Borough President Markowitz delivered his “State of the Borough” address last night — a wide-ranging speech chronicling the highlights of 2008 and the challenges ahead that even found time to acknowledge our award-winning work.
Markowitz and the editorial board of Brooklyn’s real newspaper haven’t always seen eye to eye, but Markowitz highlighted the staff’s coverage of the celebrations that engulfed Kings County following Barack Obama’s election victory in November — with the Beep showing off The Brooklyn Paper’s front-page headline “Barack-lyn.”
“Brooklyn, which is proud home to more African–Americans residents than any county that is not it’s own city, voted so strongly for President Obama that we could be called ‘Barack-lyn,’” Markowitz boasted while displaying the collector’s issue of The Brooklyn Paper.
Markowitz also introduced and updated the assembled dignitaries and news-making Brooklynities in the seaside Kingsborough Community College about on several of his key initiatives:
• the creation of the Brooklyn Academy of Global Finance, a high school set to open in Bedford–Stuyvesant this fall with a core curriculum in the lucrative areas of business and investments. (Markowitz was instrumental in the creation of an advertising and media school in Canarsie that opened last fall.)
• the creation of a new ampitheater in Coney Island’s Asser Levy Park. Though it’s run into controversy with some park neighbors, Markowitz hopes the band shell will rival the summer performance venue at Jones Beach.
• relocating government offices from the lower floors of the Municipal Building on Joralemon Street to make way for national retailers like Crate and Barrel and Nordstrom — a rehash of an initiative that was widely covered two years ago.
Markowitz also had time to lash out at his critics, including the New York Post, which called for abolishing the city’s borough presidents in several editorials last year.
“Despite what you might read in editorials in some of our tabloids, which don’t have a clue and would like nothing more than to see the elimination of borough presidents, the real story is that every single day my office fights to make sure Brooklyn gets its fair share,” he fumed.
