The local paper for the Upper East Side
WEEK OF AUGUST CANINES COMPETE ◄ P. 12
2-8 2018
A MAILMAN’S FIRST-CLASS FAREWELL ROUTE’S END For 20 years, he delivered the mail – along with good cheer and bundles of joy, hope and love – to the residents of the Upper East Side BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
shape the local representative bodies. The city’s 59 community boards, 12 of which represent Manhattan neighborhoods, are the most local manifestation of New York City’s municipal government, responsible for advising elected officials and government agencies on matters of community importance. Each board is composed of up to 50 volunteer members appointed by the borough president, half of whom must be nominated by the City Council member or members representing the district. Members can be reappointed to an unlimited number of two-year terms. Critics charge that the current appointment system has resulted in boards with little turnover in membership due to repeated reappoint-
No one knows East 88th Street between First and Third Avenues — and its 16 businesses, 56 residential buildings, 643 delivery addresses and roughly 1,400 renters and homeowners — better than Ilsoo Choi. He’s friendly with the “kindly local billionaire,” though he’s too discrete to name him. He’s encountered “countless doctors and professors,” a foreign diplomat — and a healthy number of down-to-earth celebrities. Veteran Fox TV anchor Rosanna Scotto is one of them. She lives on one of the two long blocks that comprise his territory. And she couldn’t be any sweeter. “She’s simply a beautiful, beautiful lady,” Choi said. He’s befriended the area’s dispossessed, too, like the homeless woman — “Nancy,” she called herself — who sat by the Vietnamese restaurant on 88th Street at Second Avenue. “She was my mentor,” he said. A former schoolteacher who lived in the East 90s and fell on hard times, Nancy was a “beautiful soul,” he said. “We’d talk every day for seven or eight years. She was lovely. And then one day, she just disappeared.” The 62-year-old Choi knows them all — and he just said his goodbyes to many of them — because after 20 years as a letter-carrier on the Upper East Side, including 12 years walking the same route on 88th Street, he is starting what he calls a “new chapter as a retiree.” Nancy always knew this day would come: “I’d sometimes try to give her
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Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer opposes instituting term limits for community board members. Brewer’s office is responsible for appointing members to Manhattan’s 12 community boards. Photo: William Alatriste/NYC Council
PANEL EYES CHANGES TO COMMUNITY BOARDS POLITICS Mayor’s charter revision commission to examine term limits, increased land use resources for local advisory boards BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
As part of the city’s ongoing charter revision process, New Yorkers could be asked to vote this year on major changes to rules governing community board membership, including instituting term limits and a uniform citywide appointment process. The preliminary staff report of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s charter revision commission, released in July, recommends that the 15-member commission consider potentially significant measures that could re-
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Veteran letter-carrier Ilsoo Choi outside the Gracie Station Post Office on East 85th Street on Thursday, July 26, as he prepares to deliver the mail for the last time along his route on East 88th Street. After 20 years on the job, the postman sent his patrons a farewell letter before retiring. Photo: Douglas Feiden
It is in this country that I’ve gained countless blessings over the years.” Letter from Ilsoo Choi, mailman
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