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The New New Domino:Déjà vu All Over Again
As I predicted, CPC Resources, the original developer for the Domino Sugar Refinery, flipped the property to a new developer, Two Trees Management, for a huge $120 million profit. So there’s a new plan afoot for the refinery, one the new developer has made even larger than CPC Resources’ massive plan, and one that is much larger than what is currently on the Williamsburg waterfront.
Teri Muroff Meyer, former Community Board #1 member and Public Safety chairperson. Photo courtesy Robert Meyer
On January 23, former Community Board member and Public Safety chairperson, Teri Muroff Meyer, 44, passed away after a long battle with cancer. This community is a better place thanks to her. I admired how Teri could dispute with people over issues in her leadership role as Public Safety chair, being firm and tough; then I would see her outside with the same people she was just in conflict with, having a laugh. I learned from her how to fight over an issue but to always be respectful of others.
She was a person I became friends with, and I am blessed for the wonderful times I had with her. This was sent to me by friend and colleague Heather Roslund, who also had the opportunity to work closely with Teri:
OP/ED PHIL ON FIRE
In what had to be one of the most bizarre races in recent memory, Chris Olechowski defeated Lincoln Restler in their contentious race for the 50th Assembly District Leader post. The day after election day, it seemed Chris Olechowski had won by 136 votes. But as the Board of Elections counted hundreds of absentee and affidavit ballots in the following week, word came out that Olechowski’s lead was down to 50 votes. Then on September 22nd, I received this message from Lincoln Restler: “After every last valid ballot has been counted, we have won by 53 votes! Against all odds, we have pulled this thing off!”
So it seemed that the verdict was in and Lincoln was the winner as he had been two years earlier. You might recall in the 2010 race Restler was behind by 97 votes in his first race for democratic district leader, but then won by a 120 vote margin in a recount. But this year, things would be more bizarre. A few days later, I received this announcement from Restler: “The canvassing of voting machines was completed and emergency, affidavit, and absentee ballots were all fully accounted for. Board of Elections staff and our election lawyers confirmed the result: every valid ballot had been counted and we had overcome a 136 vote margin on election night to be ahead by 53 votes in the final result.
Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Vito Lopez accused of sexual harassment
On August 24 the New York State Assembly Committee on Ethics and Guidance announced that Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the powerful Brooklyn Democratic boss, had been removed as chairman of the Housing Committee in the Assembly, stripped of his seniority and forced to undergo sexual harassment training after an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed two legislative employees beginning in June of this year. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, in a letter sent to Lopez, stated, “The bi-partisan Committee on Ethics and Guidance today delivered to me a report signed by all eight of its members, finding that Assembly Member Vito Lopez violated the Assembly’s sexual harassment policy. I have reviewed the report and will fully implement its recommendations. The members of the committee have fulfilled their obligation to independently and thoroughly review these allegations, and I thank them for their hard work.” Silver’s letter gave details of the two workers who said Lopez harassed them. The committee told Lopez the credible allegations made by the two women included:
That there were multiple incidents of unwelcome physical conduct toward one complainant, wherein you put your hand on her leg, she removed your hand, and you then put your hand between her upper thighs, putting your hand as far up between her legs as you could go;
By Phil DePaolo
The latest contested issue in Williamsburg is the attempt by former Manhattan City Council Member Eva Moskowitz, who turned entrepreneur, to open her brand of for-profit charter school (Brooklyn Success Academy Charter School) at the same location as JHS 50, at 183 South 3rd Street. The school, which houses 470 middle school students, also houses another public school, the Academy for Young Writers, which is scheduled to move elsewhere. At a recent hearing, hundreds of local residents came out to oppose the opening of the Success Academy charter school. It’s been documented that Moskowitz bussed in hundreds of Harlem residents to give the appearance of community support.
Charter schools in New York were started by the late Al Shanker, the former president of the American Federation of Teachers, among others. Shanker believed that charter schools couldn’t change education if they were disconnected from regular public schools. He wrote in a 1994 column in the New York Times: “Charter schools must have autonomy to get where they want to go, but they must also be part of a system that has a central purpose, and that means a system that has decided what kids need to know and be able to do. Otherwise, they will end up like all those alternative schools of the 1960s, relevant only to themselves and useless to the system as a whole.”