Maloney visits constituents in Lower East Side
BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Congressmember Carolyn
Maloney’s district represents
a good portion
of the Lower East Side and the
Congressmember used some of
her time away from Washington
D.C. to tour a portion of her
district and listen to constituents.
Guided by Carmen Gonzalez
of the Village Reform Democratic
Club (VRDC), Rep. Maloneyfocused
on small businesses in
the area including stores in a set
ofbuildings on East 4th Street,
part of Cooper Square Mutual
Housing Association (MHA),
low-income co-ops on E. 3rd &
E. 4th St. These stores are in peril
due to COVID.
It was mentioned during the
tour that the Board of Directors
of MHA 1 have created a plan to
save the stores.
Maloney listened and gave
With Carmen Gonzalez looking on, the Rep. Carolyn Maloney hears about this small
businesses’ challenges.
suggestions, and offered the services
of her offi ce to help,including
contacting appropriate resources
to resolve the many problems and
issues the business owners in the
area areexperiencing.
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Happy that Carmen Gonzalez
brought Rep. Maloney
to the neighborhood, MHA
1 Board Member Donna
Brodie, who helped provide
context and background to
the Representative, said, “It
was wonderful to have the
opportunity to show her our
unique community.”
During this walkabout, Rep.
Maloney visited parts of her congressional
district that she is not
that familiar with and where she
was able to offer her expertise or
suggestions.
She also visited Village View, a
large affordable housing complex
nearby and ended her visit at a
local restaurant, impressed by its
patronage.
Maloney, U.S. Representative
for New York’s 12th congressional
district, is currently Chair
of the House Committee on
Oversight and Reform, a senior
member of theHouse Financial
Services Committee and the Joint
Economic Committee.
New Yorkers not ready for mandatory compost recycling: de Blasio
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The Big Apple won’t be
forced into composting!
New Yorkers are not
ready to have a mandatory food
and yard scraps recycling program,
Mayor Bill de Blasio said
Friday — a day after he hailed the
relaunch of the city’s composting
curbside pickup this fall.
“We expect this is something
that can be extended all over the
city, every kind of neighborhood,
and I believe people will get the
hang of it over time and like it,
and then it can go more and
more and more,” de Blasio said
after questioned by amNewYork
Metro at his April 23 press briefing.
“But in this moment, coming
off the pandemic and with all the
struggles and stresses people going
through, I don’t think it’s the
time for mandatory now.”
Hizzoner announced the revival
of Gotham’s curbside organics
pickup program Thursday after
an almost year-long pause due to
pandemic budget cuts, but added
that the program would still only
be available in certain neighborhoods
and run on an op-in basis.
Building owners in some parts of
De Blasio addresses a brown compost bin at his April 22 press briefing.
Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and
Staten Island will be able to register
to have their scraps collected in the
signature brown bins through a
portal from August onward with
pickups starting back up in October.
De Blasio, a self-described
“obsessive composter,” and city
Sanitation Commissioner Ed
Grayson argued that was the best
way to bring back the eco-friendly
PHOTO COURTESY NYC MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY UNIT
initiative, which helps divert
organic waste from landfi lls and
incinerators.
But de Blasio’s former trash
czar and current candidate to
replace him Kathryn Garcia
slammed the move as not going
far enough, demanding the city
reintroduce the composting program
in every neighborhood and
make it mandatory, a move that
has shown more effective results
in other cities.
“The mayor’s ‘compost comeback’
plan to restore the program
on an opt-in basis via enrollment
doesn’t go far enough,” Garcia
said Thursday. “Worse, it is going
to turn composting into a
‘luxury’ that is available for New
Yorkers that have the resources
to organize community support
and submit bureaucratic paperwork.
Curbside organics should
be universal – plain and simple.”
Organics make up about a third
of residential waste in the city,
which when left to decompose
in landfi lls can emit the harmful
greenhouse gas methane, which is
25 times more potent than carbon
dioxide.
If treated properly, the materials
can become nutrient-rich compost
to feed back into the city’s
parks and community gardens or
turned into biogas.
When pressed by amNewYork
Metro why “The City That Never
Sleeps” was lagging behind the
other states in recycling, de Blasio
argued New York’s dense and
economically diverse population
made it harder to implement organics
across the Five Boroughs.
“We are just profoundly different.
We’re a much more densely
populated place,” the mayor said.
“San Francisco is a place that
has become, you know, almost a
gilded city at this point and a very,
very, very high-income city across
the board. We’re a city of people
of all different backgrounds and
incomes, many of whom live in
really tight quarters.”
18 April 29, 2021 Schneps Media