Marty Axes CB6 Members Who Opposed AY Project
In a move likely to cloud his legacy as the Brooklyn’s biggest professional cheerleader, Borough President Marty Markowitz purged Community Board 6 yesterday of nine members, apparently as retribution for having voted against the proposed plan for the Atlantic Yards project back in September 2006. I’m rather disappointed. I think that it could have been…
In a move likely to cloud his legacy as the Brooklyn’s biggest professional cheerleader, Borough President Marty Markowitz purged Community Board 6 yesterday of nine members, apparently as retribution for having voted against the proposed plan for the Atlantic Yards project back in September 2006. I’m rather disappointed. I think that it could have been handled better and I think that I will continue to work for my community and the greater good of the community through the Community Board, Jerry Armer, who had served on CB6 for more than two decades, told the NY Observer. What we were doing was giving the community a voice and reflecting the community. Today on the Atlantic Yard Report, Norman Oder notes that Armer and other dismissed members purposefully did not align themselves with the most vocal opponents of the project. Instead, Oder notes, he “participated in numerous meetings of the Brooklyn Borough Board Atlantic Yards Committee, cordially raising some worthy questions…He spoke courteously, even ponderously, in testimony to the Empire State Development Corporation.” What an embarrassment.
Project’s Foes Shown Door in Brooklyn [NY Times]
Markowitz Purges Community Board 6 [NY Observer]
The Ironies of the CB 6 Purge [AY Report]
Arena Foes Slam Dunked [NY Post]
CB6 Letter, 9/29/06 [DDDB]
Markowitz is receiving kickbacks for his support of the AY project just like the rest of the crooked politicians involved in this fiasco. Money talks – bullshit walks. Whaddya expect?
5PM, surely you jest. Not? Kick Marty and Bloomie out of office? Never. They represent the future of Brooklyn! They are taking Brooklyn to a place where the average townhouse in brownstone Brooklyn will fetch in ten years well over $6 million (yes, even in the far out fringe areas of Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights and PLG).
When you get down to the crux of the matter, this is the biggest reason why most of us living in brownstone Brooklyn do not support the crunchy granola anti-development hippie set (e.g., DDDB, NLG and “Oddly Oder”). We understand that they do not represent our biggest interest – our pocketbooks! Yes, this is still America and the almighty dollar STILL rules!
Ratner, Marty, Bloomberg and Pataki sought to put more money in our pockets whether your white, black, Asian or Latino. They are simply accelerating gentrification which is the most impactful form of wealth redistribution in the entire history of this country! My African-American neighbor sold a house that she paid $30k for in the early 1970’s for $2.4 million in ’06. Because of gentrification (i.e., “white re-entry”) she was able to buy herself and her two children beautiful homes in South Carolina for cash!! Now that’s the American dream. All things come around in full circle. White flight from New York City during the ’60s and ’70s enabled her to purchase a home for nothing in the ’70s and now she is able to sell it to the same people who thought that it was worth nothing years ago for a mint today! I think that’s a beautiful thing! America….love it or leave it!!
The money machine knows very well that Brooklyn is the new frontier and no one – either them or us brownstone Brooklyn homeowners – are going to allow some weed smoking hippies from the “silly sixties” to dictate our future and what’s in our best interest!!
AY is totally going to take the nabes east of Flatbush Avenue to new heights. How can you have a problem with that?
12:43, don’t Marty, Bloomberg, DeBlasio and all the other co-conspirators also qualify as being ‘old-geezers’. Why don’t we also kick them out of office. Would be good for the city, no?
Adios Amigo!!
Ok that is it. I had it with Brooklyn. I am moving to the Bronx. I am sure I will be more welcome there than in the new Brooklyn.
Outstanding! The CB6 dismissals are a great thing. It was time to kick the old geezers out anyway. Those old farts should have no say so in Brooklyn’s future, especially one that must prepare the borough for an explosive population growth and expansion of major downtown Brooklyn business district. CB6 geezers don’t know a debit from a credit. They have never represented me or anyone one else I know. The only represented themselves, their families and close friends. Thank God that Marty had the courage to do the right thing – better late than never.
This is a story about using nearly $2 billion in taxpayer dollars to benefit private interests for a project that will cost the surrounding communities dearly and benefit them little, and all this has been done in the absence of a real public discourse. I’m not anti-development, but the more I learn about this project, the angrier it makes me.
Gowanus Lounge may have put it best: “The CB6 dismissals strengthen the belief that Mr. Markowitz and other supporters were unwilling to tolerate basic legitimate questions about the project’s impact on the community or an honest assessment of its public costs. CB6 did its job by raising questions and representing the community…. the CB6 Purge gets to the reasons that Atlantic Yards has had such a sadly divisive and deeply corrosive impact on Brooklyn politics and on civic discourse. One clear culprit has been the absence of real participatory democracy in a project that will impact the quality of life in surrounding communities for generations to come. Had the planning process not been handled as a top-down exercise, the outcome might still have been the same, but some of the bitterness and civic poison might have been diluted.”
yes, $20,000 30 years ago.
4 million today.
must be the weak dollar.
if you freakin loved brooklyn so much, why did you go buy a house in the suburbs????!!!!
your comment sounds as if you’re on ludes.
All of New York was beautiful in the forties.
Brooklyn didn’t need anyone’s help in the fifties. We had it all. Of course we moved out and bought a big house in the suburbs.
ButBrooklyn was beautiful. Eastern Parkway
was gorgeous. We didn’t need anyone from
the midwest to save us. Damon Runyon was from St. Lousis, but he was immediately made a citizen of all the boros.
Most of you kids are one dimensional.
You have no stories to tell. But let’s talk about how muxh your tiny house is worth today.
It’s not that your house is worth so much more than it was worth in 1950,
it’s the fact the dollar is worth so much less.