Divisive & Disruptive
It turns out Maggie Siena, Peck Slip School’s principal, who has been the most concerned about dividing the large rooms in the school’s temporary spot in the Dept. of Education’s Tweed headquarters had every reason to be worried.
Lower Manhattan school advocate Paul Hovitz, who has been the most bullish about dividing the rooms, took a break from his fight against privatizing Southbridge Towers coming to a vote this Sunday, to tell us he recently took a tour with Siena to see that the room dividers are not working.
Hovitz said they are only about six-feet high. It is a problem that he and his colleagues on Community Board 1 anticipated, which is why they passed a resolution a few months ago asking for dividers that go to the ceiling. Those calls apparently fell on deaf ears. Hovitz also tells us that Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña has rejected the Downtown advocates’ idea to create another classroom in the chancellor’s conference room, just as Fariña’s predecessor, Dennis Walcott did.
We did try to get a comment from Siena, but were not hurt when she didn’t return our call. Even curmudgeonly UnderCover might have gone into worship mode had Siena been willing to figuratively talk out of school with her big boss potentially within earshot at Tweed. Who knows how the echoes work in that building?
Shaming Landlords
We’re not sure if the city’s worst landlords “give a damn about their bad reputation” (as Joan Jett or “Freaks and Geeks” fans might say), but Margaret Chin apparently thinks they do.
The City Council on Tuesday passed legislation co-sponsored by Councilmembers Chin and Jumaane Williams that would double the penalties against landlords guilty of harassing tenants (fines go up to $10,000 per apartment). The bill also requires the Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development to list these bad boy and girl offenders on its web site — the part of the bill Chin emphasized in her press release.
“Council passes bill to publicly shame landlords…” was the headline on Chin’s release whereas the Council notice went with “…to curb tenant harassment,” in its headline.
We hear Mayor de Blasio is likely to sign the bill Sept. 30.
Ladylike Event
FiDi resident Chelsea-Lyn Rudder was volunteering on Julie Menin’s campaign for borough president in February of last year, when she met a few women at an event who were impressed with all she had learned about navigating the dating and job world in the big city.
The conversation sparked the idea for a book, and by the end of the year, Rudder, 29, had written “Ladylike Lessons, A Guide to Feminine Empowerment, Elegance and Etiquette,” which has had a respectable showing on Amazon.
She will be visiting her local church’s community space, Charlotte’s Place owned by Trinity Church, 107 Greenwich St. on Sun., Sept. 28, at 1 p.m., with a reading starting at 1:30 p.m.
She tells us she’s honored to be the featured guest at one of the last events before the space closes for new development.
As for the book, Rudder, who grew up near Detroit, said one of the biggest adjustments in New York is realizing how much more people emphasize their career over their romantic life.
“A lot of friends back home are getting married and having children,” she said. “I have very few friends in New York who are married — many are not dating someone seriously. That timeline is definitely different in Michigan.”
