If I understood correctly at the meeting I attended about the renovation of this park (as well as that of the playground area of McLaughlin park at the corner of Tillary and Jay Streets), the money for this park's renovation is coming from fees the federal government pays related to the courthouse building next door -- maybe the feds lease the building from the city or state? I can't remember the details now? Anyone else know? But I think the money is specifically dedicated for this park. Again, anyone know better here?

And frsq, I don't agree that the park is inaccessible. If it's done right, it could make Cadman Plaza park feel a bit bigger, and with a fountain that kids could play in in the summer, there would certainly be a reason for families to walk across closed-off Washington Street to Whitman. More generally, it's reasonably easy for DUMBO families to walk up Washington Street to get to the park -- also for families living in Concord Village directly across the Brooklyn Bridge on-ramp, because they can cross under the bridge using the A/C subway stop (no need to pay). Finally, the design for the area was very nice and I think could make an underused bit of open space a much more inviting and better used space. I was a little skeptical about plans to engrave excerpts from Whitman poems at different locations on the new plaza, with the idea of reflecting what Whitman might have thought/said had he been standing on the Plaza looking out (at the Brooklyn Bridge, at the war memorial in the adjacent park, at the emergency management building), but the excerpts seemed to me quite interesting, thoughtful even, and made me think how nice it can be to have thoughfully designed public spaces that seek to engage us in meaningful ways in the city in which we live. Certainly this is a kind of luxury, but if the money has to be spent in this area, from what I heard, it seemed like it was being well spent.

Posted by: slyone at May 6, 2009 10:24 AM in response to Walt Whitman Park Slated for Renovation

The hard thing about planning for school and kids is what I think many have already suggested here: that building a strong school environment requires involvement long before your children would start school if you want your kids to benefit (and not simply those who come after). That's hard to do -- it's asking people who may not even be sure they want to have kids to invest significant time and energy in a school district five or more years before they'd use it. It's probably the expectation we should have of ourselves as members of a community, but besides being a lot to ask of people, it seems like it could be organizationally problematic, too.

I think it's fair to say that five years ago before I had kids, I had different ideas of what was important to have in a school. I've never worked in education or with kids, so my education about kids, and the various ways they can be, and how they learn, has come with spending time with my kids and their friends. I can imagine parents of actual kids who were attending a local school not being too excited about hearing what the kid-less, planning-for-the-future parents had to say about the best way to run a school. If all this is about is raising money for a school, that would be one thing, but I don't think it's only about raising money.

Finally, the most intersting and impressive (to me) school I've seen so far was a charter school (a public school) that's gives preference to kids within a certain district -- and the directors there said the reason they were able to do many of the things that I found so appealing was because they had flexiblity not available to regular public schools. This suggests that we're asking people not only to become invested in their own public schools five or more years before they'd use them -- perhaps in ways that could raise the hackles of those with kids already in those schools -- but also to become advocates for changes to the educational system (at least prospective parents who like the same things I like in schools). Again, this may be what we should ask of members of a community, but it is asking a lot.

For my part, when I moved here many years ago, I thought a little about public school, but perhaps not as much as I should have. I was somewhat involved in the local school, but again not perhaps as much as I should have been. And now we're probably going to have to move and my kids are aproaching school age, and I am thinking very much about school district -- not as an alternative to private school, but now knowing my kids and knowing a little bit about what learning environments I think would be good for them, I have a better sense of what public schools I think would be a good fit for them and that will inform my family's move.

Posted by: slyone at April 7, 2009 12:13 PM in response to The Shifting School Equation

I'm basically a lurker, I suppose. I've only posted 3 or so times (I think) on this blog -- though I read (and skim) it and the comments fairly regularly (I've never looked at the OT) -- because what really interests me about it is the information I can get from it, not the debate or discussion among people. So I only post when I have what strikes me as relevant information about a topic, as opposed to a point of view (meaning I give what I like to get from others -- though I suppose the line between information and a point of view might be hard to draw precisely). I'm not "not posting" out of fear of a smack-down, for what it's worth.

For many reasons, I tend to find the internet most useful as a means of increasing the information I have on subjects that interest me, information that might eventually inform debates I have with myself or people I know. I'm less interested in it as place where people actually have online debates.

So I guess the question back to you, browstoner, is what precisely you hope to have in a comments section: is your concern with what's substantively going on in the comments(do you want less debate and more simple exchange of information) or is your concern with amount of participation (you just want more people participating in the debates), or is your concern with the tone of the debates, regardless of how many people participate? Your concern could be any of these things, based on your post -- I think. And the best response might be different, depending on what precisely you're hoping to see in the comments . . .

Now, having offered what's clearly a point of view (and not iformation), back to relative silence.

Posted by: slyone at March 27, 2009 2:02 PM in response to Let's Talk About Commenting

I'm also a grown-up working person with a family, and I'm quite excited about the "sliver park." My young children already love to play in the green space in the small parks down near DUMBO (what would be the end of the "sliver park"), and I'm perfectly willing to keep parking my very old, barely used car on the street like I do now so that I and my family can enjoy more parkland within walking distance.

Posted by: slyone at January 28, 2009 12:11 PM in response to Pols Highlight Brooklyn Bridge Park's Money Probs

Maybe I haven't been in NYC long enough, but I've been a renter my whole time here and have always been aware that rent could change whenever the lease was up -- that was the downside of renting (but we couldn't afford to buy what we could rent, and we didn't want to make the commitment that comes with buying, and so we rented).

All that said, my only expectation as a renter is to be given enough notice to find another place if I think the new rent is unreasonable (meaning I can find a better deal elsewhere) or simply not affordable for me. If your renters have children, it would be nice to give them until the end of the school year before you made any significant adjustment in rent, so that they would have more moving options if they couldn't afford the increased rent. As a renter, I would appreciate a friendly conversation (about increased costs and belt tightening) it if my landlord was proposing a significant increase in rent. Them's my thoughts on maintaining good renter karma.

Now what makes sense for you as a landlord -- in terms of keeping the rental income coming in . . . I do not know, but that didn't seem to be what you were concerned about.

Good luck.

Posted by: slyone at January 8, 2009 1:20 PM in response to Raising the Rent

Not that this really matters, but it was a three family before the conversion -- a lower duplex (where the prior owner lived) and second and third floor floor-throughs. In a long-ago life (according to the prior owner who owned the building from 1969 until his death in 2007), it was a boarding house, which you could see from the configuration of the upper floors (the bathroom on the middle floor-through had a separate door out to the staircase, among other things). It was a really wonderful old house -- I rented there for a couple of years a while back -- full of charm and quirkiness and character. The prior owner took real pride in the place -- though anyone who paid 2.8 million for it would want to make lots of changes, I suppose. It may have already been gutted by way of renovations, but I'm sad to know whatever old school charm remained has probably now been gutted by fire.

Posted by: slyone at January 5, 2009 6:28 PM in response to Fire Guts Newly-Renovated Townhouse at 67 Cranberry

My limited experience as a renter in Brooklyn for the past 6 years is that rents go up and down with the market. A place (one and a half bedroom floor through in a brownstone-- it had a very small second bedroom with a window but no closet) I rented in Brooklyn Heights dropped from $2400 a month for a two-year lease in the summer of 2001 to $1800 in the summer of 2003. The market changed and so did the rent -- though, admittedly, we rented the place for the first time in 2003, we just knew the prior rent. Then, when time came to renew in 2005, the landlord was able to raise the rent back to $2400; we were moving for other reasons, and he expressed some willingness to only raise it to $2000 or $2100 if we were to stay, but when we left, he was able to get $2400 again. This is all to say that long-time landlords -- at least in my experience -- are accustomed to rents going both up and down for a variety of reasons. Asking for a reduction because of your changed circumstances, nicely . . . assuming you'd like to stay, can't hurt.

Posted by: slyone at December 30, 2008 7:41 PM in response to RENEGOTIATING THE RENT