MBNA: BBQ Ban Critics Once Supported A Ban! [Sheepshead Bites]
The rhetoric between the Manhattan Beach Neighborhood Association and Manhattan Beach Community Group continued to mount this week, as MBNA President Alan Ditchek released a 2007 petition to ban the practice – a petition signed by the current proposal’s most vocal critics.
The petition reflects efforts from four years ago to ban barbecuing in Manhattan Beach Park, and the signatures of Manhattan Beach Community Group leaders – who now call the current attempt “racist” – casts doubt on their sincerity.
The proposal to ban barbecuing on Manhattan Beach is being pushed by the MBNA because they say it is detrimental to residents’ health, but the president of the MBCG, Ira Zalcman, believes that the MBNA is proposing the ban for all the wrong reasons. Zalcman previously argued before his group that the MBNA’s position is mired in racism and discrimination, as they have a “history of wanting to privatize the beach.”
(We’re working to bring you video of this meeting, but publication has been delayed due to technical problems.)
Ditchek showed MBNA members at their Monday night meeting a petition made and signed by the “rival” Manhattan Beach Community Group back in 2007 – before the two groups split – to ban barbecuing on Manhattan Beach. The petition reads:
We the residents of Manhattan Beach located in Brooklyn, New York request that barbecuing be prohibited in Manhattan Beach Park. We find barbecuing to be a health hazard to us due to the close proximity of our homes to the beach. This issue has been voted on by our community group several times over the past years and the vote has been overwhelmingly in support of this prohibition. We ask that this prohibition be enacted immediately so that the summer 2007, Manhattan Beach Park will be barbecue free.
The last name signed on the petition is Ira Zalcman. Other current MBCG leaders signed it, too, including Vice President Bunny Fleischer, Judy Baron and Marty Baron.
“How ironic the reality is, now that we take up the fight, they have plenty of things to say about our group, all untrue,” said Ditchek.
But Zalcman claims he doesn’t recall signing a petition, though admits he may have. Regardless, he said it’s irrelevant since he wasn’t the president of MBCG at the time.
“They’re saying I signed the petition, which could be, I don’t remember. But they are the ones who started the petition. Ron Biondo at the time was the president of our group and started the petition. He is now a leader of MBNA,” said Zalcman.
Last week Zalcman said that Ditchek has “not come up with any realistic scientific evidence that proves his point.”
But Ditchek was sure to bring his evidence this week, along with a hostile attitude towards Zalcman, MBCG, and “bloggers.”
“President Ira Zalcman of the other group said that he was embarrassed to tell people that he was from Manhattan Beach. I’m embarrassed he’s from Manhattan Beach also,” said Ditchek.
In response to Zalcman’s previous comments regarding MBNA using this proposal as a way to “privatize” the beach, Ditchek said, “The people accusing others of being racist are usually the racist ones.”
“We are not anti family at all, we happen to be the more hospitable group… we welcome everyone to the beach,” said Ditchek.
And about those bloggers?
“For those of you bloggers who probably failed high school chemistry, fossil briquettes are a fossil fueled derivative,” he said. Sheepshead Bites’ editor Ned Berke did quite well in high school chemistry.
To help hammer his point home, Ditchek yielded the floor to Beth Israel Medical Center’s pulmonary disease specialist, Dr. Chaim Bernstein. Bernstein wasn’t clear whether he thought barbecuing on Manhattan Beach was in fact dangerous to those who were not consuming the meat.
When one of the spectators argued that barbecuing on Manhattan Beach is not nearly as dangerous as other areas, Bernstein agreed. The audience member then asked if the negative effects of barbecuing are small due to the fact that it only occurs three to four months out of the year and only on the weekends, Bernstein nodded in the affirmative.
Last week at Community Board 15′s meeting, Ditchek told the audience to look for evidence themselves when asked to see some documentation that he failed to provide – but he came well-equipped this time around and handed out four articles: a Citizens’ Environmental Coalition report on air quality; The Journal of the American Medical Association on air pollution as an emerging global risk factor for stroke; About.com on how charcoal grills pollute the air and may cause cancer; and another by the Illinois Times on how air pollution and carcinogens are two hazards of barbecues, titled When Grills Kill.
Most of the information in the articles that Ditchek provided did not heavily focus on the negative effects of barbecuing, and in some articles barbecuing was not even mentioned. The articles for the most part discussed the overall effects of air pollution and air quality, and for those articles that did mention barbecuing, they noted that pollution from barbecuing is slim compared to other contributors.
The Citizens’ Environmental Coalition reported, “The accumulation of airborne particulate matter is a major concern for Houston. Particulate matter may incorporate water and a wide variety of inorganic salts, acids, metals, organic compounds, and soot-like material. A 2003 study done by Rice University found that diesel engines are the primary contributors of fine particles to Houston’s air, followed by gasoline-powered vehicles and road dust. Smoke particles from wood burning and fatty acids from meat grilling contributed considerably smaller but nonetheless significant amounts of the particulates in Houston’s air.”
It’s not clear if the evidence will be enough to sway the Department of Parks and Recreation, though. Just last week, the agency issued a statement supporting families’ rights to grill.
“[Parks' Brooklyn Commissioner Kevin Jeffrey] has been in touch with the Community Board regarding their concerns,” a Parks Department spokesperson told Sheepshead Bites. “At this time there are no plans to eliminate barbecuing at Manhattan Beach.”
See Video Here: http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2011/05/video-mbna-continues-to-discuss-bbq-ban/
http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2011/05/mbna-bbq-ban-critics-once-supported-a-ban/#more-16578
BBQ To Stay In Manhattan Beach! Parks Commissioner Unmoved By Ban Arguments [Sheepshead Bites]
The heat around a proposed barbecue ban on Manhattan Beach continued to intensify this week, this time at the Community Board 15 meeting. But the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation said they have no plans to halt one of America’s favorite pastimes.
Parks Department Brooklyn Commissioner Kevin Jeffrey listened intently to arguments for and against the ban at the Wednesday night meeting, but appeared unmoved by the opponents’ concerns. And, according to a statement from his office, no ban is likely in the near future.
“Commissioner Jeffrey has been in touch with the Community Board regarding their concerns,” a Parks Department spokesperson told Sheepshead Bites. “At this time there are no plans to eliminate barbecuing at Manhattan Beach.”
Manhattan Beach Neighborhood Association President Dr. Alan Ditchek, who also serves as vice chairperson on the Community Board, stood by his arguments that charcoal grilling at the beach carries pollution and health risks for the community’s residents.
But, while Jeffrey maintained a poker face, advocates in attendance made supportive statements to the commissioner.
Stan Kaplan, a Manhattan Beach resident and member of both the MBNA and Manhattan Beach Community Group, said that families gathering together to barbecue at Manhattan Beach keeps good order at the beach and should continue to go on. Another supporter demanded that Ditchek bring his evidence to a meeting, and said that his internet research yielded no definitive ties between charcoal barbecuing, pollution and illness.
But Ditchek kept to his guns, saying that the grouping together of grills in parks is different from backyard barbecues, and is more likely to have a damaging effect for residents nearby.
“If you have a concentration of 10, 15, or 20 barbecue grills, all the smoke adds to the air pollution, which is only deleterious to your health,” said Ditchek. “If you look at the studies you can see that cancers are caused by it, cardiac diseases, respiratory disease, and strokes.”
“When you concentrate a bunch of barbecue grills in one place and you have any kind of a breeze, those people – not only the people barbecuing the food, but the people on the beach and the children in the playground – are certainly at a health risk,” he added.
Ditchek did not have the documentation stating this information and asked the audience to check for themselves when they asked to see some documentation at the next meeting.
“That information is on the internet you can look up numerous studies,” said Ditchek.
When he first proposed the ban, he said his conclusions were supported by an article from a recent issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, which argues that air pollution – and concentrated particulate matter, especially – elevates a population’s risk of stroke. The study did not mention barbecuing, but discussed overall air pollution and specifically examined air quality in developing nations.
Measurements of particulate matter around the barbecuing areas in Manhattan Beach have never been made to see how much it affects air quality.
Ira Zalcman, president of the MBCG, which is often described as the MBNA’s “rival,” said Ditchek’s arguments are all smoke. According to Zalcman, no one has been able to find any documentation supporting such evidence and that the MBNA has a “history in wanting to privatize the beach.”
Zalcman believes the fight to ban barbecuing on the beach has much to do with racism and discrimination.
Before splitting from the MBCG to form the MBNA in 2007, the MBNA’s leadership “are the ones that proposed privatizing the beach and charging admission to Manhattan Beach, which is a public beach, and now they want to ban people from barbecuing… it’s kind of fishy,” said Zalcman. “I just don’t trust them.”
But MBNA spokesperson Edmond Dweck claims that banning barbecuing on Manhattan Beach is strictly for health concerns, and not meant to keep people out.
“God forbid, that was never our intention. These are just accusations that are being brought up only by the other group,” said Dweck. “Basically, it’s strictly health concern. We don’t want people not to come in, we don’t want people not to barbecue, but there are other ways of doing it.”
Dweck explained that barbecuing in a controlled environment would be less harmful to the people on the beach, including the children.
Currently, only seven Brooklyn parks permit barbecuing, and only one other in Southern Brooklyn – Kaiser Park in Coney Island. All of those parks limit barbecuing areas to small sections of the property. In Manhattan Beach, grilling is legally confined only to the section northeast of the promenade, next to the parking lot, and also near Hastings Street.
Many of the opponents suggested that beach-goers could bring their own portable propane grills – some of which cost hundreds of dollars. However, propane grilling is strictly forbidden in public parks.
Despite opposition from neighbors who use the grills, as well as the Parks Department’s statement that grilling will continue on Manhattan Beach, the MBNA appears to be regrouping and pushing forward in its fight to obtain a ban. Dr. Chaim Bernstein, the chief medical officer and chief of pulmonary diseases at Beth Israel Medical Center, has been invited to speak about health concerns and charcoal barbecuing at the group’s May 2 meeting.
Until then, the group will have to continue to fight off criticism that the barbecue ban is an exclusionary measure.
“It wouldn’t have been brought up by our president, who is a doctor, unless he had substantiated information. This has nothing to do with racism or elitism,” said Dweck.
View article here: http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2011/04/bbq-ban-manhattan-beach-kevin-jeffrey/#more-16449
State restores $25 M to save senior centers – it’s now up to Bloomberg (BayCurrents)
Monday, 11 April 2011
Written by Angelina Tala
Governor Cuomo and the New York State legislature agreed to restore $25 million to save the senior centers that were going to be closed down because of state budget cuts, but local city councilmen say the centers may still be at risk of closing.
“As of now half the battle is done, so now it’s up to the mayor’s office,” 48th District Councilman Mike Nelson said through a spokesman.
When it was first announced that many centers – which provide activities, companionship, and hot meals for seniors across the state – were threatened with closing, seniors and their advocates took to protests and rallies, calling on the governor and legislators to “save our centers.” Lawmakers agreed to fully restore Title XX funding, keeping the 105 senior centers in the five boroughs open for operation
Gertrude Lerner and Lidia Boris, who attend the Bay Senior Center in Sheepshead Bay, were among the many older New Yorkers who joined rallies and went to City Hall with signs, wrote letters and made phone calls to Governor Cuomo and attended press conferences. “We did everything to save our center – it’s our home away from home,” said Boris, 62. “It makes us wake up in the morning and have a place to go.”
But the threat may not be completely over. “It’s up to the mayor now to decide what he wants to do with that money,” said Nelson spokesman Steve Zeltser. “He can put it toward saving the senior centers — or he can put it toward closing the City’s budget deficit.”
The mayor’s office couldn’t be reached by press time.
District 46 Councilman Lewis Fidler was also hesitant to break open the champaign just yet. “We have to remember that city tax-levy funds support many of our services for seniors, and some of that funding remains in jeopardy, partially due to cuts to block-grant funding from Washington and Albany. We still have our work cut out for us in protecting senior services,” he said.
Boris finds it hard to believe that the city and state even “considered such a thing,” and hopes Bloomberg puts the money toward the centers, “I hope Bloomberg makes the right decision,” she said.
Boris said she feels alone and isolated in her house, and thinks that without the centers many seniors will get sick, which would leave the city with bigger problems. “Bloomberg would have to pay more doctor bills, and fund more Meals on Wheels if the senior centers were closed down,” she said.
Gertrude Lerner, an 88 year-old woman who has been living alone since her husband Morris died eight months ago, says that the Bay Senior Center is what keeps her alive. “Without him, I am so lonely and when I’m here I feel so alive…it makes me one of the happiest women,” she said.
Lerner’s husband was a president of The Bay Senior Center, and when he died she was so depressed all she wanted to do was stay home, “I thought, ‘Heaven knows what’s going to become of me.’ I just wanted to stay in the house and get under the covers.”
But Sharon Retkinski, director of the center, called Lerner and told her she was important to them and that she needed to come back to her “home away from home.”
“Most of us are without our spouse and we’re lonely, we are depressed and when we come here we’re rejuvenating,” Lerner spoke as she rubbed her time-worn hands together in the dining area of the center on a recent afternoon. “We feel we have a meaning to our lives — we help each other, we comfort one another.”
“It makes us feel important to know we are not lost and we are not forgotten. These things are very important at our age,” she added.
Over the weekends when the center is not open, “I do nothing, I sit, look at the television and try to keep occupied,” she said. She always looks forward to Mondays.
Lerner and many of the other seniors said they were there for the politicians when they needed their votes – now they want the same respect in return.
“We had a lot of politicians come here all these years wanting our help, and we all voted for them because we felt they were important to us. Now we need them,” she said, sounding decidedly worried. “We need them to help us to keep this place open.”
http://www.baycurrents.net/senior-currents/item/310-state-restores-$25-m-to-save-senior-centers-–-it’s-now-up-to-bloomberg
Confessed Criminal And Kruger Croney To Star In Brighton Beach Reality Show [Sheepshead Bites]
Lifetime’s Brighton Beach reality show will star a confessed criminal and local nightclub owner facing disbarment and six months in jail after a political scandal, but the Russian community isn’t worried about negative stereotyping because they “trust” the A&E-owned network.
Michael Levitis, lawyer and owner of Rasputin Nightclub (2670 Coney Island Avenue) confirmed to Sheepshead Bites that the show is focused, in part, on his family, a casting decision that comes as Levitis is caught up in an alleged corruption scheme with State Senator Carl Kruger.
Levitis pleaded guilty of lying to federal investigators earlier this month in relation to an FBI probe dating back to 2007. The investigation explored an alleged influence peddling scheme in which Levitis was recorded telling another restaurateur that the state senator would help him with state matters if he held a fundraiser and turned over thousands of dollars for the politician’s campaign. Federal prosecutors charged Kruger last Thursday with accepting at least $1 million in bribes in a separate investigation.
Though local Russian-American leaders previously squabbled over potentially harmful depictions of their community in the Brighton Beach show, it seems all is quiet in Little Odessa despite the casting revelation.
Continue reading here: http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2011/03/confessed-criminal-and-kruger-croney-to-star-in-brighton-beach-reality-show/
Marine Park Salt Marshes Get An Overhaul [Sheepshead Bites]
by Angelina Tala on Mar 3rd, 2011
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working to restore some of the salt marshes along Gerritsen and Mill creeks in Marine Park, bringing it back to their wildlife-suited environment.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started working on the $8 million project last spring, and are expected to finish by this winter. Most of the work required to create the 67 acres of marshland habitat was completed over the summer. The grading of the grassland is scheduled to be completed by spring.
Read full article here: http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2011/03/marine-park-salt-marshes-get-an-overhaul/#more-14274
Plumb Beach Restoration Plans Outlined, Construction Could Begin As Early As December[Sheepshead Bites]
by Angelina Tala on Feb 22nd, 2011
U.S Army Corps of Engineers and city officials are working together to save Plumb Beach and the Belt Parkway from catastrophe, and have come up with a set of proposals for the long-term sustainability of the parkland and transportation infrastructure.
Plumb Beach, once providing 40 feet of beachfront, has been reduced to just a few yards due to the nor’easter back in 2009. The storm swept away sand, ruined a section of the bike path, and nearly flooded the highway. The extremely eroded beach is in desperate need of construction, which can range anywhere from one to five million dollars.
Continue reading here: http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2011/02/plumb-beach-restoration-plans-outlined-construction-could-begin-as-early-as-december/
9 children and driver hurt as school bus rams into bank (BayCurrents.net)
By Angelina Tala l Tuesday, December 14 2010
School bus crashes into bank on Avenue U
Bay Currents photo by Angelina Tala
A school bus crashed into a bank Tuesday morning, Dec. 14, injuring all nine children aboard and the bus driver.
At about 7:45 a.m., the bus went over the sidewalk, damaging two parked cars and crashing into a Capital One branch on Avenue U at West 6th Street.
The children and the driver were immediately taken to the hospital.
“We are not sure if there were any major injuries yet,” Lieutenant Phil Solimeo told Bay Currents.
The impact of the bus lifted one of the parked cars onto the sidewalk, and shattered the back windows of the other vehicle, a silver SUV.
The slippery road from snow flurries of the night before was a possible cause. The accident was under investigation.
You can view this article here: http://www.baycurrents.net/top-stories/item/282-9-children-and-driver-hurt-as-school-bus-rams-into-bank
