Opinion

Op-ed: Show Me the Teachers!

“Mayor to Kids: Say Goodbye to Your Teacher” is the glaring headline on the front page of the Feb. 17 edition of New York Teacher, a bi-weekly periodical for teachers. Its sub-head reads “Bloomberg would rather lay off teachers than extend millionaire’s tax.” This state tax is due to expire at the end of this year, and my immediate thought on this sub-head was: I wonder if the mayor objects because he himself is a millionaire, which would mean his own taxes would be higher. It has been reported that this tax could add billions of dollars to the state budget which could prevent layoffs.

Letter: Grammy-Winner Plays at Norwood Church

Maybe you’ve seen him at Willie’s Steak House, or even at the Grammys in Los Angeles. Pete Nater earned his Grammy in 2005, along with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra. But has he forgotten that he’s from the Bronx? Not a chance. Even though he’s made it, he seems to have a soft spot for us.

Webster Ave. Rezone Now in Hands of Council

The rezoning of a long, auto shop-strewn stretch of Webster Avenue between Fordham Road and Gun Hill Road is now moving into its final stage — scrutiny from the City Council, which must sign off on the plan.

Editorial: Foodtown’s Welcome Return

The absence of Foodtown in Norwood for the last 15 months has been deeply felt by thousands of local residents. The elderly, who were able to walk to the supermarket before the store burned to the ground in December 2009, were particularly burdened by the loss. But the store has emerged bigger and better with a much wider array of offerings and more room for residents with walkers, strollers and shopping carts to maneuver.

Editorial: The Armory Vote One Year Later

It’s the one-year anniversary of the nearly unanimous City Council vote that scuttled the mayor’s juggernaut to stuff a cookie-cutter mall inside the landmark Kingsbridge Armory. In that time, the city’s two tabloids, the New York Post and the Daily News, have taken every opportunity to whack at Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. for his opposition to the project, which gave the necessary juice to a community and labor-backed effort to defeat it in the City Council. Regular readers know where we stand on this, but as long as the editorial boards of the city dailies continue to harp on this, we are compelled to reiterate our position. For more than a decade, community organizations led by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition hammered out plans for a remake of the facility that made room for recreation, community programming, small businesses, a movie theater, etc. Related, the city’s chosen developer, never offered details on what it was going to provide except for retail. Despite this and the clear sense that the Armory would be a mall pure and simple, the community’s only firm request in the end was that people had to be paid a living wage, particularly when the developer was going to receive over $70 million in taxpayer subsidies to remake a public landmark. It was hardly an outlandish request. Several other municipalities have enacted wage guarantees on development projects benefiting from taxpayer subsidies.

Op-ed: Should Parks and Beaches Be Smoke-Free?

As a child I always enjoyed going to our Bronx beaches and parks with my family. While affluent children enjoyed collecting seashells by the seashore, I remember fondly picking up cigarette butts so we could spell out our names with them. Little did we know of the harms of secondhand smoke and the impact discarded cigarette filters would have on our environment. The facts are indisputable and alarming. Smoking kills more New Yorkers each year than AIDS, drugs, homicide and suicide combined, and the Bronx has one of the highest rates of tobacco use in the city. Secondhand smoke is a known Class A carcinogen. Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can lead to more frequent asthma attacks in asthmatic children. Cigarette butts are toxic, slow to decompose, costly to manage and growing in volume; 75 percent of the litter found on NYC beaches is cigarette butts, and it takes over a year and a half for a cigarette filter to decompose.