Ahead of the June primary election for the New York State Assembly’s 50th District (which includes sections of Greenpoint and Williamsburg), incumbent Joe Lentol and challenger Emily Gallagher will both hold petitioning launch events this weekend with supporters in order to get on the ballot. Continue reading →
With an uptick in complaints over chronically late mail, missing packages and unsatisfactory service, Assemblyman Joe Lentol sent a letter to the U.S. Postal Service Inspector General earlier this month asking how to improve mail delivery in his district. The letter also asks to identify the cause of USPS’s delivery woes in Brooklyn zip codes in 11211, 11222, and 11249. Lentil spoke to News 12 Brooklyn in an interview at the Williamsburg post office: Continue reading →
Assemblyman Joe Lentol is calling for the U.S. Postal Service Inspector General to “conduct a thorough audit of mail delivery and its efficiency in North Brooklyn.” Speaking for his constituents in Brooklyn zip codes in 11211, 11222, and 11249 Lentol addressed a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz urging a close look into the cause of mail-related complaints flooding Lentol’s office:
For the past few months, many constituents in our districts have expressed their dissatisfaction with the inadequate performance of the USPS. We have heard numerous complaints that include untimely deliveries, routine delivery to incorrect addresses and mail sometimes not being received at all.
Flooded India Street on 5/29 (via Jonathan Vanasco)
The India Street pier entrance has been flooding for months during rain episodes and multiple people have reached out to Greenpointers with photos from last night’s flooded commute.
Flooded India Street next to “The Greenpoint” on 5/29 during the rain (via Sean Hart)
“I love the ferry, I feel like most people in Greenpoint who take it, love it,” said Sean Hart, a Greenpoint resident who takes the ferry at India Street approximately three to five times per week.
The flooded India Street entrance on 5/29 during the rain (via Sean Hart)
But Hart’s love for the ferry has come with multiple instances of dodging the flood waters on India Street next to “The Greenpoint” development, where pedestrians are prohibited from accessing the new walkway that is policed by construction workers.
“A few months ago, I went to take the ferry, it was on a rainy day as well, and I noticed a similar level of flood and I wasn’t sure what to do,” Hart said.
“I remember even stepping over to the area where the condo is and I remember there was a pretty rude angry foreman,” he said.
The flooded India Street entrance on 5/29 during the rain (via Sean Hart)
Local elected politicians are holding an East River State Park and Kent Avenue town hall meeting tonight in Williamsburg.
The town hall takes place tonight (5/28) at the Bushwick Inlet Park community room (86 Kent Ave.) at 6 p.m.
State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, State Senator Brian Kavanagh, NYC Councilman Stephen Levin, and U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney are sponsoring the meeting.
Assemblymember Joseph Lentol (Courtesy of Joseph Lentol)
Following a meeting with volunteer victims advocate and Greenpointer Deborah Spiroff, State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol introduced The Safe Way Home Act this week, to provide sexual assault victims free transportation home from the hospital following treatment.
The budget would be provided through seized forfeiture funds from the district attorney’s office and the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services would be the program administrator.
Spiroff, who identifies as a survivor, has volunteered for the past two years at Wycoff Heights Medical Center in the Violence Intervention Treatment Program, working on call two to four days per month for 12 – 15 hour shifts. Volunteers like herself must go through training and a background check to volunteer their service to victims of sexual assaults.
“I’ve had more than one case where after the person has been treated they’re just released, and they literally were walking home from Wycoff Hospital at 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 4 o’clock in the morning,” Spiroff said. “And even if it’s earlier in the day depending on where an assault may have occurred, it could have been near a subway; assaults happen everywhere. And frequently cell phones are stolen, wallets are stolen, metro cards are stolen, it’s just a very overwhelming traumatic time.”
Courtesy of CRÈME Jun Aizaki Architecture & Design
Williamsburg-based CRÈME introduced renderings of Timber Bridge at LongPoint Corridor: A 275-foot-long, 16-foot-wide, floating pedestrian and biking bridge made of sustainable glue-laminated and pressure-treated timber, to span Newtown Creek from Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint to Vernon Blvd in Long Island City.
Courtesy of CRÈME Jun Aizaki Architecture & Design
The bridge is designed to have pivoting features to open and close in around 3 minutes for the many boats and barges on Newtown Creek, the 3.8 mile-long federal Superfund site that will undergo remediation over the next decade.
Courtesy of CRÈME Jun Aizaki Architecture & Design
To prevent flooding, the bridges’ platform would move with the tide and have green spaces on either side. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports that the bridge was the idea of Jun Aizaki, a 20-plus year North Brooklyn resident and Pratt Institute graduate.
Construction would take approx. two years and cost more than $32 million to build. LongPoint Bridge could potentially receive city funding and additional backing from private donors, such as Amazon, who the firm is exploring as a donor. The bridge is also backed by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and State Assemblyman Joe Lentol; a newly registered nonprofit, Friends of Timber Bridge, is seeking to raise funds for the project.
Courtesy of CRÈME Jun Aizaki Architecture & Design
A floating timber bridge between #Greenpoint and #LongIslandCity would provide #BikeNYC and pedestrian connections between the two neighborhoods, while activating public space on our waterfront. I support the proposed LongPoint Bridge. https://t.co/1ttfRXqtVw
A Kickstarter campaign by the design firm raised $30,266 last summer, which was short of the $50,000 goal. Momentum for the bridge may pick up with the anticipated localized tech industry boom led by the potential for Amazon to build HQ2 in Queens, bringing tens-of-thousands of new jobs and residents to the area served by the proposed bridge.
Tonight, Assemblyman Joe Lentol is holding a public meeting to address comments and concerns related to nightlife in Williamsburg in Greenpoint at the Bushwick Inlet Park Community Room (86 Kent Ave.) at 6:30 p.m. Ariel Palitz, from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment will also be in attendance.
Wegmans rendering at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (via S9 Architecture)
Only a 20-minute bike ride away on the waterfront from Greenpoint, the Rochester, NY-based grocery store Wegmans is scheduled to open at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 2019, and is holding information sessions for potential employees starting this week.
The grocery store has locations throughout the Northeast U.S. and the Brooklyn Navy Yard marks Wegmans’ first expansion into NYC. Wegmans is held in high regard by upstate New Yorkers for its typically easy to navigate layout and stellar prepared foods. Not to mention, the store isn’t owned by Jeff Bezos.
Assemblyman Joe Lentol posted a reminder on the upcoming Wegmans information sessions where resume workshops will also help applicants who might need assistance.
The upcoming info sessions are scheduled Nov. 26 – Dec. 6:
Voting lines wrap around McGuinness senior center in Greenpoint on midterm election day 2018.
The outrage caused by widespread voting machine breakdowns throughout New York City on midterm election day is largely falling on the shoulders of Board of Elections Director Michael Ryan.
At Greenpoint’s polling sites wait-times exceeded two hours throughout the day, as ballot scanners overheated, jammed and simply stopped working. Greenpoint was not alone, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams counted 49 poll sites facing similar dilemmas.
Voter turnout increased 88 percent in NYC this year for the midterm elections compared with the 2014 midterms, but decreased by nearly one million voters compared with the 2016 presidential elections, according to Gothamist.
BOE director Ryan said that 56 ballot scanners were taken out of service on Tuesday between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., the 15-hour window which saw 1.9 million NYC voters — each with two double-sided ballots — overwhelm the eight-year-old scanners that were expected to be used for 10 years. 6,000 calls were made to 311 pertaining to election day woes.
