The local paper for the Upper East Side
WEEK OF DECEMBER A CONCEPTUAL MESSAGE OF LOVE ◄P.12
7-13 2017
Council Member Corey Johnson (right), whose political base is in Chelsea, campaigned with then-candidate and now Council Member-elect Francisco Moya (left) in Corona, Queens, in June. Johnson, who is running for City Council speaker, donated $2,750 to his campaign and campaigned on his behalf. His Manhattan rivals for the speaker post, members Mark Levine and Ydanis Rodriguez, also contributed to Moya’s campaign. Photo: Twitter/@CoreyinNYC
CASH COW FOR COUNCIL MEMBERS POLITICS The heated race for City Council speaker has become a fundraising bonanza for elected officials and candidates as aspirants for the city’s second most powerful post shower favors – and dollars — on the colleagues whose votes they seek BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
Never before has so much attention been lavished by so many striving Manhattan politicians on the relatively obscure, and safely Democratic, 49th District City Council seat on the North Shore of Staten Island. The lucky recipient of favors, friendship and funds in the run-
up to the November 7 election was incumbent Council Member Debi Rose, who routed a weak GOP challenger to coast to a 24-percent blowout victory. Her political fiefdom is located a distant five miles south of Battery Park. She was ranked by City and State Magazine as “one of the worst members” of the Council — 46 out of 51 — with an attendance rate, 67 percent, that was the third-worst in the chamber in 2016. But none of that kept Council Member Corey Johnson, who represents Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and Greenwich Village, from joining her on the campaign trail in a district that’s much closer to Bayonne, N.J., than it is to Times Square.
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The M31 bus travels at an average speed of 4.14 mph, making it the second-slowest bus route in New York, a new report from Comptroller Scott Stringer says. Photo: Michael Garofalo
THE SLOWEST BUSES IN TOWN TRANSPORTATION City’s most sluggish routes include M42, M31 and M57, report says BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
Several crosstown bus routes in Manhattan are among the New York’s slowest, according to a report on the city’s bus system by Comptroller Scott Stringer. The report found that New York buses are the slowest of any big
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city in the country, traveling at an average speed of 7.4 mph citywide and 5.5 mph in Manhattan. The slowest bus in the city, the report says, is the M42, which travels from Pier 83 to the United Nations complex along 42nd Street at an average speed of just 3.90 mph. By comparison, a 2007 study found that New York pedestrians walk at an average speed of 3.4 mph. After the M42, the next three slowest routes are all crosstown buses that carry passengers between the
Upper West Side and Upper East Side: the M31 (4.14 mph), the M57 (4.17 mph) and the M66 (4.25 mph). The
CONTINUED ON PAGE 7 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, December 8 – 4:11 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com
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