Daily Archives: August 30, 2012

Op-Ed: Greco has no attachments to big businesses

The following op-ed was submitted by Chelsea resident Russell Orenstein, a friend of Tom Greco, who’s one of three Democratic candidates for Tom Duane’s seat in the State Senate.

There is a discernible difference between the candidates running in this year’s election for the newly drawn 27th State Senate District in Manhattan.

Tom Greco, a business owner and community activist from Hell’s Kitchen, is the best choice. The record of Greco’s opponent, Brad Hoylman, is dubious at best. Sure, he is the hand-picked selection of the Democratic establishment in Manhattan. But in times like these we deserve something more in who represents us than the result of political deal making and pre-determined coronations. After all, this is Manhattan and we are New Yorkers. As voters, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard of what we expect from our elected leaders, and owe it to ourselves to do the necessary research in finding out who the candidates really are, their records and what they truly stand for.

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Letters to the Editor, Aug. 30

Bed bug situation is being addressed

Re: “Residents reeling from bedbug ‘incompetence,’” T&V, Aug. 23

I am the person who led the 280 First Avenue bedbug meeting at the Community Center. I would like to clear up a few inaccuracies in last week’s article about it.

We have had at least six known (to us) bedbug infestations in the past few years, not six currently active bed bug infestations. There are two currently active infestations that are undergoing abatement.

There is a bed bug epidemic in NYC, so the fact that we have had a number of infestations over the past few years is not necessarily cause for alarm.

Our cause for alarm was the discovery that three of these infestations took place one after the other in adjacent apartments. Let’s call the infested apartments 14x, 14y, and 13y to protect people’s privacy.
These three infestations began this past April after apartment 14x tested positive for bed bugs and underwent a successful abatement.

Then in June, after getting numerous bites, the tenant in the apartment directly next door, apartment 14y, called management to schedule a bed bug test. 14y also tested positive for bedbugs and underwent abatement. During the course of abatement in that apartment, the apartment directly below, 13y, became infested and is still, to my knowledge, undergoing abatement.

That suggested to us that management’s pest control team might not have our situation under control. So the purpose of our meeting was twofold: to educate our neighbors about bedbugs and to discuss how we might find a way to work together with management to develop a comprehensive building-wide plan to rid 280 of bed bugs now, and to better contain any infestations in the future.

There is another active infestation (unrelated) undergoing abatement in a lower level apartment on a different line.

Thanks,

Name withheld, ST

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