We got a “D”.

Below is the extensive report done by New Yorkers for Parks. As you may remember we met with them a while back and they gave us a pretty good idea of their findings. Now it’s official.

The Report Card on Parks: Spotlight on the Community Parks Initiative. 

In no way does it reflect the hard work of staff and volunteers of Sara Roosevelt Park who work diligently and long hours (many with no pay, some with little pay) to make this park a good place to be. 

Our electeds have also funded us on many projects that are ongoing. 

We think we need some decisions and action on furthering the ability of the neighborhood to pitch in on the park in an ongoing way that is institutionalized and protected.

Everywhere we have stable local participation we have a unique and beautiful park. Everywhere we have a beehive of activity – be it the Gardens, the Bird Sanctuary, the BRC Senior Nutrition Center,

or Parks workers who maintain THIS park – we have hubs of purpose and often unique beauty.

Let’s work with each other, the workers here, our electeds and Parks to change this ‘grade’.

NYs for Parks Recommendations: “Renew Sara D. Roosevelt Park Sara D. Roosevelt Park needs significant capital improvements, as well as increased maintenance attention. At over 80 years old, Sara D. Roosevelt Park is an incredibly successful, well-loved urban park. With multiple playgrounds, athletic areas, passive recreational space, and community gardens, “Sara D.” is highly popular and heavily used. The low score the park received in this Report Card points to the day-to-day consequences of its popularity and to the need for additional maintenance as well as comprehensive capital renewal. Recent small-scale improvements have transformed sections of Sara D. Roosevelt Park, creating vibrant, multi-generational spaces. These success stories include the renovated Hester Street Playground, a new synthetic turf field in partnership with Nike at Stanton Street , and a restored park building at Delancey Street which houses the BRC Senior Center. The popularity of these features proves that any improvement made to Sara D. Roosevelt Park will have a tremendous value for the neighborhood. However, not all parts of Sara D. Roosevelt Park shine. Remaining athletic fields, playgrounds, and many pathways show wear-and-tear signs of heavy use, and are in need of refurbishment. It is clear that the current maintenance capacity of NYC Parks is not meeting the operational needs of this property. Adding maintenance staff and plumbers will improve daily conditions of critical features, like comfort stations and spray showers. The remaining park buildings should be restored to uses by the public. Sara D. Roosevelt Park is a perfect site for capital improvements: it is a very heavily used neighborhood park serving several high-needs communities, providing much-needed open space in a dense area of the city.” *1 The Stanton Street field was under construction at the time of this survey, and is not included as part of Sara D. Roosevelt Park’s evaluation.

A “D” is our starting point. Not our end point.

Thanks for all your work.

 K

K Webster

President

Sara Roosevelt Park Coalition

https://sdrpc.mkgarden.org/

We stand with our all our neighbors and with the Constitution of the United States. Always will.

Turning Madness into Flowers – Alice Walker

It is my thought that the ugliness of war, of gratuitous violence in all its hideous forms, will cease very soon to appeal to even the most insulated of human beings. It will be seen by all for what it is: a threat to our well-being, to our survival as a species, and to our happiness. The brutal murder of our common mother, while we look on like frightened children, will become an unbearable visceral suffering that we will refuse to bear. We will abandon the way of the saw, the jackhammer and the drill.

Of bombs, too.

As religious philosophies that espouse or excuse violence reveal their true poverty of hope for humankind, there will be a great awakening, already begun, about what is of value in life.

We will turn our madness into flowers as a way of moving completely beyond all previous and current programming of how we must toe the familiar line of submission and fear, following orders given us by miserable souls who, somehow have managed to almost completely control us. We will discover something wonderful: that the world really does not enjoy following psychopaths, those who treat the earth our mother, as if she is wrong, and must be corrected, in as sadistic and domineering a way as that of a drunken husband who kills his wife.

The world – the animals, including us humans – wants to be engaged in something entirely other, seeing, and delighting in, the stark wonder of where we are: This place. This gift. This paradise.

We want to follow joy.

And we shall.

The madness, of course, for each one of us, will have to be sorted out.

Easiest overview (though a bit dated) is a video put together by the Real Deal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXrWxOUtyK0

Timeline for Rivington House re: Money trail:

http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/03/follow-the-money-mayor-struggles-to-explain-rivington-house-debacle.html 

Attorney General Schneiderman vs The Allure Group (purchasers of Riv. House):

Politico: http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2016/06/schneiderman-blocks-sale-of-two-nursing-homes-to-allure-group-102531 

Mayor and probe into Rivington House:

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160428/civic-center/heres-what-we-know-about-probe-into-mayor-bill-de-blasios-fundraising Edited compilation of the issues for the 

NYC Comptroller Stringer’s report:

NYT Editorial https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/opinion/how-did-a-nursing-home-become-a-luxury-condo.html?_r=0    

Comptroller’s Report: https://issuu.com/thelodown/docs/rivington_report_8-1-16 

City Council Hearing with Admin. officials 

WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-city-council-answers-elusive-on-rivington-house-deed-deal-1463184469  

CBS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0wuFQp3NDg

DOI investigation:

WSJ  https://www.wsj.com/articles/mayors-office-provides-rivington-documents-1469581660

Politico: http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/07/new-report-slams-de-blasio-administration-over-nursing-home-deal-103847

False Claims Act:

Squadron Quizzes Mayor About City’s Unwillingness to Sue Former Rivington House Owner Most recent challenge presented by Sen. Squadron on using the False Claims Act.

If Facebook, Neighbors2Save Rivington House has a page that will give you all the articles since they began posting (more than you’d ever want!).

Squadron Quizzes Mayor About City’s Unwillingness to Sue Former Rivington House Owner

“The mayor has personally blamed the real estate developers at the center of the scandal — accusing them of hoodwinking the city administration into dropping deed restrictions on the former nursing home. Based on the mayor’s public statements, Squadron said the former owner, the Allure Group, should be sued under the False Claims Act.”

Squadron said, “Frankly it leads to questions when (officials) at the highest levels of the administration (are) accusing (the developers) of misleading (the city). “To just be told, ‘we agree but we can’t,’ is not sufficient for a community that is still smarting from the loss of a healthcare facility.”

Appreciations to the Lo-Down for their original, breaking, and full coverage of Rivington House.

“Appreciations to Senator Squadron who had the guts to call out the mayor on the lack of forceful push back on Rivington House by this Administration. He did it respectfully and with (correct) appreciations for what the Mayor has done to benefit our communities. Squadron is looking for a way to make a statement loud and clear that we don’t just turn tail and say we failed when someone has deliberately hurt and misled the public for private gain. Especially when that public may literally have no voice to fight on their own behalf. We must fight with and for them. We push back. We make common cause for the right reasons and we call our own ‘side’ to account. Sometimes you just have to say no, no further. Or we get what we are seeing now with policies that would undermine our foundational purpose in creating this (imperfect) attempt at real democracy. Again, our thanks to the Senator.” Neighbors to Save Rivington House

From the New York Times:

“Senior centers across New York City receive varying levels of funding from the city, and the disparities are glaring: A center in Lower Manhattan gets just $3.54 to provide a meal to an elderly client, while a center in Brooklyn gets $18.36.”

“The level of inequality in the funding of senior centers is very troubling,” said David Nocenti, executive director of Union Settlement, a private agency founded in 1895 that also runs after-school, mental health and education programs. “Every senior deserves to be treated fairly and equitably, and the quality of their senior center shouldn’t depend on where they happen to live.”

We must fight to save food sources that remain closer to affordability!

FYI: Rally to Save Met Foods – Thursday 12/29 2PM @ Met Foods 251 Mulberry at Prince

PLEASE SHARE!!

THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

OFFICE OF MARGARET S. CHIN 

250 Broadway, Suite 1882

New York, NY 10007

**MEDIA ADVISORY**                                                                                 

Contact: Paul Leonard [CM Chin] (212) 788-7259, pleonard@council.nyc.gov 

COMMUNITY RALLIES AGAINST CLOSURE OF LOW-COST FOOD MARKET IN LITTLE ITALY

WHAT: Tomorrow at 2 p.m., residents of Little Italy, SoHo, NoHo, and surrounding areas will rally against the closure of a Met Supermarket that has offered low-cost, fresh food to the neighborhood for more than two decades.

After months of rumors — which were denied by a market representative in early November – the store announced the food market would permanently close its doors on Saturday, Dec. 31 at 9 p.m. 

This week, Council Member Chin joined other local elected officials to call on the foodmarket owner and landlord to resume lease negotiations. Despite having a current tenant paying $90,000 a month, a representative for the landlord, Abington Properties, said it wants to transform the Met Foodmarket into “a more upscale operation.” 

With the closure of Met Foodmarket, shoppers on fixed and low-incomes will have to travel even farther for affordable, fresh produce. The loss of Met Foodmarket is the latest in a string of low-cost food market closures in the past few years – including the Associated Supermarket on W. 14^th Street and a Pathmark demolished to make way for an as-of-right real estate development in Two Bridges. 

WHEN: TOMORROW, THURSDAY, Dec. 29 at 2 p.m. 

WHERE: Outside Met Foodmarket, 251 Mulberry St. (at Prince St.)

WHO: 

·         Council Member Margaret S. Chin

·         Little Italy Merchants Association

·         Residents of Little Italy, SoHo, NoHo, and surrounding areas

###

Pete Davies

Broadway Residents Coalition

548 Broadway #5A

New York, NY 10012

H: 212.925.1225

C: 917.623.4104

pdavies1@nyc.rr.com

Thanks Jane, Rob, Kate, Carol, Debra, Bob, Jason and others for M’Finda Kalunga, Elizabeth Hubbard and New Forsyth Conservancy in SDR Park who spent time thinking through what was needed here. Thanks to Aziz and Charles for their tireless efforts.

DNAinfo:By Allegra Hobbs

“The first phase of an expansive $2 million project bringing protections against flooding to more than 40 Lower East Side and East Village community gardens has concluded, paving the way for construction on new infrastructure to begin by summer 2017.

The New York City Community Garden Coalition has wrapped its roughly year-long study of 47 neighborhood gardens, identifying the best ways for each garden to absorb more storm water and prevent sewers from overflowing in the event of a future storm….

The entire feasibility study results, broken down by community garden, can be viewed on the coalition’s website.”

From The Next City: “Mapping Tool Aims to Keep Public Spaces Public” by Oscar Perry Abello

Such as the Stanton Building in Sara Roosevelt Park!

“Paula Segal, founder of 596 Acres…“The truth is, we’re in a city, most of our infrastructure and our assets are shared — the subways, the roads, the sidewalks, the water, something like 30, 40 percent of all housing in the city is some form of cooperatively owned. … privately owned property can start to seem like the real outlier.”

“Residents…have long been organizing around many of these assets. …Common Cause and the other NYCommons partners started to see a pattern in the organizing [of] … public assets.

Susan Lerner: “We started thinking about the fact that all of these separate challenges had similar underlying policy issues that have to do with how does government think about commonly owned, shared assets.”

“…NYCommons went to 10 neighborhoods…where they knew people were organizing. Lerner:..“[we found] a tremendous amount of energy in all five boroughs” for sharing best practices and connecting with others doing similar work…

NYCommons picked three neighborhoods for pilots, and provided them documentation, workshop facilitation and other resources to begin developing a tool kit. …The Sara D. Roosevelt Park Community Coalition was one of the pilot sites.

“The coalition’s current focus is a former recreation center, currently used as a systemwide parks storage facility, smack dab in the middle of a well-used area of the park. “We’ve been having a conversation about this building since 1994,” says Webster.”