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August 27, 2009

Our debate is a brawl! Candidates for Fort Greene seat get testy

Boro Politics

The Community Newspaper Group hosted a debate among the candidates for the 35th City Council district, incumbent Letitia James and challengers Delia Hunley-Adossa and Medhanie Estiphanos.

Forest City Ratner's anointed candidate didn't exactly shine.

Hunley-Adossa, who had not taken questions from The Brooklyn Paper until this debate, said far less than her opponents, often not even taking the 30-second allotment for her answers and referring to a binder full of newspaper articles, notes and other study aides.
...

Later, Hunley-Adossa explained her close connections to Ratner, who pumped — in her words, “a little over a couple of hundred-thousand dollars” — into her group Brooklyn Endeavor Experience through a “community benefits agreement” that Hunley-Adossa and others signed in 2005. (Coincidentally, Bloomberg, in a separate interview this week with editors and reporters from The Brooklyn Paper and other outlets in the Community Newspaper Group, said he’s “violently opposed” to such agreements.)

Hunley-Adossa said her group, whose board is filled with many of her family members, helped “downsize” Ratner’s initial plan, though it is actually larger than when it was first unveiled in 2003, and negotiate high environmental standards for the buildings.

"Downsize?"

It also has an educational component, she claimed.

“We have attempted to educate young people on how to be little green people,” Hunley-Adossa said, but its work has been suspended while the construction project is stalled, showing its reliance on Ratner.

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Posted by eric at August 27, 2009 10:26 AM