The new Yankee Stadium has 5,000 fewer seats than the old one. Nevertheless, city officials endorse the team’s plan to build four new parking garages, most of them in place of public parks, essentially inviting fans from the suburbs to bring their cars into the area to clog local streets and deposit their exhaust in a community that has among the highest asthma rates in the country.

Building on the success and popularity of 311, Mayor Bloomberg just introduced a radical but seemingly sensible idea – roving units of city employees whose job it is to look for things like potholes, graffiti and darkened streetlights. It’s commendable when citizens call 311 to complain about such things, but, the mayor said, it’s actually the government’s job to identify problems before people complain. He even expressed surprise that the city wasn’t already doing this.

A student worker is pictured here in Poe Park on the last day of the Summer Youth Employment Program on Aug. 16. Thousands of teens were deployed by the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center to fill jobs at local stores, businesses and nonprofits. Twenty-three of these local high school students worked with Mosholu Preservation Corporation (publisher of this newspaper) to improve Poe Park, St. James Park, Williamsbridge Oval and Mosholu Parkway. Led by six mentors from local colleges, the students spent their summer improving erosion control, reestablishing turf, painting park structures and clearing pathways to make Bronx parks better for the entire community.

If a high-ranking City official lies to a New York Times reporter and the Times prints it, the paper has an obligation to follow-up with a correction, retraction, or further study to explain it.

There are rumors that Jose Rivera, Assemblyman and Bronx County Democratic Chairman, will be selected by Council Speaker Christine Quinn to fill the position of City Clerk, from which Victor Robles has recently retired.

Twelve students graduated from Montefiore Medical Center Summer Health Careers Internship program earlier this month in a ceremony at the hospital’s Cherkasky Auditorium. The program, which is one of four like it in the country and began in 2002, links high school and college students with Montefiore staff mentors, many of whom share the same cultural and social backgrounds as the students.

High school senior Jorge Hernandez, sporting a mini-afro, sagging jeans and a business-like demeanor, dropped his backpack and emphatically tossed his black baseball bat to the side as he strode onto a stage in Van Cortlandt Park.

The first rehearsal for the Lehman College Chorus, which meets Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:30 to 5 p.m., will be held on Monday, Aug. 27. The Lehman College Community Chorus, which meets on Tuesdays from 7 to 9:30 p.m., will start Tuesday, Aug. 28. Community members are welcome to join either chorus.

The newest business addition to Norwood, Sunshine Photo Studio, represents just another family trying to carve out a little niche of their own on the 204th Street strip.