Bronx News Network

Bronx Electeds Demand Equitable Trash Burden

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Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. and Council member Annabel Palma, the head of the Bronx Council delegation, joined up with other Council members and environmental justice advocates at City Hall today to rail against Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to shelve the building of four new waste transfer stations – three Manhattan and one Brooklyn.As it stands now, some 60 percent of the city’s waste is taken to transfer stations in Newton Creek (Brooklyn) and Hunts Point in the South Bronx. The new stations would have eased this saturation, which residents say leads to foul odors and heavy truck pollution. “If approved, this proposal [to not fund the new transfer stations] almost exclusively concentrates the burden of handling NYC’s solid waste in a handful of low-income communities of color in Brooklyn and the Bronx – yet again,” it said in a press release sent out by the New York Environmental Justice Alliance. The release also warned that the city was considering creating “waste to energy” facilities, which would use incinerators and “whose siting may be restricted to environmentally overburdened communities of color” – like Hunts Point. “It is only fair, and environmentally responsible, that each borough handle its own garbage.

Bronx News Network

Vacca Holds Out On Living Wage; No Hearing Date Yet

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City Councilman James Vacca is the only Bronx member of the Council who has yet to throw his weight behind the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act-the bill that would require developers of retail projects receiving taxpayer subsidies to pay workers $10 an hour with benefits, or $11.50 without.This week, his spokesman Bret Collazzi said the councilman is waiting for an official hearing to be held on the legislation before he takes a stance. “He’s open to the idea, but he’s not there yet,” Collazzi said. “He’s met with both sides, he’s interested in it, but he won’t make a decision until the hearing.”The fate of a hearing lies in the hands of

Bronx News Network

See 'The King's Speech' Tomorrow Evening

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Lots of quality free entertainment coming out of the two neighboring northwest Bronx hospitals tomorrow. As we mentioned yesterday, North Central Bronx will be holding a lunchtime concert. And at 5 p.m., Montefiore Medical Center, in honor of World Voice Day, will be hosting a screening of the Oscar-winning film, “The King’s Speech,” which recounts the story of the King of England overcoming his stuttering problems. See details below in our oft-updated Bronx Events calendar. Editor’s note: What did we miss? Send details to bronxnewsnetwork[at]gmail.com.

Bronx

Bronx Hoops Star Kemba Walker Declares for NBA Draft

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Bronx boy Kemba Walker, the charismatic point guard who led the University of Connecticut men’s basketball team an an extraordinary run to Big East and NCAA Tournament titles, announced today he will skip his senior season and enter the NBA draft.The decision came as no surprise to many observers who watched Walker, who is on pace to graduate a year early in May, emerge this year as one of the most dynamic offensive players in college basketball. He averaged 23.5 points per game, good for fifth in the nation.”I just think it’s the right time for me to go to the NBA,” Walker said at a press conference Tuesday, according to USA Today. “It’s a happy day, but a sad day because I am leaving my brothers.”Walker, who grew up in Soundview and attended IS 174, wrote a diary during the tournament for the Daily News.

Bronx News Network

Bronx News Roundup, Tuesday, April 12

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Weather: Light rain is expected here in the Bronx sometime after noon, with temperatures dropping into the 40s as night falls on our lovely borough. To the news!Story of the Day: Kazimiroff Boulevard Re-Renamed It is said that Dr. Theodore L. Kazimiroff, a jack of many trades (dentist, naturalist, Indiana Jones wannabe) and the Bronx’s first historian, once removed a tooth from a lion’s mouth in the Bronx Zoo. He had become such a legendary borough figure that, just a year after his death in 1980, a section of the winding road that runs from East Fordham Road to Allerton Avenue and cuts between the New York Botanical Garden and Fordham University was remaned Dr. Theodore L. Kazimiroff Boulevard.For years, the Garden and Fordham complained that the new street name confused drivers who wanted access to its institutions. (Current Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan was skeptical about this claim). In any case, they finally got their way Monday when Mayor Bloomberg signed into law a bill, sponsored by Bronx City Councilman Oliver Koppell, renaming the street Southern Boulevard, as it was known before it took on Kazimiroff as its namesake.

Bronx News Network

60 Budget Fixes from the Independent Budget Office

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Following is a press release we just received from the Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan city agency, announcing a report that looks at 60 ways to cut spending or increase revenue to plug the hole in the city’s budget. We thought it was worth reprinting here. We’d love to hear your suggestions, too, on where the city might find some untapped revenue, and where it can cut. So comment away. Here’s the release …

Bronx News Network

Bronx Events: A Lunchtime Concert April 14 at North Central Bronx Hospital

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Concert at NCBH Ad_Norwood News(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();Here’s the rest of our calendar of Bronx events …Editor’s note: What did we miss? Send details to bronxnewsnetwork[at]gmail.com.

Bronx

Bronx Weekend News Roundup, Monday, April 11

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Weather: Dense fog in the Bronx today will give way to a partially cloudy, partially sunny afternoon with highs in the low 70s. Chance of thunderstorms later tonight.Story of the Day: Bronx’s MS 223 Embodies Public School ChallengesSpent a good chunk of this morning reading Jonathan Mahler’s extensive NY Times Magazine piece about MS 223, a South Bronx school opened during the early days of former Chancellor Joel Klein’s reform movement. Through his profile of 223 and its energetic and highly-optimistic principal, Ramon Gonzalez, Mahler, who wrote the fabulously entertaining “The Bronx is Burning,” deftly captures the challenges of not only running, but improving, public schools in the Bronx (and much of NYC, for that matter). If you don’t have time to read the piece (as I mentioned, it’s “extensive,” to the tune of 20 printed out pages), I’ll summarize the key take away points.-The charter school paradox: Gonzalez uses many ideas and strategies promoted by charters schools. MS 223 starts school early and entices kids to stay late.

Bronx News Network

Vacca and Palma Sponsor Blizzard Bill

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It’s hard to think about snow right now, with the weather outside hitting a sunny 73 and the Mister Softee trucks finally making their rounds through the neighborhood, but try to remember that post-Christmas blizzard that dumped two feet of snow on the city, leaving a string of stranded MTA buses-and perturbed residents-in its unplowed wake.To avoid another snow fiasco like that one, Bronx City Council Members James Vacca and Annabel Palma sponsored a bill, passed last week, that requires the Department of Sanitation to prepare and publish snow-removal plans each winter for all five boroughs.”Last December’s blizzard revealed how woefully unprepared the City was to deal with these kinds of major storms,” Palma said in a press release. The required plans must include a list of primary, secondary and tertiary streets (the terms the Sanitation Department used to classify blocks in order of plowing-importance) to be published online, along with criteria for each ranking.”During the December blizzard, we heard a lot of talk about tertiary streets and how they were the lowest priority for snowplows. Well, tertiary streets are where taxpayers like you and I live, and many of us didn’t see plows until days after the blizzard was over,” Vacca said.”That’s unacceptable. This bill will put the City’s feet to the fire so that they are forced not only to have a plan but also to explain why they chose to have the plan they chose to have.”During this winter’s blizzard, some outer borough streets and neighborhoods went unplowed and snowed-in for several days, to the frustration of those who lived there.The new law also requires the Sanitation Department to provide detailed plans for removing snow from bus stops, an