Senator Tony Avella Meets with North
Shore Towers Political Action Committee
BY SUSAN BARTELSTONE
AND VICKI MAZEL
Photos by Susan Bartelstone On Tuesday, December 5,
the North Shore Towers
Political Action Committee
(PAC), under the leadership of Director
Dr. Stanley Goldsmith, held
a meeting with State Senator Tony
Avella to discuss the legislation
which will be affecting everyone’s
wallets in 2018. The meeting was
also attended by Board Chairman
Mario Carmiciano and Directors
Bob Ricken, Steve Redlich and
Phyllis Goldstein, and set up by
Sub-Committee Chair Diane
Stromfeld.
Senator Avella spotlighted a
broad range of issues relating to
Co-ops and Condominiums, but
of particular interest was the unfair
way co-ops and condos are currently
being taxed. The Senator has
introduced several bills to fix the
Among those in attendance were Board Members Phyllis Goldstein
(behind Goldsmith), NST Treasurer Steve Redlich and PAC Member
Debra Markell Kleiner
inequities, most importantly one
reclassifying co-ops and condos
into their own tax category (Class
One-a), equating them with residential
one-, two- and three-family
homes instead of the current Class
2 category, which taxes them like
commercial rental properties—a
significantly higher rate.
The bill also addresses assessment
methodology, provisions to
appreciably increase tax abatements
for properties valued at less than
$650,000, and the proposed creation
of an enhanced abatement
to protect affordable co-ops and
condos from sharp year-to-year tax
increases. Avella even has a viable
suggestion for Mayor de Blasio on
how to make up the lost revenue
which would result from a tax rate
change, a big sticking point.
Avella’s bill has passed the Senate
four years in a row, but a comparable
bill in the Assembly, sponsored
by Jackson Heights Assemblyman
Michael DenDekker, has never
been permitted to come out of
Committee for a vote, thereby preserving
the inequitable status quo.
Other issues discussed were:
The Creedmoor property redevelopment
(more than 70 acres), problems
with aggressive panhandlers
by Creedmoor outpatients at local
shopping centers, and proposed
ethics legislation for making Albany
work more fairly.
This coming January, Senator
Avella will host a breakfast at North
Shore Towers to explain his agenda
and the Political Action Committee
will introduce an advocacy campaign
in conjunction with this event
to reach out to Assembly Speaker
Carl Heastie to pass the DenDekker
bill.
More details to come.
Receiving the 3rd Degree
NST Board Member to be honored
STORY BY
STEPHEN VRATTOS
Photo Courtesy of
OStanley Goldsmith n May 22, NST Board
Member Stanley J. Goldsmith
will be conferred an
honorary Doctor of Science degree
from the State University of New
York (SUNY) “Needless to say,
I’m overwhelmed, not only with
pride and gratitude, but also with
nostalgia for times past and the
many people who helped me along
the way,” Goldsmith wrote in an
email. “I regret some of my family
and friends are not here to share
this honor or for me to thank them
for all they did for me.”
Even as a lad, Goldsmith would
walk to school in lieu of taking
the bus, so he could save enough
money to buy a chemistry set. Once
in hand, the enterprising physician
started conducting experiments,
which included creating his own
fireworks. “Good thing I wore
glasses,” he said with a laugh,
recalling the resultant spray from
one such experiment.
His interest in medicine followed
him to Columbia University,
where he majored in pre-med/
chemistry, with the intention of
being a General Practitioner. He
graduated and received his BA
from Columbia in 1958, but the
insatiable hunger for knowledge
he displayed as a young’un continue
to drive Goldsmith and he
consumed everything he could find
on the latest medical discoveries,
specifically in the fledgling field of
Nuclear Medicine.
By 1967, he was the Chief
Resident at prestigious SUNY
Downstate Medical Center in
Brooklyn, where he received his
Doctor of Medicine degree. Not
long after, he became Director of
the Department of Physics/Nuclear
Medicine at Mt. Sinai, a position he
held from 1977 to 1992, working
beside American medical physicist
Rosalyn Yalow, co-winner of the
1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine for development
of the radioimmunoassay (RIA)
technique. Among his many
achievements is being the first
conductor of nuclear stress tests
in the New York area.
Goldsmith downplays any
suggestion that he is a pioneer in
Nuclear Medicine and Molecular
Imaging, though he was at the forefront
of the field in its embryonic
stages of development. “Did I make
significant contributions to the
field? Yes, but I think it would be
vain to consider myself a ‘pioneer’.”
This past October, he was
invited to Vienna by WARMTH
(World Association of
Radiopharmaceutical Medicine and
Therapy) and the EANM (European
Association of Nuclear Medicine)
to speak on Nuclear Medicine,
where he was surprised with a
Lifetime Achievement award. But
superseding even this remarkable
recognition, this latest according
to Goldsmith, “has stunned me the
most.”
During his recent trip to Vienna, at
a banquet in the Orangerie of the
Schoenbrunn Palace
January 2018 ¢ NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER 3