This week's Riverdale Review and Bronx Press

Here are the stories in this week's issue (December 6 - December 12) of the Riverdale Review:

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz demands Con Edison
bury power lines underground to prevent blackouts.

* After Sandy, pols urge Con Edison to bury power lines > Con Edison has vowed to meet with local residents to discuss the feasibility of running power lines underground--instead of overhead--to prevent future electrical outages. The Riverdale Review can reveal the utility provider has indicated it will hold a series of meetings with area residents in the coming weeks to explore the idea of burying cables. Con Edison officials agreed to meet with residents after Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz renewed his call to abolish overhead lines during a press conference in Spuyten Duyvil last Friday.

* Ari Hoffnung edges closer to possible City Council run > Riverdale resident and city deputy comptroller Ari Hoffnung is mulling a run for Councilman G. Oliver Koppell's seat in 2013 citywide elections. Koppell is currently serving his third and final term and must vacate office due to term limit rules. Hoffnung said he remains undecided about whether to jump into the much-anticipated City Council District 11 race but gave the strongest indication yet that his political aspirations were still alive.

 * George Gilbert, photographer, dies at 90 > George Gilbert, a noted photographer and former Fieldston Road resident, died last month at the age of 90. He was living at the Regency Park Assisted Living senior community in Portland, Oregon, near his daughter's home, when he succumbed to lymphoma.

* Honest commuter returns found laptop > The spirit of kindness is alive and well in Riverdale. Local resident Dana Charlton, an employee of the law firm Klein Zelman Rothermel, was on her way to work last Friday when she noticed something on top of the parking meter at the Riverdale Metr0-North station--a laptop and binder. Area commuters soon mobilized to reunite the laptop with its rightful owner.

* At VC Park, you still have to hold it in > The $1 million-plus project to renovate the comfort station and district headquarters in Van Cortlandt Park has been postponed indefinitely. Efforts to refurbish the single-story building, located on Broadway just north of West 242nd Street, were slated for completion this fall. But city officials now say the long-awaited project has been hit with another setback.

* Vinmont Park neglect hit by board > Local residents are mobilizing to establish a "Friends of Vinmont Park" group in a bid to assist city officials with parks maintenance. Community Board 8 is currently seeking volunteers and aims to have the group up and running by spring 2013.

* Sunday's South Riverdale street fair deemed a success despite iffy weather > The holidays came to Riverdale a little early this year. Hundreds turned out to the Riverdale Holiday Festival on Riverdale Avenue between West 236th and West 238th streets last Sunday. The festival featured holiday tunes, pony rides, a petting zoo, the Bronx Culture trolley and face painting.

* Engel gets funding to repair damaged roads > New York State has been granted $20 million in federal funding for the emergency repair of roads damaged by superstorm Sandy, Congressman Eliot Engel announced last Friday.

* Senior centers seek standards > The City Council is proposing that the state begin to regulate all agencies that provide social adult dat services, making Medicaid funding contingent upon compliance with state standards of care. Community Board 8 aging committee supports the Council's proposal and expressed concern at a recent hearing about the proliferation of for-profit facilities that might seek Medicare funding without meeting regulations set forth by the New York State Office for the Aging.

Also, in the Bronx Press:

* Bronx high schools improve on progress reports > Chancellor Dennis Walcott released progress reports for New York City high schools last week, and statistics show a slight uptick for the Bronx. The average letter grade for Bronx public high schools was a B, almost a full letter grade higher than last year. Out of the 116 schools in the Bronx, half received a B or C grade.

Officials unveil the newly-renovated office building
at 1775 Grand Concourse

* Renovated Grand Concourse office building opens for business > Local officials have unveiled the results of a $5 million facelift to a majestic multistory office building in the Bronx. Renovations to the 347,000-square-foot building at 1775 Grand Concourse were revealed during a ribbon-cutting ceremony last Thursday.

* Slain teen laid to rest > The young teenager who was mysteriously found dead in the hallway of a relative's home was laid to rest at St. Raymond's Cemetery on December 3. The body of Destiny Sanchez, 15, was discovered in the hallway of 632 Barretto Streets in the Hunts Point sections on November 23. Investigations are continuing, but police said the popular teen had been strangled.

* Bronx DA convicts unlicensed lawyer > A Bronx woman has been convicted for practicing law without a license. After less than a day of deliberating, the jury found Kehinde Jobi of 1407 Croyona Avenue guilty on two counts of grand larceny in the third degree, one count of grand larceny in the fourth degree and eight counts of judicially disbarred attorney practicing law. Jobi had been suspended in October 2008 for taking money from a victim with an indictment without permission. Despite the suspension, Jobi continued to represent herself as an attorney. A press release from Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said Jobi stole more than $53,000 from 10 people.

Espaillat to consider running for Congress (UPDATE)

Congressman Espaillat?

Today, state Sen. Adriano Espaillat will announce the formation of an exploratory committee to run for Congress, a source close to Espaillat told Bronx Press Politics.

According to the most recent draft of redistricting maps, that could mean Espaillat could run against Rep. Charlie Rangel in the 13th Congressional district (currently the 15th). According to those maps, the district would include Washington Heights, Inwood and parts of the west Bronx. It would be 55 percent Hispanic, 12 percent non-Hispanic white and 27 percent non-Hispanic black, which would shape up nicely for a Latino candidate to challenge the incumbent.

It should be noted that a new draft of the Congressional maps could alter the districts, and therefore the races, in northern Manhattan.

The largest problem for Espaillat's campaign, aside from unseating an incumbent, would be for multiple Hispanic candidates to run, diluting the voting bloc and giving Rangel the easy road to victory.

Rangel, who has represented the 15th Congressional district since 1971, is the third-longest currently serving member of the House of Representatives.

Espaillat would make history with a win against any opponent, becoming the first Dominican-American in Congress if he were to win in November. 

Espaillat released the following statement: 

"This is a historic opportunity for the State of New York to send a clear and unmistakable message that the growth of the Latino community demands that our government reflect our diversity.  

“I have been privileged to serve in the NYS Assembly for 14 years and in the Senate for the last two years. Throughout my career in public service, I have advocated for our community to be represented at the highest levels of government.  We are forming a committee that will explore the possibilities of what a predominantly Latino district would look like and whether there is support for a candidate who represents us. 

“While it’s premature to target one particular district, given the fact that final district lines have not been settled, launching this exploratory committee is an important step in making sure we are ready, when the final district lines are established.”

Espaillaat's exploratory committee is comprised of the following individuals:

Ø  Jeff Korek, Esq

Ø  Rev. Calvin Butts, III

Ø  Ralina Cardona

Ø  Kim Ramos, Esq

Ø  Hon. Maria Luna

Ø  Ricardo Oquendo, Esq

Ø  Jefrey Pollock

It's official: Boycotter leader just another politician

Another story from this week's Riverdale Review.

By Brendan McHugh 

Stanton is running for City Council.

Cliff Stanton, a Van Cortlandt Village resident who is involved in the boycott of the Riverdale Review, has opened a campaign committee with the Board of Elections to run for City Councilman G. Oliver Koppell’s seat in 2013. 

Koppell is term limited, forcing him to vacate the seat. 

Stanton also runs United Snacks, which has a relationship with the Nuts4Nuts street vendors. Locally, he is involved with the parents associations of P.S. 24 and Bronx High School of Science and is the treasurer of the Kingsbridge Riverdale Van Cortlandt Development Corporation. 

During a brief phone interview, Stanton said he is not inclined to speak with this newspaper. 

"This is not the best time to have the conversation. Frankly, I'm not going to have a whole lot to say," he said. 

When asked if he would continue to boycott our newspaper, he would not say. "Listen, we have nothing to say to each other. I have nothing against you personally, OK?" he replied. 

And when pressed further, he stuck to his guns. "I have nothing to say to you." 

After trying to change topics, asking what he would bring to office, he abruptly hung up. 

Stanton did speak with the Observer, blaming the Bronx Democratic Party for spreading political cynicism. “I’m certain that it is responsible. I’m not opposing individuals here, but I’m opposing this culture, and I’m holding them responsible for perpetuating this culture,” he said. 

Council district 11 gets its first entry in Cliff Stanton (UPDATE)

Stanton is running for City Council.

Cliff Stanton, a Van Cortlandt Village resident who runs United Snacks (which partly owns those Nuts4Nuts street vendors), has opened a campaign committee with the Board of Elections to run for District 11. The seat will be vacated by City Councilman G. Oliver Koppell, who is term limited.

Stanton is involved with the parents associations of PS 24 and Bronx High School of Science.

He's also leading the boycott of the Riverdale Review.

Ari Hoffnung, a deputy comptroller for John Liu, has a committee from races years ago (that has $76,000), but when we last spoke to him in December, he wouldn't say whether or not he will run for the seat in 2013.

Maybe ironically, Hoffnung's campaign received $180 from Stanton in 2008 that Hoffnung could use for this race.

We have been able to speak with Koppell, and he said he is unsure how involved he will be in the race, only saying that he will be retiring from public service.

We'll have updates soon, so make sure to come back for more information.

UPDATE: We spoke to Stanton over the phone, but he said he wasn't going to speak with the Riverdale Review. 

"This is not the best time to have the conversation. Frankly, I'm not going to have a whole lot to say," he said.

When asked if he would continue to boycott our newspaper, he would not say. "Listen, we have nothing to say to each other. I have nothing against you personally, OK?" he replied.

And when pressed further, he stuck to his guns. "I have nothing to say to you."

We tried to change the question, asking him what he would bring to office, but he hung up on us.

Rivera raked in $83K over last six months

Rivera has had a successful fundraising period.

Bronx State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, elected to office in 2010 after defeating the embattled Pedro Espada Jr. in the 33rd District, has raised a solid $83,121.60 in the last six months, according to the most recent campaign filings with the New York State Board of Elections.

Looking at this handy spreadsheet, put together by Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), Rivera is only outpaced in the Bronx by fundraising heavyweight state Sen. Jeff Klein and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., who is toying with the idea of running for a citywide office. Diaz raised $90,880.13 and Klein raked in over $300,000.

We took a minute to chat with Rivera, who said the successful fundraising has been another reminder that he works for the people.

"I think that’s definitely very humbling," he said. Rivera added that this success is reminiscent of the election, when a larger-than-expected amount of people came out to support him.

"This is a very big show of support that im very appreciative of. It reminds me of all the people I'm working for--the folks in my district."

Rivera did spend just over $39,000 this period, giving him a total balance of $64,964.24 when including funds he already had.

He said he hasn't heard any rumblings of a challenger for the Democratic primary, but did say that "I want to make sure I have the strongest filing possible so I can continue to represent the Bronx."

As for the primary itself: "We don’t even know when the primary will be. We have to figure that out up here [in Albany]."

We put the spreadsheet below the jump. It was slowing down the whole blog.

Dinowitz, leading Obama reelection campaign locally, named delegate for national convention

Here's a story from this week's Riverdale Review.

By Brendan McHugh 

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, leading the local charge to reelect the president of the United States, has been selected by the Obama for President Campaign as a candidate for delegate to the Democratic National Convention. 

Dinowitz, who has been selected five times before, would be the only Bronxite representing the 17th Congressional district. 

In 1980, Dinowitz was one of the youngest delegates in the convention held in New York City. He was elected as a Ted Kennedy delegate. He was a Bill Clinton delegate in 1996, an Al Gore delegate in 2000, a John Kerry delegate in 2004 and a Hillary Clinton delegate in 2008. 

Both President Obama and the candidates for delegates to the DNC are running in the April 24 New York presidential primary. It would appear that they are unopposed. The 17th CD elects eight convention delegates; the other candidates on the slate include Mario Cilento, the President of the NYS AFL-CIO, State Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson and several local legislators and party officials from Westchester and Rockland counties. 

The convention is Labor Day weekend in Charlotte, N.C. 

Thousands of Bronxites' votes in the 2010 election did not count

In 2010, nearly 40 percent of the votes cast for governor were voided as 'overvotes' in two South Bronx election districts.

In 2010, New Yorkers voted on electronic, optical-scan voting machines for the first time. Voters went to their polling places on Election Day, filled out paper ballots and fed them into the brand-new optical scan machines.

But tens of thousands of their votes did not count. Specifically, about 20,000 voters in New York State did not have their votes for governor counted because the machines read their choices as “overvotes” — the invalid selection of more than one candidate. Even more votes were lost in other contests — 30,000 to 40,000 more. If this were a presidential year, with nearly twice the turnout, the Brennan Center expects that the number of votes lost because of overvoting would more than double, possibly resulting in more than 100,000 lost votes.

Astoundingly, there were seven different election districts with more than 30 ballots cast where 10 percent or more of the voters lost their votes for governor due to overvoting. Six of these election districts were in a single polling place in the Bronx (see image, below). The other was in the Morris Park neighborhood in the northeast Bronx.

Here's a closeup of the problematic area. All screenshots courtesy of the Brennan Center of Justice.

'Overvoting' means voting for more than one candidate in the same race (For example, trying to vote for both Andrew Cuomo and Jimmy McMillan for governor).

The lack of adequate overvote protections had a disproportionately negative impact on the state’s poorest communities, the Brennan Center said. Lost votes due to overvoting occurred far more frequently in areas with higher populations of low-income residents, people of color, and immigrants. Black and Hispanic voters were at least twice as likely to lose votes due to overvoting as non-Hispanic whites. The two Bronx election districts where over 35 percent of the votes cast for governor were voided as overvotes are heavily Hispanic and Black.

Here's the breakdown in the various problem districts:

To explain this onslaught of numbers, the worst election district, 023, had nearly 40 percent of votes cast for governor not count. The bottom row, 065 election district, was no success either, with 15 percent votes for governor not counting because of overvotes.

The authors of the report explained the issue to WNYC:

Norden, the program's interim director, said most people don't know the phrase "Over Voted Ballot" at the top means too many votes were cast for the same race -- invalidating their vote for that race.

The giant green 'Accept' button confuses voters
into thinking the ballot is A-OK when really,
an over voted ballot has been cast and the vote
for that race will not count.

And he said the big, green "accept" button at the bottom is misleading.

"Our concern was that a lot of people, not understanding what that message meant, would just go ahead press 'accept' -- green seems like a good thing, it seems like a way to get your vote to count. In fact, what ends up happening in those circumstances is that your vote doesn't count," he explained.

The good news is that the New York State Board of Elections has agreed to adopt a better overvote warning when a voting machine cannot discern voter intent, hopefully in time for the November 2012 election: such a warning will inform the voter of the problem in plain English (“you have filled in too many ovals”), and clearly explain the consequences of casting an overvote (“your vote will not count”).

Why this message can't also appear in Spanish is unclear, though I suppose it's still better than a giant green 'Accept' button. Voting is a miserable, time consuming experience for most people, so moving through the process as quickly as possible (especially if it's in your secondary language) explains the mistake of not catching your overvote.

This should significantly reduce the number of overvotes in 2012, officials said, but it will not eliminate the problem.

"There is more that our public officials, and especially our state legislators, could do," the report said. "In this report, we discuss how commonsense solutions, like requiring boards of elections to publish precinct-level election results, can improve detection and correction of machine-related problems. Critically, we also explore how better ballot design requirements can reduce overvotes."

Jump below for the full document from the Brennan Center.

Bronx DA Johnson wins election...against no one

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson had the Democratic, Republican and Conservative line, and was running completely unopposed, so the only thing we learned yesterday was how many people either came out to vote to keep a perfect voting record or had no idea who was running for what and just showed up anyways.

Scroll down to the fourth page to find the Bronx DA race, and you'll see that 20,358 people (unofficially) cast their vote for the only dog in the race.
The breakdown by which party line they voted on has 17,535 people (86.13%) voting for him on the Democratic line, 2,065 (10.14%) went Republican and 758 (3.72%) voters chose the Conservative Robert Johnson.

Well, that was an exciting race. We'll post something about the race for NYC mayor later today. That hopes to be a bit more exciting.


NYC 2011 Unofficial Election Results

Feds want earlier NY primary date

The federal Justice Department has filed a motion seeking an order to move New York's primary election date to no later than Aug. 18, 2012.

Currently, primaries are held the second Tuesday of September, but this is a violation of federal law.

As Celeste Katz of the Daily News reports, U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe has scheduled a hearing for 9 a.m. on Oct. 20. New York’s opposition papers are due Oct. 3.

DOJ’s proposed order provides that: “New York shall conduct its 2012 federal non-presidential primary election on an appropriate date no later than 35 days prior to the 45-day advance deadline set by the MOVE Act for transmitting ballots to the State’s military and overseas voters, i.e., at least 80 days before the November 6, 2012 federal general election.” (Eighty days before Nov. 6, 2012 is Aug. 18.)

New York has applied for a waiver under the MOVE Act for 2012 and but the feds have not yet ruled on the application.

New York lawmakers say it would be an unfair advantage for their challengers, because the legislators are stuck in Albany until the end of session, which is suppose to be the end of June, but typically runs into July as / they / drag / out / the / difficult / arguments (Umm...some of those...yeahhh). If legislators are stuck in Albany, they say they will have a hard time running a campaign if they are only in their district full-time for a month.

However, with incumbents in New York having a reelection success rate of 96 percent over the last ten years, the amount of "damage" incumbents would see moving the primary up one month is anyone's guess. Also, one out of every 11 legislators who did get the boot was shrouded in ethical misconduct or criminal issues.

Jump below for the full document from the Justice Department.