De Blasio Talks Hurricane Preparedness As Tropical Storm Bertha Churns In Atlantic

De Blasio Talks Hurricane Preparedness As Tropical Storm Bertha Churns In Atlantic « CBS New York

Coney Island’s residents remain largely isolated from local progress

Coney Island’s residents remain largely isolated from local progress

Dozens Pitch In To Clean Up Sheepshead Bay Road » Sheepshead Bay News Blog

Sheepshead Bites » Blog Archive Photos: Dozens Pitch In To Clean Up Sheepshead Bay Road » Sheepshead Bay News Blog

Council Member Chaim Deutsch is pleased to announce the success of his first community clean-up event that drew nearly 100 volunteers to Sheepshead Bay Road on Sunday. Armed with rakes, shovels and brooms, volunteers turned out to pick up trash from neighborhood streets.

“We’re taking pride in our neighborhoods – block by block across our district. Coming out and volunteering is sending a message to violators that we demand a clean neighborhood,” Deutsch stated. “Cleaner streets promote social and economic improvement, whilst giving our children and families a clean, safe place to reside.”

This event, the first in a series of clean-ups in Council Member Deutsch’s district, aims to promote unity and community activism, all the while drawing attention to the Council Member’s top priority: cleaner streets. Council Member Deutsch is proud to have funded various clean-up initiatives in this year’s budget and is actively reaching out to local small business owners to educate them on ways to keep storefronts clean.

“Many thanks to the Department of Sanitation for their commitment to working with me to promote cleanliness, as well as for the donation of gloves and garbage bags and the loan of brooms, shovels, dustpans and rakes,” said Deutsch. “Together we are making our neighborhoods an even better place to live, work, and do business.”

Please contact Council Member Deutsch’s office at 718-368-9176 to learn more about future community clean-up events or to share suggestions that will help Deutsch address problem areas.

The next Community Clean-Up Event will be held on August 17th on Avenue U

Both suspects caught in 'despicable' robbery and beating in Midwood

Both suspects caught in 'despicable' robbery and beating in Midwood | Brooklyn Daily Eagle

(Excerpt)
By Matthew Taub
Special to Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn Brief
The second of two suspects who assaulted a young woman in an apartment building in the vicinity of Avenue M and East 18th Street in Midwood on Sunday were arrested early Friday morning. The other suspect was apprehended on Thursday.

The Battle of Brooklyn Bridge Park

The Battle of Brooklyn Bridge Park - NYTimes.com
(Excerpt)
The internal message board of the One Brooklyn Bridge Park luxury condominium is generally used to post “babysitter wanted” notes or to remind residents to pick up their dry cleaning. Last spring, residents used it to air their dirty laundry.

When city officials said they were ready to solicit requests for proposals to develop two parcels of land north of Atlantic Avenue and directly south of the building, they altered a 2006 plan so that it would include affordable housing, for moderate- to middle-income residents. Some condo owners reacted with unfiltered fury.

The messages expressed outrage over how the two new buildings would increase crowds in the park and cramp the already oversubscribed local public school, P.S. 8. Other residents were angry that a 31-story tower would block their views. When some people intimated that affordable housing could bring down property values, the debate took a tone that was offensive to Nina Lorez Collins, a writer and former literary agent.

“It felt very Nimby, like ‘We don’t want poor people in the backyard,’ ” she said recently.

“After two months of those comments, I sent out an email to everyone. I said, ‘You are making me ashamed to be your neighbor, please stop.’ ”

The tone of the posts softened, but the uproar has not ended.

In the largely liberal sandbox of Brooklyn Heights, the debate is not restricted to One Brooklyn Bridge Park, a former Jehovah’s Witnesses’ printing plant transformed into a condo in 2009 with the purpose of financing the park’s operations. A park activist group, Save Pier 6, has been responsible for pasting laminated fliers along Joralemon Street leading to the park; it also started an online petition against the two buildings that has gathered 3,000 signatures.

The battle is taking place in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s home borough and among many people who might have seemed to be his core constituency. As new basketball courts and soccer fields have opened and proved wildly popular on the Brooklyn Bridge Park’s piers, the issue of private development and public authority in the park continues to divide neighbors and neighborhood associations, split some households and forge unions in others.

This is a continuation of a battle that goes back 30 years, in which civic leaders in Brooklyn Heights fought to make a park on the shipping piers that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was ready to sell.

“The bleeding-heart liberals, of which many of my great friends are, say we need affordable housing,” said Judi Francis, 59, who lives in Cobble Hill and is the president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund, an advocacy group that fought any kind of housing in the park.

“Affordable housing is a noble and fine thing. But a park that has to pay for itself is not supposed to pay for the ills of the city.”

Bikes on the Coney Island Boardwalk