To the editor,
I thought you would be interested in this letter I wrote to Rep. Yvette Clarke, given your coverage of the superdelegate story (“Hil’s B’klyn superdelegates to rescue,” Feb. 28):
Dear Rep. Clarke:
I am writing to you regarding your status as a superdelegate in the current Democratic Primary race for President of the United States. I saw in a recent article that you support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy even though a majority of voters in our district voted for Barack Obama.
I understand the historic nature of this race — the Democrats have the best chance ever of winning back the White House, and it would be incredibly exciting to see either a woman or an African-American as our next president.
I voted for Barack Obama because I believe in his message of change, and because I believe he is the best candidate in a race against John McCain.
As a constituent, I appeal to you to honor the will of the voters in our district and to support Barack Obama as the next Democratic Presidential nominee.
Amanda Aaron, Park Slope
Parking? Lots
To the editor,
Residential Parking Permits may give residents a “hunting license” to look for parking, but given the unprecedented amount of development in the neighborhoods around Downtown Brooklyn, it will hardly improve one’s chances of getting a parking spot (“Pay-to-park plan cheered,” Feb. 9).
Residential Parking Permits are one of several tools that the city needs to employ in the coming years to manage supply and demand of our increasingly strained roadways.
Atlantic Yards, for example, is expected to generate as many as 20,000 new car trips a day. For the neighborhoods surrounding Atlantic Yards, permit parking is needed to discourage arena patrons from cruising for free parking.
But permits by themselves won’t be enough if those cars continue to drive to the arena and park in local lots. The city should insist that Forest City Ratner develop alternate plans for its “interim” parking lot, which would accommodate as many as 1,400 cars.
Without improvements to public transportation and disincentives to drive, the costs of free parking and free driving will continue to be borne by residents and pedestrians through increased accidents, elevated asthma rates, noise pollution and degraded quality of life.
Danae Oratowski, Prospect Heights
Save Green Church
To the editor,
I’m not a church-going person. I’m sure many people probably think I should be so I can find God and be “saved.”
Yet on Feb. 16, I went to church — the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church on Ovington and Fourth avenues in Bay Ridge. I stood outside with a sign and chanted “Save the Green Church.” I stopped strangers to tell them that we need to save this church (“More ‘Green’ to be torn down,” Feb. 9).
I found it ironic that the congregation isn’t trying to save me, yet I am trying to save it. The church has sold out to a developer, who wants to tear down a building on the National Registrar of Historic Places and put up condos.
I’ve lived in Bay Ridge for over 30 years. I walk its streets and admire its grand Victorian homes, with their turrets and columned porches. I gaze at the rows of townhouses made of brick, limestone or brownstone, with their original cornices and railings and imagine the interiors with pocket doors and moldings.
I also stumble upon construction sites of recently demolished homes and cringe at the thought of what will replace them: non-descript brick or stucco buildings with lifeless facades.
And I always think, “What a shame.”
What will we have left if the Green Church is demolished? A fleeting memory of what once stood there. But we don’t need memories; we need that church preserved as a reverence of this neighborhood’s past and as a hope for the future. Save the Green Church.
Helen Maalik, Bay Ridge
Road rage
To the editor,
I’ve always thought that the Congress Street on-ramp to the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway was very dangerous (“Smash hits,” Feb. 16).
Drivers can help protect themselves by making sure the car in front of them has successfully merged before trying to merge themselves. I also think a traffic sign to this effect would go a long way towards preventing accidents.
Ideally, a better entrance ramp would be built, but a simpler and faster solution would be to reduce the number of lanes on the Staten Island-bound BQE from three lanes to two approaching the Atlantic Avenue exit. When it was done in the past, it allowed drivers on the Congress Street on-ramp to have a no-merge situation, and all it took were a few cans of paint.
Perhaps you could forward these suggestions to the Department of Transportation.
Michael Kilfoyle, Brooklyn Heights
Editor’s note: Consider them forwarded.
Down on Towns
To the editor,
While our Constitution is under a constant threat of being annulled by the current president, I found it beyond shameful that my congressman, Rep. Ed Towns was cross-examining Roger Clemens.
I need not go through the litany of issues that this ineffectual Democratic Congress hasn’t taken up, but seeing Towns’s picture in the Daily News last week in connection with these hearings steamed me so much that I had to stop reading and count to 10.
In case Rep. Towns wasn’t aware, East New York, Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Ocean Hill have a sub-prime mortgage crisis, along with the highest murder rates, black male incarceration rates and HIV/AIDS case rates in the city.
Ask those people about Roger Clemens’s alleged steroid use and you’ll get a hardy laugh and a suggestion on how you can amuse yourself in private.
The mediocre representation that the 10th Congressional District has tolerated since Ronald Reagan’s first term has made our voice virtually silent in Washington.
Our congressman has amassed no significant clout after 25 years on the Hill, and it’s safe to say that he never will.
Ed Towns should do the good people of Brooklyn a favor and retire — today! New blood is warranted in this disadvantaged district.
If re-elected, get ready for Towns’s hearings on who sold Amy Winehouse crack!
Terrance Knox, Fort Greene
The writer is co-president of Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn.
Grand plan
To the editor,
One of the points that the Grand Army Plaza Coalition made very clear in its recent presentation to Community Board 6 was that a two-way Prospect Park West would not necessarily be an outcome of a makeover of the Plaza, but it could enable a two-way PPW should that be deemed desirable (“Reinventing the (traffic) wheel,” online, March 1).
More than this, though, please understand that there is no firm alternative plan for dealing with the traffic in Grand Army Plaza at this time.
The CB6 presentation merely raised one vision that came from the Coalition’s community planning workshop in March 2007.
Michael Cairl, Park Slope
