When our local government works well for us, we are the first to give credit. A couple of years ago we were aghast at two looming possibilities—an out of place nursing home and a misplaced ferry stop. Despite the worst efforts of the local community board, our councilman saved us in both cases—the ferry stop ended up in the right place, and the nursing home was stopped in its tracks.
In this issue we write about two situations that need to be handled better, and another that we don’t write about, which is itself the problem.
Once upon a time, Red Hook had a closed down sugar factory. It looked like this:
In 2006 the rapacious real estate speculator Joe Sitt, enriched by some shady dealings involving downtown’s Albee Mall, paid a huge sum for the l;and, which stood on the peninsula in Erie Basin, next to IKEA. Before anyone had a chance to protest, they obtained demolition permits and knocked down that historic structure.
Over the next 10 years he did absolutely nothing with the land, holding back a nascent economic revival that could have energized Beard Street.
Instead, he did nothing. The land lay fallow until a few years ago, when he turned it into a truck parking lot, at first without even paving the dirt.
Then, a couple of years ago he commissioned some fancy architects to create a plan for two fancy commercial buildings, along with a waterfront esplanade.
The viability of this plan is sketchy at best. No leases have been signed, no building permits issued, or even recently applied for. As detailed in this issue, all that he has done is collect fines for failing to follow environmental regs.
He has done is to dig up a lot of earth, as he has put up new bulkheads. He claims that the mini mountains of dirt that blow around the neighborhood are not toxic, but who knows.
Not a great neighbor.
Our councilman is about to allow him leeway in some zoning restrictions. In return they will build a public restroom. This is the deal our great community board worked out for us. Our councilman should tell them no deal. Not until they offer some proof that they will actually build what they say they will, and also to cart off the dirt. Sitt runs a $10 billion company. He can afford it.
The next situation is the fiasco that the closed ballfields have become. The EPA correctly ordered them closed for remediation due to lead in that dirt. That was three years ago. The city was ordered to create a plan to fix the fields.
In three years, the only visible work we can see are fences to make sure nobody uses the fields. And a couple of signs.
Last summer, amid a local city council race, a group of residents, led by Wally Bazemore, held a rally wondering what was up. In response, the sitting councilman, facing an electoral challenge, got the Brooklyn Parks commissioner, Marty Maher, to hold a community meeting in the Rec Center.
He told us that while Red Hook couldn’t see anything happening, there was actually a maelstrom of activity at city agency offices. Papers were being shuffled, approvals sought between different agencies not used to working with each other, to pave the way to digging up the toxic earth.
Last month he finally convened another meeting. The news was that there are to be more delays in moving even a teaspoon of leaden dirt. Something about some hidden rules preventing them from choosing a contractor. And then he said he’d see us in six months. Maybe…
I remember our councilman giving a speech in the Sunset Park HS, calling for a change in the attitude of city agencies. These agencies are used to doing things the way they always do them – innovation and creativity is not part of being a city worker. Maher is no exception.
A local businessman, Jim Tampakas, made a suggestion for reducing truck traffic, once the work finally begins. His idea is to use our waterways to ship out the toxic dirt, of which their will be lots. We are surrounded by water.
In the 1990’s, the city wanted to fill us up with waste transfer stations and barge out lots of garbage. I guess dirt is not garbage, or Parks and Sanitation don’t talk.
Maher looked at Jim like he was speaking Chinese. That’s not something in the Park instruction book, so for Maher, that doesn’t compute.
Our councilman was at this meeting. He should have been screaming at the parks department. He should be calling on the mayor to shake things up. Will he?
Finally, what we do not write about this issue is something our councilman came into office a rabid fan of. He is still a rabid fan of it, but not in Red Hook, at least it seems that way.
I’m talking about Participatory Budgeting. Back in 2014, there was a lot of energy surrounding this new idea, pioneered in Brazil, that allowed for local groups to create projects and have them voted on by locals, the winners to be funded by the city.
The councilman and his aides were everywhere getting local groups involved. There were monthly meetings where projects were planned, and dioramas of the proposed plans were made and displayed at the Red Hook Library.
We are the local newspaper, and we had seen absolutely no publicity surrounding this years PB. Voting for it takes place the second week of April. At the end of March we realized that we still hadn’t heard a peep from anyone about it.
We checked at the council office and they promised to get back to us, but they didn’t. So the April issue went out with no mention that there were elections coming up on which every resident 11 years and could vote – on projects that hardly anyone even knew about.
We walked around the neighborhood and saw only a couple of signs advertising the voting. Afterwards, we checked at the two local voting places and were told that not many people showed up to vote, but anyone who came by for whatever reason was pressed to fill out a ballot. The councilman loves to say that he gets a great turnout for this vote.
Come on – lets do a better job next year, and make participation exciting again.
