Bar capital, U.S.A.
To The Editor:
Re “S.L.A. chief gets an earful at nightlife town hall” (news article, Feb. 12 – 18):
Thank you for your coverage of the town hall meeting with the new State Liquor Authority Chairperson Rosen. If I may please correct a statistical quote in the article: The zip code 10003 (Union Square, parts of Greenwich Village and East Village) ranks number two as the zip code with the most alcohol drinking places in the country, not the neighborhood, city or state.
Combine that with the zip codes 10009 (East Village — seventh in the country) and 10002 (Lower East Side — ninth in the country) and our neighborhood outranks any other for the most drinking places in the country. These data are from City Data, which compiles statistics on cities and zip codes around the country.
Stuart Zamsky
Member, E. Fifth St. Block Association
9/11 injustice
To The Editor:
On 9/11, my nephew was killed in the Twin Towers. Now after all these years they want to put the rats that had a hand in it on trial. The whole world knows that they are guilty. Even if they are found guilty they get to go on living the way they have been for the past eight years. It’s a shame that my family’s tax money has to pay for their food and housing. I’ll bet that the families of the other 2,800 people who were killed feel the same way that I do. Because of them, my son-in-law served a year in Iraq and will have to go to Afghanistan soon. It’s a sin that our boys are dying over there and these rats get to live.
George Marmo
Pearl St.
Letters to The Editor (Posted, Feb. 18):
For the duration of this zoning process, the new parents were not properly informed about the very complex situation we have here. We have a popular school that has a bubble in its first and second grades, almost twice the size of its other classes due to the late arrival of our two new schools. It is @ 175 students over capacity that are tenuously contained in 2 annexes the school is holding. This in turn created a larger sibling rate and a highly volatile yearly registration as a result.
The DOE further exacerbated the problem by using data from last year’s registrants to project this year’s pattern which in the end, not only created unrealistic expectations, but only further illustrated how volatile our yearly registration is going to be. And by the time we get our bubble and siblings through this school, we will have an additional 900 kids downtown to accommodate!
…Many of us on CB1 and the CEC said from the get go that we were concerned that we would have waitlists at 234 with either option…In the end, there is no way to perfectly zone downtown and avoid yearly waitlists somewhere because of the unprecedented speed of growth combined with not enough school seats – We have gone from 389 to 881 children born here between the years 2002 to 2008 (news article, posted Feb. 18, “Downtown birth rates suggest new school will be needed”). That represents today’s 2nd graders and 1-2 yr olds. Unless we zone yearly from now through 2013 and only then if we get perfect data on who exactly is coming in each year, exactly where they live, exactly how many sibs there are, [we will need] at least one, probably two new elementary schools. No small feat.
While I am in no way excusing the DOEs lack of proper DATA this year, I can’t say that there is any way to really do this correctly without the DOE’s proper PLANNING. This has been a disastrous five years for downtown schools due to the blind eye the DOE cast as we built 13,500 new apartments below Canal St post 9/11. Not until our two schools were exploding with kids did they take action and only then with immense pressure from CB1, Sheldon Silver, parents and our elected officials. It was 5 years too late. It will take a decade to undo this mess, and only then if the DOE admits today how deeply flawed their projections were, and starts on a realistic course towards better school planning and building concurrent with development.
Tricia Joyce, PS 234 Overcrowding Committee, Sheldon Silver Task Force for Education, CB1 Public Member
“Charter wants to grow, but 2 other schools say No” (news article, posted Feb. 18):
I have no problem with Charter Schools but I feel strongly they should not be given space (rent free) in existing school buildings. If they want a charter school to open, they should find their own space and not act like cuckoos in the nest.
Liat Silberman
Letters policy
Downtown Express welcomes letters to The Editor. They must include the writer’s first and last name, a phone number for confirmation purposes only, and any affiliation that relates directly to the letter’s subject matter. Letters should be less than 300 words. Downtown Express reserves the right to edit letters for space, clarity, civility or libel reasons. Letters should be e-mailed to news@DowntownExpress.com or can be mailed to 145 Sixth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10013.
