A Stink on 101st Street
Posted on 02. Nov, 2009 by Taylor Brown in Beats Blog, Brooklyn
By Taylor Kate Brown
Sometimes it’s not there for months; at other times, it stays for days. For Bay Ridge residents near Fort Hamilton Army Base, the unexpected visitor is not a barely-tolerated relative, but a pervasive, rotten-egg stink that emanates from sewer grates and basement plumbing.
Homeowners along Fort Hamilton Parkway, from 92nd to 101st Street, continue to cope with the gag-inducing odor after three years.
In 2004, the Department of Design and Construction installed a new sewer along the Fort Hamilton Parkway, in response to years of homeowner complaints of severe basement flooding during storms. After completion, the flooding continued and raw sewage leaked into basements. The contractor, JR Cruz Corp., fixed the flooding, but left the old sewers intact under the new.
Soon after the repairs were finished and the street was closed up, the odor appeared. While residents still have no definite answer from the Department of Environmental Protection, they are convinced the second sewer project is responsible.
The irregular timing is frustrating and perplexing for homeowners.
“It’s not low tide or high tide. It’s not the temperature,” said Christine Mascialino, a resident of the area. “We’ve never found the trigger or the common denominator.”
Mascialino, who wrote a letter detailing the problem to the city’s public advocate in November 2008, says that, though the smell bothers her, she doesn’t have time to be a crusader.
Community Board 10 has a foot-high file documenting the situation, while Councilman Vincent Gentile’s office sent a letter of complaint in July 2009 to the Department of Environmental Protection.
Representatives from the department come dutifully to investigate every time a complaint is made, but the root of the problem remains.
“Myself and a neighbor had the DEP come into our houses to test the plumbing,” said Irene Rivera, who lives on Fort Hamilton Parkway. “Two years later, and we still haven’t gotten a result.”
The reason for the delay? They were told it had to go to the head of the department first.
In November 2008, officials from the department of environmental protection were invited to explain the steps they had taken to find and remove the smell to the community board’s general meeting. According to the community board, no one from the department attended.
“I think DEP thinks the odor is a lower priority than flooding,” Community Board District Manager Josephine Beckmann said, “I don’t share that view.”
Department officials did not return calls or emails for comment.
In early March 2009, the odor became sulfurous, prompting residents to call 911. The nearby Fort Hamilton Senior Center was evacuated. The new smell showed up again on March 23rd.
Community liaison Stephanie Giovinco at Councilman Gentile’s office said officials from the environmental department met with the councilman’s office last month. They had ruled out an accidental sewage connection to the Fort Hamilton Army Base, which borders the street, or open catch basins beneath sewer grates as the culprit.
But they were no closer to finding the source of the smell.
After months of sweet air, Mascialino got whiff of the odor again on October 1st, but she is weary of the formal complaint process.
“Nothing has ever been done about it, so today I didn’t bother,” she said.
A New Start at a Catholic School in Bay Ridge
Posted on 24. Oct, 2009 by Taylor Brown in Education, Religion
By Taylor Kate Brown
On the second morning of school, Rosemarie Diaz, a secretary at Holy Angels Catholic Academy in Bay Ridge, is still enrolling new students. The mother of a new student asks questions about the uniforms in a nearby display case; they sport the logo of a shield with a wing sprouting from each side. A class waiting in the hallway chimes a hello, in chorus, to their principal.
Just a few months ago, parents and teachers feared the school would close for good after years of decreasing enrollment.
Instead, Holy Angels is one of several schools to reopen this year under an independent Catholic academy model, where each school, administered by a board of directors comprised solely of laypeople, is legally and financially independent of the parish. The parish priest and the bishop of the diocese remain responsible for keeping the school Catholic.
The Roman Catholic Diocese in Brooklyn hopes to convert all its financially struggling schools to the academy model by August 2013. Last year, around 35,000 students attended 111 elementary schools within the diocese.
The journey from Our Lady of Angels School to Holy Angels Catholic Academy started last January, when the diocese announced that the parish school of the 4th Ave church would be one of 11 schools in Brooklyn and Queens closed at the end of the academic year. Parents and teachers found out about the school’s closing when a reporter stood waiting outside the gates, garnering reaction to the diocese’s press release.
“We were hurt in the way that it happened,” Rachel Connolly, the Parent’s Association president and mother of two children at the school, said.
Rosemarie McGoldrick, the school’s principal, said she expected to have two years to prove herself. Instead, the announcement of the school’s closing shocked her mid-way through her first year as principal.
“I’d come from a parish that closed its school because it didn’t have the money. We [Lady of Angels] had money,” she said.
Our Lady of Angels School received an endowment of $1 million from Phillip Whitcomb, an alumni, upon his death. Plus, the school rents out part of the 36,000-square foot building to Treasure Island, a day care, and to HeartShares, a human service agency. Parish and school finances usually didn’t mix, with the exception of a shared bookkeeper between the two accounts.
Instead, the school suffered from low enrollment. By the time of the diocese’s announcement, the total number of students for Pre-K to 8th grade had fallen to under 180. The target for all Brooklyn diocese elementary schools is at least 200.
According to McGoldrick, four Catholic schools in the immediate area and 20 years worth of speculation that the school would be the first to close, didn’t help enrollment numbers.
“Bay Ridge is a small town,” McGoldrick said, adding there were some concerns with the prior school administration.
“The perception was not positive.”
Connolly and other parents were determined to keep the school open. They set up a phone bank to gauge interest in the school if it did stay open. An online petition to “Save Our Lady of Angels School” garnered more than 850 signatures.
“It’s a special place,” Roseann Raccuia, an alumna and now the school nurse, said, “And [closing the school] affects the whole community. We have the seniors’ leisure club, scouts, and speakers here.”
McGoldrick, Fusco and two parish priests worked on a proposal to convince the diocese that the school could switch successfully to the model the diocese had proposed as part of a long-term solution to an ailing Catholic school system.
There were several items in their favor: the endowment, a school building with an auditorium, gymnasium and a whole unused floor, plus a promise from McGoldrick to increase enrollment. Superintendent Tom Chadzutko said the school’s commitment to stay open, as well as a realistic plan for the future, convinced him.
In the end, eight of the eleven schools did close, but Holy Angels is one of seven new academies in the diocese this year. In May, the original school closed and the entire staff had to apply again for their jobs. Not all were hired back. Even Mary Brennan, a Pre-K teacher who has worked at the school for 25 years, had to interview for her own position.
“There were questions as if you hadn’t worked here before, like ‘What would you bring to Holy Angels?’” Brennan said.
She said she is glad the school remains open and notes the teachers will be involved in more extra-curricular activities, like after-school arts-and-crafts.
“All eyes are on us, we’re like the guinea pig,” she said.
As of the second day of school, Holy Angels’ enrollment stands at 217.
