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Sunnyside Fights Over What to Preserve


Residents in Sunnyside, Queens are facing off against each other over how best to preserve the historic Sunnyside Gardens housing development. And the fight may be more about who will be able to live in Sunnyside than the buildings that those people will live in.

On April 17, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission will hold a public hearing on its proposal to create an historic district including 16 city blocks and 610 buildings in what would be the largest historic district in Queens. The townhouses and apartment buildings in the district were built in the 1920s and 1930s by architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, following the precepts of British planner Ebenezer Howard. Howard proposed building “Garden Cities” with abundant open space to provide housing for working class households in a communitarian environment. They were intended as an alternative to congested industrial cities. The Garden City idea is influential, but Sunnyside is one of only a few examples actually built in New York City or anywhere in the nation.

The Preservation District

Sunnyside is already protected from redevelopment pressures by a Special Planned Community Preservation District. In this district, created in 1974, anyone who wants to take down or build any structure, enclose a porch, enlarge a home or put in a garage, driveway or curb cut must obtain a special permit. It also protects Sunnyside’s unique common areas and gardens; permission is required to remove a tree.

To obtain these special permits, the property owner must apply to the Department of City Planning and prepare an environmental assessment. The application then goes through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, requiring public hearings and votes by the local community board, borough president, City Planning Commission and City Council. Some property owners have complained that the process is too time consuming and costly. So, for the last several years, the local community board had been working with the Queens city planning Ofoice to address these concerns.

A Landmark District

Some residents of Sunnyside believe the zoning district has proved successful. “The zoning district has worked to protect the most significant element of the neighborhood, the open space,” said Hunter College professor Susan Turner-Meiklejohn, who live in Sunnyside and opposes the landmarks designation. “The key goals of the Garden City were not architectural but social,” said Turner-Meiklejohn who has done extensive research on the community. And in any event, she said, Sunnyside is “not an architectural masterpiece.”

But the Sunnyside Gardens Preservation Alliance, which backs the landmarks proposal, believes that the historic district would provide additional protection for the area. Jeffrey Kroessler, a landmark proponent, complains that the current zoning district “doesn’t protect the aesthetic qualities of the buildings.” Some supporters also feel the landmarks procedures would be less cumbersome than those in the special zoning district.

Kroessler, who is also a founder of the Queensboro Preservation League and a recent Sunnyside arrival, sees another advantage to the landmarking: It would move the landmarks commission away from its Manhattan-centric focus. Queens now has only six designated historic districts, a mere fraction of the city’s total.

But the Preserve Sunnyside Gardens Coalition, which opposes the landmarks designation, worries about the costs landmarks regulations would place on building owners. Coalition member Ira Greenberg told the Queens Tribune that replacing a slate roof as required by Landmarks would cost him some $45,000, over 10 times the usual cost.

What to Preserve?

The dispute in Sunnyside Gardens is in many respects a debate over what aspect of a community deserves protection. Those opposing the landmarking argue that it would preserve architectural details such as roofs, windows, doors and facades times but would make the housing there unaffordable to the moderate-income working class population that is at the core of the Garden City concept. Affordability, they say, is what most deserves to be preserved.

In a heated exchange on WNYC radio’s Brian Lehrer show with landmarks proponent Kroessler, Turner-Meiklejohn asserted that recent demographic changes in the neighborhood have a lot to do with the landmarks proposal. With over 50 percent of the population foreign-born, the non-Hispanic white population is now only around 40 percent, and the social base for new restrictions is in that minority of “old-timers.”

But Kroessler denies that ethnicity or race has anything to do with the matter. He says that housing prices have already been going up in the neighborhood and that has nothing to do with the proposed historic district designation. (Studies have shown that property values tend to be higher in landmark districts).

However, Kroessler did tell the Queens Tribune, “Over the past few years there have been individuals who have done illegal work on their homes and have ‘uglified’ their property.”

The argument in Sunnyside reflects a debate taking place throughout Queens, where some resident blame working class immigrants for changes in the urban landscape. Justified concerns about out-of-context building conversions often get mixed with disdain for new foreign-born residents. Crackdowns on building violations and demands for downzoning sometimes target the new populations instead of trying to accommodate them and go after the violators.

While it is a good idea to have strict but sensible regulations that promote good design and aesthetically pleasing neighborhoods, there is a fascination and a value in the immense variety of ways that people alter and decorate their homes. Some of these efforts are beautiful, others are mediocre, and still others are incredibly ugly. The shapes, colors and textures go from glorious to garish. But that is what makes a walk down a New York street exciting.

Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning. 

A Platform to Preserve Housing


In recent years, housing advocates in New York have focused on city government. But in just the past few months, that has changed dramatically. Advocates now plan aggressively to push an agenda for preserving the dwindling supply of affordable housing – and they have aimed it directly at state politicians.

A key element is the election of a new governor. During the Pataki years, few housing activists embraced any hope that the governor or the Republican-led State Senate would take any action to preserve and expand affordable housing in the state. The election of Governor Eliot Spitzer has changed that. “Clearly (the political conditions) are the best they’ve been since I’ve been involved in this kind of work,” said Tom Waters of the Community Service Society.

But other developments have also fueled calls for changes in housing policy. First, the Coalition for the Homeless released its annual report on the state of homelessness. Its most salient finding was that family homelessness in New York City has reached a record high.

Second, the city’s commissioner for homeless services, Robert Hess, announced that apartments being considered for subsidies under the city’s Housing Stability Plus rent subsidy program will be subject to more rigorous inspections and must be in adequate condition before the city will lease them. Under the current program, the value of the housing subsidy decreases by 20 percent a year and only people getting public assistance are eligible for the subsidies. Advocates would like to see both those policies changed, and Hess has told advocates that could become reality shortly .

These two developments, along with the changes in Albany, serve as reminders first of the continuing problem in finding affordable housing and second of the ability of concerned citizens to persuade policymakers to make changes.

THE HOUSING CAMPAIGN

To address this, a broad coalition of housing advocates and others have launched a campaign around preserving affordable housing. They have dubbed their push “New York Is Our Home! Affordable rent campaign,” are planning a massive rally for May 23 to call attention to the affordable housing problems and set up a Website.

The platform calls for action on four fronts:

--Preserving Mitchell-Lama and Section 8 apartments. Landlords have been opting out of these programs as the terms of their contracts expire. This has increased rents in some of the buildings to market rate, out of the reach of many tenants.

--Repealing vacancy decontrol. This policy, which allows rents to rise in apartments after they become vacant, has led to the loss of as many as 100,000 rent-regulated apartments in New York City since 1997.

--Reinstating operating subsidies for public housing projects the state developed. Pataki did away with these subsidies in 1998 and earlier this year, the housing authority proposed using Section 8 rent subsidy vouchers to pay rent on the apartments. This enraged many advocates, who believe these vouchers should be used to pay for private housing – not for public housing, which, after all, is supposed to be affordable without such vouchers. Using the vouchers for public housing reduces by thousands the number available to help poor families find affordable housing in the private market.

--Limiting rent payments for New Yorkers living with AIDS to 30 percent of their income. The state has proposed having these tenants pay all of their income except $330 monthly on rent.

The platform springs partly from an understanding that, despite its many facets, the affordable housing is a single problem. “We’ve recognized that it’s not good enough to work on Mitchell-Lama over here, to work on rent regulated apartments over there,” Hilda Chavis of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, told the audience at the recent meeting on the platform.” It all hangs together. If one goes, the other goes. So, we have to work together.”

THE NEED FOR PRESERVATION

While Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s housing program has been largely aimed at building more affordable homes, the advocates’ platform focuses on preserving those apartments that already exist – an area, they say, where the mayor has been far less successful.

“Many of us praised the mayor for producing affordable housing,” said Brad Lander of the Pratt Center for Community Development. “But we also recognized that [keeping] the 1.3 million affordable units we have is more critical than ever.”

Julie Miles of Housing Here and Now and the campaign director for the new campaign echoed Lander’s comment. “Locally, the mayor has invested a lot of money, billions of dollars, toward creating new affordable housing,” she said. “But we’re on track to lose hundreds of thousands of units and unless we stop the loss of units, we’ll make no headway in alleviating the pressure on affordable housing.”

RECOGNIZING THE PROBLEM

The platform has attracted a broad base of support, including housing groups from across the city, politicians, unions and the Working Families Party.

“At the top of everybody’s list is affordable housing,” Miles said. Individual families are paying more of their incomes to rent, elected officials are seeing more of their constituents coming to their offices with housing problems, and union members are saying they need higher wages to deal with increases in rents.

When the New York Times ran an editorial in support of rent stabilization last month, Michael McKee of Tenant PAC said he knew a critical shift had taken place. “That’s the first time the Times has come out in support of rent stabilization in more than 30 years,” he said. “All of sudden editors and reporters have realized that there’s a very serious problem.”

Campaign organizers say that the Bloomberg administration, along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other council members also support their cause.

The new political climate does not guarantee that change will come quickly or easily. “It’s going to be a tough fight,” said Michael McKee of Tenant PAC. “But there’s a chance we could get something this year.”

That possibility has energized activists. “Clearly all of us, across the progressive spectrum, are very excited… at the changing political dynamic,” Bill Lipton of the Working Families Party said at a recent meeting of more than 200 advocates. “It feels like a new moment.”

Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations.  

New Bills -- Government on the Web, Parking, and Illegal Hotels


At each of the City Council's stated meetings, council members introduce bills, most of which will never become laws (for the process by which bills become laws, click here). As a regular feature, Gotham Gazette discusses some of the legislation proposed at each meeting.

 

GOVERNMENT ON THE WEB

 

The council was flush with ideas about using the Internet to improve city government at its most recent Stated Meeting on March 14. Council members introduced several bills that would use the Internet to make it easier for New Yorkers to get information about city government and participate in civic life.

All public meetings of city agencies and the City Council would be Webcast under a new bill introduced by Councilmember Gale Brewer (Intro 533), head of the City Council's technology in government committee.

"Important budget discussions, agency testifying, that should be available for the public," said Gale Brewer. " Very few people come to City Hall."

Currently, public meetings are taped and broadcast on NYC-TV. Some are also Webcast, although this coverage is inconsistent. Recording and Webcasting all meetings would require an investment from city government. Brewer said she would develop a price tag for her bill as it goes forward.

This bill mirrors an executive order issued by Governor Eliot Spitzer on his first day in office that requires all public meetings of state agencies be Webcast by July 1, 2007.

Simply putting meetings online is probably not enough, said Brewer, a confessed NYC-TV addict. She acknowledges that the station's coverage is often "unwatchable" because those testifying are not identified on the screen, and there is often a significant amount of dead airtime. Eventually, she says, Webcasts of meetings should be productions that include important information, like the names of those speaking and instructions on finding written testimony online. They would also be archived on the city government's Web site.

"If we're going to Webcast," she said, "we have to think about how to make it more interesting."

Council Speaker Christine Quinn introduced another bill (Intro 531) that would require agencies to give the council electronic copies of all documents they have to submit in hard copy, such as oversight reports. A bill already requires these agencies to submit such documents to the Department of Records and Information Services, which then makes it available to the council, said a council spokesperson. (In theory, at least. Gotham Gazette ran an article that found that this isn't always happening.) This bill would streamline that process.

 

PARKING

 

John Liu also introduced a bill that would require the city's Department of Transportation to post the city's parking regulations online, block-by-block.

The bill would serve two purposes, said John Choe, Liu's chief of staff.

Currently, the public does not have access to such information, even though administrative judges who preside over parking court do. Such information should be made easily available to the public online, said Choe.

But Choe says the bill is also seen as a step towards the possibility of more fundamental changes in the city's parking policy. In certain circles, parking policy inspires intense emotions. (Liu's bill is not the only parking bill introduced at the meeting, in fact. James Vacca introduced one (Intro 544) that would increase fines for truckers who park illegally on residential streets).

Some think that parking regulations should be overhauled to reflect a transportation policy that seeks to reduce driving and encourage mass transit. By beginning to compile parking information online, this bill seeks to be the beginning of a discussion about larger changes, like the possibility of raising the price of online parking to reflect the actual demand for spaces.

"It would open up the possibility for more innovative policies," said Choe. "Maybe there's a way to price these parking spaces differently so it maximizes public good."

 

ILLEGAL HOTEL CONVERSIONS

 

Gale Brewer also introduced a bill (Intro 534) intended to cut down on landlords who convert apartments into illegal hotels.

Brewer and other officials have been fielding an increasing number of complaints from constituents who say their apartment buildings are being turned into hotels. They say that their landlords harass them or withhold services, hoping to force them out and replace their apartments with more lucrative hotel rooms. Some also voice security concerns about a steady flow of strangers in and out of their buildings. In a city where the scarcity of affordable housing has reached emergency levels, Brewer and others see taking apartments off the market illegally as a serious offense.

In January 2006 Brewer, State Senator Liz Krueger, and State Assemblymember Richard Gottfried formed a working group on illegal hotel conversions. The task force has received complaints from about 100 buildings, concentrated primarily in Manhattan.

Gottfried and Krueger have introduced legislation at the state level that would give city officials more enforcement power and close some loopholes allowing landlords to run illegal hotels. That bill is being considered in Albany.

Brewer's bill, seen as a compliment, would increase the fines on violators.

According to Brewer's office, it makes financial sense for landlords to violate the law, because an average fine is only about $800, while illegal hotels are immensely profitable. Her bill would change the fine structure significantly. Fines would range from $1,000 for first time offenders to $20,000 for repeat offenders. It would also add a civil penalty that would be assessed daily until the landlord could prove that he or she is no longer using apartments for hotel use.

Other officials and city agencies have also joined the effort. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has added a full-time staff member to the Office of Midtown Enforcement to confront illegal conversions. The mayor's office is working on its own package of legislation regarding illegal hotel conversions.

 

Staten Island's North Shore: A Heated Three-Way Contest


For More on the Special Elections:

* Staten’s Island South Shore
* Central Brooklyn

UPDATE: Matthew Titone won the special election, becoming Staten Island's first openly gay public official. According to unofficial returns, in an election marked by low turnout, Titone, an attorney, received 49 percent of the vote, compared to 32 percent for Rose Margarella, the Republican and Conservative Party candidate, and 19 percent for Independence Party candidate Kelvin Alexander, who was seeking to become Staten Island's first black elected public official.

The race to succeed John Lavelle, the longtime member of the Assembly who died this winter, could give Staten Island some political firsts. But in the meantime, the race has developed some nasty undertones.

The contest features three candidates: Democrat Matthew Titone, who also has the Working Families Party endorsement; Republican Rose Margarella, who will also appear on the Conservative Party line; and Kelvin Alexander, the Independence Party candidate.

If elected, Matthew Titone would be the first openly gay legislator from the island; Kelvin Alexander, a retired police sergeant who works as an aide to Brooklyn State Senator Eric Adams, seeks to become the borough’s first black elected official.

Attorney Matthew Titone got the Democratic Party’s nod -- highly valued in this Democratic district -- after what the Staten Island Advance described as “a contentious six-hour” convention.” While party chair John Gulino trumpeted the event as “the democratic process at work,” an ally of one of the failed candidates termed it “a sad day for democracy.”

The acrimony has not faded.

Kelvin Alexander tried to form a new political party called the Family First Party just for the election. Matthew Titone objected, charging that family was “anti-gay code.” “When did it start happening on Staten Island that being a family man became a bad thing?” Alexander countered. In the face of a challenge from Titone, the Board of Elections threw the Family First Party off the ballot, on the grounds that many of the signatures on Alexander's petition were invalid. Alexander has said this was part of an effort to disenfranchise black voters, and is now running only on the Indpendence Party line.

Republicans hope that all this will give Rose Margarella, a school teacher, the opportunity to pick up the seat.

All three candidates cite transportation congestion as a key concern, with Matthew Titone looking to improve bus service and Rose Margarella saying she would work to get funding for a North Shore rail line. Kelvin Alexander would increase the number of bus routes between Staten Island and New Jersey so the island's commuters could have access to rail service into Manhattan.

Both Rose Margarella and Matthew Titone cite education, including class size and getting a fair share of funds for Staten Island schools, as a key issue. While Margarella supports Governor Eliot Spitzer's plan to give parents who send their children to private or parochial schools $1,000 education tax credit, Titone opposes it, saying it is similar to a voucher. Kelvin Alexander wants a new high school on Staten Island with an emphasis on trade programs for students not going to college.

Matthew Titone and Rose Margarella disagree about gay marriage, with Titone in favor of it and Margarella saying “As your assemblywoman, I will oppose any legislation that threatens the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.”

Central Brooklyn: A Not-So-Instant Replay


For More on the Special Elections:

• Staten Island’s North Shore
• Staten’s Island South Shore

Last month, Mathieu Eugene, a Haitian born doctor who runs a youth services agency, seemingly won this City Council seat from Central Brooklyn, capturing about a third of the vote in a field of 10 candidates. He was all set to take his place as the council’s first Haitian member when reports circulated that he lived in Canarsie, far outside the district’s boundaries.

In the comedy of errors that followed, Mathieu Eugene seemed to offer different accounts of when he moved where. Finally, after being certified the winner by the Board of Elections, he himself asked for a new election. Mayor Michael Bloomberg complied, with the vote now scheduled for April 24.

Special elections for City Council are far more open than those for legislature. They are essentially nonpartisan contests, with any candidate who can collect enough signatures getting a place on the ballot. As of last week’s filing deadline, five candidates submitted petitions to run for this open City Council seat: Mathieu Eugene, Harry Schiffman and Wellington Sharpe, who both ran in February’s election, and two newcomers – Darly Brutus and Marie Gina Faustin. While Eugene was the sole Haitian candidate in February’s election, both Faustin and Brutus are reportedly Haitian as well. Little seem to be known about Brutus, but Faustin is a television personality. And in what some could view as a case of dĂ©jĂ  vu all over again, she not does not live in the 40th district. In fact she does not even live in Brooklyn but in Cambria Heights, Queens. Faustin has said her children attend public school in the district and that she will move there by Election Day as the law, generally regarded as rather murky, seems to require.

Wellington Sharpe, a family counselor, is founder and president of a private company, the Nelrak Child Development Center. A member of Community Board 17, he has served on the boards of many community groups and been politically active, including running unsuccessfully for State Senate. Harry Schiffman is director of government and community relations for Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center and has also been active with many community groups.

Whatever happens, the voting is not over for residents of this area in and around Flatbush. Whoever wins next month, assuming he or she actually takes their seat, could face a party primary in September and a general election opponent in November – on what is generally considered Election Day.

 

Staten Island's South Shore: Mulia, Tobacco and Tabacco


For More on the Special Elections:

• Staten Island’s North Shore
•Central Brooklyn

UPDATE: Republican Lou Tobacco won the special election with 70 percent of the counted vote. The unofficial returns did not include any votes cast for write-in candidate Todd Tabacco. Turnout was reportd to be low.

Voters on Staten Island’s South Shore may do a double take when they enter the voting both on Tuesday. The same candidate – John Mulia – appears on the Democratic, Conservative and Independence party lines. He is facing Lou Tobacco, who must content himself with one ballot line – the Republican one. But given the generally Republican politics of this district, that one line could be enough.

John Mulia is a registered member of the Conservative Party. But he says that, if elected, he will caucus with the Assembly’s Democratic majority “for the benefit of the people in the district.” The South Shore has had Republicans representing it in the Assembly for 25 years, Mulia said, and because of the way Albany works, has not been able to get its fair share from the state.

Traffic is the issue of biggest concern in the district, according to John Mulia, with residents of the area having among the longest commutes in the nation. He would work to get road improvements and repairs and would like to see another rail line on the island “up and running.”

On other issues, John Mulia is concerned that Staten Island will not get its “fair share” of the increase in state money for education in New York City. He also cited issues involving senior citizens as a priority and said he would work for laws to bring down the cost of medications for older residents.

Lou Tobacco is a pharmaceutical sales representative. If elected, he has said he would try to reduce taxes in the state and get a veterans cemetery built on Staten Island. In an effort to give the outnumbered Republicans in the Assembly a bit more clout, he would work to allow the ranking minority member of an Assembly committee to call hearings. Tobacco wants to see the death penalty restored in New York and would crack down further on sexual predators, including requiring repeat offenders to wear tracking devices.

But beyond concern about education, congestion and crime, the question of where Lou Tobacco has lived has emerged as a campaign issue. He lives in the district now – and was raised on Staten Island – but between January and June 2006, he reportedly lived in Arizona. The state constitution requires legislators to live in their districts for at least a full calendar year before the election. Tobacco, a former president of the Totenville Civic Association, said that he feared being laid off from his job in New York and went to work in Arizona for a while. But he didn't like the Southwest and was "homesick," so returned after several months.

A third candidate – Todd Tabacco (with an a) has entered the race as a write-in candidate. If he wins, Tabacco, who works for a financial firm, would be the first write-in candidate ever elected to the New York State Assembly.

 

Atlantic Yards: A 'Done Deal?'


The Atlantic Yards megaproject proposed by Forest City Ratner in Brooklyn had all the appearances of a “done deal” when it was first announced almost three years ago. Brooklyn’s biggest developer boasted solid support from Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Basketball fans applauded the plan to build an arena for the Nets, the professional team owned by developer Bruce Ratner. And many advocates for affordable housing cheered Forest City Ratner’s pledge that half of the new housing packed into 16 giant towers would be “affordable.”

The general feeling among Manhattan-centric urban policy pundits seemed to be that Atlantic Yards was just a harmless piece of Manhattan-like development opposed only by a small group of narrow-minded Brooklyn brownstoners, and that, as Errol Louis of the Daily News has written more than once, the opponents would do best “to accept the reality of the plan.”

Indeed, in the beginning of March, the New York Post, in an article entitled Ratner Readies Wrecking Ball, reported that the developer plans to demolish 12 buildings, on Pacific and Dean Streets, and Flatbush and Vanderbilt Avenues, “as he revs up efforts to being building his $4 billion Atlantic Yards project.”

But a new film, Brooklyn Matters, uncovers a deepening vein of displeasure with the project that spans a wide political spectrum, in Manhattan as well as Brooklyn, among community leaders and urban planners. In addition to the “resignation and bitter apathy” referred to by Brooklyn resident Jennifer Egan in her recent New York Times op-ed essay, there seems to be a warehouse of active resistance and also a minefield of new obstacles. Three new lawsuits against the project will tie the project up for a while. The Spitzer administration is looking closely at this and a host of other Pataki deals that left mushrooming public costs. Critics are attempting to expose the affordable housing package as something of a front for what they say is really a massive luxury project. And now community groups are working on expanding their own plan for the area that sets aside Ratner’s vision.

Brooklyn Matters

The film Brooklyn Matters was produced and directed by independent filmmaker Isabel Hill, who a decade ago produced a documentary entitled Made in Brooklyn, which took a critical look at the city government’s planning and zoning policies that undermine productive industrial areas. For the new documentary, Hill says she had hoped to include spokespeople for Forest City Ratner, but the developer did not respond to multiple requests for interviews. However, Bertha Lewis of ACORN, a housing advocacy group that supports the project, is interviewed in the film, as are other supporters, and many are shown in action at heated public forums. The urban planners and architects who voice their opinions include former city Planning Commissioner Ron Shiffman, architectural critic Paul Goldberger, and me.

Despite the impression that attitudes toward the project split along racial lines -- blacks supporting it and whites opposing it -- the film makes clear there are eloquent people of color in the opposition, from activist Bob Law to Councilmembers Letitia James and Charles Barron.

There are in fact unexpected harmonies among the diverse opposition chorus shown in the film. Julia Vitullo-Martin of the conservative Manhattan Institute (director of its Center for Rethinking Development) lashes out at the enormous density of the project and its failure to connect with the surrounding neighborhoods. Kent Barwick of the liberal Municipal Art Society blasts the use of eminent domain to transfer ownership of viable developed properties to a single large developer. Both left and right now seem to agree that this project is too large and dense (it would be the densest in the city), and that state officials are both abusing the government’s condemnation powers by using them to favor one powerful developer, and overriding the city’s normal public review process.

What this has meant is that the only opportunity for local residents and businesses to comment publicly on the project was through the environmental review process, mandated under state law. But this review was found in a report by the Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, a coalition of over 40 local groups, to be “insufficient in both process and substance.” There were only two public hearings -- one in October of 2005 on what is called the “Scope of Analysis” for the environmental review (basically the outline of potential project impacts that would have to be analyzed), and one to receive public comments on the “Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” over 4,000 pages of detailed, highly technical analysis, which was held in August of last year, when many residents were on vacation and community boards were in recess. Those who missed that public hearing may find both entertaining and shocking the footage in Brooklyn Matters, in which hordes of hard hats from throughout the region shout down requests by neighborhood leaders for more time to evaluate the project’s impacts, and ACORN’s troops joined the chorus.

Despite many appeals for changes to the plan -- including calls by many project supporters for a reduction in size -- this did not happen.

The Disappearing Affordable Housing

For those on the liberal side of the spectrum, the developer’s promise of 50 percent affordable housing was certainly a most compelling one. No private developer has ever made such a huge pledge. It is understandable why ACORN, one of the largest advocates for affordable housing in the nation, would accept the developer’s invitation to sign a contract -- a Community Benefits Agreement -- that promised its support in exchange for the developer’s commitment.

Michelle de la Uz, director of Fifth Avenue Committee, one of Brooklyn’s largest non-profit affordable housing developers, tells Brooklyn Matters how, within weeks of the announcement of the benefits agreement, the developer added more residential units to their project in a way that reduced the percentage of affordable units to about 30 pecent. Then the developer defined “affordable” so liberally that it included a huge swath of “moderate-income” households that would be making far more than the median income for Brooklyn. In fact, less than 14 percent of the apartments in the proposed development would be affordable to households making less than the median income.

Three Court Cases and the UNITY Workshop

Opposition groups have filed one lawsuit and two more are lined up and ready to go. This may create more problems even should Forest City Ratner eventually prevail in court, since “market timing” may force the developer to alter its plan or postpone its completion indefinitely. Landscape Architect Laurie Olin, who was hired to make the project’s interior courtyards look as if they were public open space, recently told the New York Observer he thought it could be 20 years before the project is completed, twice as long as projected.

Forest City Ratner has requested permits to demolish buildings it owns in the area, even though it cannot build the first phase of the project, including the arena, as long as the project is tied up in court. Demolition might help Forest City Ratner create “facts on the ground” that favor eventual implementation of the project. But the history of giant urban renewal projects like this one is telling. New York City, including downtown Brooklyn, has had many large urban renewal areas that remained vacant eyesores for decades after they were cleared for redevelopment. Forty years after the clearance of the Hoyt-Schermerhorn Urban Renewal Area in Boerum Hill, the vacant sites are just now being built on.

Meanwhile, neighborhood residents are also thinking long-term. The UNITY Plan (which stands for Understanding, Imagining and Transforming the Yards) was developed three years ago as an alternative plan after workshops sponsored by Councilmember Letitia James and coordinated by architect Marshall Brown. Brown, along with Ron Shiffman and I, are convening a series of workshops to update and expand the plan, so that it covers areas that are being blighted as Forest City Ratner buys and vacates properties. To the people attending the UNITY Workshops, Brooklyn matters, and nothing is a done deal until it is done.

Tom Angotti is professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning.

Housing's Impact: Need For New Research


Four seemingly disconnected announcements made news in housing in February. First, the city announced it would open the waiting list for Section 8 that has been closed for well over a decade. The long lines at housing authority offices for applications reflect the great need for housing help; the 22,000 vouchers will not come close to addressing it. Second, Starrett City, a housing complex in Brooklyn built with financing provided by the state’s Mitchell-Lama program, was sold for $1.3 billion (the sale is not final and requires state and federal approval). That was barely a month after Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan, a large complex of mainly rent stabilized apartments set a record for real estate sales when it fetched $5.4 billion. Third, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced she would pursue a tax credit for renters and passage of a new law to allow tenants to sue their landlords in housing court for harassment.

The fourth announcement came from the MacArthur Foundation and sort of links all of these things together: The foundation will commit $25 million over five years to finance housing research – specifically aimed at shifting the debate on housing. The research would help advocates, policymakers, politicians and others develop a larger understanding of why housing is so important –--and, consequently, why public policy on housing requires a new sense of urgency.

Housing Research Gets a Big Boost

In 1968, an advisory panel to then president Richard Nixon recommended creating a housing allowance program that would help low-income families pay their rents. It seemed a risky idea to many people. Among many concerns, one stood out: It would drive up rents – landlords would just raise rents if government helped people pay.

But the Experimental Housing Allowance Program was a success. “There was a lot of debate at the time,” said Ingrid Ellen, director of the Furman Institute for Real Estate at New York University. But research showed “there wasn’t much of an effect on housing prices. That research is probably the best research out there to this day, and it paved the way for the Section 8 program.”

Doing more research is critical to understand just how housing impacts people’s lives and to develop new housing policy. And now is the time to undertake new research, said MacArthur Foundation President Jonathan Fanton when he announced the foundation would spend $25 million to fund research on housing issues over the next five years.

“It seems to me that a policy ‘window’ is opening,” Fanton told an avid audience when he announced the new initiative. “It is easier now than at any time in recent memory to imagine that critical financial and regulatory barriers to preserving and improving affordable housing will be overcome.”

More research would help everyone working on housing issues modify existing efforts and design innovative new approaches, Fanton said. It probably was not coincidental that he announced the initiative in New York City, and he pointed to the city’s housing acquisition fund, $200 million raised by the city to help finance affordable housing efforts, as a model new approach. The MacArthur Foundation has committed $5 million to the fund.

But the foundation’s effort is aiming for a more profound shift in how people think about housing.

“We need a new theory about how housing matters, and why it is a critical path toward other individual and community improvements to which we aspire,” Fanton said. “And that new theory must be more than a field of dreams; it must be built on high quality research that yields evidence to persuade across the political spectrum.

“Better and more knowledge about housing as it relates to schools, jobs, health, and economic growth will significantly change attitudes among policymakers and the public at large.”

The foundation’s announcement thrilled researchers.

“That’s outstanding, very exciting news,” said Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania, whose research is frequently cited in housing policy circles. Last year, when the city and state announced the third New York/New York agreement to build supportive housing, Culhane’s research showing that such housing is very cost effective was a persuasive piece.

“Housing is one of the most understudied issues in social policy,” Culhane continued. “It’s primarily an issue of resources. Health care and medicine has the National Institutes of Health, the physical sciences have the National Science Foundation, but the social sciences have very limited resources within NSF.”

Culhane went on to say that although the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development finances housing research, most of its research budget is eaten up producing its annual housing vacancy survey.

Research is critical, Ellen said, to not only rethinking housing policy but to making current housing policy efficient and effective.

“Research can only point our policies to be more effective,” she said. “It’s almost irresponsible to spend money on policies that don’t have the effects we think they’ll have.”

The MacArthur Foundation is clearly seeking to push research of the connections between housing and family and community health, broadly speaking, but there are lots of areas ripe for study, a panel including the city’s housing commissioner said after Fanton’s remarks.

“There has been a fundamental shift in the challenge of abandonment to the challenge of affordability,” said Shaun Donovan, the city’s housing commissioner. “The challenge for housing policy has more and more shifted away from this problem of urban revitalization to the fundamental challenge of housing affordability. The more the research can be focused on that, the better.”

“We don’t really know much about the role of housing in the lives of children and families and communities,” said Sandee Newman, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “To put it another way, we don’t really know how improving housing carries with it benefits above and beyond the value of the housing itself.”

Newman divided housing research into five categories:

  • Physical quality of housing
  • Crowding
  • Affordability
  • Subsidized housing
  • Home ownershi

“The good news is that in the last ten to 20 years we’ve started to build that base of knowledge,” she said. “The bad news is we have a long way to go.”

Given the financial means, researchers pointed to a number of areas for new research efforts.

“There are lots of areas where we could use a lot more evidence in ways that we could shape policy,” Ellen said. For example, “we don’t really what drives segregation” in housing.

“We’d like to know if we just provided someone with a voucher with housing location assistance, maybe we can open up new worlds to them…. We have no idea if (location assistance) makes any difference.”

The MacArthur Foundation and many researchers are clearly interested in knowing more about the fundamental impact housing has on families, children and entire communities. How important, for example, is housing to a child’s success at school? Does housing stability affect people’s health?

“That is precisely the direction it should go in because we all know from a common sense perspective that we wouldn’t live just anywhere or have our children randomly assigned to neighborhoods,” Culhane said. “We know intuitively that place matters. But social research has not really figured out how to elucidate those impacts.”

And Culhane said the dramatic impacts on policy that the foundation is seeking are clearly possible.

“Behavior is a function of the person and the environment, but virtually all the research today has been on the person and not the environment,” he said. “And I think that’s partly because the tools and the data we have have been very limited.

“Part of what the challenge will be for this new generation of research will be identifying new types of data, new methods of measurement and things that are longitudinal in nature that show impact over a lifetime.”

Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations.  

 

Bigger Media, Less Local Democracy


“Give me another issue where the American Civil Liberties Union is working with the National Rifle Association; where you get MoveOn.org agreeing with the Christian Coalition,” Eric Klinenberg was saying in his office in the Puck Building. “When you get these extremes of the American political spectrum -- plus everybody in-between -- coming together on an issue, then it’s time to pay attention to it.”

The issue to which he was referring is media consolidation – the gobbling up by big corporations of newspapers, TV stations and radio stations. According to Professor Klinenberg, who teaches sociology at New York University, there is only one group that seems uninterested: “Major media companies do not cover this issue. They have proven incapable of covering themselves.”

Klinenberg focuses on the issue in a new book, “Fighting for Air: The Battle To Control America’s Media,” which seems itself to be getting plenty of attention, from Philadelphia to Chicago, Nashville to Seattle. We thought we would see what he had to say about New York City. An edited transcript follows:

Gotham Gazette: There is a sentence in your book, Fighting for Air, that sums up what it’s about: “Just as Starbucks knocked out independent coffee shops and Wal-Mart killed the corner store, media conglomerates have devastated locally produced newspapers, television stations, and radio programs throughout the country.” You say this threatens both cultural diversity and democracy. How so?

Eric Klinenberg: We’re not getting news about the places where we live and we’re not hearing local voices on the air.

There are newspapers across the country that have pulled out their City Hall reporters; that cut their school board beats or their environmental reporters. It’s not as if our local school boards no longer shape the quality of our children’s education. It’s not as if there are no more polluting corporations. It’s just that we don’t necessarily get the news coverage of them that we need to make informed decisions…

Television newscasts were better 20 years ago. You see more commercials now, more teasers, longer weather reports. One study of more than 4,000 local evening news broadcasts in the month leading up to Election Day in 2004 revealed that a mere eight percent of the broadcasts ran a story about a local political race, including campaigns for the U.S. Congress.

As for diversity, one of the most alarming trends in our broadcast system is the recent decline of minority and female station owners -- people who in many cases got licenses for the explicit purpose of doing cultural and civic affairs programming for communities that large corporations neglected. But they just can't compete with the Clear Channels of the industry, which sell package advertising at deep discounts, own live concert venues, and even own the syndicated programs that more than half of all commercial radio stations play.

Research shows that the larger the owner of a radio station, the less diverse its playlist -- compared to both its programming under the previous owner and to other stations in the same market. Big radio companies operate in top-down fashion. They want national market researchers finding music that appeals to the lowest common denominator, not local DJs selecting music that they like because it's interesting, innovative, and exciting. Local radio DJ’s are struggling everywhere to find jobs.

Big Media And New York City

Gotham Gazette: In New York City, there is no Wal-Mart, and there are still plenty of places to have an over-caloried coffee besides Starbucks (though there are more than 170 Starbucks in the city, and counting.) How is media consolidation affecting New York City in particular?

Klinenberg: Truly local coverage has become a luxury good. So the wealthiest cities are still getting a decent supply of local information. New York is the most competitive media market I know of. People in Los Angeles and Chicago envy New York for the diversity of its local news.

Gotham Gazette: But a lot of New Yorkers, especially community advocates, neighborhood activists, complain all the time about the lack of coverage of local issues.

Klinenberg: Yeah, well, it’s an enormous city. I’m not saying that every community is adequately covered. My point is: As we look across American cities and communities, we find that local information about them has become more of a luxury good.

But New York is not immune from this pressure of consolidation.

Radio Commercials.
The New York City music radio market has changed dramatically in the last ten years.

People here get the same formats and the same kinds of music that are available everywhere else, with the same increase in commercials that have driven many of us off the dial.

Cable Rates.
Probably the most frustrating aspect of consolidation in New York is the cable television industry. Most New Yorkers don’t have a choice about cable; it’s a non-competitive part of the marketplace.

As a result, the cost of cable television has skyrocketed. Rates have gone up higher for Cablevision subscribers than for anyone else. And we are paying for channels we never watch.

 

The Death Of Alt?
The other dramatic story has to do with the transformation of the alt weeklies. The Village Voice is now managed by two libertarians from Phoenix, Arizona. They merged New Times with Village Voice Media, they took the name, Village Voice Media, but the controlling party are these two from Phoenix. They came to town, they fired veterans, they imposed conditions that were so difficult for others that they resigned, they lost an editor. In the view of many veterans at the Voice, they crushed the spirits of the newspaper and tried to impose a style whose fit for the city remains open to question. For example, many people at the Voice were concerned that there was a political purge, that [co-owner] Michael Lacey wanted to take the progressive voice out of the Village Voice. The Village Voice long ago lost its tight connection to Greenwich Village. It became a New York institution and somewhat of a national institution as well, but it’s always had this distinctly alternative voice, and the voice of Michael Lacey and the new Village Voice management is alternative only insofar as frat boy contrarianism of the kind that we associate with the party that’s in power right now is an alternative; in my view that’s not very alternative at all.

Gotham Gazette: This is on the basis of your reading the issues since the new owners took over?

Klinenberg: I think we’re still watching the Village Voice change. I’ve been reading the New Times publications for years, and I’ve had countless conversations with former New Times employees, current New Times employees, as well as those with other alternative weeklies, about the way that company does business. The standard operating style of the New Times weekly papers was to pare down the editorial staff so that they had fewer full-time reporters than papers like the Village Voice used to have. In the cultural coverage, they have a number of movie reviewers, music reviewers, who do content for all of the Village Voice media chain papers; that means a smaller number of perspectives.

Gotham Gazette: You are talking about what the chain was like before it merged with the Village Voice Media, and you are also talking about what has happened in other cities. I wondered if there is evidence that this has happened here.

Klinenberg: The jury is still out. I haven’t seen the Village Voice replace all the people who resigned or were fired.

Gotham Gazette: I have seen stories though that say they are hiring.

Klinenberg: I see ads.

Gotham Gazette: So, you don’t know for sure yet.

Klinenberg: I’m pretty certain they have not exceeded the number of employees they used to have. The style of management in this company is that you have smaller newsrooms. They have quotas; reporters have to get work out more quickly. Some of the reporters I spoke with [in other Village Voice Media newspapers] complained that when you have to produce reported stories quickly, you’re more likely to go after public companies or non-profits, whose financial information is more readily available, than do deep investigations into the private sector.

Gotham Gazette: So, to sum up: The effects of consolidation have been most dramatic nationally with radio and newspapers. In New York City, the effects are most seen in radio as well…

Klinenberg: They’re heard in radio.

Gotham Gazette: Yes, heard in radio. The other effects locally are in the cost of cable TV and possibly in the alternative newspaper, by which you mean the Village Voice.

Klinenberg: Yes, but I would add one thing: The mainstream newspaper industry has not been unaffected. I’m sure you follow the story of the Tribune company’s management of the Daily News, sorry, Newsday.

Gotham Gazette: The Tribune company actually owned the Daily News in the past.

Klinenberg: Which is why sometimes I make that slip. But they fired more than 100 reporters at Newsday. The staff recently wrote collectively a letter to the Tribune company, saying that you’re destroying the quality of journalism that made this paper important. So newspaper reporters in New York are experiencing a version of what’s happened to reporters in Los Angeles, just on a smaller scale.

Is Big Necessarily Bad?

Gotham Gazette: I want to show you what’s written on a soda cup from a Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant: “Chipotle, Unchained

“According to various media reports, Chipotle is now a ‘chain.’ (We thought we were just a burrito joint.) It simply means we have a lot of restaurants. But we’re aware of the negative connotation of that word…and we’re intent on disproving it by acting un-chain-like. Because big can be good…Because of our size, we can influence for the better how livestock is raised….We also buy organic pinto and black beans…because we’re buying so many, we’re helping to increase the supply. All that means better food for you. So, size does matter.”

I should point out that the Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant chain is owned by McDonald’s, so they are being a little coy here, if not outright misleading.

But still, what about their argument -- what’s so bad about big?

Klinenberg: What I’m most concerned about is uncompetitive media marketplaces. Big might not be bad, if by big you meant big journalistic staffs, big studios filled with all the live djs and reporters. But what we are seeing is big companies downsizing -- reducing the number of live local human beings producing original content. So in my view we’re getting big companies, small journalism… We once considered local news and information to be necessary for democracy in this country; we have a profoundly local political system.

Fragmented, And Neglected

Gotham Gazette: Is there an argument that just as in Europe , we’re becoming more one culture where regional differences are smoothing out and there is such a thing as an American or national culture and society? Is it actually making us more united as a people when the people in Atlanta are reading the same statements from Barack Obama as the people in Chicago?

Klinenberg: I have the reverse interpretation -- that the era of the mass society in the United States is actually in decline; that culturally, we’re fragmented….

In the last 25 years there has been a political shift in this country that involves more political power delegated to state governments. The corporate communities have figured that out, which is why they have made unprecedented investment in lobbying at the state level. If you go to any state capital in this country today, you can see the whole landscape has transformed with fancy hotels, big chain restaurants; it’s an elite scene now.

At the same time the corporate community and lobbyists raced to the state house, the newspaper industry and the radio reporters were going out the other side of the revolving door. Media companies pulled out their investment in this kind of state coverage. And here we have this incredible paradox. There are more significant political decisions taking place in the state capitals, and we have fewer journalists covering that information.

A Change In The Culture?

Gotham Gazette: In the book you attribute a lot of the problems to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. How much can you blame on that single law, and how much is it a change in the culture, and in technology?

Klinenberg: It depends on the industry.

Until 1996 it was illegal for any company to own more than four radio stations in a single market and it was illegal for any company to own more than 40 radio stations nationally. And that meant that by definition, this was a relatively small business. The radio industry was dominated by mom and pop players. There were some big companies that had big radio stations, but it was a highly competitive industry. After 1996, the Telecommunications Act raised the local ownership cap to eight in the largest markets, and eliminated the cap altogether nationally. What happened is that in the next two years, 40 percent of America’s commercial radio stations changed hands. That’s a staggering number. And a small number of companies (basically three) emerged as the true giants of the field, including Clear Channel, which went from 40 stations to more than 1200 in four years.

Radio changed as a result, for the worse.

Gotham Gazette: What about the argument that the large companies have actually saved some local newspapers from going under – and that the cutbacks are about survival in a changed environment?

Klinenberg: These businesses are tremendously profitable. Newspapers have profit margins that dwarf other companies. Typical Fortune 500 companies have profit margins of six percent. Newspapers typically have 30 percent. You’ll have a hard time persuading me to feel sorry for the owners of newspapers.

Media companies are arguing that they’re losing audience because of changes in technology. I’m arguing they’re also losing audience because of their business model – to get rid of local content. Radio broadcasters turned off a generation of radio listeners, who may now not go back.

Countertrends

Gotham Gazette: You talk about counter-trends to the homogenization of media, such as so-called pirate radio stations – whose motto is “Low Power to the People” – and the Internet. Do these leave you hopeful?

Klinenberg: There’s no doubt we have access to more information. But all the evidence shows that there is not more information available on the local level. You can read about South Africa on your computer. That won’t help you make decisions in your neighborhood, in the city, or in the state. No matter how cosmopolitan we are, no matter how global we aspire to be, in my view we all live, ultimately, local lives. When our schools are bad, our children suffer. When our hospitals are bad, it affects our health.

Gotham Gazette: What about hyperlocal media, or what’s being called citizen journalism?

At this point, I would like to do what Kurt Anderson does in New York Magazine and give a full disclosure notice that’s actually an exercise in self-promotion. Your book devotes several complimentary pages to Gotham Gazette as the example of “innovative Internet journalistic projects”, calling it “a remarkably rich publication” and Jonathan Mandell its “tireless editor.”

Klinenberg: I love the Gotham Gazette. I read it every morning. Gotham Gazette would be a sliver of itself were it not for all the local news organizations full of professional reporters, on whom it relies daily for its information.

I love Gothamist too. The co-founder of that blog told me that if they didn’t have the local press, the whole Gothamist model would fall apart.

Gotham Gazette: But this is the first generation of Internet journalism. When Time Magazine first started, it was basically just a rewrite of the articles in the New York Times. Of course now, they have their own massive independent news operation (despite recent layoffs). If Web sites are starting to make money covering local news, why couldn’t they start sponsoring original reporting?

Klinenberg: In theory, that could happen. But I’m not prepared to say that as newspapers fire reporters, bloggers will make up for it. Are bloggers going to replace investigative reporters? Are bloggers going to report on issues that require technical knowledge of a field? Journalism is a profession that took generations to develop. What they do is not always wanted by powerful people, whether they’re public or private.

Gotham Gazette: It’s not always wanted by regular people either.

Klinenberg: The demand for newspaper journalism is at an unprecedented high, if you include the Web versions of the newspapers.

Gotham Gazette: But do readers really miss the investigative pieces, or are they satisfied with the latest escapade of Paris Hilton? What about the argument that publications and stations are giving their subscribers what they want?

Klinenberg: There are many of us who are not getting what we want. If you’re a radio listener, is what you want 20 minutes of commercials every hour? Do television viewers really want extreme political invective rather than local coverage?

Gotham Gazette: How optimistic are you about the future of local media?

Klinenberg: It depends on whether the major telecommunications companies get their way with Congress, and take control of the Internet, so they can offer faster access to their own sites as well as to those sites that can afford to pay a premium for high-speed delivery. This would mean that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation could pay to make it fast and easy for you to get to one of its Web sites – and could make it impossible for you to get to Gotham Gazette or Gothamist or any other site unable to pay.

If we preserve network neutrality on the Internet, I’ll be much more optimistic. A healthy media is necessary for a healthy democracy.

 

It's the Development, Stupid, on Staten Island


It would be hard to imagine two political contests more diametrically opposed than the two Special Election races in New York City on February 20. While the Brooklyn race has captured the most press attention with its unwieldy crowd of candidates, complicated ethnic calculations, and laundry list of issues, the Staten Island contest is fairly straightforward.

The election to fill the council seat in the 51st district presents only two candidates -- one Democrat and one Republican, even though under city law, the ballot for the special election will not identify either candidate as such. And both candidates agree that one issue -- overdevelopment and its effects on the area -- overshadows any and all other topics.

In many respects, the 51st represents an anomaly in New York. It is overwhelmingly white, resembles the suburbs more than the city and is one of only three City Council districts represented by a Republican.

Vincent Ignizio hopes to continue that tradition. Currently a member of the State Assembly, he previously worked as chief of staff to Andrew Lanza and has held other staff positions at Staten Island. He said he wants to continue in the tradition of other Staten Island Republicans, such as City Council Minority Leader James Oddo and U.S. Representative Vito Fossella. His opponent, Manny Innamorato, thinks it is time for a change.

EFFECTS OF THE BOOM

Each of the two candidates argues that he is best equipped to deal with the problems created by the area’s population and building boom. Both offer a number of proposals to deal with it. Manny Innamorato would like to see the establishment of a Staten Island Planning Commission that “would be more sensitive and more focused” than the city planning commission. He would seek a number of changes in the way the city issues building permits and questions the granting of some variances that have allowed for new constructions, some of its in inappropriate places or not in keeping with the surrounding community.

Vincent Ignizio points to his work on down zoning as a City Council aide. Zoning for less density, he said, is “a major initiative for curbing overdevelopment” that has sharply reduced the umber of new housing permits issued on Staten Island.

Traffic is inextricably linked with all the new housing. “My commuters have the longest commute in the country for the shortest distance,” Vincent Ignizio said. To provide some relief, he would work for the city and state to arrange ferry service between the South Shore and lower Manhattan. Manny Innamorato would like to see the area’s street completed; much of the planned street grid he says has never been built.

Crowding in schools is also a byproduct of all the new homes, Vincent Ignizio said. He is working with Mayor Michael Bloomberg to develop a new school complex, with grades kindergarten through 12 , on the South Shore.

While development remains at the core of his campaign, Manny Innamorato has also been expressing concern about property taxes. For years, the city property tax rate for homeowners was reasonable, but he said “we’re starting to see that our numbers are creeping up.” If that continues, he worries that people will start to leave the city for New Jersey” and, Innamorato said, that’s the last thing we want to see.”

NAME GAME

Aside from the development debate, one of the biggest controversies in the race has been Emanuele Innamorato’s name. The candidate sought to appear on the ballot as Manny Innamorato, the name by which he says he has been known since high school. When the Board of Elections rebuffed his bid, the candidate took the issue to court. There a state Supreme Court judge ruled in his favor, declaring the ballot should be changed. The Staten Island Advance reported, it will cost the Board of Election $35,000 to make the switch.

THE RACE

In his campaign, Ignizio points to his accomplishments as a City Council aide, helping to bring, preserve open space and limit new construction on Staten Island. He said that as a council aide he worked on the first applications for down zoning and will continue to pursue such policies as a council member.

Innamorato is skeptical. During 30 years of Republican leadership, he said, “overdevelopment has gotten worse. Traffic has gotten worse.” Republicans only acted, he said, when problems reached a “fever pitch.”

So far both candidates have lined up endorsements from members of their party, with Michael Bloomberg and Staten Island Republicans backing Ignizio and Senator Charles Schumer supporting Innamorato. The Independence Party and Working Families Party also support the Democrat. With more than $58,000, Ignizio has raised three times the amount that Manny Innamorato has.

CHANGING PLACES

Vincent Ignizio’s campaign surprises some who question why a politicians would want to give up a seat in the State Assembly -- which, dysfunctional or not, is virtually a lifetime tenure -- for a term-limited seat on City Council. Ignizio said he thinks he could do more for his community on the City Council. Being a minority member of the City Council, even when the margin is 48 Democrats to three Republicans, is not the same as being a Republican in the State Assembly, according to Ignizio. “The City Council is a much more progressive body and a much more bipartisan body that the State Assembly,” he said.

A victory by Vincent Ignizio would have an interesting ripple effect. If he wins, there will almost certainly be yet another special election, that one to fill his seat in the legislature.

-----------

Vincent Ignizio: A longtime resident of Staten Island’s south shore, Ignizio worked for City Council and served as chief of staff for Andrew Lanza, whose seat he now hopes to fill. He has been a member of the New York State Assembly since 2005. He also serves as chair of Richmond County Republican Party.

Emanuele “Manny” Innamorato: A lifelong resident of Staten Island Inamorato formerly worked for the New York City Department of Transportation. He is now director of technology for the city of Yonkers. Innamorato ran against Vincent Ignizio for the State Assembly in 2004.



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