Community groups and new Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. are combining forces to negotiate an agreement that would provide additional community benefits from the coming redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Amory.

If successful, the collaboration between the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance (KARA), Community Board 7 and the borough president’s office, could become a new model for large-scale development projects in New York City.

The city’s Health Department says it is looking into a compromise that might split the vacant old Fordham Library into a multi-use facility, a sign of hope for local politicians and activists who were outraged last fall when the city said it was planning to turn the building into a full-service animal shelter.

Pet advocates, along with local activists and politicians, say the city should change its animal shelter laws, which would open up even more space for humans at the library building.

He’s already been on the job a month, but that didn’t stop a packed Lehman Center for the Performing Arts and the city and state’s top officials from attending the formal swearing-in of Ruben Diaz, Jr., the 13th borough president of the Bronx last Thursday.

City Council members who are gearing up for fall elections candidates are flexing their fund-raising muscles, according to campaign finance reports submitted on May 15.

Radame Perez, president and chief operating officer of Mastermind Development in the Bronx and board member of the New York Community Bank, was hoping to challenge Councilman Joel Rivera in District 15, but then unexpectedly dropped out of the race two weeks ago after raising $156,945.

A listing of public and community meetings for our readers in the northwest Bronx, mostly in Community District 7.

Last winter, when times got tough for the oldest, most influential grassroots organizing group in the northwest Bronx – a financial crisis compounded by a leadership void – they looked within for a path forward.

In the span of eight days, two teenage females were grabbed off the street, dragged into an abandoned building and sexually assaulted near the corner of Grand Avenue and Kingsbridge Road.

Police say in both cases it was the work of one sexual predator. Last Thursday, police arrested Stephen Robinson, 48 and charged him with rape, criminal sex acts, sexual abuse and kidnapping.

Police have now confirmed that a young man was indeed shot on Saturday, May 9, while walking along East 203rd Street from the Grand Concourse toward Valentine Avenue.