Change the political climate
To The Editor:
Re “Sandy’s surge not sinking residential urge at Pier 40” (news article, Dec. 6):
As usual, it’s all blocking and no ideas or alternatives from Assemblymember Glick. It seems as if she believes she is some sort of visionary for opposing housing because of rising water levels and storm surge. For the rest of us who also support this idea, it is no great revelation. Opposing housing and building for high tides while fighting global warming has been part of the fiber of much of this community since well before Sandy. What is the alternative idea coming from her office?
As for the Durst idea, we’ve been saying raise the entire thing and build for high water for years. Major League Soccer’s plan was to raise all of the fields, including theirs, and the park on top of it all, but that was opposed by the youth leagues, who advocated only for ground-floor fields with more open, ground-level views. I attended the soccer meeting in Flushing the other night and saw a community with a vision working in unison to get a job done, addressing concerns and advocating for a plan, making the formerly effective Village community leaders look pathetic. Unions, neighbors, youth leagues, state Senators Stavisky and Peralta, Councilmember Ferreras and Assemblymember Moya all showed up, shaming our elected officials. They aired their concerns and demanded accountability from soccer, while moving forward with a plan.
Watching the Glicks, the Capsises and the HKreses oppose and oppose, with no viable plan of their own has been a nightmare. By “viable,” George, I mean a plan with money and backing — oh, and by the way, a wiser person would have moved his car up from Pier 40’s ground level before Sandy’s surge hit, instead of spending an entire edition complaining about what you could have prevented.
Our local elected officials have graduated completely to political self-interest. Glick, with her pet and animal legislation, has put passionate self-interest above the needs of this community.
Pier 40 will never get done without some personal political damage being done; it is time. It is time for the neighborhood to build a coalition to find an alternative to Assemblymember Glick. If she stays in office, no plan, good or bad, will ever go into effect. Pier 40 is a big enough issue to force the end of an ineffective political career. It is time.
Put your name on your posts HKres if you’re going to keep flaming. I do, Lincoln Anderson does, Madelyn Wils does. If you don’t want us to look at you as a wide-eyed conspiracy theorist, time to ante up and become a public part of this effort.
Pier 40 has gone on too long. A pathetic example of a community which has lost its way. The soul searching must begin, or the Greenwich Village we know and love will be lost.
Patrick Shields
Highway better than high-rises
To The Editor:
Re “Sandy’s surge not sinking residential urge at Pier 40” (news article, Dec. 6):
Blocking the view of the river with a housing project on the Hudson River should be a dead issue now. Might as well have built Westway. You can only get so much out of a pier.
Charlie Walker
Trustee gets a tax break, too
To The Editor:
Re “N.Y.U. still punting on probe of Law trustee goons link” (news article, Dec. 6):
Isn’t is ironic that this trustee would hire goons to intimidate striking students and workers and take a tax deduction for his million dollar-plus annual endowment “gift” to the N.Y.U. Law School Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice?
Hubert J. Steed
The gift of a good education
To The Editor:
Re “The education of a New York public school parent” (notebook, by Michele Herman, Oct. 18):
Michele, you’ve written a beautiful, moving article. It reminds us that we have only a few years left before we too confront the same big question: Did our own kids’ schools educate them well?
In your case, knowing the wonderful young men your sons have grown into, we can certainly corroborate your judgment that they came out well-educated and eager to keep learning. What more could one ask of a school?
In our case, we made different choices. Not being in “one of the more functional pockets of the system” or in that “district in Queens that always outperforms everyone,” we agonized long and hard before deciding to go the private school route. By the way, I wish it was a quarter of a million dollars, but it’s really half a million dollars per child now.
Anirvan Banerji
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