To the editor,
Your article about the demise of Atlantic Yards (“Atlantic Yards Dead; Ratner kills Miss Brooklyn, KOs 11 buildings; vows to build publicly financed Nets arena,” March 29) makes it seem like Bruce Ratner’s promised 2,250 units of affordable housing might never get built.
One scenario is that Ratner builds the stadium and then sells off the rest of the 22-acres to private developers.
So when does ACORN, which supported Ratner and signed the Community Benefits Agreement, say, “Bruce, you’re breaking the deal”?
Bertha Lewis has to have major egg on her face now.
P.S. I hope the editor’s ankle is healing nicely.
Steve DeSève, Brooklyn Heights
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To the editor,
Your editorial, “Take Back the Rail Yards” (March 29) was right on. The whole Atlantic Yards project has been a huge betrayal of the public trust, and a reversion of the yards would help at least a little bit.
Your coverage of the whole debacle has been most welcome, and your jeremiads are being vindicated.
Let’s hope the several public officials do the right thing now, and move from (tardy) outrage to (early) action. Get on it, lawmakers. Make it happen. Take the rail yards back. And work on legal relief for those adjacent neighborhoods, which are not being developed but destroyed.
Daniel Meeter, Park Slope
The writer is the pastor at Old First Reformed Church on Seventh Avenue
• • •
To the editor,
Bruce Ratner didn’t create this blight. It has been a blight created by 60 years of political neglect. Even when the all-powerful speakers of the state Assembly were from Brooklyn, nothing was done to improve the area.
That is where the blight and neglect started — and remains.
Al Pankin, Downtown
Bias crime
To the editor,
I notice frequently that your “journalism” is filled with editorials presented in ways which distort facts, create bias, and fail to meet professional standards for community newspapers.
Though I could find other examples to support my claim, the one that pushed me to write this message was one found on the front page about (ironically) “whining” (“Whine connoisseurs,” March 22).
While every newspaper uses eye-catching headlines, my complaint comes from the body of the article:
• In the list breaking down the nature of the complaints, the text says that Williamsburg and Greenpoint residents called 311 “491 times to whine about blocked driveways, 426 times to request graffiti removal…”
The choice of words makes people who need to drive out of their driveways to go to work, pick up their kids, or even to do something for pleasure seem to be completely unreasonable — even though calling 311 is what they are supposed to do.
Yet people who don’t agree with an artist’s free expression are the ones who sound like upstanding citizens in your paper. Your writer seems to have inserted his own opinions about whose complaints are legit and who’s are not. That’s not reporting, that’s preaching.
• The next paragraph states sarcastically that “community members say the complaints are justified — especially when it’s their complaint.”
By reading this, I had been prepared by the author to disagree with the following statement. Instead the “whiner” went on to describe safety issues such as crime and broken streetlights. Again, the 311 system was set up so people would have a convenient way to report issues like these, so characterizing the complaints this way is unreasonable and unprofessional.
I read your paper because the New York Times and other “larger” papers don’t cover Brooklyn sufficiently. Therefore, I count on you. But please do the reporting and let me draw my own conclusions. I have plenty of my own unreasonable biases, I don’t need a reporter to provide me with his or hers.
Tim Steele, DUMBO
Morning, Wood
To the editor,
I want to clarify that when I called attention to my situation last week, I was focusing on corruption in the courts in particular (“He Wood if he could,” March 22).
My case against the city was dismissed in violation of the court rules which prohibit the filing of a written motion to dismiss in court. In a pre-trial hearing the lawyer for the city, Carolyn Planas, attempted to serve a written motion to dismiss. This motion was denied by honorable Donald S. Kurtz for improper service.
The following day, the same city attorney read the denied motion in court in front of the honorable Lawrence Knipel. He accepted this motion and dismissed the case claiming it was an oral motion!
As such, I have filed formal complaints against the judge and the city attorney.
Thank you for taking the time to look into this matter.
Arthur Wood, Clinton Hill
The writer owns the Broken Angel, a unique house on Downing Street.
Trash talk
To the editor,
As a member of Community Board 2, I am highly supportive of getting the Sanitation garage to be moved within CB2, if possible (“Heights ‘trashes’ Slope,” March 22). But I do think the concept that we have imposed our garbage trucks on Park Slope is a little far-fetched.
First, the garage is between 14th and 15th street and between Second and Third Avenues — not exactly the center of Park Slope. In fact, this garage is near CB6’s Sanitation garage.
Secondly, CB2 has the highest concentration of borough-wide and city-wide services within its borders — things like courthouses that also service CB6.
Perhaps we can trade the Brooklyn House of Detention or the parole offices and put the garage at these sites.
Sidney Meyer, Boerum Hill
Reader betrayed
To the editor,
As cheeky and amusing as Mike McLaughlin’s Styrofoam vs. biodegradable field test was (“Field Test: It’s a tale of two trays,” March 29), I found his insinuations that Styrofoam trumps the “green” sugar cane based trays quite irresponsible.
The green trays, though more expensive, break down in 45 days and can significantly decrease the amount of daily waste in our schools. If balancing over-sized portions of baked ziti and chicken Parmesan with one hand is Mr. McLaughlin’s defining factor, than perhaps he has somewhere to store the 850,000 used Styrofoam trays?
Scarlett Lindeman, Bushwick
Cobbled together
To the editor,
For at least the past two years, the city has granted film permits to what I consider an excessive number of shoots in a very small radius of blocks in my neighborhood of Cobble Hill. There is a one restaurant and a movie theater in particular often used as locations on Court Street that are right outside my door.
I have spoken to, and sent e-mails to, the Mayor’s film office on dozens of occasions. But it has all been to no avail.
I understand the city wants films to encourage shooting in the city, but the impact on the quality of life for my neighbors and me, including the local businesses, is disproportionate to the benefit to our community. The local businesses tend to lose money on shoot days.
Parking is lost, trucks idle all day, garbage is left behind, there is noise at night. These productions come to a set for a day or two, wreck havoc, then leave.
The community board is supposed to be notified of filming in their area, but Community Board 6 told me that the office receives a flash e-mail without details regarding specific streets that will be affected.
Yet the film office keeps issuing permits without consequences. The film office can’t even tell me how many permits were issued in each community board.
I call upon Public Advocate Gotbaum to investigate, audit and review all of the procedures of the Mayor’s Film Office.
Jason Licht, Cobble Hill
