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WEEK OF MARCH - APRIL THE GOOGLIFICATION OF CHELSEA ◄ P.16
29-4 2018
SCHOOL CROSSING GUARDS IN SHORT SUPPLY SAFETY As many as half of budgeted positions are unfilled in some precincts BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
Despite increased funding as part of a citywide push to hire enough crossing guards to cover every school crossing post in New York City, as many as half of budgeted crossing guard positions in some Manhattan neighborhoods have gone unfilled. City Council Member Helen Rosenthal raised the issue at a recent budget hearing, at which she referenced a lack of crossing guard coverage near a cluster of schools in her district, including the new Riverside School for Makers and Artists, which opened in September. “There’s been no crossing guard at 60th and West End Avenue, where we just opened a new public school, a private school just opened, and we have three other schools up the block on West 61st,” Rosenthal said at the hearing. “It’s been very distressing for the parents.” Five out of nine budgeted crossing guard positions were unfilled in the Upper West Side’s 20th Precinct as of January 2017, the most recent period for which data is available. (Rosenthal said it is her understanding that the number of positions filled has not since changed. The NYPD is required to report updated data on crossing guard vacancies to the City Council by Sept. 30, 2018.) “That means that there are five corners that have been determined to be critical for the safety of our children crossing the street to get to school that are not covered every day because they don’t have people to do so,” Rosenthal said in a later telephone interview.
The Rev. Stephen Harding, pastor of the 180-year-old St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on West 20th Street in Chelsea. Photo courtesy of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
A SEASON OF FAITH The NYPD has struggled to fill budgeted school crossing guard positions in some precincts. Photo: Thomas Altfather Good, via flickr
This city has a commitment to Vision Zero, and having crossing guards at dangerous intersections could be helpful to more than just our public school students.” City Council Member Ben Kallos
School crossing guards are hired by and work under the purview of the NYPD. When a school crossing does not have a guard assigned to it, precincts assign traffic enforcement agents or patrol officers to provide coverage, but Rosenthal said that this protocol still sometimes results in unguarded corners. “A traffic agent or P.O. will go off and do something else if called to do so, because their primary job is not to be a school crossing guard,” Rosenthal said. “So the fallback that they have in place, in my mind’s eye anyway, is not satisfactory.”
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WORSHIP Love triumphant is celebrated on Easter, freedom ascendant is commemorated on Passover — and as the two great spring holidays overlap this weekend, Trumpism will be confronted from the pulpit BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
“Love wins!” said the Rev. Dr. Cathy S. Gilliard in a classic two-word encapsulation of the Easter message of hope and new life and how it can overpower pain and sorrow and even death itself. And the senior pastor of the Park Avenue United Methodist Church on East 86th Street, the first AfricanAmerican to hold that position, quickDowntowner
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WEEK OF APRIL
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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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ly added a two-word coda: “Exclamation point!” “Freedom is possible,” said Rabbi José Rolando Matalon in a synopsis of the Passover message that a people of faith, with divine guidance, can defy their oppressor and be emancipated from bondage. And the lute-playing, Buenos Airesborn senior rabbi of B’nai Jeshurun on West 88th Street, the synagogue’s spiritual leader for the past 25 years, added a cautionary note: “But it’s not easy.” Due to a quirk in the religious calendar, the two hallowed institutions — a temple founded in 1825, a church established in 1837 — are about to observe, at the same time but in their own very separate ways, one of the
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