New York City – Page 6 – artdiamondblog.com

Union Blocks Firing of Teachers Who Do Not Teach

(p. A1) Francis Blake has not held a permanent position in a New York City public school in at least five years. At his last job, in a Bronx elementary school, records show he was disciplined for incompetence, insubordination and neglect of duties — he had been caught sleeping in a classroom when he was supposed to be helping with dismissal.
Felicia Alterescu, a special-education teacher, has been without a permanent post since 2010, despite high demand for special education teachers. According to records, in addition to getting a string of unsatisfactory ratings, she was disciplined for calling in sick when she actually went to a family reunion. She also did not tell the Education Department that she had been arrested on harassment charges.
This month, Mr. Blake, Ms. Alterescu and hundreds of other teachers who are part of a pool known as the Absent Teacher Reserve could be permanently back in classrooms, as the city’s Education Department places them in jobs at city schools.
The reserve is essentially a parking lot for staff members who have lost their positions, some because of school closings and budget cuts, others because of disciplinary problems, but cannot be fired. It grew significantly as a result of a 2005 deal between the Bloomberg administration, which wanted to give principals control over hiring, and the teachers’ un-(p. A17)ion. Since then, the union has fiercely protected the jobs of teachers in the reserve, resisting attempts to put a time limit on how long a teacher can remain there.

For the full story, see:
KATE TAYLOR. “Caught Sleeping or Worse, Idled Teachers Head Back to Class.” The New York Times (Sat., OCT. 23, 2017): A1 & A17.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 22, 2017, and has the title “Caught Sleeping or Worse, Troubled Teachers Will Return to New York Classrooms.”)

Brooklyn Reinvented Through Creative Destruction

(p. A13) The Wythe Hotel sits in the heart of Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood directly across the river from Manhattan. Opened to rave reviews in 2012, the hotel offers luxury dining at Reynard restaurant and spectacular city views from the rooftop bar. (Beers: $11.) Not long ago, the Williamsburg waterfront was a postindustrial wilderness, abandoned but for squatting artists; today it’s lined with glass towers and strolling millennials. The Wythe, set in a 1901 factory that once produced barrels for local breweries, features rooms with exposed-brick walls, spare concrete floors and beds made from salvaged wood. The streetscape retains a gritty feel–except at 3 a.m. on a Saturday, when party kids pour out of the nearby nightclubs and limos jostle for curb space with Ubers.
It’s easy to mock such scenes. But the borough’s boom deserves to be taken seriously, argues Kay S. Hymowitz in her engaging book, “The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back.” Ms. Hymowitz, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, recounts how “a left-for-dead city”–“a cultural and economic peasant enviously eyeing the seigneur just across the East River”–has reinvented itself in recent decades and emerged as “just about the coolest place on earth.” What, she asks, turned Brooklyn into a global brand?
The history of the borough, according to Ms. Hymowitz, embodies what economist Joseph Schumpeter dubbed the “creative destruction” of capitalism–the continual obliteration of old modes of production by rising industries and new technologies. In colonial times, Dutch and English farmers tamed the lush hills of Long Island’s southwestern tip. Slavery flourished; the indigenous Canarsee people disappeared. In the 19th century, industrial growth annihilated the bucolic past, while immigration reshaped the city’s culture. Factories closed and capital fled in the postwar decades, shattering communities and leaving the built landscape to decay. That destruction, though, cleared the decks for another burst of creative energy–one that has made Brooklyn a model, and a cautionary tale, for the cities of tomorrow.

For the full review, see:

Michael Woodsworth. “BOOKSHELF; Kings County Comeback.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Aug. 17, 2017): A13.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 16, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Hymowitz, Kay S. The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017.

Cashless Toll Technology Enables Congestion Pricing in Manhattan

(p. A15) As debate about creating a toll system to limit traffic in the most congested parts of Manhattan heats up, a transformation in technology could make congestion pricing a far more realistic notion than when it was last proposed a decade ago.
By the end of the year, nine crossings around the city will employ an open-road, cashless collection system that does away with tollbooths, toll lanes and toll collectors. Instead, sensors and cameras installed both above the road and in the pavement itself will capture cars and trucks as they zip by at full speed – automatically charging the 90 percent of drivers with E-ZPass transponders, and billing the other 10 percent by mail.
A decade ago, when the Bloomberg administration first proposed congestion pricing, such tolling technology was in its infancy and not widely used. Now, it is in place in some 35 jurisdictions, and its deployment in New York is the most ambitious use of the technology in a complicated urban setting.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who had not shown any enthusiasm for congestion pricing, has embraced the idea of late as a way to raise billions of dollars for the city’s ailing subway system. But Mayor Bill de Blasio has been steadfast in his opposition, and has instead pushed a plan to raise transportation funds by increasing taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.
Mr. Cuomo has yet to release a detailed congestion-pricing plan, but most schemes being discussed call for tolling vehicles to enter crowded parts of Manhattan, and doing so in a way that that does not slow the flow of traffic. By making toll-collecting all but invisible, Mr. Cuomo hopes congestion pricing will be more politically viable this time around.

For the full story, see:
MARC SANTORA. “Cashless Toll System Could Pave the Way for Manhattan Congestion Pricing.” The New York Times (Sat., AUG. 26, 2017): A15.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 25, 2017, and has the title “Open-Road Tolls Could Pave the Way for Manhattan Congestion Pricing.”)

Higher-Paid Finance Jobs Moving from NYC and San Francisco to Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Dallas

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Traditional finance hubs have yet to recover all the jobs lost during the recession, but the industry is booming in places like Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Dallas. The migration has accelerated as investment firms face declining profitability and soaring real estate costs.
. . .
“San Francisco is a wonderful place, but unfortunately it’s an expensive place from a real estate standpoint,” said Brian McDonald, a senior vice president for Schwab. “So we had to identify other places where we could make things work.”
While the finance industry has been relocating entry-level jobs since the late 1980s, today’s moves are claiming higher-paid jobs in human resources, compliance and asset management, chipping away at New York City’s middle class, said (p. B2) Kathryn Wylde, president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit that represents the city’s business leadership.
“This industry isn’t just a bunch of rich Wall Street guys,” Ms. Wylde said. “It’s a big source of employment that’s disappearing from New York.”

For the full story, see:
Asjylyn Loder. “Wall Street’s New Frontier.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., JULY 27, 2017): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 26, 2017, and has the title “Passive Migration: Denver Wins Big as Financial Firms Relocate to Cut Costs.”)

Petsitting Is Illegal Without a License

“Raul Cordero with his Rhodesian ridgeback, Viuty. Mr. Cordero operates a dog-care business in East Harlem that appears to run afoul of city rules regarding the care of pets for pay in homes.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A18) Raul Cordero and his Rhodesian ridgeback, Viuty, often have canine houseguests overnight at their East Harlem home, part of Mr. Cordero’s dog-care business, for which he carries special petsitter’s insurance that costs about $800 a year.
Yet despite Mr. Cordero’s efforts to do everything by the book, he was shocked to discover that his petsitting business — and in fact, any of the ubiquitous, your-home-or-mine variety — is against New York City’s rules.
According to long-established but little-noticed regulations of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, anyone offering petsitting for pay must be licensed to board animals, and do so in a permitted kennel. Running such a kennel out of a home is not allowed in the city.
. . .
The newcomers are large, app-based pet-care businesses, with names like Wag and Rover, that operate in a similar style to Airbnb, enabling New Yorkers to open their apartments and dog beds as à la carte dog hostels.
. . . Rover and its ilk have run afoul of similar stipulations in places like California and Colorado, and John Lapham, Rover’s general counsel, said that Rover was currently embroiled in similar concerns in several cities in New Jersey.
. . .
The department’s rule “deprives dog owners of the most obvious, safe and affordable care,” Mr. Lapham said.
“And it deprives sitters of the opportunity to make ends meet,” he said.
Mr. Lapham noted that in New York City, babysitting, for example, is permitted, no license necessary.
. . .
. . . to Mr. Cordero, 27, regulating small-time dogsitters like him and his Rhodesian sidekick feels like government overreach. Petsitting “is like taking care of you own pet in your house,” he said, adding: “So if you have a license, that means you are certified to feed a dog or a cat? That’s crazy.”

For the full story, see:
SARAH MASLIN NIR. “Paid Petsitting in Homes Is Illegal in New York. That’s News to Some Sitters.” The New York Times (Sat., JULY 22, 2017): A18.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 21, 2017.)

“The System Is Totally Crazy”

(p. D1) Mr. Ahmed, 46, is in the business of chicken and rice. He immigrated from Bangladesh 23 years ago, and is now one of two partners in a halal food cart that sets up on Greenwich Street close to the World Trade Center, all year long, rain or shine. He is also one of more than 10,000 people, most of them immigrants, who make a living selling food on the city’s sidewalks: pork tamales, hot dogs, rolled rice noodles, jerk chicken.
These vendors are a fixture of New York’s streets and New Yorkers’ routines, vital to the culture of the city. But day to day, they struggle to do business against a host of challenges: byzantine city codes and regulations on street vending, exorbitant fines for small violations (like setting up an inch too close to the curb) and the occasional rage of brick-and-mortar businesses or residents.
. . .
(p. D6) Mr. Ahmed ties on his apron and pushes a few boxes underneath the cart so he can squeeze inside and get to work. Any boxes peeking out beyond the cart’s footprint could result in a fine (penalties can run up to $1,000), as could parking his cart closer than six inches to the curb, or 20 feet to the building entrance. Mr. Ahmed knows all the rules by heart.
. . .
He applied for a food vendor’s license, took a required health and safety class, bought a used cart and took it for an inspection by city officials. (The health department inspects carts at least once a year, and more frequently if a violation is reported.)
Mr. Ahmed still needed a food-vending permit, though, and because of a cap on permits imposed in the 1980s, only 4,000 or so circulate. He acquired his from a permit owner who has charged him and his partner $25,000 for two-year leases (for a permit that cost the owner just $200), which they are still paying off.
A day ago, Mr. Ahmed received a text message: 100 vendors were protesting the cap. Organized by the Street Vendor Project, a nonprofit group that is part of the Urban Justice Center and offers legal representation to city vendors, they hoped to pressure the City Council to pass legislation introduced last fall that would double the number of food-vending permits, gradually, over the next seven years. Mr. Ahmed, who believes the costs for those starting out should be more manageable, wanted to join them, but like many vendors, he couldn’t get away from work.
“The system is totally crazy,” Mr. Ahmed says. “Whoever has a license, give them a permit. It’s good for all of us.”

For the full story, see:
TEJAL RAO. “A Day in the Lunch Box.” The New York Times (Weds., APRIL 19, 2017): D1 & D6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 18, 2017, and has the title “A Day in the Life of a Food Vendor.”)

Deer Dies from Stress Caused by Bickering Governments

(p. A1) A white-tailed deer that went from being a minor celebrity in Harlem to a cause célèbre after its capture, died in captivity on Friday [December 16, 2016], moments before it was to be driven upstate and released.
The preliminary causes of death, according to a New York City parks spokesman, were stress and the day and a half that the deer spent at a city animal shelter in East Harlem. But that did not begin to tell the absurd tale of how the buck, known as J.R., for Jackie Robinson, and Lefty, because of his crumpled left antler, came to die.
The deer had become the latest and most unlikely casualty of the feud between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, an animosity that has manifested itself mostly on big issues like education, safety at homeless shelters and funding mass transit.
But the tussle over the deer was extraordinary even by the standards set by Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio. All day Thursday and into Friday, the city and state issued competing and sometimes self-contradicting updates on the deer and what should be done with him.
The buck had spent two weeks attracting adoring, snack-proffering crowds at Jackie Robinson Park, where he often was seen near a chain-link fence across the street from a bodega. How he traveled to a park in the middle of a crowded Manhattan neighborhood remains unclear.
. . .
After it looked like the deer might live, allies of the mayor and governor took the opportunity to throw a few jabs.
“Bureaucracy lost,” Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor, wrote on Twitter.
“Andrew Cuomo is an idiot,” posted Bill Hyers, who managed Mr. de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral campaign.
. . .
. . . the Harlem deer was no ordinary deer. He was beloved, a holiday-season gift to a beleaguered city, a surrogate reindeer camped out just a block from St. Nicholas Avenue.
. . .
The deer was condemned to die, then he was not, then he was, then he was not.
For a few surreal minutes Thursday night, the deer, like Schrödinger’s cat, was both alive and dead, with a city official insisting he had already been euthanized and the state insisting he had not.
Then, just before 2 p.m. with workers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the federal Department of Agriculture gathering at the Animal Care Centers of NYC shelter on East 110th Street, a city parks spokesman announced that the deer had died.
The spokesman, Sam Biederman, blamed the state.
“Unfortunately because of the time we had to wait for D.E.C. to come and transport the deer, the deer has perished,” he told reporters, adding that the city had wanted to euthanize the deer all along. “This was an animal that was under a great deal of stress for the past 24 hours and had been tranquilized for much of that time.”
The state, naturally, blamed the delay on the city.

For the full story, see:
ANDY NEWMAN. “Condemned, Reprieved, Then a Sudden Ending.” The New York Times (Sat., DEC. 17, 2016): A1 & A18.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 16, 2016, and has the title “Harlem Deer Caught in City-State Tussle Has Died.”)

Poor Are Exiting High-Housing-Cost Cities

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A3) Americans are leaving the costliest metro areas for more affordable parts of the country at a faster rate than they are being replaced, according to an analysis of census data, reflecting the impact of housing costs on domestic migration patterns.

Those mostly likely to move from expensive to inexpensive metro areas were at the lower end of the income scale, under the age of 40 and without a bachelor’s degree, the analysis by home-tracker Trulia found.
. . .
Another study this year from California policy group Next 10 and Beacon Economics found that New York state and California had the largest net losses of domestic migrants between 2007 and 2014, and that lower- and middle-income people were more likely to leave.

For the full story, see:
CHRIS KIRKHAM. “Costly Cities See Exodus.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Nov. 3, 2016): A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 1, 2016, and has the title “More Americans Leave Expensive Metro Areas for Affordable Ones.”)

“To Understand Zoning, You Have to Have a Law Degree”

(p. 27) Not all buildings are worth keeping. In Midtown East, many nonconforming structures have low ceilings and columns that make them unappealing to new businesses. Some developers have gone so far as to demolish all but the bottom quarter of their buildings, and then build up from there, allowing them to retain the old zoning for their plots so as not to sacrifice a single square foot. The city is currently reconsidering a proposal that would allow these buildings to be rebuilt to their original size and possibly even larger.
It does not have to be this complicated. In honor of the code’s 100th anniversary, the Municipal Art Society of New York has called on City Hall to consider overhauling the code in a way that would make it intelligible to all.
“To understand zoning, you have to have a law degree, it’s so convoluted and so dense,” Mike Ernst, director of planning at the civic group, said. “The whole process of how buildings get built these days is so confusing and opaque to people. There really should be more transparency, so people can have an understanding of what the future holds for their city.”

For the full story, see:
“Reviled, Revered, and Still Challenging Russia to Evolve.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., MAY 22, 2016): 27.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 20, 2016, and has the title “40 Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today.” It is substantially longer than the print version and includes three authors, while no authors were listed for the print version. The authors listed for the online version were: QUOCTRUNG BUI, MATT A.V. CHABAN and JEREMY WHITE.)

Regulations and Bureaucratic Inefficiency May Kill Restaurant

(p. A22) To begin with, although the B&H Dairy Restaurant on Second Avenue in Manhattan now hangs by a thread, no one was hurt there on March 26 [, 2015], the day that three buildings on the same block were leveled by a gas explosion.
. . .
“On the third day after the explosion, people from the building department and Con Edison came together,” Mr. Abdelwahed said. “They inspected the place, upstairs, downstairs, the pipes, the basement. They told me, ‘You are O.K., you should be fine, no problem.’ ”
That changed, he said, in the charged days that followed, as it emerged that apparently illegal alterations to the gas lines had been made in one of the buildings down the street.
The original inspector returned, he said, and told him that another inspection was going to happen in a couple of days. “He said, ‘You’re not going to pass that inspection. Because of what happened next door, I don’t want to be responsible for the future,’ ” Mr. Abdelwahed said.
All of the gas piping in the building has to be replaced, a job the landlord has taken on, though it is not clear what deficiencies it had. The Buildings Department file for 127 Second Avenue shows that there were no open violations on the premises in March, and none now.
After questions were put four times to the city on Thursday about the nature of the problems with B&H’s operation, a spokesman for the mayor said the administration was trying to help small businesses affected by the explosion, including the restaurant.
In B&H, Mr. Abdelwahed said, the inspector noted that his stove had five burners, but the plans on file showed only four. “He required me to correct it on the plan,” Mr. Abdelwahed said. “Originally it was four. I don’t know how it came to be five. It’s not an issue. Where was an inspector before all this? You’re trying to show you’re working?”
. . .
“He told me, ‘You have to change the fire system,’ ” Mr. Abdelwahed said of the inspector. “Of course, I had a fire suppression system all the time, inspected. I told him, ‘I am going to go out of business.’ He said: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’ They don’t want to be responsible for anything.”
Because the fire suppression system was going to jut into the backyard, Mr. Abdelwahed had to apply for permission from the city’s Landmarks Commission as the block is part of a historic landmark district. Only after that approval was granted could his contractor apply for a building permit.
“What’s killing them is the lag time,” said Mr. Reynolds, who is organizing crowdfunding support for the restaurant. Bernadette Nation, an official with the city’s Department of Small Business Services, has cut red tape in getting permits issued, and their story has been covered on New York 1 and by many blogs.

For the full story, see:
JIM DWYER. “About New York; Unharmed by a Gas Explosion, but Choked by the Red Tape That Followed.” The New York Times (Fri., JULY 10, 2015): A22.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added. The quote from Mr. Reynolds in the last passage above, appears in the print version of the article, but not in the online version of the article.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 9, 2015.)

Ugly, Invasive, Depressing Federal LEDs Disrupt Sleep and Increase Risk of Breast Cancer

(p. B1) In my repellently contented middle age, I don’t seek blue light. Like most sane people, I spurn restaurants whose lighting glares. I recoil from mirrors under fluorescent tubes. I switch on an overhead only to track down a water bug while wielding a flip-flop. Yet each evening from March onward, in the Brooklyn neighborhood where I live part of the year, it seems as if the overhead is always on.
Along with other parts of South Brooklyn, Windsor Terrace is an early recipient of the Department of Transportation’s new light-emitting diode streetlights. New Yorkers who have not yet been introduced to these lights: We are living in your future.
Our new street “lamps” — too cozy a word for the icy arrays now screaming through our windows — are meant to be installed across all five boroughs by 2017. Indeed, any resident of an American municipality that has money problems (and what city doesn’t?) should take heed.
In interviews with the media, my fellow experimental subjects have compared the nighttime environment under the new streetlights to a film set, a prison yard, “a strip mall in outer space” and “the mother ship coming in for a landing” in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Although going half-blind at 58, I can read by the beam that the new lamp blasts into our front room without tapping our own Con Ed service. Once the LEDs went in, our next-door neighbor began walking her dog at night in sunglasses.
Medical research has firmly established that blue-spectrum LED light can disrupt sleep patterns. This is the same illumination that radiates in far smaller doses from smartphone and computer screens, to which we’re advised to avoid exposure for at least an hour before bed, because it can suppress the production of melatonin. . . .
While the same light has also been associated with increased risk of breast cancer and mood disorders, in all honesty my biggest beef with LEDs has nothing to do with health issues. These lights are ugly. They’re invasive. They’re depressing. New York deserves better.
. . .
Even fiscally and environmentally conscientious California has compromised on this point. Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco have all opted for yellow-rich LEDs. These cities have willingly made the modest 10-15 percent sacrifice in efficiency for an ambience that more closely embodies what Germans call Gemütlichkeit and Danes call hygge: an atmosphere of hospitality, homeyness, intimacy and well-being.
. . .
As currently conceived, the D.O.T.’s streetlight plan amounts to mass civic vandalism. If my focus on aesthetics makes this issue sound trivial, the sensory experience of daily life is not a frivolous matter. Even in junior high school, I understood that lighting isn’t only about what you see, but how you feel.

For the full commentary, see:
LIONEL SHRIVER. “Ruining That Moody Urban Glow.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., OCT. 18, 2015): 5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date OCT. 17, 2015.)