Daily Archives: December 27, 2018

Christmas visit from Con Edison scammer

By Sabina Mollot

A Stuyvesant Town resident who got a Christmas visit from a scammer posing as a Con Ed employee alerted Town & Village to the incident, in the hope of warning neighbors to be careful.

As the resident, who lives at 453 East 14th Street, told us via email:

“Around noon a very large, white male, with a slight speech impediment was ringing doorbells on my floor and asked for my neighbor to show her Con Ed bill. I felt suspicious as he had rung my bell as well. So in a move of safety and solidarity, I opened my door and told him to leave the building, that he is not allowed to be here. I notified security. Not sure if they found him. Obviously not the brightest scammer since we don’t get Con Ed bills!”

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Letters to the editor, Dec. 27

Cartoon by Jim Meadows

Better plans needed on sanitation garages

I’ve been a long-time opponent of the NYC Department of Sanitation’s (“DSNY”) plans to build a garage on one of the last available public lands in lower Manhattan’s East Side, the Brookdale Campus of Hunter College at East 25th Street and First Avenue. There, the city would claim nearly two acres of sparse NYC public land for a DSNY garage, as well as another additional two acres for “bookend” facilities.

But news a few months ago that DSNY had been evicted from a 30th Street garage facility led me to question why it is DSNY needs such huge footprint for garage facilities in the first place.

As I wrote for Gotham Gazette, land currently devoted to garages could be used to build more affordable housing, to create more active public parkland for a growing city, or – if sold – to help pay down the deathly underfunded NYC Pension Plans.

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Affordable housing and L train woes top concerns at East Side town hall

Mayor Bill de Blasio answers questions from audience members at a town hall co-hosted by Council Member Keith Powers at Hunter College. (Photos by Maria Rocha-Buschel)

By Maria Rocha-Buschel

The L train shutdown and the lack of local affordable housing were among the main concerns of East Side residents who packed a town hall hosted by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Councilmember Keith Powers last Wednesday evening. The mayor, along with numerous representatives from city agencies as well as Powers and other local elected officials, answered questions from more than 300 advocates and community residents during the event at Hunter College.

Stuyvesant Town resident and former ST/PCV Tenants Association president Al Doyle got in the first question of the night, asking the mayor if he would actively support a return to rent stabilization of all apartments that had been deregulated due to vacancy decontrol.

The mayor admitted that he couldn’t necessarily commit to that, at least at this point, despite wanting to.

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