« As AMI climbs, a significant slice of Atlantic Yards "affordable housing" seems to track market | Main | It came from the Blogosphere... »
April 10, 2009
The Brooklyn Paper mailbag
The Brooklyn Paper, Letters
Your story about the arborcide caused by the New York City Waterfalls exhibit (“Silent spring — It’s official: W’falls were arborcidal maniacs,” April 4) should have made a least some reference to Mayor Bloomberg, who diverted $2 million in 9-11 disaster recovery money for its funding.
He led and directed almost all the $15-1/2 million in funding for it and then gave his pet project a (self-congratulatory) city award notwithstanding the damage it did.
It was probably because of Bloomberg’s involvement that there wasn’t an environmental impact statement or assessment ahead of time sufficient to identify the damage that was likely.
In addition to the diverted disaster recover money, funding came from Bloomberg’s private “charity” and from a City Hall “charity” that Bloomberg controls by being mayor and then from a long list of mostly real-estate industry interests, like Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner, all of whom benefit terrifically from discretionary decisions made by the Bloomberg administration.
The kicker is that the recipient of all this money, Susan Freedman, president of the Public Art Fund, testified in support of the Bloomberg-proposed special extension of term limits.
Michael D. D. White,
Brooklyn Heights
Posted by eric at April 10, 2009 10:06 AM