Gonzalez Indicted
News of longtime State Senator Efrain Gonzalez’s indictment on mail fraud charges rocked the northwest Bronx at the end of summer. That lone charge proved just the tip of the iceberg when, on Dec. 13, federal prosecutors piled on an additional nine charges alleging that Gonzalez conspired with three other co-defendants to bilk the state for half a million dollars from 1999 to 2005.

The previous indictment did not stop local voters from re-electing the Bronx lawmaker. He received nearly 90 percent of the votes in a landslide victory over virtually unknown Conservative party candidate Ernest Kebreau.

In an interview two months before the first indictment, the Norwood News pressed Gonzalez to divulge where and how he allocated his member items (discretionary funds that senators and members of the Assembly dole out to local institutions each year). He refused to say where the money was going or which organizations he had given money to in the past.

It is those member items (Gonzalez reportedly was allotted $290,000 per year) that federal prosecutors say the senator funneled through non-profits into his own pockets.

Gonzalez maintains his innocence and political colleagues have said they hope it’s not true.

Update: In the wake of the Gonzalez indictment, not to mention other corruption scandals and a lawsuit by the Albany Times-Union, the state legislature agreed to make all member items public from now on.

A trial date for Gonzalez and the three co-defendants will be set at a pre-trial conference on March 23. Just last week, the senator stepped down from a legislative leadership position that paid him an additional $8,250 because, his staff said in a statement, the indictment will take up too much of his time.

Filtration Jobs Battle
When Greg Faulkner took over as chair of the Croton Facility Monitoring Committee (CFMC) early in 2006, he wanted to first sit back and observe. Faulkner, who also chairs Community Board 7, he says wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to the city agency responsible for building the massive new water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park.

As the year wore on, however, Faulkner and the rest of the community found it harder and harder to ignore that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) was not delivering on one of its chief promises to the community: more well-paying jobs for local residents.

In 2003, former DEP commissioner Chris Ward, union leaders and several Bronx elected officials sold the project to skeptical Bronxites by promising jobs to a borough starving for them. While Bronx unemployment has steadily decreased since it reached 11.2 percent in January 2003, it still boasts the highest jobless rate in the state – 5.5 percent – which is more than a percentage point higher than the national rate of 4.4 percent.

The DEP said that during the first phase of construction, which consisted mostly of digging and demolition, 25 percent of the work force came from the Bronx. But many of those local workers were either already in unions or employed as security officers.

Faulkner and other community activists weren’t satisfied. What about all the unemployed young adults who want good jobs but can’t get into unions, or those who want more than minimum wage security positions? And now, with the next billion dollar construction phase set to begin early in 2007, the community is demanding more union apprenticeship programs to be set up by the DEP.

In other important filtration news, the Norwood News reported in November that cost of the filtration project doubled to $2 billion, drawing further attacks from residents and activists who have long charged that the DEP didn’t accurately present the details of the project before it was approved.

Update: The DEP recently set up a 20-week pre-apprenticeship program, through Bronx Community College’s Project HIRE, for 33 people who have signed up at the DEP outreach office. Plus, new DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd showed up at a Monitoring Committee meeting on Dec. 21 (where she was greeted by a handful of protesters demanding more programs) and promised to create more job opportunities.

“This is good first step, but we need to do more,” Faulkner said.

Schools Get ‘Empowered’
In the fall, more than a dozen local public schools were granted more autonomy from regional Education Department administrators by joining Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s ambitious new empowerment program.

The program gives principals more freedom in hiring, curriculum and professional development. It also gives them more discretionary funding. In return, student performance and achievement at empowerment schools are assessed throughout the year, rather than just once at the end of the year. Schools individually determine assessment practices.

It’s all part of the Klein/Bloomberg educational reform plan to create schools that can tailor themselves to the needs of its students and community. At the same time, it puts more pressure on principals.

While some local principals were excited about the opportunity for more freedom, others, such as PS 340 Principal Deirdre Burke, expressed “skeptical optimism.”

Update: While there has been a period of adjustment, Scott Goldner, the principal of Discovery High School on the Walton campus, says: “It has been great – a bit overwhelming with the testing and accountability, but very supportive. It has allowed us to have had our best semester yet.”

Via e-mail, Goldner reported no major problems with the new program, but admitted the experience has been “just challenging in the first year as we learn together what it means to be Empowerment. A few glitches with testing. It’s a learning process, so these kinks are understandable.”

Controversial Developments
While the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory was perhaps the biggest story of the year, there were other, less ambitious, developments that drew strong community criticism.

Two new proposed motels on Webster Avenue, a Best Western and a Comfort Inn, were adamantly opposed by community leaders and local officials who feared the two developments would become havens for illegal activity, as they have in some other parts of the borough.

Residents near Villa Avenue in Bedford Park also worried a decline in quality of life would come along with another proposed development project, designed by the non-profit group Project Renewal, which would provide housing for homeless and low-income families.

Update: While the Best Western proposal appears to be dead, the five-story Comfort Inn, which the Buildings Department approved over the summer, is still in the works, according to Community Board 7 Chair Greg Faulkner. The developers of the project didn’t return calls from the Norwood News.

Meanwhile, there have been no signs of progress on the Project Renewal proposal. Faulkner says the project has run into funding problems.

Fight for School Seats
In November, the city announced it was slashing 1,500 new seats from the Department of Education’s (DOE) new 5-Year Capital Plan for District 10 in the northwest Bronx. Parents and local activists were incensed, saying the district is already suffering from severe overcrowding.

The DOE countered that despite the cuts, the new capital plan would be enough to alleviate overcrowding. When projecting how many seats would be needed, however, the DOE used a 36 percent high school graduation rate. Because of this number, parents, students, politicians and activists all said the DOE was “planning for failure.”

Update: The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition rallied to protest the cuts and to ask that more high school seats be added to the plan. The coalition is pressuring the city to site two new small high schools, an additional 1,000 seats, on the property of the Kingsbridge Armory, which will be revamped into mixed-use development in the coming years. The School Construction Authority is planning to build space for 1,000 middle and high school seats at the Armory site, but the coalition and other community leaders want more.

Library Center Opens
Though it happened early in 2006, the opening of the new Bronx Library Center must be counted as one of the highlights of the year.

A modern, environmentally-friendly building made of glass and shiny steel, the new library (located on Kingsbridge Road, just north of the bustling Fordham Road commercial corridor) offers more than just aesthetic beauty. Almost a year later, it’s now a hub for enrichment classes, business conferences and local meetings as well as a showcase for literary, musical and cultural events. And you can check out books there, too.

Update: The Bronx Library Center celebrates its first birthday on Saturday, Jan. 20. See Out & About section for more details.

Death of Quachaun Browne
The most notable, heartbreaking and tragic death of the year in our community was that of 4-year-old Quachaun Browne on Jan. 30. The Norwood toddler died in his mother’s apartment, directly across the street from North Central Bronx Hospital, after suffering a severe beating, allegedly at the hands of his mother’s 18-year-old boyfriend, Jose Calderon. When paramedics arrived to treat the child on a Monday morning, they discovered the child had already been dead for several hours.

The case garnered even more media attention because it came just two and a half weeks after the highly-publicized brutal murder of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown of Brooklyn.

Update: While Calderon faces murder charges, Browne’s mother, Aleisha Smith, who has five other children, has been charged with manslaughter for failing to seek medical attention for her son’s injuries. The case goes to trial on Jan. 18.

Monroe College Win Streak
Following a defeat in the Junior College Division III championship game in March of 2005, the Monroe College women’s basketball team didn’t lose again for almost 22 months.

During that span, the Lady Mustangs punctuated an undefeated 2005-2006 season with a national championship this past March and reeled off 47 consecutive wins before losing to a high-caliber Division I opponent in Florida on Dec. 28. While it was going, the winning streak was the longest in all of college basketball. The University of Connecticut holds the women’s college basketball record with a 70-game win streak that ended in 2003.

“It’s a nice thing,” Monroe head coach Seth Goodman said about the win streak. “Everyone around the school was excited about it. And a lot more people knew about it than I thought.”

Update: Goodman’s team lost two in a row in Florida, but salvaged the road trip with a victory in the team’s third game in three nights. The Lady Mustang’s focus is still on defending its crown, Goodman says. The playoffs begin at the end of February and Monroe remains the team to beat.

Armory Open for Development
In May, following a decade of community meetings, rallies, and hearings, but little official action, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff toured the Kingsbridge Armory with local activists and proclaimed that a request for proposals – the starting pistol of the redevelopment process – would be issued by August.

It wasn’t actually issued until the end of September but no one seemed to mind – the road to redeveloping the facility for the community’s use was under way.

Anticipating the RFP’s release, developer Peter Fine sought an advantage by presenting his redevelopment plan to Community Board 7 last June. The Board liked what it saw, but decided to hold off judgment until the RFP process was complete.

Though the years of inaction were frustrating, the work community residents put into it, with the organizing help of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, appeared to pay off. Fine’s plan and others that have surfaced since the failure of a Giuliani plan for an athletic and retail complex, conformed to the community’s vision of transforming the building into a mixed-use complex featuring entertainment venues, stores big and small, athletic facilities, community space and, most importantly, public schools.

The only bone of contention now is the RFP’s stipulation that there will be 1,000 public school seats. The Coalition and the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance, an umbrella group of interested parties the Coalition formed, wants 2,000 seats.

Update: The city’s Economic Development Corporation set Dec. 14 as the deadline for submitting an RFP, but then postponed it to Jan. 4.

An EDC spokesperson told the Norwood News that proposals were received by the deadline, but would not say how many there were or who submitted them. “Once a developer is selected, we will proceed with negotiations to finalize the details of the project,” the spokesperson said in an e-mail. “The developer will [then] begin [an] environmental review which will lead to the public review process.”
–JORDAN MOSS

Fordham Radio Tower
Another long battle – this one over the radio tower Fordham University began erecting on its campus in 1994 for its public radio station, WFUV – came to a resolution at the end of 2005. That’s when Fordham and its aggrieved neighbor, the New York Botanical Garden, came to an agreement, brokered by Montefiore Medical Center, to place the antenna on a Montefiore-owned apartment building on Wayne Avenue in Norwood.

But the definitive end of the controversy came last April, when Fordham began dismantling the half-built tower.

Update: As the acrimony dissipated after the deal, Fordham and the Garden, along with Montefiore and the Bronx Zoo, began meeting to discuss ways the institutions could collaborate on improving area thoroughfares.

The Garden-Fordham thaw also led to creative collaborations. WFUV hosted special evening concerts at the Garden during the landmark Chihuly glass sculpture exhibit.
–JORDAN MOSS

Chihuly
After showing his unique glass blowing creations all over the world, northwest artist Dale Chihuly finally brought his wildly successful talents to New York City for the first time this summer with a massive sculpture exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden.

Update: “Chihuly at the Garden” was one of the most successful exhibits in the history of the Botanical Garden.