Voting for Cycle 8 of Participatory Budgeting New York City (PBNYC) will take place from Saturday, March 30, to Sunday, April 7. PBNYC is a program that encourages City Council Members set aside at least $1 million from their discretionary budgets to be spent on capital projects selected by residents of their districts through direct democracy. As of 2018-2019, 31 […]
Author: Brett Yates
Kirsten Gillibrand’s Period of Adjustment
Like the majority of people these days, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has announced her candidacy for President of the United States in 2020. According to most polls, zero to three percent of Democratic voters would choose Gillibrand among the slate of likely primary candidates. Her unpopularity may seem strange to prognosticators who initially saw the senator as a plausible […]
Gaelic League Branch Marches for Irish Language Rights
On March 17, the Brooklyn branch of the Gaelic League held its annual St. Patrick’s Day parade outside Rocky Sullivan’s, with members making a short loop from the bar on Beard Street to the shoreline at Erie Basin Park with flags and signs in hand. The political concerns of the group, however, extend far beyond Red Hook. Douglas Hyde, who […]
HIV Infections on the Rise in Brooklyn
In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that progress has stalled in the effort to end the United States’ HIV epidemic: after five years of substantially declining rates of HIV infection, the number of annual infections has stabilized. Three months earlier, The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released a study showing a similar […]
Ortiz Introduces Green New Deal Legislation
The term “Green New Deal” typically brings to mind progressive politicians on the national stage, like U.S. Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. But thanks to Red Hook’s assemblyman, Assistant Speaker Félix Ortiz of the 51st District, New York State has a chance to craft its own climate change plan in the same vein. In February, Ortiz introduced Assembly […]
Gowanus landmarks group rallies against destruction
The Gowanus Landmarking Coalition wants to thwart the planned demolition of the S.W. Bowne Grain Storehouse, a circa-1886 brick industrial structure at 595 Smith Street. On the morning of March 13, the preservationists held a rally on the Hamilton Avenue Bridge over the Gowanus Canal. Last year, a fire damaged the Storehouse, which the Chetrit Group, a real estate development […]
BQX Courts Small Business Owners
Friends of the BQX, an advocacy group backed by developers Two Trees Management and the Durst Organization, continues to push for the $2.73-billion Brooklyn-Queens Connector light rail project favored by Mayor de Blasio and local real estate interests. Most recently, the Friends held an event for small business owners at the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg on March 5. Called “BQX […]
Trucks Worry Civic Association
At the start of the Red Hook Civic Association’s February meeting at P.S. 15, Neighborhood Coordination Officers Krystal Class and Vegnel Jovin from the 76th Precinct announced that they’d distributed flyers to local truck drivers to inform them of Red Hook’s designated truck routes. For large vehicles, New York City’s official truck route map limits the neighborhood’s through-traffic to Van […]
NYCHA announces maximum income policy and Section 18 dispositions
On February 13, at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) held a public hearing regarding an amendment to its annual plan for 2019. Dated December 27, 2018, the Draft Significant Amendment to the Annual PHA Plan for Fiscal Year 2019 outlines NYCHA’s approach to the new income limit requirements passed down from the […]
Vegan Food Is Like Butter at Sans
In 2018, when the Vietnamese noodle shop Nightingale Nine shut down with a year left on its lease at 329 Smith Street in Carroll Gardens, the restaurateur Robert Newton asked a former employee, Champ Jones, if he wanted to fill the space for the remainder of the term. Since working for Newton, Jones had gone on to cook at the […]