A listing of community events, programs, services and other useful information for our readers in the Bronx.

A listing of arts, entertainment and learning events for our Bronx readers.

The city’s Parks Department announced last week that it was setting up a Central Park-like Conservancy in Van Cortlandt Park.

This is a bad idea.

Up until now, the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park have acted as independent caretakers of the park responding to community concerns, helping to organize upkeep, maintaining trails, advocating for park interests, fundraising, providing important programming and maintaining ongoing communication with the Parks Department.

So why does the city feel the need to add on a Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy, right in the middle of the biggest economic downturn in a generation? One possible explanation is vengeance.

Mayor Bloomberg is mad at the Friends because they decided to oppose the siting of the Croton water filtration plant at Mosholu Golf Course. Unlike the mayor, they believe that the land use review process should be adhered to, that parks are not for sale, and that if land at Van Cortlandt Park can be alienated then it can happen elsewhere.

The Fordham Bedford little league season, featuring these excited young Yankees, started last Saturday morning with a parade down to the ball fields on Jerome Avenue near Walton High School.

Hoping to drum up parent involvement in this year’s Community Education Council elections, the Department of Education (DOE) is allowing all parents to weigh in on their favorite candidates online.
But the number of candidates has declined sharply and election outreach efforts have lagged, leaving candidates to acknowledge a general sense that parents aren’t tuned in to what purpose the councils serve or why they should get involved with them in the first place.

One of only a dozen recipients of the 2009 New York Times Company Foundation College Scholarship, 18-year-old Andrew Boryga of Bedford Park is headed for the Ivy League.

Thanks to a new coalition of the borough’s four largest institutions -Fordham, the Zoo, Montefiore Medical Center and the New York Botanical Garden – plans are in place to transform a stretch of Fordham Road into a lush, tree-lined parkway. It’s just one of several aesthetically pleasing projects being developed and pushed by the Four Bronx Institutions Alliance.

Firefighters tore through several Bainbridge Avenue businesses Monday morning, gutting a bakery and damaging several other stores as they searched for a fire issuing smoke but no flames, according to business owners and witnesses.

Police want guns off the street and they’re willing to pay for them. As part of a citywide NYPD initiative, Bronxites can surrender an operable gun and receive a $200 bank card, Saturday, April 25 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at two local churches.