The Charter Revision Commission green-lighted several questions for voters to decide this fall, including whether to return to a two-term limit. But the push for nonpartisan elections died with a whimper.
Transit service reductions will inconvenience millions of commuters. But for thousands of people in a few neighborhoods, the cuts will be more deeply felt.
An impromptu survey finds that about half of a sample of city offices participate in a 20-year-old program to distribute voter registration forms.
Some members of the Charter Revision Commission disagreed pointedly with the panel’s own staff over what changes to city government are worth contemplating before a November vote.
The Citizen Union’s recommendations to the city’s charter revision commission go well beyond the good-government group’s reversal on nonpartisan elections.
P.S. 186 on 145th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam in Harlem has not echoed with the thud of books or the hum of adolescent gossip since the mid-1970’s. Its “green roof” would be enviable if it weren’t for the fact that lush green leaves are the only things between the sky and the inside of much of the top floor. Trees have taken root in the abandoned building and their branches and foliage peek out of glassless windows and formerly stately arches.Now, the M.L. Wilson Boys and Girls Club has plans for the graffiti-strewn building—plans that include demolition. But not everyone in the community is on board with that idea. The club is planning a development that includes a large Boys and Girls Club facility, a school, 90 units of affordable housing and a commercial space which might be a U.S. post office.
The Port Richmond Water Pollution Control Plant is designed to handle 60 million gallons of sewage per day. Photo by: Marc Fader
Projects to upgrade a sewage plant and construct a cement facility open the next chapter in a complex—and controversial—industrial history. By: Jake Mooney
The Port Richmond Water Pollution Control Plant has stood on Staten Island’s North Shore, purifying the sewage of about half of the island’s residents, for 57 years. Soon it will get a $29 million upgrade, thanks to a citywide infusion of federal stimulus funds. It will also get a new neighbor, a transfer station about a mile down bumpy Richmond Terrace where cement will arrive from South America by boat and head to local construction projects by truck.
Mayor Bloomberg, at left, speaks in front of a giant Mayor Bloomberg, at right, during the 2009 campaign. Some public testimony to the Charter Revision Commission held that the mayor’s influence looms too large of the Conflict of Interest Board and other entities. Photo by: Jarrett Murphy
The charter commission hears from experts as it considers whether the city’s ethics monitors are sufficiently independent. By: Jarrett Murphy
During its first round of public hearings, the city’s Charter Revision Commission heard more than one speaker suggest that it was inappropriate for the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board—which largely regulates the mayor and his appointees—to be composed entirely of mayoral appointees. On Wednesday evening, the commission will take up that concern, and hear from experts.
Richmond Terrace, the bumpy former cow path that is the main road along Staten Island’s North Shore, starts at the St. George Ferry Terminal and winds past dozens of storage lots, old factories, transfer stations, high sheet-metal fences and, occasionally, a park. Six miles later, just east of the Goethals Bridge, it reaches its end among heavy trucks and stacked shipping containers at the Howland Hook Marine Terminal.The port, operated on public land by New York Container Terminal, a private company, is one of Staten Island’s largest businesses. The company, officials said, has a $53 million payroll and more than 550 employees, unloading around 400,000 shipping containers a year. But that, company officials and their allies in government say, is not big enough.
The New York City Charter Revision Commission meets Thursday night to hear testimony about whether borough presidents and the public advocate should vanish or get more power.The hearing at 6 p.m. at Staten Island Technical High School, 485 Clawson Street, is the third in a series of five “issues forums” where the 15 commissioners are hearing from experts on topics where charter changes are possible. Forums on term limits and voter participation have already been held. Sessions on public integrity and land use remain. Testimony on Thursday will be heard from Baruch College Professor Doug Muzzio, Hofstra Law School’s Eric Lane, former chair of Manhattan Community Board 2Manha Brad Hoylman, former deputy mayor and current CUNY official Marc V. Shaw, and Gerald Benjamin of SUNY New Paltz. Public comments will be taken after the experts have testified.
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