Meet the new boss

BRONXTALK, Monday 27, 2009

In a wide-ranging Monday interview with veteran Bronx talk-show host Gary Axelbank — a Riverdale-area resident — new Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. appeared to make some concrete promises on his performance in his new job. He will take office Friday.

Here's some of his strong words:

Commitment	Quote
Prepare Bronx residents for union jobs at projects of the scale of the Yankee Stadium or Croton plant	"We want to make sure that people are unionized before we actually sign off on these projects.”
Appoint active, independent community board members and equip them to make informed land use decisions	" ... And as we move forward and we evaluate people’s applications, we’re going to look to see who is really committed, who is really going to go to the meetings, who are the ones who are really going to analyze how a new schools are being built and where they’re being built, when you look at development, whether its good for the neighborhood or whether its going to threaten the character of the neighborhood, how we empower community boards with the technical assistance and the legal assistance and the know-how so they make sound decisions on land use and the ULURP process, these are all the things I want to do I want to work together with community boards so long as there is a real earnest attempt to better not only the community boards but the entire Bronx."
Prevailing wage and a community benefits agreement at Kingsbridge Armory, and schools, too, if that's what the community wants	"What I want to do is bring everyone together to ensure that we get prevailing wages for our jobs there … jobs for people in our community."
Press the city Department of Environmental Protection for answers to questions about work on the Croton filtration plant.	“I want to advocate for the DEP to really answer questions … what I want is for there to be a response to the many concerns of the people in the neighborhood.”
Bring a hip-hop museum to the Bronx	"Absolutely ... why not, this is a genre that’s changed the planet."
Defer to the community boards on how the borough president's office will respond to development and zoning proposals from the mayor's office and City Hall	"We’re going to take our cue from the community, from the community boards."
Make an effort to clamp down on landlords who fail to maintain their properties, possibly even by putting pressure on City Hall to revoke transitional housing contracts for landlords who don't properly treat their tenants	"We want to make the case as to why [the borough presidency] is a relevant agency, a relevant office, and certainly looking at landlords and how they mistreat Bronxites is something I’ll be paying attention to and focusing on.”

Is landmarking worth it?

Rev. Diego Delgado Miller shows the wear and tear on his over-100-year-old Kingsbridge church, Church of the Mediator, last June. The church is on a list of buildings the former Bronx borough president recommended for landmark status. Claudio Papapietro // Riverdale Press photo

Community Board 8 members are watchful because of a Bronx borough president’s report recommending 15 Riverdale and Kingsbridge-area buildings, historical districts or other features be recognized for historical significance. The report was released by then-Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr.’s office in December, and we editorialized on that list in February.

By December, Mr. Carrión had already let slip that he would soon be leaving the Bronx to become head of the White House Office of Urban Policy. The new borough president is expected to be sworn in tomorrow Friday.

Board 8 land use committee chairman Charles Moerdler said at a Monday meeting that were the sites in the report placed on the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s calendar for consideration, any work permits for the sites would be suspended until the commission decided whether or not to landmark them.

On landmarking issues, Mr. Moerdler, a former commissioner of the city Department of Buildings, tends to side in favor of granting the property owner as much freedom from regulation as possible.

Landmarking also incurs extra cost for property owners, because their professionals working on the property will have to take the extra steps of applying to Landmarks and shepherding that application towards approval. Mr. Moerdler said he was concerned that houses of worship and other non-profits mentioned in the report would be unable to come up with the cash needed to do this.

If landmarking makes it unrealistically expensive to fix up a historic building, the argument goes, then what’s the point of landmarking?

Sister Regina Murphy and Sister Eileen McGrory of the Sisters of Charity, the religious order that founded the College of Mount St. Vincent and still owns property at the campus, were at that Monday meeting. One of their properties, LeGras Hall, is recommended for landmarking.
They said it was too early for the Sisters to have a position on landmarking LeGras. They were there to get more information.

The list calls for the Church of the Mediator in Kingsbridge to be landmarked as well.
We wrote about Church of the Mediator last summer. The church, which features stainglass windows that bear the images of Booker T. Washington and Jane Addams, was in an ongoing fundraising drive to return their aging church to a state of good repair.

The list of places recommended for landmarking also includes Christ Church Rectory, the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale, along with Glyndor House at Wave Hill, LeGras Hall, and the Van Cortlandt Park Golf House. The borough president recommended that the Dodge/Delafield estate area become a historic district, as well as the Ladd Road houses, Lehman College, and the Wave Hill district extension. The beep’s report also called for historic markers at Gaelic Park, the Béla Bartók House, the Henry Hudson Bridge, and the James & Kirtland Ironworks.

In Riverdale, hoping for change

UPDATED

By N. Clark Judd
njudd@riverdalepress.com

"It's about time!" Shelli Aderman all but yelled into the phone.

Yesterday Gov. David Paterson announced that he would place a bill before the Legislature legalizing gay marriage in the State of New York. New York already recognizes marriages performed elsewhere, and state courts have ruled it's up to the Legislature to decide whether or not to allow marriage within the state.

Ms. Aderman, an administrator at Congregation Tehillah in Riverdale, wasn't speaking for the congregation as a whole. But there are several gay or lesbian couples and families in the congregation, she said, and it's safe to say they're thrilled, too.

"I just want to marry my partner of almost ten years now and give my children legal validity," she said of her partner, Narda Alcorn, a Broadway stage manager, and their children, 3-year-old Malka Aderman-Alcorn, and Noah Matan Aderman-Alcorn, 5 months.

"People are just growing up and realizing that it’s not that big of a deal," she added.

Not everyone shares Ms. Aderman's enthusiasm. This morning, the new Republican Assembly minority leader, Brian M. Kolb, slammed Mr. Paterson's proposal in a statement.

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"Instead of spending his time and energy advocating for same sex marriage, the Governor should be discussing how we can put New Yorkers back to work," Mr. Kolm said.

The suggestion that the hope of a better life for Ms. Aderman is a Machiavellian ploy for Mr. Paterson, who has rock-bottom poll figures and faces a November November 2010 election, is not lost on the political cognoscenti.

And if that's what's going on, it might be hard to blame him.

Mr. Paterson made his proposal the week before the state Senate was to reconvene. A proposal to bring more revenue to the cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which will most likely be controversial, is expected to hit the Senate floor when session resumes.

Lawmakers are also negotiating over a bill that would dramatically change the rules for industrial development agencies, which are local public corporations with the ability to secure taxpayer-subsidized funding for big projects if they'll mean jobs.

And Mr. Paterson's timing is odd for another reason: The political climate, on its face, is not favorable for growing support for gay marriage. The Democrats have a 32-30 majority in the state Senate, and three swing voters — Pedro Espada Jr., Ruben Diaz and Carl Kruger — have established themselves as mavericks who will buck the party line.

One Democratic lawmaker is convinced Republican support will push the bill through despite any party heretics from the majority.

But Mr. Diaz, Democrat of Soundview and the South Bronx, an evangelist Christian minister whose single burning issue is his disapproval for gay marriage on religious grounds, is organizing resistance to the bill.

The Senate Democrats' only openly gay member, Thomas K. Duane, said last week he didn't want the bill to reach the floor if there's no guarantee it will pass. He has since changed positions.

"This is what I think: This isn't Las Vegas, and I'm not willing to gamble with a new strategy on anyone's civil rights," Mr. Duane said last week.

He yesterday announced he was sponsoring the bill in the Senate.

"I expect we’ll have the majority of Democratic senators voting in favor, and we’ll have several Republican senators voting in favor," Mr. Duane said today when reached by phone.

“Last week the Governor just sort of casually said, 'I’m going to put out a bill and have a vote and let’s see what happens,'" he said, explaining his earlier opposition to the bill. "And then he really became much more focused on it, and made it a priority, and so his focus on it will be very helpful in getting the legislation passed."

Mr. Espada, who represents parts of Fieldston, Riverdale and Kingsbridge, has not given a clear position on gay marriage until now. In a statement released this morning, he said the bill has little chance of passing — but he'd vote for it.

"I view this as a human rights issue and, therefore, I am prepared to support the Governor's bill," he said in the statement. "However, if there is insufficient support in the Senate — which appears to be the case — this bill should not come up for a vote. It would be politically imprudent and, in fact, a major step backwards, to bring this bill to a floor vote if it is headed for defeat."

None of this matters to Ms. Adelman. She just wants the same rights as her neighbors in East Harlem, and to have a marriage ceremony at her own synagogue in Manhattan. What she has with her partner is no different, he says, than what others have in their long-term relationships.

"We bicker over finances and toilet paper, our souls are connected," she said. "There happens to be a lack of male reproductive organs in our house and that’s really the only difference. That’s it."

Fire guts high-rise apartments

By Kevin Deutsch
kdeutsch@riverdalepress.com

A raging high-rise fire destroyed two apartments, burned two firefighters and left a family of three homeless at The Glenbriar building on Kappock Street last Saturday, firefighters said.
A candle burning at a teenage boy’s bedside in apartment 1014 somehow tipped over and set fire to his pillow about 3 a.m., firefighters said. Flames quickly enveloped his room, spread through the walls and blackened most every inch of the two adjoined 10th floor apartments.
The family has since found temporary housing, while only traces of their comfortable lifestyle remain in the apartments they called home for more than 10 years. Their movie-viewing room was scorched and their teenage son’s bedroom immolated, his bed frame twisted into a heap of molten metal and splintered wood. The living and dining rooms were charred beyond recognition, the fine furniture inside them reduced to rubble.
Some artifacts of everyday life survived: an empty, soot-covered birdcage; lightly charred family pictures of boys fishing together; a Beatles number 1 hits album covered in black dust; and a Godfather movie poster in a fire-tinged frame.
Two firefighters battling flames inside the apartments at 750 Kappock Street suffered minor burns. They were treated and released from an area hospital. None of the building’s residents were hurt.
Firefighter Fernando Camacho was among the first on the scene.
“The flames were roaring,” said Mr. Camacho. “They were blowing very intensely out the back window.”
Firefighters rushing up to the 10th floor found the long, narrow hallway full of black smoke.
“There was zero visibility,” Mr. Camacho said.
Moving by touch and instinct, the firefighters carried their folded houses toward the two burning apartments, unfurled them and doused the flames until they receded. Frightened residents wearing robes and nightgowns scrambled down the staircases to the front of the building,where they gazed up at exploding windows and billowing smoke.
The blaze caused smoke and water damage to at least one other apartment. The roof of the 10th floor hallway, once white as pearl, is now completely black from smoke damage. The hallway itself reeks of smoke and burned plastics.
“This was a bad one,” Mr. Camacho said.

Scharper blasted at parents’ meeting

Support for PS 24 Principal Philip Scharper was hard to find at a parents meeting held last night across the street from the school in the Whitehall apartment building.

The meeting began contentiously, with some parents questioning the methods used by the schools parents' association to bring Mr. Scharper’s alleged failings to light. But, as the night wore on, a majority of the parents at the well-attended gathering united behind the idea that Mr. Scharper should either step aside, or be removed from his post.

Complaints varied from failures to deal with a school nurse who was said to have failed to properly treat a child with a concussion, to allegations that Mr. Scharper humiliated students as a means of dealing with bullying and the use of corporal punishment by certain school aids.

By the end, parents seemed to agree that they had no confidence in Mr. Scharper’s ability to lead the school, or to change his ways. Parent Association leaders repeatedly pointed to meetings they've held with Mr. Scharper and other Department of Education officials, which they say have not changed his approach.