Beacon School Trades With The Enemy

Manhattan’s Beacon School gets the full Michael Moore treatment from the Treasury Department:

The Beacon School’s field trips to Cuba have generated the interest of the Treasury Department, which is investigating a community group that may have organized the trips.

An official at the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, Dale Thompson, wrote to Pastors for Peace/Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization last year to request records and notify it that his office was “currently conducting a civil investigation of this matter.”

The group supports travel to Cuba, and participants in the Beacon School field trips say the group organized their travel to the communist country. The trips, at least some of which violated federal law, do not appear to have received authorization from top officials at the city’s Department of Education. They did, however, receive the written endorsement of at least two politicians, Lieutenant Governor David Patterson and Rep. Jerrold Nadler. Both later said they were unaware the trip was being undertaken in violation of the federal travel ban.

The city’s Department of Investigation is also looking into the field trips.

More importantly, do parents understand that the school recently performed “Urinetown”?

How Tame Is The West Village These Days?

The West Village is so tame that arborcide qualifies as a major story:

With its cozy bakeries and candlelit restaurants, tree-lined Bedford St. is a picture-perfect piece of the West Village. But upon second glance, there is something missing. In front of 12 Bedford St. sits an empty tree pit. Home to a male gingko for nearly 20 years, all that remains is a dirt-covered stump and a yellow, laminated sign that reads:

R.I.P. Gingko Biloba 1985-2007

Shade Giver, Oxygen Provider, Friend to Humans and Even Dogs, A Good Tree

Died November 15, 2007

Victim of NYC Parks Department Arborcide

. . .

On Nov. 15, Stu Waldman and Livvie Mann were on their way out to an event at the Javits Center when Waldman noticed through their front window two people pruning their beloved tree. He and his wife had paid for it to be planted when they first moved to Bedford St. Having received no call ahead of time from the Parks Department, Waldman and Mann rushed out to find out who the pruners were and what exactly they were up to. Waldman said there was no indication on their uniforms that the man and woman worked for the Parks Department. But the pair of pruners said they were hired by the city to cut down the tree because it was cracked and posed a danger to local residents.

After a few minutes of arguing, the couple — hoping they had convinced the pruners to consult with their supervisor before going through with the job — left for their evening event. When they returned later that night, the tree was gone.

As they retold the story recently, they sat perched on their side-by-side sofa chairs, finishing each other’s sentences. When they came to the moment when they found the tree gone, they gazed wistfully out at the empty space where it once stood.

“We were upset, felt violated and lied to,” Mann said. “Everything about that tree represented years of work. It’s not easy to keep up a tree around here.”

. . .

The pair plan to take the issue to Community Board 2 or the City Council if they don’t get a response from 311 soon. Bob Gormley, C.B. 2 district manager, said the board is working on a number of initiatives to plant trees in empty tree pits in the neighborhood, but he was surprised to hear about this particular case.

Because Those Signs Are Really For Collecting Vast Amounts Of Money To Balance The Budget At The End Of The Year

All for the public good:

Moshe Zenwirth has been waiting since June for a bus that hasn’t come — and likely never will.

The Borough Park yeshiva administrator was slapped with a $115 ticket after he parked at a “bus stop” on 51st St. – even though the closest bus route is one block north.

Since the June 13 fine was issued, Zenwirth, 34, has appealed the decision, but has been stymied by two city administrative law judges, most recently in October.

“It upset me more the unfairness, the negligence, the stupidity than the money itself,” said Zenwirth.

“How did it go through two separate judges and nobody even bothered to look to see that there wasn’t even a bus that went by.”

The City Finds $2.1 Billion For A Train Stop At That Convention Center But Can’t Figure Out How To Provide Working Elevators At Bronx Family Court*

Sure, the project is a lot less “sexy” but it at least provides some useful purpose:

There are many longstanding, seemingly intractable shortcomings in the city’s family court system that might delay a parent in getting a child back from foster care: unprepared lawyers, overcrowded dockets and long waiting lists for drug treatment and mental health services.

But Bronx Family Court has added a new obstacle: broken elevators.

For about a year, the elevators at the courthouse have been a disaster, people who work there say. Breakdowns have long been routine. This year, repair work has only added to the problem.

Lines to use a working elevator can stretch around the corner. People sometimes wait for hours to get to hearings, which are held on the seventh and eighth floors. Frequently, hearings have to be postponed because clients and witnesses cannot get to them.

“It’s absolutely an outrage,” says Ava Gutfriend, a lawyer who often represents parents in child welfare cases. “But in the Bronx it happens all the time.”

In some cases, warrants have even been issued for people who are downstairs waiting for an elevator; judges know only that they are not in the courtroom, said Bill Nicholas, the assistant attorney in charge of the Legal Aid Society’s office at the court.

. . .

In a city full of aging towers, many people view elevator breakdowns as a common annoyance of life. But the scale of the waiting at Bronx Family Court, which often extends to an hour or more, is beyond what most New Yorkers face. And the potential loss is not simply that of time wasted, but of the quality of justice that is dispensed. Consider the case of a client of Ms. Gutfriend’s who was scheduled for a hearing in mid-November to determine whether she could get her daughter back from foster care, where the child had been for 10 months.

The hearing was set for 10 a.m., Ms. Gutfriend recalled, but it was a day when only two of the four elevators in the building were working. The lines to get on the elevator and up to the hearing rooms stretched back two city blocks. Her client phoned upstairs to let her know she was stuck in the line, but was not able to get upstairs in time.

The judge agreed to call the hearing again an hour later, but the client was still in line. So the judge, who had something like 70 other cases to try that day, rescheduled the no-shows for the next available date. For this mother, the next chance to plead her case and get her child back was in January.

*I don’t care if it’s a reductionist apples-oranges argument — this is horrifying.

Mr. Sander, Tear Down This Whimsically Playful, Mosaic-Tiled Wall!

Staten Islanders question the federal percent-for-art program — because when a project costs billions of dollars, it adds up:

Even as the MTA is raising tolls and tempers on Staten Island, it plans to spend as much as $4 million on art installations for the Second Avenue Subway.

Some Islanders may not know art, but all know what they want: Funds to be spent on sorely needed mass transit improvements here.

. . .

The federal government requires that one-half to 5 percent of a project’s budget be dedicated to art, said MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin.

“Art is one critical element of our stations program that has a considerable impact . . . for a small fraction of a project’s budget,” Soffin said. “We are at the lower end of the recommended guidelines, well below 1 percent.”

So it isn’t possible to eliminate the art requirement without risking the loss of the entire $1.3 billion federal contribution.

Mary DiChiara of Pleasant Plains was in no mood for explanations, “We can’t get off this Island and they put aside $4 million for artwork for Manhattan? Take the $4 million and fix this bridge.

“They think we’re living on Fantasy Island, and nobody ever wants or needs to get off.”

“Just once, I’d like to see everybody on Staten Island who works in Manhattan just stay home,” she concluded. “Then they’ll see.”