation for constitutional property rights than that conclusion.<br />
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One last reflection-on Greg David's genuflection to Mike Bloomberg: "Only Mayor Michael Bloomberg has gotten this far, which says a lot about the backbone of this administration." Not really. It is more an expression of the mayor's edifice complex, and his insouciance about any possible negative impact that his chainsaw malling of the city has wrought. And his disregard, as evidenced by EDC's extra-legal maneuvering, for honesty, integrity, and the rule of law.<br />
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The Willets Point project was <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-it-legal.html">midwifed in illegality</a> by the hiring of Claire Shulman's astroturf LDC. It proceeded apace through the invidious offering of <strong><em>boucoup </em></strong>bucks to large property owners-folks represented by Peter Vallone, whose latest claim to fame was his three time endorsement of the mayor. Nothing to see there. It then moved on to fraudulent traffic submissions to NYS DOT, and now to violating sworn court testimony.<br />
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This, friends, isn't an example of backbone. It is a manifestation of a bullying administration with little regard for either legal niceties or the fate of small property owners-revealing in the process that the man who has claimed to be above special interest is, in reality, their apotheosis-a classless example of class interest.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-8629455744093818422011-03-01T05:37:00.001-05:002011-03-01T05:37:00.544-05:00Ketcham Calls Out AKRF and EDCWe are taking the liberty of giving everyone a preview of the statement that WPU's traffic engineer, Brian Ketcham, will be making before the EDPL hearing on Wednesday. A careful perusal of Ketcham's traffic analysis will give everyone a crystal clear idea why EDC is going forward with a rampless Phase I <strong>before </strong>obtaining regulatory approval for the Van Wyck ramps-ramps that fail to mitigate the project's massive traffic generation. Ketcham's analysis will also be the crucial evidence that WPU will use to invalidate EDC's extra-legal maneuvering.<br />
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Here's Ketcham's statement:<br />
<br />
"Nearly four decades ago William Hoppen and I took on the West Side Highway project. We did so alone. And we paid for all of our work in cash and in careers. The City, State and Federal governments spent $150 million to stop us. They could not. Although they did torture us afterwards. <br />
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Westway was not nearly so complicated as Willets Point. Nor as divisive! As with Willets Point, Westway was a multi-billion project. A huge land development swindle that would have made the City’s favored developers billions. Another similarity is that the Westway engineers, Parsons Brinckerhoff, were the same folks who were to form AKRF, the environmental engineering firm who botched the Willets Point environmental impact statement and have caused the multi-year delay in this project. <br />
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These engineering firms along with NYCEDC will ultimately be responsible for the collapse of the Willets Point project. In the case of Westway these environmental engineers could not make the case in support for Westway. Their efforts cost taxpayers $150,000,000 and they did not have a clue. It is incredible to think about that battle nearly 40 years later. <br />
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For Willets Point, the problem is that AKRF knows precisely what they are doing and they have to lie to make their case. They know that Willets Point is too big for the Flushing area. They know the surrounding roadway network cannot accommodate Willets Point traffic. They know that the Van Wyck Expressway and connecting expressways cannot accommodate so much additional traffic. They know there is no additional transit capacity to accommodate Willets Point and the other projects like Flushing Commons and that even more traffic will be forced onto the area than reported. <br />
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They lied and they got caught. They have lied repeatedly. Over the last 18 months we have provided NYCEDC, NYSDOT and the FHWA dozens of documents supporting these assertions, identifying the errors, omissions and outright lies that forced EDC in 2010 to withdraw its application for ramps connecting Willets Point to the Van Wyck Expressway. <br />
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While these agencies have failed to directly acknowledge these reports they have been forced, based on these documents, to delay any action on the Willets Point project. Within the next month I will be providing you with a new report summarizing the situation today, critiquing the latest efforts by EDC to sell their Willets Point project, and connecting the current problems that we have identified with all of the many reports that we have submitted over the past 18 months. <br />
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The ramps will not help reduce the impact of the Willets Point project. The surrounding roads and expressways cannot accommodate this project let alone the other 20 million square feet of new development generating more than 170,000 new car and truck trips daily. The existing transit systems cannot accommodate 200,000 more daily trips leaving most of these travelers to use their cars and add to the areas Super-Gridlock conditions. <br />
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The NYCEDC cannot meet any of the eight FHWA criteria for ramp approval and, as NYCEDC has said repeatedly, the Willets Point project will not work without the ramps. The Willets Point Development Plan is fatally flawed and must be abandoned." Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-50492195163519688062011-03-01T04:57:00.003-05:002011-03-01T05:25:36.736-05:00Sick Transit Gloria: A Sadik-Khan JobSadik-Khan is at it again-this time it is the arbitrary remaking of 34th Street that has her Utopian dreams all aflame. The NY Post has the<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/save_th_street_ZegSPjgaoPlXguYquLyw3N"> editorial response</a>: "City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan — a k a The Thing That Ate Times Square — is on her way back for seconds<strong>.</strong> New York’s bicycle belle has her eye on 34th Street this time, which she’s planning to transform into another teeming walrus wharf . . . er, pedestrian plaza. She’s planning to swipe the entire block between Fifth and Sixth avenues, permitting only buses to pass through. Nor will the chop stop there: 34th Street is to run eastbound only from Fifth Avenue, and westward from Sixth Avenue, rendering the road useless as a thoroughfare."<br />
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The Post, as we do, believes that this is asinine: "Certainly her new plan would severely degrade one of New York’s premier commercial districts, for no discernible good purpose other than to give a boost to the lawn-chair and roller-blade industries. Worse still, she’s proceeding with her $30 million scheme in secret and without a shred of real accountability."<br />
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Andrea Peyser agrees-and <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/janette_big_transitway_road_to_ruin_V6obl2EErgSaSZtg04Lr1K">weighs in</a> in yesterday's Post: "At issue is a project bigger than the detested, dangerous bike lanes and despised pedestrian plazas that have sprouted up like a cancer, to applause from Mayor Bloomberg. The new plan is Sadik-Khan's crowning achievement. Her Taj Mahal. Her Coney Island fun house. It's called the 34th Street Transitway. And as plans reveal, it's a doozy -- meant to surrender that main Midtown thoroughfare to buses while preventing passenger cars from traveling it from the Lincoln Tunnel to the Midtown Tunnel. The project is a budding Titanic -- a monstrous muddle of bus routes, bike lanes and pedestrian malls."<br />
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When we last encountered this maven of mischief she was fiddling while the the city was buried under a blizzard-but practical matters are not her métier. The Post gnashes its teeth over this inanity, but doesn't feel that there is much that can be done-aside from public caterwauling: "Which is why it is critical that the City Council exert its every power to force Madame Bike-Lady to explain — publicly and in detail — what she has in mind, and precisely what its impact will be. True, the council doesn’t have any authority over the DOT, but it can use its bully pulpit to shine a light on the department’s hush-hush maneuvers...This time, it can do something to protect existing commerce — and jobs — from the wrath of Sadik-Khan."<br />
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We disagree that the council is helpless to stop this maneuver-it may be self-checked, but it isn't powerless. What the body can do is challenge this cockamamie scheme under the rubric of SEQR-the state's environmental quality review act. Put simply, this is a massive undertaking that will have an equally large impact on the city's environment. The council should warn the mayor that it Sadik-=khan doesn't submit this to a full environmental review, it will go into court to force the department's hand. It is time for the legislature to re-assert its own oversight prerogatives.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">We'll give, along with Peyser, two outspoken New Yorkers the last word: "It should be scrapped. "Oh, my God! This means all of our side streets will become tunnel-to-tunnel streets," said Marisa Bulzone, a 35th Street resident. "How many meetings do I have to go to and tell officials that 33rd Street does not go through? You'd think they'd know this. They don't!" Lisa Pyle of Manhattan griped, "This is a case of<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Mayor Bloomberg </a>hiring those he enjoys as dinner guests, like [Schools Chancellor] Cathie Black. "I bet [Sadik-Khan] doesn't even own a car -- maybe doesn't even have a license." Stop her before it's too late.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-59495164012849946552011-03-01T04:51:00.002-05:002011-03-01T04:51:00.689-05:00Calling Out Eduardo GiraldoIn yesterday's NY Times<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/nyregion/28willets.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion"> story on</a> Willets Point there was one item that we found disturbing. Not surprising, mind you, but disturbing because it represents a pattern of dishonest representation. We're referring to the comments of Eduardo Giraldo: "While some critics have portrayed the redevelopment of Willets Point as a class battle by a billionaire mayor intent on supplanting scrap metal with sushi, the Bloomberg administration has some unlikely allies in the project. “We see Willets Point as a form of modern-day slavery in which poor people are working in conditions worse than in their home countries,” said Eduardo Giraldo, head of the <a href="http://www.hccq.org/" title="The chamber’s Web site.">Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Queens</a>. “It is better to shut it down.” <br />
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This is the same Giraldo who has come out four square in support of Walmart in NYC-clearly a man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience; in this case, the cash nexus looms large. So Giraldo's concerns for the plight of the workers is suspect-and if the city does evict the businesses from Willets Point you will not find Giraldo within ten miles of helping the "exploited" workers find new work-his job will have been completed.<br />
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Giraldo has anointed himself as a spokesman for Hispanixs, but his group is a rump organization that is not a part of the official NYS Federation of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce. His grass roots support? When he ran for the city council in 2009 against Julissa Ferreras he <a href="http://boropolitics.com/stories/1/8/01_08_0916_district_21_-_julissa_wins.html">was beaten</a> in a landslide: "City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-East Elmhurst) handily defeated challenger Eduardo Giraldo to win the Democratic primary for the 21st District seat. Ferreras, the incumbent who won the seat in a special election in February after her former boss Hiram Monserrate ascended to the state Senate, had 65.9 percent of the vote compared with Giraldo’s 34.1 percent, according to city Board of Election figures. She had no known Republican opponents."<br />
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We'll give the hapless Giraldo the last word: “I think we worked hard,” Giraldo said. “We gave it 110 percent. ... I think the turnout was very low and we weren’t able to persuade the people to vote for me."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-39355178332515136852011-03-01T04:43:00.002-05:002011-03-01T04:43:00.086-05:00EDC's Day of ReckoningOn Wednesday, the city is holding what we believe to be an<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/willets-point-development-defense-fund.html"> illegal eminent domain hearing</a>-which, if true, wouldn't surprise any one who has followed the Willets Point saga over the past few years. After all, when NYC government can begin the development process by <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-it-legal.html">illegally hiring</a> a local development corporation to lobbying its behalf, then all the illegality that follows shouldn't be shocking. But it actually is.<br />
<br />
Yesterday the NY Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/nyregion/28willets.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion">focused in</a> on Willets Point and underscored the extent to which the little guys <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/nyregion/14rezone.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=%22willets%20point%22%20apartments&st=cse">are being hosed</a>: <br />
<br />
<em>"Two years ago, as the mayor attended the Mets’ home opener at the new Citi Field, Adrien Nicolescue, an auto mechanic from Romania, joined a procession of honking garbage trucks to protest the city’s plans to condemn the nearby Willets Point area and build a $3 billion project of apartments, office buildings, stores, restaurants and a hotel. But as his comrades geared up for another showdown with the mayor at a public hearing on the project scheduled for Wednesday, Mr. Nicolescue decided to pack up and leave. “I am going home, back to Romania,” he said, standing on the same pothole-pocked corner of Willets Point where he has been drawing in customers for windshield repairs for 36 years. Willets Point, in Queens, is a 61-acre expanse of junkyards and auto-repair shops so squalid that local business owners compare it to Iraq. “I don’t want to leave,” Mr. Nicolescue said, “but I have nowhere to go. This may look like the third world, but it is my world.” </em><br />
<br />
The Times continues: "But opponents of the Bloomberg plan counter that the project is speculative and environmentally unsound. They insist that the area, however bedraggled, has become an Ellis Island of sorts for a newly arriving underclass that depends on it to get by. They also complain bitterly that the city is shutting down thriving small businesses that have nowhere else to go." <br />
<br />
But the efforts of Willets Point United have so far stymied EDC is its land grab-and the group will soon be arguing in court that a process that began with the illegal lobbying of Claire Shulman has <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/edc-outdoes-itself-on-willets-point.html">now degenerated even further</a> with the city's efforts to avoid complying with the original terms of the environmental review that was the basis for the city council's approval in 2008. Nothing is more exemplary of the <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/hold-up-not-holdouts.html">corrupt nature</a> of the process than the discriminatory manner that EDC has used against the smaller property owners-nothing more egregious than <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/edcs-flushing-towing-company.html">the treatment</a> of Flushing Towing's Carlos Canal.<br />
<br />
EDC's jaundiced outlook is given exposure by the Times: "City officials estimate that Willets Point is home to 255 businesses, which employ about 1,700 people, some in sheds made of tin or cinder blocks. Of 74 property owners, 28 have agreed to sell their land or relocate, city officials say; the city already owns 90 percent of the property where the first five-year phase of development would go."<br />
<br />
Do the math. Less than half of the property owners have settled with the city, but that represents the largest percentagee of the property-which means that, since EDC has yet to negotiate with the others, the city has looked to buy off the big guys with sweetheart deals, and have the luxury to bully the little folks, who are treated as little more than bugs on the EDC microscope. How else to explain no negotiations in over two years with the majority of all of the property owners?<br />
<br />
Think of it, though. There are 1700 workers at Willets Point that will soon have no place to go if this corrupt deal goes forward-and if you believe that the city will sincerely work to relocate these folks, just ask all of the Bronx Terminal market wholesalers who were <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2005/07/bronx-terminal-market-edc-disgrace.html">treated with disdain</a> by EDC, scattered to the four winds, as it made that property available to Related in a no bid conveyance. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.<br />
<br />
The illegality of the EDC condemnation effort will be subject to a vigorous legal challenge-but not one that rests exclusively on the eminent domain issue. How could it? There is no protection for property owners under NY law, so this challenge will be based on the EDC's violation of the environmental laws it promised to uphold, but didn't as soon as the going got too tough. Here's where the fabled Mike Gerrard comes in.<br />
<br />
rGerard will file suit on WPU's behalf on the following grounds-and in his own words: <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> "1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s proposed actions violate binding pledges that the City previously made to the New York Supreme Court, on which the Court relied.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s proposed actions amount to segmentation, which is impermissible under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR).</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s failure to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement violates SEQRA and CEQR.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>4.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City’s proposed actions are a violation of federal law -- the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As a result of these numerous violations of law, my clients Willets Point<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>United and individual property owners who are members of WPU plan to institute legal action against the City in New York Supreme Court."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">As Gerrard goes on to point out-referencing the misrepresentations of then Deputy Mayor Lieber to the court: "...the City represented to the court, in a sworn affidavit, that it would not take my clients’ property by eminent domain until the FHWA has approved the ramps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Counsel to the City told the court at oral argument that the project cannot proceed unless the ramps are approved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The court relied on these representations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are binding on the City."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">So, in our view, this EDPL hearing is nothing but a sham-as EDC tries to salvage progress on the Willets Point development out of <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/avella-blasts-edcs-dishonesty.html">its ineptitude </a>over failing to garner approval for the Van Wyck ramps. It is a fitting culmination-a cherry on the sundae-to an entire process characterized by abuse and illegality. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">We'll give Willets Point United's Ralph St. John the last word-but EDC hasn't heard the last from WPU by any means: "Meanwhile, some small business owners are frustrated that their neighbors are getting lucrative deals from the city and they are not. Ralph St. John, whose company has built apartment buildings and parks for the city for nearly 20 years, said he had been offered nothing, and that his 18 employees would lose their jobs if he were forced to leave. City officials said that Mr. St. John’s land was not earmarked for development in the first phase, and that by the time the city was ready to make a deal with him, his land would probably have increased in value. But Mr. St. John, who is 77, does not want to live in limbo. </div><br />
“If you want what I got, act like a man and come face me,” he said. “Don’t use eminent domain and steal from me.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-83391403466518700862011-02-28T05:29:00.002-05:002011-02-28T09:16:30.909-05:00TINOs: Teachers in Name Only?The NY Post has a story yeterday that <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/union_classic_le_en_jrQKCmKdjWQbMAtzqHASxI">reported on</a> the 1500 UFT members who are being paid not to teach as part of a negotiated union-release program: "In the city's funny math, you get only one teacher for the price of two. The Department of Education pays about 1,500 teachers for time they spend on union activities -- and pays other teachers to replace them in the classroom. It's a sweetheart deal that costs taxpayers an extra $9 million a year to pay fill-ins for instructors who are sprung -- at full pay -- to carry out responsibilities for the United Federation of Teachers."<br />
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In a time of fiscal austerity, some folks think that the practice should end: "With<a class="topiclink" href="http://www.blogger.com/t/Michael_Bloomberg"> Mayor Bloomberg </a>calling for thousands of teacher layoffs to balance the 2012 budget, critics say it's time to halt the extravagant benefit. "In these tight fiscal times, it defies common sense to pay two different people to do one job," said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a government watchdog. "It's a waste of money." <br />
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Perhaps Dadey is right, but there's a couple of larger points that get lost in the midst of all the union focused bashing-and, ironically, it is made by E.J. McMahon, certainly no fan of labor. As he <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/cuomo_tied_down_HNevJXMS0dcfKGGiz5ZG2O">pointed out</a> in the same edition of the Post, commenting on Wisconsin and Governor Cuomo's challenges to rein in labor costs: "It’s pointless to blame the unions themselves for this situation. After all, they are only acting the way unions are supposed to act — relentlessly pursuing the interests of their members, period. The real blame falls on the generations of elected officials who have abdicated their responsibility by creating and nurturing this system."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
And the issue with the union released teachers fall on the nonfeasance of the current occupant of city hall. As the union spokesman told the Post: "UFT spokesman Dick Riley said such arrangements are common among city unions "and were instituted with the agreement of NYC government." The mayor, probably out of town, was unavalable for a comment.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">It is high time for both the Post and the NY Daily News to refocus their attention on where it belongs-the mismanagement of the educational edifice by the mayor and his dearly departed ed head, Joel Klein. (These papers share in <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/07/ny-post-and-daily-news-awediting.html">the culpability</a> since they promoted the mayor's faux achievements uncritically.) After all, Bloomberg and Klein are the ones who larded up the DOE payroll with 16,000 additional personnel-money fro nothing in our view. And they're the ones who promoted an out sized NYC educational achiement that is turining out to be made almost entirely out of whole cloth.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Now, what may be true is that the UFT <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2009/07/ny-post-gets-randi.html">colluded for too long</a> with the mayor's phony test score bonus regime-but the blame needs to be redirected to the man in charge of the fiasco. And can we stop with all of this <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/02/25/2011-02-25_cuomo_must_end_.html">LIFO propopaganda</a>? Seniority may be a flawed system for hiring and firing teachers but, much like democracy, it might also be better than all of the alternatives-at least under the current structure of public education. In NYC, are we going to replace seniority with a system controlled by Bloomberg and his lackeys? Talk about making a bad situation worse!</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">The reality here is that the mayor's nine year rule has been<a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/costlybenefit-analysis.html"> less than stellar</a> in regards to the educational change that he told us should be the basis for determining whether he has been a success or a failure. When we add the incredible increase in funds and personnel into the mix, <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/04/stern-warning-to-emperor-mike.html">the evaluation falls</a> from a D to an F. The teacher's union has played a role in all of this, but it hasn't been a starring one. That honor goes to Hizzoner.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-59682731159475474972011-02-28T05:17:00.007-05:002011-02-28T05:17:00.063-05:00Voodoo ReportingOn Saturday the local tabs did return to the story of the fatal Flatbush fire-but not as we hoped. Neither the NY Post nor the NY Daily News-or the NY Times, for that matter-went back to examine whether or not the city's reduced manning policies played a role in the tragedy. Not when you can introduce the possibility that voodoo sex had something to do with fire-and both the Post and the News felt this was front page importance.<br />
<br />
Here's the Post's <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/fatal_klyn_fire_was_hex_rated_N0NlwUMYxxfrOEb1o7FSvN">sensational lede</a>: "A wild candlelit sex ritual between a Brooklyn woman and her voodoo priest got so hot and heavy, they ended up torching their clothes and sheets -- sparking the nasty fire that killed a retired teacher and left 100 people homeless last week, sources said yesterday."<br />
<br />
The News <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/02/25/2011-02-25_voodoo_candles_used_in_sex_ceremony_sparked_deadly_brooklyn_blaze_sources_say.html">chimes in</a>: "A Voodoo sex romp triggered the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Brooklyn+(New+York+City)" title="Brooklyn (New York City)"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Brooklyn</span></a> blaze that killed one person and left dozens homeless when a ceremony meant to bring good luck went horribly wrong, sources said yesterday." The Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/nyregion/26fire.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=flatbush%20fire&st=cse">account</a> was, as expected, a bit less lurid: "A fatal five-alarm fire that roared through a building in Flatbush, Brooklyn, last Saturday was ignited by candles arrayed around a bed for a voodoo ceremony, Fire Department officials said Friday."<br />
<br />
Now we don't really blame the papers for reporting this-it is all quite juicy, after all. But we do expect that the press might want to focus on a critical management issue that could, if not altered, lead to more fire fatalities in the future. Only the News even bothered to mention this issue: "The firefighters union said staffing cuts contributed to the spread of the fire, but <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Salvatore+Cassano" title="Salvatore Cassano"><span style="color: #015fb6;">Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano</span></a>, without referring to the couple having sex, blamed other errors. "This fire had so many of those elements - candles left on the floor near combustible material, one of the occupants trying to douse the flames before calling 911, and an open door, which allowed fire to spread into the hallway," Cassano said. "Hopefully others will learn from this tragedy."<br />
<br />
We can imagine that Commissioner Cassono was relieved to have a sensational action as the proximate cause of the blaze-and we have no doubt that the failures of the occupants of the apartment played a role in the tragic results. But to state this, and this alone, is to fail to further explain that irresponsibility is all too often at the root of why fires are started-but this has absolutely nothing to do with the failure to control the blaze that led to a woman perishing; along with a total building demolition.<br />
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In our view, the manning issue is a critical one-and it points to the failure of the management priorities of the Bloombergistas. This is an administration that <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/costlybenefit-analysis.html">added 16,000</a> more personnel to the DOE, leading to a grand total of 23% of our high school graduates being college ready-yet it wants to pinch pennies on fire truck manning where lives are at risk.<br />
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We notice that Commissioner Cassano left out entirely any possibility that the failure to control the fire might have been a result of management failures-both manning and command decisions in the minutes leading up to the eventual fatality. That is why a thorough investigation is needed, and if the fire unions are proven correct, we can put the death of Mary Feagin right up there with the snowfu and CityTime scandals-more evidence of just how egregious it was for the mayor to usurp a third term.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-42859411671857098092011-02-28T05:05:00.003-05:002011-02-28T05:39:01.243-05:00Hold Up, Not Holdouts<span style="font-family: inherit;">We have been </span><a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/willets-point-holdouts.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">inveighing against</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> the use of the term, "holdouts," to describe Willets Point property owners who are not on;y unwilling to seel their property, but even more importantly, have yet to be approached by EDC to negotiate a sale-as is required by the Eminent Domain Procedure Law. The urgency of the issue is magnified by the fact that the city is holding an eminent domain hearing on Wednesday.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Flushing Times has </span><a href="http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2011/02/24/queens/qns_willets_folo_20110224.txt"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the story</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">: "The hearing, scheduled from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. March 2 in the auditorium of the library, located at 41-17 Main St., will be the only official opportunity for Willets landowners and business owners, as well as any other concerned citizens, to voice their views about the $3 billion plans to representatives of the city Economic Development Corp. and Cornerstone Group, the firm handling relocation of area businesses."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ah yes, the Cornerstone Group-the same pretenders who EDC put in charge of the relocation of the businesses that were thrwon out of the Bronx Terminal Market. As we </span><a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2005/07/bronx-terminal-market-edc-disgrace.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">pointed out</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> five years ago about these no-bid favorites: "There is a constant reference to the Cornerstone Group as the city’s relocation expert. Still? Doesn’t our “senior counsel” realize that these dopey consultants had labored long and hard Xeroxing advertisements from the local newspapers and passed off this effort as relocation (of course she does, she just doesn’t give a damn)?"</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But we digress. The issue here is the city's flauting of the very law it is sworn to uphold-and we will now rely on the wisdom of one of the foremost experts on the EDPL, Mike Rikon, to explain just how tainted this process has been ever since the city council passed the Willets Point ULURP appliocation in the fall of 2008. Once the council passed the application, the eminent domain procedures in the EDPL should have been initiated in order for the city to be in compliance with the law.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's Rikon's analysis: "The Council of the City of New York adopted Resolution No. 1759 on December 18, 2008. This Resolution with other related Resolutions adopted the Willets Point Urban Renewal Area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Resolution approved the Urban Renewal Plan, the Resolution states, “the Plan requires the acquisition and subsequent disposition of property within the Willets Point Urban Renewal Area.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the predicate authorization to condemn."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Once the authorization is in place, then the next steps are clear-to everyone bu the city, it appears: "When the City Council authorizes acquisition of private property, the City is required to comply with the Eminent Domain Procedure Law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That law requires the appraisal of the properties to be acquired and the written offer of an amount that represents 100% of the highest approved appraisal."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Instead, the city did the complete opposite, in a move rife with favoritism and potential corruption: </span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: inherit;">"When the City Council authorizes acquisition of private property, the City is required to comply with the Eminent Domain Procedure Law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That law requires the appraisal of the properties to be acquired and the written offer of an amount that represents 100% of the highest approved appraisal. It is no secret that those owners who obtained favorable deals were also those that supported members of the City Council that wrote an “adamant opposition” letter signed by 29 members to prevent the project’s approval.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the Project was approved after the negotiated agreements were made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></em><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><em><span style="font-family: inherit;">The City’s improper conduct in ignoring the law’s requirement of written offers based on fair market appraisals and equal treatment to all property owners is inexcusable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The law was adopted to prevent corruption and special deals."</span></em></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But, as </span><a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/edcs-flushing-towing-company.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">we pointed out</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> last week in regards to the disgraceful treatment of Carlos Canal and Flushing Towing, favoritism and inequity is at the heart of this entire process: "EDC lied to Canal-and took him through a two year sham relocation process. But Canal shouldn't feel too bad. EDC has lied to the city council, lied to the court, and lied to almost every other land owner that wasn't singled out for favored nation status-lying to Canal is part of a systematic pattern of dishonesty that will be challenged in court."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, as we have</span><a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/edc-outdoes-itself-on-willets-point.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> pointed out</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> continually, the city also told one and all that condemnation-a supposed last resort-would not begin until the city got approvals for those crucial ramps. That position held until it became clear that the ramp approvals-thought to be a slam dunk by EDC-all of a sudden became problematic after WPU exposed the deficiency of the traffic data submitted by the agency's compromised consultants. These so called experts, so unused to anyone challenging their work, must have been stunned when WPU's Brian Ketcham exposed it as a sham-and the agency itself has been playing catch up ever since.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So the move to the EDPL hearing, in spite of the fact that the remaining property owners have yet to even get the required appraisals, no less an offer, is one of desperation on the part of EDC-a desperation so profound that this rogue group is willing to roll the legal dice by violating what it has alocuted to the court about the ramp approvals proceeding any eminent domain process.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We'll give Rikon the last word: "Condemnation is a very significant power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It enables a condemnor to forcibly take title to someone’s land or business<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If this awesome power is to be used by the government, it must be used carefully, legally and only when necessary."</span> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12403538.post-35470524315970625152011-02-28T04:53:00.002-05:002011-02-28T04:53:00.694-05:00Questionable Calorie Counting: Part IILast week <a href="http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2011/02/calorie-recount.html">we opined</a> about the self serving NYC DOH study of its menu labeling. In this week's Crain's we are force fed so more pablum from the agency on the topic: "The city's 2008 menu-labeling law has been criticized since the day it was implemented as being both burdensome to chain restaurants and ineffective for customers: No study had shown that posting calorie information induces restaurant patrons to make healthier selections. That could change. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene says its new research shows that the 15% of fast-food patrons in the city who use the information eat an average of 106 fewer calories than those who don't see or ignore the calorie content."<br />
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Nah, not very likely-and who's gonna believe the department that gets to mark its own test papers? For a more realistic appraisal of the DOH self survey, listen to NYU's Marion Nestle-a proponent of aggressive intervention for healthier eating: "New York University used a similar approach in a February study of teenagers who ate at fast-food outlets. But researchers concluded that their calorie intake was unchanged. “Most studies show very, very small effects,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at NYU. The city's study could be significant. “It shows a small effect, but it's bigger than any other that has been seen.”<br />
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The department, of course, refused to share its methodology with Crains: "City officials refused to share further details because the study is being peer-reviewed for possible publication in an academic journal. The research project, begun in the spring of 2009, cataloged 12,000 lunch receipts at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and eight other fast-food chains in the city."<br />
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Well, the last effort by the department to get peer reviewed on menu labeling fell flat-and independent studies-<a href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/28/6/w1110.abstract">like this one</a>-have shown no effect whatsoever. As the authors tell us: "We examined the influence of menu calorie labels on fast food choices in the wake of New York City’s labeling mandate. Receipts and survey responses were collected from 1,156 adults at fast-food restaurants in low-income, minority New York communities. These were compared to a sample in Newark, New Jersey, a city that had not introduced menu labeling. We found that 27.7 percent who saw calorie labeling in New York said the information influenced their choices. However, we did not detect a change in calories purchased after the introduction of calorie labeling. We encourage more research on menu labeling and greater attention to evaluating and implementing other obesity-related policies."<br />
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As we told Crains: "Critics said the law is a compliance hassle for food operators and has had little measurable benefit. Richard Lipsky, a small business lobbyist who has represented restaurant owners, said the city's findings were self-serving. “They should be taken with a grain of salt,” he said. “No pun intended.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com