New York State has one of the four highest school dropout rates in the country, and that could cost the state billions of dollars, according to a study released by Bronx Assemblyman Peter Rivera in May.

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.

Responding to increasing pressure to create more jobs in the northwest Bronx during the construction of the Croton Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park, the head of the city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said the agency would fulfill promises it made to the community and find ways to place more local residents in construction unions.

When the city and local politicians tried to sell Norwood residents on a plan to build the massive Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park, they offered two benefits in exchange for years of traffic interruptions, lost parkland, and increased air pollution - $240 million in Bronx park renovations and the promise of jobs for local residents. The park renovations are under way now.

The committee set up by the City Council to monitor the construction of the water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park has a new look, leaving the immediate community's sole representative owith concerns that it will lose a critical local perspective.

An alternative slate of candidates for Community Board 7's executive positions has emerged in the first challenge in years to the veteran leadership.