A lifelong resident of Van Nest, founder of the Van Nest Neighborhood Alliance, and a Bronx Community Board 11 (CB 11) board member since 2011, Bernadette Ferrara is one of ten candidates in the District 15 City Council District race, aiming to fill the seat vacated by former councilman and now Congressman Ritchie Torres.

 

Though Norwood News requested an interview with Ferrara, time did not allow for this finally, and so, here, we present a profile of Ferrara’s candidacy based on her campaign platform, and on her public comments during recent interviews and debates on three areas: housing, policing, and helping small businesses.

 

The self-described working-class, single mother who is also an animal rights activist has called for oversight and accountability from absentee landlords who, she said, don’t maintain their properties. Ferrara said this destabilizes neighborhoods. During a recent interview with News 12 New York, Ferrara said, “There’s a lot of [tenant] screening processes and they do not do that, for whatever reason.”

 

During a District 15 BronxNet debate earlier this month, in terms of tackling the housing crisis, Ferrara touted her 12 years of experience participating in CB 11 land use meetings. “Zoning is a very specific thing,” she said, adding that people needed to listen acutely to community leaders and housing activists, especially those living in NYCHA developments. She said some areas needed down-zoning rather than more development.

 

During the News 12 New York interview, Ferrara said that there were 2,150 NYCHA developments in District 15. “That’s a systemic challenge that should’ve been addressed, especially with the falsified lead paint inspections that were brought to light,” she said, adding that NYCHA housing problems had been on the City’s agenda for a long time. “That should have been dealt with before our mayor decided to do all the allocations for affordable housings,” she said. “This mayor wanted to have a one size fits all with affordable housing.”

 

Referring to an unspecified affordable housing project that came before CB 11 and other Bronx CBs, Ferrara said all 12 Bronx CBs rejected the proposal at the time because the project was not a “one-size fits all” solution. “Each fabric of each community holds its own characteristic,” she said.

 

“Zoning is a big issue. The median income [per district] needs to be looked at,” she said, adding that it is documented that the mayor allegedly ignored such considerations, and forged ahead anyway. “People should live there for a month, basically, and from their experience say, ‘Uh uh – No Can Do,’ and they’re not,” she said.

 

Ferrara said Torres brought the matter to light when representing City Council District 15, which includes the neighborhoods of Belmont, Fordham, Tremont, Mount Hope, Allerton, Olinville, Van Nest, West Farms, and parts of Bedford Park. “I’m so grateful to him for that,” she said, adding that, if elected, she hoped to pick up on his work on the oversight and investigations committee. “I would like to really dig in and see what’s going on, especially with housing,” she said, adding that they’ve had first-hand experience of dealing with the consequences of poor housing planning in Van Nest.

 

One apparently local tenant, who posted a video of a leaking roof in her apartment on Twitter, on Feb. 20, under the user name @MorrisPark questioned what Ferrara has done to protect against tenant harassment, or to call out allegations that the NYC Department of Human Resources Administration is allegedly being illegally garnished with benefits.

 

When it comes to policing, Ferrara told BronxNet that the City needed to add more, not less, funds to the NYPD budget. “There’s a lot of training that needs to be done, whether it’s mental health, dealing with EDPs [emotionally disturbed persons] or just dealing with difficult situations,” she said. Ferrara shared that her brother has severe autism, telling News 12 New York, “He’s my baby brother. He’s in a group home.”

 

She said she wanted assurances that if her brother had an altercation with police, they would have the training to recognize his cognitive issues. “He will shut down,” she said. “He will not be responsive to immediate questions that say, ‘Hey, what’s your name? Stop doing this! What’s going on?’ He can’t, cognitively, respond.”

 

Though she didn’t mention the person’s name, Ferrara said another candidate had called for the “demilitarization” of the police. “First of all, yes, they get their firearms from the Department of Defense, but on the local, precinct level, they do not have the high-end militia.”

 

Ferrara is in favor of curtailing police spending in one area. “They do not need to get extra insurance to cover them personally,” she said. She is also in favor of reallocating funding within the police budget. “Where is our funding for our youth, our youth explorers? That needs to be expanded,” she said. “We have youth officers. They need to be out in the community more. We’re not getting that. We need to come back to that, and a lot of it is because there needs to be more police doing it. But, taking money away from the police, I do not support at all.”

 

Ferrara, who comes from a military family, also advocates for more engagement, generally, between the community and the NYPD, saying in her local 49th precinct, the community regularly attends precinct meetings, has one-on-one meetings with the captains and NCOs, encourages participation in the “Build the Block” meetings, and has implemented a hotline to the police with text chats.

 

“I don’t know who’s on duty, but we came up with a solution that seemed to be working,” she said. “We send out a blast to everyone. Whoever is on duty, responds, and it makes people feel that there’s a response.”

 

Ferrara said crime was a major issue affecting many seniors, like her father who lives in the Monsignor Fiorentino apartments, as well as disabled veterans. “They don’t come out of their houses,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve done a lot of door knocking, and I listen. You get me in there [to elected office], I will focus on this,” she added.

 

“They’re not going to go out if it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and they feel a little unsafe,” she said. “They have to find someone to help them and it’s a very sad day when that is at the forefront of their minds. I’m a senior myself,” she added, before recounting a story of an elderly women who was slashed in the face while walking home.

 

“They need to have more police on the beat,” she said, adding that even with NYPD cameras in certain hotspots, people still feel safer when there are actual cops on the street. “People ask me, ‘What happened to the beat cops? Where are they? We feel so unsafe.'”

 

Helping small businesses is central to Ferrara’s campaign. She said all across the country, states are opening up, and taking away the mask mandates, and focusing on getting the economy back. She said New York should be opening up “100 percent,” but added that safety guards need to be maintained.

 

“We need to be practical and common sense about it, but these small businesses need help,” she told BronxNet, adding that there needed to be mentorship programs and vocational schools to help people get jobs. She added that property owners had not gotten any breaks either and some were losing their properties and would potentially have to leave the Bronx.

 

Ferrara told News 12 New York small businesses also needed relief from pandemic-related violations. “Why is there no leniency? Why has that not been looked into? To me, it’s like a no-brainer,” she said.

 

Ferrara sits on the board of the Morris Park Business Improvement District (BID) and said she hears what businesses say. “I’m a non-voter because I don’t own a business, but I represent my community. I want to hear what’s going on. I want to know what resources come to their rescue, and are those resources enough? I’m seeing that it’s not,” she said.

 

In terms of empty store fronts and struggling business trying to re-open, she said more advocacy was needed at City Council level. “You have to bring it up at every City Council meeting, and say, ‘What about the small businesses?’” she said.

 

“I know a lot of these businesses. They know Van Nest. They know Morris Park, and they just can’t do it,” she said. “Their life savings are drained. These [government program] loans are maybe small percentage loans, but they’re not money that’s given to them. They have to pay that back. What happens if they can’t pay that back? They’re making decisions based on that, and that is very sad.”

 

Asked by News 12 New York what makes her stand out as a candidate among the others, Ferrara said experience was priceless. “I’ve sat on the housing committee, the economic development committee. Land use is a major, major issue, zoning, etc. It can change the landscape of a community in a heartbeat. We all know that,” she said, before adding that one of her priorities during her 12 years on CB 11 was youth and education. “That’s our future. That’s the product, and we’re going to reap what we sow there, so that is foundational.”

 

In addition to Ferrara, according to the New York City Board of Elections and Ballotpedia, nine other candidates are running in the District 15 race, all of whom aim to replace Torres, who was elected to Congress in November 2020.

 

These are Kenny Agosto, district director to New York State Senator Jamaal T. Bailey, Ischia Bravo, district manager of Community Board 7, Elisa Crespo, an education liaison for Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr, Oswald Feliz, tenant lawyer and adjunct professor at Hostos Community College, Latchmi Gopal, a community organizer and former staffer for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Jose Padilla, former Independence candidate for both the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate, Arial Rivera-Diaz, a former finance clerk with the City’s Board of Elections and former official at the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, and Community Board 6 District Manager, John Sanchez, and another community organizer, Altagracia Soldevilla.

Candidates were required to gather a minimum number of signatures from local residents in order to qualify for the ballot in the special election. As reported by the Norwood News, that minimum had been 450 signatures until Gov. Andrew Cuomo,  announced on Jan. 7 that he was reducing the threshold to 315 signatures.

 

A Board of Elections public hearing was held on Feb. 4 to assess which District 15 candidates had collated the minimum number of signatures needed to proceed. Troy Blackwell, a former White House and Obama administration aide, and Lilithe L. Lozano, a former district chair of NYCHA’s Bronx North council, did not make the ballot according to the Board of Elections. Julian Sepulveda, an official at the Department of Education, had suspended his campaign in November, endorsing Crespo as he did so.

 

A District 15 candidate’s forum with six of the ten candidates in the District 15 special election race was held on Saturday, Feb. 13, hosted by Little Africa Bronx News, a “Social Impact Strategies” project, an intersection of community relations, issue advocacy and public policy. The forum can be viewed here. Mona Davids, founder and publisher, issued a Facebook statement following the event, explaining that only viable candidates had been invited to participate in the forum.

 

A District 15 debate among nine of the candidates was subsequently organized in partnership between the League of Women’s Voters of New York City and BronxNet with co-sponsors, Dominicanos USA, NALEO Educational Fund, The Bronx Times, The James Baldwin Outdoor Learning Center, and The Riverdale Press. It was hosted by Gary Axelbank, and will be broadcast on Monday, March 15, at 9 p.m. on Optimum 67, Fios 2133, and can also be watched on BronxNet’s YouTube channel here. Soldevilla communicated to BronxNet that she was unable to make the debate.

 

A further candidates forum was organized by the Van Nest Neighborhood Alliance on March 8. This can be viewed here.

 

The District 15 race is one of the first two elections in the Bronx which will incorporate the new method of RCV, the other being District 11. RCV is a voting method whereby voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference, instead of choosing just one. If a candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes, that candidate is the winner. If no candidate earns more than 50 percent of first-choice votes, then counting will continue in rounds. At the end of each round, the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated.

 

If a voter ranked the eliminated candidate first, then the next highest ranked candidate on the voter’s ballot will be taken into account in the next round of counting. The process continues as such until there are two candidates left. The candidate with the most votes wins.

 

Important dates relating to the March 23 special elections for District 15 [and District 11] are outlined below.

The Bronx Board of Elections confirmed that it is accepting applications for absentee ballots from voters in District 15 (and in District 11) who wish to vote by mail. Further information can be found here or by calling the Bronx Board of Elections at (718) 299-9017 and selecting Ext. 1875.

 

Polls are open on election day from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Early Voting Period is from March 13, 2021 to March 21, 2021. Voters must vote at their assigned early voting site.

 

Early Voting Hours

Saturday	March 13, 2021	10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Sunday	March 14, 2021	10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Monday	March 15, 2021	7:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Tuesday	March 16, 2021	12:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Wednesday	March 17, 2021	12:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Thursday	March 18, 2021	10:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Friday	March 19, 2021	7:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Saturday	March 20, 2021	10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Sunday	March 21, 2021	10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

 

For official information on ranked choice voting, go to the NYC Campaign Finance Board FAQ page or the New York City Board of Elections website.

 

The Bronx Democratic Party hosted an informational session on Ranked Choice Voting which can be viewed here in conjunction with the group, Rank the Vote NYC. Norwood News checked with the City’s Campaign Finance Board about the expertise of Rank the Vote NYC and were advised that the group is a reputable source on the topic and is a voter education campaign that is run by Common Cause NY.

 

Find your poll site and view a sample ballot here: https://findmypollsite.vote.nyc/.

 

Whoever wins the March 23 special, nonpartisan election will serve until Dec. 31, 2021. Future representation in the District beyond that point will likely be determined via a June 2021 primary and a November 2021 general election.

 

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story included a reference to allegations made by a member of the public regarding Ferrara’s alleged support of a particular group, which were posted as a comment in a public forum. Since the comment has since been removed, and since the author of the comment has not provided evidence of the allegations, we have removed the reference pending receipt of further details.