February 2, 2020 Your Neighborhood — Your News®
Month xx–xx, 2019
LOCAL
CLASSIFIEDS
PAG E 11
Advocates:
BK Dems’
changes
will hurt
grassroots
HOLE-D UP
SORRY MS. JACKSON: Boerum Hill resident Kenda Jackson is fed up with the street’s potholes. Photo by Kevin Duggan
Boerum Hill block littered with potholes
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Pacific Street in Boerum
Hill has devolved into a rutty
mess, according to locals, who
say the city is more concerned
with inviting developers to
their block than taking basic
care of the roads.
“Our taxes are too high
for our streets to be looking
like this — that’s what you
literally pay for,” said Kenda
Jackson. “You have a pretty
mall and all of that stuff but
the things that really matter,
that’s the problem.”
The stretch of the one-way
street between Third and
Fourth avenues has become
scattered with unsightly craters,
including one abyssal
hole that plunged knee-deep
beneath the pavement.
Making matters worse, the
street is burdened by numerous
construction sites that jut
into Pacific Street and narrow
the road, such as a sidewalk
shed erected in 2015 projecting
from a rising 12-story co-op at
the corner of Fourth Avenue,
and a walled-off container outside
the Brooklyn High School
of the Arts.
As a result, the city is in-
BY ROSE ADAMS
Brooklyn Democratic Party
leaders voted to hold fewer meetings
and restrict member-driven
resolutions on Jan. 20 — two
changes that reformers claim will
reduce the body’s transparency.
“They’re just obvious tools to
disengage people,” said Jessica
Thurston, the Vice President of
Political Affairs at the reformminded
New Kings Democrats. “It
consolidates power and reduces
accountability.”
At a closed-door meeting,
the Executive Committee of the
Kings County Democratic Party
— which is made up of 46 district
leaders, one male and one female
from each of the borough’s assembly
districts — voted to enact the
two rule changes, causing an uproar
among their fellow Democrats,
according to one district
leader who spoke on the condition
of anonymity.
“It really sparked a very fi erce,
contentious conversation,” the
person said.
The amendments come amid
a changing of the guard, as outgoing
party boss Frank Seddio announced
that he would be stepping
down earlier this month,
and backed Assemblywoman Rodneyse
Bichotte (D-Flatbush) as his
successor.
Just before her fellow district
leaders offi cially made her the
new chairwoman of the party,
however, they passed the two controversial
amendments.
The fi rst resolution reduced
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