Garbage In, Garbage Out

Asphalt Green

Set to Become

Port Garbage

Under City Plan

For some years, the City of New York has been planning to construct a marine transfer station (MTS) on the Manhattan side of the East River, with an entrance and exit at 91st Street and York Avenue. There was such a facility on that site until 1990, when it was closed. In the twenty years since, the neighborhood has become increasingly high-rise residential and Asphalt Green, a recreation center with a swimming pool and substantial play areas for children, has been built east of York Avenue, immediately adjacent to the site.

The transfer station would be a large building which trucks loaded with garbage that would enter and then drop their contents into scows. When filled, the scows, pulled by tugboats, would travel down the East River and bring the garbage to freight cars which would carry it by rail to rural sites where the city had purchased rights to deposit solid waste.

The site, a couple of blocks from Gracie Mansion, has stirred neighborhood controversy. Local elected officials, led by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, are strongly opposed to the location. Mayor Bloomberg supports it. Indeed, he advanced its construction by a year, in an effort to lock in the site before he leaves office in December 2013.

Supporters of the site say that Manhattan should handle its own garbage, rather than ship it to other boroughs. They say the residents of the East Side who oppose the site are guilty of "environmental racism", dumping unpopular facilities in neighborhoods inhabited by poor people. This argument carried the day at the City Council, where in June 2005 an attempt by then-Speaker Gifford Miller to over-rule the mayor's solid waste plan which included the marine transfer station failed when the Speaker could not muster the necessary two-thirds of the Council, and the vote was canceled. It was rumored at the time that Miller had rounded up 32 votes, but 34 out of 51 members were required for an over-ride.

The fact that Miller was running for mayor against Bloomberg that year did not help his cause. It enabled the mayor to appear as the defender of the outer boroughs against a councilmember from the silk stocking district who did not want a necessary sanitary facility in his backyard, even to take care of his own constituents' garbage.

Since that time, the project has spent six years wending its way through the bureaucracy. When approved, the decision was seen as the outcome of a political battle between the mayor and the speaker. Now, with Miller long out of politics, and Speaker Quinn a strong ally of the mayor as she seeks to become his designated successor, the old lineup has evaporated, and the transfer station appears to have clear sailing.

None of this has to do with the merits of the proposal, which have been challenged in the courts, so far without success. In general, the courts are supposed to decide on whether the city has authority to take a particular action, not to judge the merits of the proposed action. However, judges often insert themselves into local disputes, whether to make friends or avoid making enemies, or to attract attention to themselves and the power they can exercise, at least until the matter is taken to a higher court, which has no problem in reversing political decisions made by trial judges.

Disclosure: I live on East 84th Street, which is far enough away from the site for me not to be bothered by whatever smoke, noise, odors or fumes that may emanate from the plant. I do remember the old plant, and the problem there was that trucks waiting to enter one of the berths from which they dumped the garbage would line up on York Avenue, their diesel engines running, all the way down to 86th Street, five blocks south of the station. The trucks were often accompanied by flies, who feasted on the trucks' cargo whenever they could gain access.

The environmental elite is all for the project, out of belief that it will mitigate global warning, and the conviction that anything that discommodes rich people or reduces the value of their homes cannot be all bad. These groups have been under fire from minorities because they are overwhelmingly white, although composed primarily of volunteers.

Supporting this project is a good way for the richies to show that they favor justice for all, and are not troubled by any consequences that do not affect the underprivileged, or as they now prefer to say, the underserved, since they are not seeking privileges, but rights which they richly deserve but have never received in our unjust society.

Of course, rhetoric on both sides has next to nothing to do with the merits of the project. There are factors: length of truck routes, availability of sites on the Hudson River, the West Side of Manhattan (ships generally dock there, not on the East River). The effect on property values, and consequent tax revenue to the city, should also be considered. If $100 million in luxury housing declines in worth to $75 million because it now faces a huge garbage dump, that is a cost which will be paid each year when the city assesses the real estate that is its principal fixed asset.

There is also the issue of what to do if you build it and it doesn't work the way you wanted it to. Look at the Town of North Hempstead in Nassau County, which built a costly incinerator, only later to dismantle it and use the land for a golf course. This turned out to be a nine-figure blunder, but it was supported by the so-called experts. Of course, a transfer station is easier to build, small children employ its principles in sandboxes.

But with Murphy's Law in mind, do not underestimate the capacity of public officials (and their rivals and successors) to mess things up. This is particularly true when a noisy minority opposes the project from the start. BTW, why was the first transfer station built at that site to ship out truckloads of garbage abandoned twenty years ago? Why was the striking asphalt plant on the site, designed by the famous architects Kahn & Jacobs in 1944, recycled into a sports and arts center in 1982? Possibly because the manufacture of asphalt is a business historically operated by organized crime, with which the city was not competitive.

My prediction is that some day, not too far away, the experts will find a better way of getting the garbage onto the scows or a better place in which to do it. In the meantime, as they say, "there goes the neighborhood." Many communities have gone up and down over the years, often for reasons that were beyond the reach of government. The novelty here is that the city itself will pay to ruin the ambiance and the view, which will diminish the economic value of one of its finest local neighborhoods.

Let us make it clear that a lot of honest and intelligent people support this project in good faith. It is just that, based on my knowledge, experience with similar proposals, and stubborn intuition, I don't believe them to the extent of spending billions of dollars of tax money to do what they tell us. For example, what if the rural states reject our garbage, or make accepting it prohibitively expensive? Will the scows remain at sea in perpetuity?

The fact that this damage is being inflicted in the name of improving the environment reminds us of the words which sadly became famous in Vietnam: "We had to burn down the village in order to save it."

As Puck observed, "What fools these mortals be."


StarQuest #777 8.30.2011 1287 words

They're Off!

2013 Mayoral Sweepstakes:

Field of Five Is Hot to Trot

Politics is usually more about the next election than the last one. So it is not surprising that the Republican candidates for the presidency in 2012 are off and running. The candidates for the New York City mayoralty in 2013 are close behind.

Considering political campaigns as conducted on a four-year cycle, we are now in the second lap of the race to succeed Mayor Bloomberg. The winner will become our 109th mayor (the first, listed in the Green Book, was Thomas Willett, in 1665). To go to more recent history, Fiorello Henrico LaGuardia, regarded by some as the city's greatest mayor, was the 99th. The interjacent eight mayors, and the number of years they served, are O'Dwyer-5, Impellitteri-3, Wagner-12, Lindsay-8, Beame-4, Koch-12, Dinkins-4 and Giuliani-8.

The most notable aspect of this list is that, in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, where Democratic candidates for comptroller, public advocate, borough president (except Staten Island), and the great majority of state legislators and city councilmembers (currently 46 out of 51) are Democrats, it is the candidate running on the Republican Party line who has won the last FIVE mayoral elections. The five Democratic losers, in chronological order, were David Dinkins, Ruth Messinger, Mark Green, Fernando Ferrer and Bill Thompson. As you can see, they represented varied ethnicities and both genders.

The race will be determined either by the Democratic primary in September 2013 or in the election that follows in November. Fund raising is well under way, because in the absence of actual results, who is the front runner is determined by standing in the polls and the amount of money that has been raised. These are the intermediate statistics of political contests, and as reports of current preferences and achievements, their publication influences future events, like contributions and declarations of allegiance.

It is human nature to want to identify with future winners, both for financial advantage for individuals and their businesses, many of which involve decisions to be made by city officials (on the merits, of course), or for their personal satisfaction in identifying themselves with public officials and believing themselves to be instrumental in the success of those they have favored. Invitations to Gracie Mansion don't hurt, either.

DIGRESSION: The best known aphorism making this point was recalled by President John F. Kennedy on April 21, l96l, at a press conference just after the Bay of Pigs debacle, when he said: "There is an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan." Another JFK quote, on April 10, 1962, followed a US Steel decision to raise the price of steel by $6 a ton after Kennedy had pressured the United Steel Workers to accept modest increases in an effort to keep inflation down. Kennedy said: "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it until now." In his book, "A Thousand Days" (1965), historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. says the remark was made privately, but soon reached the newspapers. People do talk. END

Back to the mayoral contest. To find prospective candidates, the logical place to begin is with other citywide elected officials and former officials. A brief rundown of the current field:

1. Comptroller John Liu holds the office most often used as a springboard for a mayoral race. Six out of the last seven comptrollers were defeated when they ran for mayor (Gerosa, Beame, Procaccino, Goldin, Hevesi and Thompson). Beame won on his second try, eight years later. Hevesi was subsequently elected State Comptroller, but was unable to complete his term because of legal issues.

2. Public Advocate (formerly City Council President, and before that President of the Board of Aldermen) Bill de Blasio will surely be a candidate. Five of his predecessors lost bids for the mayoralty: Newbold Morris, Paul Screvane, Paul O'Dwyer, Carol Bellamy and Andrew Stein (who ran for a year but withdrew before petitioning). One won, Vincent Impellitteri in 1950, who became Acting Mayor after William O'Dwyer's sudden departure for Mexico, a country beyond the reach of subpoenas, to which President Truman had suddenly appointed him as U.S. Ambassador. His younger brother, Paul O'Dwyer, was elected Council President eight years after he lost for mayor in 1965.

3. One Council President ran second to Nelson Rockefeller for governor, Frank O'Connor, who had been district attorney of Queens County. We recall Rule 26-S: "Second place is the first loser." But there is a bright spot - the man who was handily defeated by O'Connor in the 1965 Democratic primary ended up as a four-term United States Senator from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

4. Borough Presidents: Two recent mayors have been Manhattan BPs : Wagner and Dinkins. Three MBPs have lost mayoral races: Stein, Ruth Messinger and Virginia Fields. Crossing the bridges, Bronx BPs Herman Badillo and Fernando Ferrer were both defeated in numerous races for mayor, but Seth Low, former mayor of Brooklyn and president of Columbia University, was elected mayor in 1901. He served one two-year term.

5. Council Speaker: 0 for 2 - Peter Vallone lost a mayoral challenge in 2001, and his successor as speaker, Gifford Miller, lost in 2005. Both were impelled to run by term limits, which prohibited their re-election. Vallone refused to over-ride term limits without a referendum. When the vote was taken in 1996, term limits were upheld.

6. Other elected mayoral springboards: William O'Dwyer was district attorney of Kings County when he was elected mayor in 1945. Ed Koch was a Congressman from Manhattan, and had previously been a City Council member, when he was elected mayor in 1977. John Lindsay was a Congressman from Manhattan, from the same district that Koch was later to represent, when he was elected mayor in 1965. Lindsay subsequently came in third (behind Liz Holtzman and Bess Myerson) in a Democratic primary for the United States Senate seat in 1980 that was won by Al D'Amato.

Five potential, probably presumptive, candidates who as of today have filed with the campaign finance board for the 2013 election cycle are Public Advocate Bill de Blasio ($346,541), NYC Comptroller John Liu ($513,471), Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer ($1,018,081), Council Speaker Christine Quinn ($3,134,698), and Congressman Anthony Weiner ($4,871,539).

This article deals with the fortunes and misfortunes of previous mayoral candidates, and provides a brief look at their current campaign treasuries. It does not discuss the merits of the candidates. The point we make is that, whether you know it or not, the race is well under way. And there are only two years and seven months before the primary.

What Would Moses Say?

Koch Bridge, Carey Tunnel

Long Island to Manhattan,

Over or Under East River



Recent days have seen a flurry of activity on a previously quiet front: the naming of bridges and tunnels.

Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced Wednesday evening at a party in Gracie Mansion to celebrate former Mayor Ed Koch's 86th birthday that legislation would be introduced in the City Council to add the name "Ed Koch" to the Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge.

At the same time it was reported that both houses of the State Legislature had adopted legislation changing the name of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, which was opened in 1950 and charged a 35 cent toll, to the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, honoring the seven-term Brooklyn Congressman (1961-74) and two-term New York State Governor (1975-82). The bill awaits signature by Governor David A. Paterson, whose eponym is the former 'silk city' in northern New Jersey.

The twin name changes are relished affectionately in an article by veteran NBC reporter Gabe Pressman titled HAIL TO KOCH AND CAREY and aired December 8. Read it here.

The Times digested the name changes the next morning in a column by Michael M. Grynbaum, BRIDGE AND TUNNEL TYPES. The column is very well done, and its best lines are saved for the closer:

"But the former mayor asked a reporter to wait a moment so he could share a quotation he had found in 'The Great Gatsby,' [a 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald], which he called appropriate for the occasion.

"'The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge,' Mr. Koch said, reading from the novel, 'is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.'

"'Nobody else has a bridge like that,' Mr. Koch concluded happily. 'Only me!'"

In Mr. Pressman's article, Mayor Koch is quoted as saying: "I'm not handsome, that's why the Queensboro represents me so well. And on my bridge I'll insist there'll never be a toll!"

The phrase that comes to our mind is: "From your lips to God's ear."

Unfortunately, there are lesser figures, all honorable men, who are eager to impose fees and tolls wherever they find human life or activity, or even death in some cases. But like the troll in "The Three Billy Goats Gruff", who wanted to gobble up anyone who crossed the bridge under which he lurked, taxers are sometimes frustrated.

The tradition in New York City has been that a bridge is a street over water, and the 19th century bridges, which once cost a few cents to cross, have been toll free for about a hundred years. The 20th century bridges were built largely by Robert Moses from the '30s to the '60s. Their tolls were supposed to pay the cost of construction, and then maintenance. They did, but that was not enough.

Since the MTA swallowed the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority in 1968, in part so Governor Nelson Rockefeller could rid New York of the once powerful Moses, who had insulted his brother in 1963, most of the bridge income has gone to mass transit subsidies. These millions have not, however, been able to keep up with escalating costs of transit agencies, where salaries, health care and pensions are growing at a rate that will be impossible to maintain, and incurring debt service for capital projects which are charged to operating expenses.

The bridge and the tunnel will have bright new names. We hope they enjoy bright futures in the new century.

Hiram and Julissa

Hiram Monserrate Indicted

For Dragooning Employees

Of Nonprofit He Enriched

For His Own Political Gain



The other shoe dropped Tuesday for Hiram Monserrate. The first State Senator to be expelled from that body since 1781, Monserrate was indicted by a Federal grand jury for using employees of a non-profit group he sponsored while a City Councilmember to labor on behalf of his unsuccessful campaign for the State Senate in 2006.

The sixteen-page indictment, which you can read here, is summarized on p21 of Wednesday's New York Times by William K. Rashbaum and Fernanda Santos. The two federal charges against Monserrate stem from his relationship with the Latino Initiative for Better Resources and Empowerment Inc., known by its acronym LIBRE, a now defunct social services agency to which Monserrate was closely linked. He secured City funding for LIBRE to operate.

The indictment alleges that Monserrate used employees of the tax-exempt organization to register voters and collect signatures to get him on the ballot in his failed bid for Senate against John Sabini in 2006.

In 2008, the Queens County Democratic organization switched its support from Sabini to Monserrate in the predominantly Latino district, Sabini was accommodated with a six-year term as chairman of the State Racing and Wagering Board, and Monserrate was elected Senator.

However, he was unable to complete his term, having been expelled in February 2010, ostensibly for slashing his girlfriend with a broken glass, although the court found that allegation unproven. His greater sin was joining renegade Senator and hospitalier Pedro Espada in an attempted coup that tied up the State Senate for over a month. Although the standoff led to the appointment of Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch, it left the Senate, and the two plotters, lower in public esteem. Espada returned to the fold when rewarded by the Democrats with the position, lulu and staff of the majority leader, but all his power and influence went to Senator John Sampson of Brooklyn, the new Democratic conference leader.

LIBRE is the latest nonprofit to come under scrutiny for its subordination to the elected official who secured its funding. It joins the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, founded by Vito Lopez, and Espada's Soundview Health Center in the Bronx. Monserrate's relationship with LIBRE was intimate. Over his seven years in the Council (2002-2008), Monserrate steered more than $2.7 million in City discretionary and capital funds to LIBRE, including more than $2 million for a community center, which was never built.

Monserrate's connection with LIBRE ran deeper than money. According to the indictment, Monserrate "played an important role in selecting LIBRE's staff and the members of its board of directors", including the chair of LIBRE's board of directors from 2005 through 2007, its interim executive director in 2005, and its executive director from late 2005 through early 2007. According to a 2008 article in the Times by Russ Buettner and Serge Kovaleski "Dysfunction at a Charity That Relies on Council Largesse", Monserrate also negotiated the lease for LIBRE's former office.

The chair of LIBRE's board of directors alluded to in the indictment is current Councilmember Julissa Ferreras, Monserrate's former chief of staff and his hand-picked successor for his former Council seat which he resigned when he was elected to the Senate.

For those who have not followed Queens politics, it would be understandable to overlook the connection between Ferreras and Monserrate. Ferreras carefully distanced herself from Monserrate during her February 2009 campaign to replace him on the Council, presumably because at the time he was under investigation for slashing his girlfriend's face. Currently, Ferreras lists no mention of her association with Monserrate or LIBRE in her bio on the City Council's website, despite the fact that they were her principal qualifications for election. Leaving Monserrate off her resume, for whom she began working in 2001 as his campaign manager and then, following his election, as his chief of staff, makes for a gaping lacuna in Councilmember Ferreras's resume.

Chronologically, the most recent accomplishment she claims on her Council bio prior to her term in office is her appointment by former Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette and Congressman Joseph Crowley to serve as a New York State delegate to the 2000 Democratic National Convention, a decade ago.

Monserrate's relationship with Ferreras has soured along with his political and personal fortunes since he appeared at her 2009 victory party. Last month, Ferreras claimed that Monserrate was responsible for the slashing of her tires, several vulgar notes left on her car, and an assortment of other allegations of harassment.

It does not appear from published reports that Ferreras ever filed formal charges against Monserrate. Councilmember Ferreras failed to return several phone calls seeking comment and clarifications for this column, but she did issue a statement to the media saying that she has "been cooperating with authorities from the very beginning."

The newly unsealed indictment implicates not only Monserrate, who surrendered to authorities Tuesday morning, it alleges a conspiracy where others colluded with Monserrate to skirt the campaign finance laws by illegally using LIBRE resources and employees to fund and support his State Senate runs in 2005 and 2006. The co-conspirators are unnamed in the indictment, but presumably one of the people involved is former LIBRE executive director Javier Cardenas, who Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced yesterday had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and mail-fraud charges and is cooperating against Monserrate.

Celeste Katz reported in the Daily News that "federal prosecutors subpoenaed and questioned several former members of [Monserrate's] Senate staff, including Wayne Mahlke and Luis Castro, about Monserrate's dealings with LIBRE."

Mahlke, who is Monserrate's former chief of staff, was arrested in May of this year in an incident unrelated to the indictment for "possessing a forged police placard and for failing to obey a police officer - after hurling an insult at the officer." Castro has been identified in news reports as a former campaign consultant to Monserrate.

According to the indictment, around May 2006, Monserrate sent an email from a personal email account to an unnamed member of his Council staff requesting a database of voters LIBRE had newly registered, apparently at Monserrate's request. A month or two later, "Monserrate stamped numerous LIBRE checks that were thereafter issued to individuals who had participated in LIBRE's voter-registration and petition-gathering activities with a signature stamp of the person who was then the chair of LIBRE's board of directors." In an article on The Queens Courier's website, reporter Steve Mosco identifies the chair of LIBRE's board of directors at the time as Councilmember Ferreras.

The check stamping allegation, which is detailed in the indictment, raises the question of who really was in charge of LIBRE's finances. In an October 18, 2008 Times article by Ray Rivera about Libre's suspiciously slipshod accounting practices, entitled "Group Spent City's Money, but Has Not Shown How", Monserrate referred all questions about LIBRE's accounting practices to Ferreras, saying, "She's the person to have the conversation with," he said. "I wasn't the director. I don't know what paperwork was there, what books were there."

Contacted at the time by Rivera for comment, Ferreras said LIBRE's records were in the organization's offices. "I personally don't keep the records," Ferreras told the Times.

As Monserrate's case advances it is likely that we will learn more about LIBRE and what, if anything, Councilmember Ferreras knew about his former boss's alleged manipulation of the nonprofit. What is for certain is that no matter how hard Speaker Christine Quinn tries to leave the slush fund scandal in the Council's past, the investigation is still very much ongoing and just how many of her members were involved is still yet to be determined. Another Councilman who was elevated to chair the Civil Rights Committee, Larry Seabrook of the Bronx, is currently under a 13-count indictment for a litany of corruption charges, and former Councilmember Miguel Martinez of Manhattan is already serving time in Federal prison.

It gives us no satisfaction to watch one elected official after another done in by their greed and contempt for the law. This parade of corrupt politicians denigrates New Yorkers' faith in local government, and further degrades the reputation of the City Council and its leader, who is supposed to look out for this sort of thievery.

We continue to encourage our prosecutors, Federal, State and Local, to pursue every elected official who has abused the public trust until all of them are rooted out. Regrettably, the only way to keep some of our legislators' hands out of our pockets is with handcuffs.