Co-op City’s official newspaper serving the world’s largest cooperative community. © Copyright 2014 Co-op City Times
Vol. 49 No. 48
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Public Safety and Bronx CERT-10 stage 2nd Disaster Simulation To continue to improve on the procedures and coordinated action established in their previous mock drill, the Public Safety Department and Bronx CERT-10 (Community Emergency Response Team for Community Board 10) held its second Disaster Simulation exercise on Friday, November 21st. These exercises are intended to help Co-op City successfully navigate through any of a number of potential emergency scenarios. BY BILL STUTTIG
Beginning at approximately 6 p.m. last Friday evening, the 43 active members of CERT-10 received a call to report to Public Safety headquarters to receive specific instructions for handling an ongoing multi-faceted emergency. According to Public Safety’s Chief Frank Apollo, the mock emergency in this case was a major power failure affecting all of Sections 1 through 4 in Co-op City. It was staged in such a (Continued on page 2)
The Department of Public Safety’s Chief Frank Apollo addresses members of Bronx District 10’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), comprised of many Co-op City volunteers, as they prepare to take to the field in response to a simulated emergency in the community. The drill, held on Friday evening, November 21st, was the second held by CERT and Public Safety in the past year to establish effective coordination between the two agencies in case of a real emergency in the community in the near future. Board Director Khalil Abdul-Wahhab serves as the CERT Team Leader and coordinated the drill along with Apollo and Co-op City’s Interim General Manager Noel Ellison.
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Eight firms submit bids to become Co-op City’s new managing agent BY JIM ROBERTS Eight substantial, serious bids were submitted by the Nov. 19 deadline and now the Riverbay Board of Director’s Ad Hoc Committee will begin its work to choose three finalists for the position of managing agent of Co-op City. The full Board of Directors will then vote to decide which of those three finalists will be selected to take overall responsibility for managing the Riverbay Corp. for a one-year period. A final decision is expected some time early next year. Since no individual general manager candidates submitted a bid, the Ad Hoc Committee's recommendations will be limited to those eight managing agents that did respond. As required by the Request for
Proposal that the Board authorized to solicit bids, all of the eight candidates were required to complete a detailed application and establish compliance with both New York State Division of Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requirements. Among other requirements, bidders (Continued on page 4)
We wish our readers an enjoyable and safe Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
United Parcel Service institutes one-try delivery policy in Co-op City and the Bronx With the holiday gift-giving season around the corner, Co-op City residents have begun to realize receiving deliveries of holiday gifts and other packages from the United Parcel Service (UPS) will not be as easy as it has been in past years. According to Natalie Godwin, a spokesperson for UPS, the world-wide parcel delivery service is in the midst of changing its delivery policy, specifically stating that currently in certain areas, if the resident is not home to accept delivery on the first try, a second try at delivery will not be made, but instead the package will be left at what the delivery service calls an access point location, which in the case of Co-op City, are local businesses contracted to accept the packages and hold them for pick-up by the resident. Godwin said that in Co-op City, there are two official access point locaBY BILL STUTTIG
tions: the Associated Supermarket in the Einstein Shopping Center at 119 Einstein Loop in Section 5 and the Associated Supermarket in the Dreiser Shopping Center at 111 Dreiser Loop. Alex Perez, the owner of the two Co-op City supermarkets serving as access points for UPS deliveries, said the acceptance of packages by his stores is done under strict guidelines set forth by UPS which includes making sure the packages accepted are kept in a designated secure area around the clock. When the packages are accepted, they are scanned for tracking purposes and kept in the store for 48 hours. If no one picks up the package after 48 hours, the UPS delivery person then takes the package back and delivers it to a UPS facility in the Bronx from where the rightful owner can then pick it up. In order for a resident to retrieve a (Continued on page 2)
Out with the old … Contracted workers performed the work of dismantling one of Co-op City’s original low pressure boilers earlier this week. According to Assistant Power Plant Director Dave Stone, the original three-story boiler outlived its usefulness after more than four decades of service to the community. By dismantling the old boiler piece-by-piece, the Power Plant is creating room for a new, more efficient high pressure boiler, now under construction off-site, which, among other things, will allow the plant to better comply with state and local emission standards and create greater reliability in the around-the-clock production of electricity and temperature control services for the community’s homes. The new boiler should be ready for delivery to the plant by early spring. Photo by Bill Stuttig