Fight Against AIDS Gets Personal

In a speech on World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, at Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. called the fight against HIV/AIDS personal and said battling the disease was one of his administration’s top priorities. “No one is immune,” said Diaz, adding that two of his uncles passed away due to AIDS complications and that his chief of staff, Paul DelDuca, is HIV positive.

$1 Million Restoration Brings Poe Cottage Into Future

When British journalist Mary Grove visited Edgar Allan Poe’s cottage outside the village of Fordham, she described it as cozy and neat, with “floors as white as wheat.” The cottage was situated on a hill, and surrounded by creeks, rivers and farmland. Today the 198-year-old cottage still stands — although it’s now a few hundred yards away from its original location — at the intersection of Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse. What was once Millbrook Creek is now Webster Avenue. A stone’s throw away, children play on playground equipment and residents sit on benches in what is now Poe Park. Ironically, when the Bronx County Historical Society kicked off a million-dollar restoration of the 198-year-old building this year, some local kids literally threw rocks to see if they could shatter the windows.

DREAM Immigration Bill Waits for Senate Vote

A bill that would provide a long-term path to citizenship for young immigrant residents passed in the House of Representatives on Dec. 8, but has since stalled in the Senate, as its supporters try to drum up Republican support for the bill in the slim hopes of passing it before the year’s end.

Bronx Pols Denounce Bloomberg’s Budget Cuts

It’s looking like it’s going to be a tough budget year for New York City, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg released his updated financial plan for this and the next four fiscal years last month—one that calls for cuts to jobs and services from nearly every city agency and sector. On Nov. 18, Bloomberg announced his latest round of budget gap closing actions, including the loss of thousands of city jobs, measures he says will reduce the budget deficit from $3.3 billion to $2.4 billion for the fiscal year 2012. The cuts sparked backlash from advocates across the city and concern from local representatives.

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.

Another Church Hit in String of Robberies

A sixth Bronx church was burglarized this past weekend, the latest in a string of break-ins targeting churches in the area since the start of November. Someone broke into an office window at the Church of the Mediator, on West 231st Street and Kingsbridge Avenue, late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, according to the church’s senior warden Frank Holsapple and the NYPD. The thief, or thieves, made off with several recently donated laptop computers and about $800 in cash, money the church was collecting for a Christmas toy drive. “They hit every church around here, and I guess we were the last stop,” Holsapple said, adding that the burglar or burglars wrecked the office they broke into but were unable to access the rest of the church.”It could have been a lot worse,” he added.

Murder at Tracey Towers, Shooting on E. 204th St.

Last week, police arrested Tracey Towers resident Horace Nichols, 38, and charged him with stabbing fellow resident Jack Hewitt to death on Dec. 8. Police also confirmed that a 20-year-old Hispanic male had been shot on Friday, Dec. 10 outside of the Super Laundromat on East 204th Street, but was expected to survive. The investigation is ongoing.

School Lunch Bill Passed, at Expense of Food Stamps

Lawmakers in Washington reauthorized funding for the Child Nutrition Act earlier this month, a bill that funds and sets the guidelines for a number of child nutrition programs, including how much federal money goes towards school lunches. The legislation, which comes up for renewal every five years, is a $4.5 billion package that included additional funding this year, something health advocates have long been lobbying for. But the extra money comes at a price, as the Senate dipped into $2.2 billion in stimulus funds intended to expand SNAP, the federal food stamps program. The cuts have put anti-hunger advocates in an awkward position, where support for one nutrition program means a major setback for another.

Workers Say Cemetery Planning Layoffs

Woodlawn Cemetery officials are planning to lay off more than a dozen workers and hire outside contractors to cut costs, employees say. After an internal investigation into racism charges, cemetery officials said they would change their training practices. But several minority employees say nothing has changed.