State Senator Pedro Espada, Jr. met with leaders of the Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District (BID) on Saturday, Sept. 12 to discuss economic development opportunities and community needs.
“This is the first time in my 25 years of community experience that someone has come to ask what we need and how the government can help the community,” said BID secretary Dennis O’Brien, who owns A & O Surgical Supply on Gun Hill Road. “We are the first BID he’s talked to and I think the meeting went extremely well.”
Espada, now the Senate majority leader, has been meeting with several other local community organizations, including the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center and the Fordham Road BID, as he tries to figure out how to allocate nearly $2 million in discretionary funding earmarked for local initiatives.
The money was supposed to be doled out by the time the budget was signed in April, but Espada has had trouble finding appropriate funding opportunities. In the spring, Espada attempted to give the money to two brand new nonprofit groups created by two employees of the south Bronx health center network under the senator’s control. But Democratic leaders rebuffed that effort.
He then tried to give the bulk of the money to the Bronx Chamber of Commerce to be a fiscal conduit for a series of programs he wanted to fund. But the Chamber declined to accept it, saying they are not suited to being a fiscal conduit.
Espada has been a lightning rod for criticism since he re-entered the Senate in January and is currently under investigation by the Bronx district attorney and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Espada says the investigations are politically motivated by Democratic rivals.
At the Saturday morning meeting at El Presidente, O’Brien said Espada and the Jerome-Gun Hill BID discussed neighborhood improvements like shopping areas and security cameras. Though the BID has been instrumental in keeping streets clean and removing graffiti, “we need more security cameras,” O’Brien said.
Ed. Note: Norwood News is published by Mosholu Preservation Corporation which manages the Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District.
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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.