Thank you for giving me the honor of representing the 67th District for another term in the New York State Assembly. I take this trust seriously and will continue to be responsive to your concerns.
With winter upon us, I hope you and your family experienced a healthy and festive holiday season. It was a pleasure to see so many of you who came to my office for help, information or to express your opinion, and I look forward to seeing more of you at community events or simply around the neighborhood.
Here in our community, changes are afoot. With a pedestrian safety redesign of the 71st Street and Broadway/Amsterdam intersection planned for 2011 and the long-sought West End Avenue Historic District recently calendared by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, our neighborhood will have two excellent achievements to celebrate.
As state government undergoes the significant transition to a new administration, we must use this opportunity to enact the strong ethics reforms necessary to restore the public’s trust. The Legislature will also be tasked with closing another difficult budget shortfall currently estimated at $9 billion. I am committed to ensuring we do not abandon our values or compassion in the process.
I will continue in the new legislative session to advance my proposals for affordable housing, equitable education formulas that will result in smaller class sizes and alleviate overcrowding, consumer protection and safety, and honest, transparent government.
I am optimistic that the coming year will be a productive one for our state. Please feel free to contact me at (212) 873-6368 or rosenthall@assembly.state.ny.us with your ideas, questions and concerns.
Sincerely,
Linda B. Rosenthal
Member of Assembly
Thanks to the unrelenting, passionate efforts of environmental groups and citizen activists, we in the Assembly were able to achieve a temporary moratorium on the use of dangerous hydraulic fracturing technology to drill for natural gas in New York State. This practice relies on blasting wells with millions of gallons of water and undisclosed chemicals that have contaminated water supplies in other states and whose dangers have not been fully assessed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
While the Governor vetoed this legislation, strong public outcry forced him to issue a comparable, although less expansive Executive Order banning horizontal fracturing through June 2011. The Executive Order does not halt existing vertical drilling and some environmental advocates worry that new vertical wells could quickly be converted to allow horizontal extraction once the moratorium expires.
Within the Assembly, I fought vigorously to ensure this vote took place and urged my colleagues to join me in securing the moratorium’s inclusion on November’s extraordinary session agenda. While this reprieve is a solid step forward, it is a short-term victory. In the coming 2011 legislative session, we must work to extend this moratorium and fight for stronger environmental safeguards, including the disclosure of the chemical composition of hydraulic fluids, stronger regulations governing water withdrawal and other steps necessary to protect our environment.
I stand strongly opposed to hydraulic fracturing in New York State, and am committed to preventing the worst environmental mistake of this generation. The fight goes on, but the moratorium is an interim victory for our environment.
Tenant Alert: Rent Laws Set to Expire Unless Renewed Next Year
With our state’s poor fiscal standing front and center, there is another major legislative conflict brewing: the renewal of the rent laws that govern the rent-stabilized and -controlled apartments in our city. Unless the Legislature acts by June 15 to prevent the expiration of these laws, all rent-regulated units will become market rate and the protections afforded to tenants will vanish.
When the rent laws were last renewed in 1997, then-Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno famously declared that he wanted to abolish rent regulation. Landlords and their allies in the Legislature may take a more subtle approach this round, but will undoubtedly seek to eliminate as many protections as possible.
I continue to sponsor and champion legislation to repeal vacancy decontrol, which is the most destructive factor in our city’s loss of affordable housing. In addition, I am a sponsor of many companion bills, including those that would offer rent stabilization to former Mitchell-Lama and project-based Section 8 buildings, limit landlords’ ability to take unlimited numbers of rent-regulated apartments for personal use and prohibit increasing preferential rent upon lease renewal.
I am committed to preventing a nightmare scenario from occurring and securing the best laws possible for tenants. Opposing interests will undoubtedly attempt to weaken protections through the incoming State Senate majority, which does not appear to be sympathetic to New York City’s concerns. I am expecting a protracted battle on this issue and am ready to fight to protect the thousands of people who could not afford to live here without rent regulation.
The 13-story building will be located between 10th and 11th Avenues and 58th and 59th Streets. It will offer an improved learning environment and ADA-compliant access.
Construction work was initiated in February 2007 and is scheduled for completion next fall. A secondary entrance on 11th Avenue will house a street level café accessible to the public.
Neighborhood activists committed to maintaining the architectural character of the Upper West Side achieved a tremendous victory with the decision of the City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) decision to calendar public hearings for the proposed extensions of the West End-Collegiate and Riverside-West End Historic Districts. Stretching from 70th to 109th Street on West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, and including appropriate side streets, this district will help ensure that our neighborhood history is maintained and the character of the area is not lost due to overdevelopment and increased density.
I am proud to have been part of this effort and have on a number of occasions testified before the LPC to urge it to protect neighborhood structures of historic and cultural value.
Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the West End Preservation Society (WEPS), its Board and in particular members Richard Emery and Erika Petersen, this landmarking will spell a tremendous victory for our community. While our neighborhood will always be lively and evolving, the Upper West Side’s unique and elegant pre-war housing stock has long been recognized for its beauty and deserves to be protected.
Public hearings are scheduled for March 22, June 28 and October 25, 2011. For more information on how to get involved, e-mail WEPS at info@westendpreservation.org or call my office at (212) 873-6368. Additional details can be found on the LPC website at www.nyc.gov/landmarks.
DOT’s plan includes solutions I first identified in 2008, including expanding curbs and existing medians, realigning crosswalks to shorten crossing times and reorienting traffic to encourage safer behavior. The installation of countdown clocks that alert pedestrians to the time remaining before lights change, which will allow seniors and others to make more informed decisions, is already under way along Broadway.
I also successfully urged the resolution of a jurisdictional dispute among the DOT, Parks Department, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that delayed an important repair in the area. In an August 2009 accident, a taxi crashed into the iron gate on the southern island of the 72nd Street headhouse, and a section of fence was irreparably damaged and then removed. As the agencies squabbled over which had authority for the repair, pedestrians remained dangerously exposed to car traffic given the gaping hole in the fence. The Parks Department was deemed to be responsible for repairing the fence; a new section has now been commissioned at my insistence and will be installed immediately after the manufacturer delivers it in late January or early February of 2011.
The more substantive changes that will put pedestrians on par with vehicles will be implemented in two phases in 2011. Operation changes, including the use of barriers to extend sidewalks and enforce lane reductions will begin in the spring. More extensive capitol changes that will make this redesign permanent will follow in the summer. I encourage you to visit http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/seniors_bway_amst_71_slides.pdf to see the full DOT presentation for yourself and to send me your comments. This location has been the site of far too many accidents, and I know these long-sought changes will make our community a safer place to live.
Selecting an elementary public school for your child can be a stressful process. Here is a compendium of important dates.
Elementary School Registration Calendar:
January 2011
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Tours of schools for prospective parents (please contact individual schools for further details).
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January 10: Kindergarten application period begins. Families submit applications to schools.
March 4, 2011
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Deadline to submit a kindergarten application.
March 21-25, 2011
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Families are notified about assignment offers.
March 28-April 15, 2011
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Pre-registration at schools.
As more and more bedbug-infested mattresses and box springs are placed outside buildings for removal, the potential to spread this infestation is substantially increased. I commend the New York City Department of Sanitation for instituting new protections from this threat, by requiring discarded mattresses and box springs to be placed in sealed plastic coverings. With bedbug outbreaks on the rise, this is an excellent way of eliminating one method of transmission. After passing the Bedbug Disclosure Act in 2010 to protect tenants signing leases, I am developing new legislative proposals that I will introduce shortly.
Image courtesy of the New York City Department of Sanitation
Too often, low-income workers are cheated out of the salary they have properly earned, through employers falsifying records and misclassifying employees, failing to award overtime or hazard pay and confiscating tips. In some instances, this form of exploitation drives down workers’ salary beneath the federal minimum wage requirement.
However, the Wage Theft Prevention Act passed during the extraordinary legislative session in November will restrict this behavior and empower workers to seek justice. The National Employment Law Project estimates that this behavior denies workers billions per year nationwide. This theft also deprives the state of tax revenue and penalizes legitimate business in compliance with the law.
Reforms in this legislation include requiring employers to detail wage information on employee pay stubs, allowing the state Commissioner of Labor to force employer compliance and assess damages, and strengthening whistleblower protections for employees coming forward with information on their abuse. Unscrupulous employers attempt this behavior because wage theft penalties have traditionally been too lax for them to worry, but the Wage Theft Prevention Act will allow workers to recover double the income they are owed as damages.
Co-op & Condo Rights Forum
Many constituents have approached me with questions about their rights as condominium owners or cooperative shareholders. To answer these questions, I will be convening a panel of experts the evening of Wednesday, February 2 to discuss issues including disputes, maintenance and the application process.
Contact my district office at (212) 873-6368 or via e-mail at rosenthall@assembly.state.ny.us if you would like to RSVP or find out more.
Mammography Van
In March my office will sponsor a free mammography van that will be located in front of the district office at 230 West 72nd Street. The van will be open to any woman over the age of 40 who has not received a mammogram in the past 12 months.
The van will be operated by the American-Italian Cancer Foundation and staffed by professional nurses. Breast cancer remains the second leading cause of death among women in the United States, and early detection is crucial.
To make an appointment, please call my district office at(212) 873-6368 or via e-mail at rosenthall@assembly.state.ny.us.