The local paper for Downtown wn A TEACHER MAKES THE GRADE < Q&A, P.21
FROM PAYPHONES TO WIFI NEWS Plan would create 7,500 hot spots BY JENNIFER PELTZ
Operator, won’t you help me replace this call? A 9-foot-tall, narrow structure installed this past week on a Manhattan sidewalk is signaling a plan to turn payphones into what’s billed as the world’s biggest and fastest municipal Wi-Fi network. The first of at least 7,500 planned hot spots are due to go online early next year, promising superfast and free Wi-Fi service, new street phones with free calling, ports to charge personal phones and a no-cost windfall for the city. With some cities nationwide making renewed pushes for public Wi-Fi after an earlier wave of enthusiasm faded, New York officials say their project is democratizing data access while modernizing outmoded street phones. For now, the first hot spot is still being tested and sits under a gray cover. But some passers-by like the sound of what’s in store. “It’s always helpful” to have WiFi to reduce the bite that apps and web-surfing take out of cellular data service, which is capped in many consumers’ plans, Jack Thomas said this week while texting near the dormant kiosk. But others have qualms about New Yorkers linking their devices to a public network as they stroll down the
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THE DOWNTOWN LIBRARY DESERT NEWS A shortage continues, despite years of complaints by local officials BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS
Downtown officials want to know why there are no libraries or community centers in the Financial District east of Broadway, where 60 percent of the population in that district lives. “I wish I knew,” said Ro Sheffe, chair of CB1’s Financial District Committee, who noted he and others on the board have been pressuring city government for the past decade to provide more community facilities in an area of Lower Manhattan that has seen a steep increase in population over the same time period. Sheffe said when referring to libraries he means facilities in the New York Public Library system, the closest of which are the New Amsterdam branch just west of City Hall on Murray Street, and further west, the Battery Park City branch on North End Avenue. Community centers, he said, are either non-profit entities like Manhattan Youth Recreation, like the center on the west end of Warren Street, or facilities like Asphalt Green at Battery Park City that are private and
The Financial District in Lower Manhattan, where according to Community Board 1 member Ro Sheffe, is without a public library or community center in its entire eastern half. Source: WikiMedia Commons for-profit, but offer free or low-cost community programming. Those types of facilities, claims Sheffe, do not exist in the eastern half of the Financial District: from Broadway down to South Street, up past the Seaport to the Brooklyn Bridge, and back west to Broadway. While there’s no concrete reason for
the dearth of community facilities in that chunk of Lower Manhattan, there are two contributing factors that may help explain the circumstance. The first is an apparent lack of good data at the official level for just
WEEK OF JANUARY
7-13 2016
Our Take TWO VIEWS OF THE HOMELESS What to make of the skirmish between the governor and the mayor over the city’s homeless problem? One view is that this is more of the same, childish sniping between the two men who are supposed to be the adults of New York politics. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in particular, seems constitutionally incapable of letting an opportunity pass to tweak Mayor Bill de Blasio. The problem is that the mayor gives him so many opportunities. As is so often the case, the mayor here laid the groundwork for his own misery, insisting over the summer that the homeless population in the city wasn’t going up, a stance that was ridiculous to anybody not shuttling around town in a SUV. Ultimately, de Blasio came around, acknowledging that things are getting worse and laying out an ggressive plan to deal with it. Cuomo’s proposal, to forcibly remove homeless people when the temperature slips below freezing, is an unprecedently aggressive step for any governor. And it raises some serious legal issues that de Blasio is right to point out. Being homeless is not against the law, even when it’s cold outside. Moving people inside against their will is not an answer to the fundamental causes of homelessness. But it’s an important debate to have and, if we can take Cuomo at his word, is rooted in compassion for our fellow New Yorkers sleeping on the streets. Credit to de Blasio for, at least so far, not taking the bait and turning this into another spitball fight .
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FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
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