By Alex Kratz 

Editor’s Note:  Former NN Editor-in-Chief Alex Kratz pens the 2013 year in review, a hallmark to the community paper.  After seeing it all this past year, Kratz outlines his top three stories of the year.  

When I started at the Norwood News in 2006, I liked the idea of a Year in Review tradition that started well before my arrival. The issue gave us the chance to step back from the bi-weekly format and look at the bigger picture. What happened? What stories really impacted us as a community?

It’s a tradition I hope will continue as the paper continues to chronicle the history of the northwest Bronx. Looking back on a year’s worth of stories is a great exercise for any news outlet and serves as a placeholder in the lives of the communities they cover.

In my final Year in Review, I want to touch on a few stories that resonated this year and the communities I pledged myself to these past seven and a half years. Like almost every hard news story, these came with their positives and negatives. In the spirit of the season, we are going to break down what is naughty and nice about each of them.

Concluding the Armory Saga

Background: A Year in Review at the Norwood News is never complete without tracing the fate of the Kingsbridge Armory. The story of its

emptiness and the incessant, but often fruitless, attempt to fill it with something beneficial to the northwest Bronx is nearly as old as the paper itself. This year, a solution was reached. The city chose the Kingsbridge National Ice Center to transform the Armory into the world’s largest ice sports facility.

Naughty: As the project’s review process drew closer to completion, things turned ugly. While Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and other elected officials in the borough were all-in on the ice center, the most local official, Councilman Fernando Cabrera, who lives and leads a church just blocks from the Armory, balked.

In November, Cabrera was under fire after the paper broke news he allegedly tried to solicit $100,000 a year from developers to divert into a defunct nonprofit. Cabrera insisted his doubt over the project stemmed from traffic and parking issues, which were addressed in a last-minute deal brokered by the city.

Nice: The City Council (and Cabrera) approved the Kingsbridge National Ice Center 48-1, which will turn Kingsbridge Heights into a local, regional, national and global draw for ice sports athletes, enthusiasts and spectators.

Along with the $300 million spent on transforming the Armory into a productive space, the ice center will provide 50,000 square feet of community space and $1 million a year in direct and in-kind benefits for the community. Best of all, hockey legend Mark Messier will head the youth program, which will provide local youth with free ice time and tutoring. It’s nothing less than a game changer for this neighborhood.

Crime Map Goes Live

Background: For the past several years, the Norwood News has railed against the NYPD’s glaring and unreasonable lack of transparency in

divulging local crime statistics. Each precinct generates neighborhood-specific crime statistics, but refused to produce them unless journalists or citizens went through an interminable request process that involved stalling until the statistics became close to irrelevant.

Naughty:  Check out full story here. 

Nice: Councilman Fernando Cabrera took our complaints, recognized an opportunity to make government work more efficiently, and crafted legislation to make local crime statistics available to everyone through an interactive, online crime map. The legislation passed in the spring with little opposition.

 

New Blood in the Council

Background:   This year capped the political careers of Council members Oliver Koppell (11th District), and Joel Rivera (15th District), and the electoral rise of their replacements.

Rumors persist that Koppell may challenge State Senate co-leader Jeff Klein in an attempt to wrest control from his small cadre of Independent Democrats. But it’s more likely Koppell will hang up his political hat indefinitely, capping his long career of public service that included stints as an assemblyman, New York State attorney general and member of the city’s now-defunct Board of Education.

Meanwhile, Rivera, elected as a 22-year-old college dropout, enjoyed a steady if unremarkable three-term run in the City Council, rising to Democratic majority leader. He valiantly stepped into the leadership void when Mayor Bloomberg tried to push an unpopular mall proposal into the Armory in 2009.

This fall, their replacements, Andrew Cohen (11th) and Ritchie Torres (15th) were elected by convincing margins over their opponents.

Naughty: Cohen and Torres received hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial support from a political action committee backed by the city’s most powerful landlords and unions. Though they did not seek out this support and couldn’t prevent the money from playing a role in their respective races, it is troubling to see special interest groups play just an out-sized role in our most local campaigns. While we can’t say for certain the money swayed either race, it was definitely a factor in favor of both candidates. Unfortunately, this problem is only reparable through a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Nice: New blood in elected office is a good thing and the reason we have term limits in city government. Cohen and Torres have pledged to be progressive, hands-on leaders who will address the concerns of their diverse constituencies. Both appear to be smart, nuanced politicians who promise to take their roles lawmaker and advocate seriously.

In January, when both take the oath of office, Torres will become the Bronx’s first openly gay elected official. Even more impressive: in a borough sometimes castigated for its lack of tolerance (Bronx State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. was the face of New York’s limp anti-gay marriage crusade, and hate crimes remain a problem), sexuality did not play a prominent role in the campaign.

So as the Norwood News keeps covering the naughty and nice stories that shape our communities under new leadership, we’ll keep making our lists and checking them twice.