Tag: city

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New York bans e-cigs

The New York City council has voted to add electronic cigarettes to the city’s strict smoking ban, in what could be the latest of many anti-tobacco measures put in place by the outgoing mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

As The Guardian reports, “Only weeks after New York became the first major city to raise the legal age for buying tobacco to 21, the city council voted 43-8 to add electronic cigarettes to the city’s Smoke-Free Air Act.

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“Bloomberg’s other initiatives have included bans on trans fats and attempting to limit the sale of large sugary drinks. If the mayor signs the bill as expected, smoking e-cigarettes – or “vaping” – would be prohibited at public and private venues such as beaches, parks, restaurants and office buildings after 120 days.

“The council speaker, Christine Quinn, who sponsored the bill, said at a press conference that the public use of e-cigarettes threatened to undermine enforcement of anti-smoking laws because their appearance was similar to traditional cigarettes and could “renormalise smoking in public places.”

“E-cigarettes are slim, reuseable metal tubes that contain nicotine-laced liquid in a variety of flavours such as bubble gum and bacon. As a “smoker” puffs on the device, the nicotine is heated and releases a vapour that, unlike cigarette smoke, contains no tar, which is known to cause cancer and other diseases.

“Critics of the law contend that such a ban would do more harm than good. Richard Carmona, a former US surgeon general and a current board member at NJOY, one of America’s largest electronic cigarette manufacturers, sent a letter to the council recently to urge rejection of the bill. “I’m extremely concerned that a well-intentioned but scientifically unsupported effort like the current proposal to include electronic cigarettes in New York’s current smoking ban could constitute a giant step backward in the effort to defeat tobacco smoking,” Carmona wrote. Continue reading “New York bans e-cigs”

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The Irvine Great Park

The housing market’s resurgence could jump-start one of Southern California’s most ambitious but long-stymied projects: Irvine’s Great Park.

imagesConceived more than a decade ago — and designed to span twice the size of New York City’s Central Park — the project has encountered one disaster after another, including the housing market collapse, the bankruptcy of lender Lehman Bros. and the elimination of the state’s redevelopment agencies, reports today’s Los Angeles Times.

“The slow pace of work has inspired sharp criticism, in part because Irvine spent almost all of the project’s initial allocation of $200 million on marketing, concerts, fairs and planning. Now, with the housing market in a healthy recovery, the project’s developer has offered to finance and build a big chunk of the park in exchange for the city nearly doubling the number of homes he can build.

“The way out of the economic mess is going to be public-private partnerships,” said Emile Haddad, chief executive of FivePoint Communities, the city’s development partner. “This is an excellent example.” Haddad has offered to build 688 acres of the park for $174 million, in exchange for City Council approval of an additional 4,600 homes. He already has approval to build about 4,900.

“The city would get a 176-acre sports complex — more than twice the size of Disneyland — a 45-acre park area known as the Bosque area, a 227-acre golf course, a 35-acre canyon and a 178-acre wildlife corridor set aside as a natural reserve. Jeff Lalloway, chair of Great Park Corp. and Irvine’s mayor pro tem, said he believes that the city and Haddad will strike a deal, though he has some concerns about the long-term operating costs of the park. “I am generally confident,” Lalloway said. For now, the first phase of Haddad’s Great Park Neighborhoods, one of the region’s largest residential developments, has begun sales on the northern edge of the future park. More than 700 homes are planned for this phase. In the first weekend the Pavilion Park neighborhood opened, an estimated 28,000 people toured model homes by eight home builders, according to FivePoint.Proceeds from the sale of homes will help finance the park. Much of the infrastructure needed — such as sewers and streets — would be shared between the park and the housing development and would be FivePoint’s responsibility to install. Situated on the site of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, the park site is now mostly a series of fenced-in, aging military structures and old runways. Only a fraction of the park has been built, including a free balloon ride and some other facilities.”

 

More at: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-great-park-20131019,0,7290631.story

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The 1% crowding out creative talent

imagesRampant inequality is squeezing out the artistic genius that made New York such a vibrant cultural capital. We can’t let that happen, writes David Byrne in an editorial in The Duardian

“I’m writing this in Venice, Italy. This city is a pleasantly confusing maze, once an island of fortresses, and now a city of tourists, culture (biennales galore) and crumbling relics. Venice used to be the most powerful city in Europe – a military, mercantile and cultural leader. Sort of like New York.

“Venice is now a case study in the complete transformation of a city (there’s public transportation, but nocars). Is it a living city? Is it a fossil? The mayor of Venice recently wrote a letter to the New York Review of Books, arguing that his city is, indeed, a place to live, not simply a theme park for tourists (he would like very much if the big cruise ships steered clear). I guess it’s a living place if you count tourism as an industry, which I suppose it is. New York has its share of tourists, too. I wave to the doubledecker buses from my bike, but the passengers never wave back. Why? Am I not an attraction?

“New York was recently voted the world’s favorite city – but when you break down the survey’s results, the city comes in at No 1 for business and only No 5 for living. Fifth place isn’t completely embarrassing, but what are the criteria? What is it that attracts people to this or any city? Forget the business part. I’ve been in Hong Kong, and unless one already has the means to live luxuriously, business hubs aren’t necessarily good places for living. Cities may have mercantile exchange as one of their reasons for being, but once people are lured to a place for work, they need more than offices, gyms and strip clubs to really live.

“Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration. Sometimes, that possibility of serendipitous encounters – and I don’t mean in the meat market – is the principal lure. If one were to vote based on criteria like comfort or economic security, then one wonders why anyone would ever vote for New York at all over Copenhagen, Stockholm or some other less antagonistic city that offers practical amenities like affordable healthcare, free universities, free museums, common spaces and, yes, bike lanes. But why can’t one have both – the invigorating energy and the civic, intelligent humanism? Continue reading “The 1% crowding out creative talent”

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The end of caring in teaching

“Teaching is a caring profession–a humane profession about human beings engaging with one another,” imgres-1says Brian Jones, a former New York City public-school teacher now pursuing a PhD in urban education. “Relationships between the teachers and the learners are an important part of the whole process.”A recent article in from In These Time, reports how this may be changing, as excerpted below:

“Jones and other teachers worry that the new system of teacher evaluations slated to be implemented this fall in New York’s public schools will take caring out of the equation.

“The new system, which was imposed by state education commissioner John King after the United Federation of Teachers and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration could not negotiate a deal, willbring millions in federal “Race to the Top” funds to the city’s schools.

“In a statement, Michael Mulgrew, the president of the UFT, wrote: “New York City teachers will now have additional protections and opportunities to play a larger role in the development of the measures used to rate them. Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s desire for a ‘gotcha’ system, as Commissioner King noted today, New York City ‘is not going to fire its way to academic success.’” He pointed out that there are additional opportunities for teachers to challenge violations of the process by supervisors before they get their ratings.

“But UFT members now face the possibility that they could lose their jobs if they receive “ineffective” ratings two years in a row. Teachers will be ranked “highly effective,” “effective,” “developing,” or “ineffective”—or, as John Surico at the Village Voice describes it, “Instead of pass/fail, we now have more of a letter-grade-esque method to grade our educators with more lethal consequences if you earn too many Fs.”

“The deal requires that 20 to 25 percent of the teacher’s rating come from state tests, another 15 to 20 percent from “measures established by the school” (which Jones says are likely to be more tests), and 55 to 60 percent from in-class observations or video-recorded performance assessments by principals.’

“But an “ineffective” rating on the tests trumps the other measures. Jones explains, “Teachers rated ineffective on the tests have to be rated ineffective overall. Even a glowing teacher with great rapport with her students, if the test scores don’t rise at the predetermined level, that teacher has to be rated ineffective. Carol Burris, New York’s 2013 Principal of the Year, criticized this aspect of the system in the Washington Post, calling it a “foolish inequity, with real life consequences.”

 

More at; http://inthesetimes.com/article/15245/taking_the_caring_out_of_teaching_new_yorks_new_teacher_evaluation_system_i/

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New York seeks to expand foster parent diversity

New York City is launching a campaign to recruit gay and lesbian foster parents, part of a major push to expand the kinds of families who consider fostering and to find more welcoming homes for children who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, reports today’s Wall Street Journal

“The public ad campaign, set to roll out this week, features images of an interracial gay couple spending time with a young child. “Be the reason she has hope,” one of the ads reads. In another, a black woman is pictured alone with a white teenage boy. “Be the reason it gets better,” the message says.

“How many of the nearly 13,000 children in New York City’s foster-care system identify as LGBTQ is unclear because the city does not keep such data. But, citing anecdotal evidence, researchers, child advocates and city officials insist that the children are disproportionately represented in the foster care system and say the need to find them supportive homes is great.

“When we decided to do this campaign we knew that LGBTQ young people are disproportionately represented in our foster care population, especially among our teens,” said Ronald Richter, commissioner of the Administration for Child Services, the city’s child welfare agency. Continue reading “New York seeks to expand foster parent diversity”

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Raising smoking to 21

The city’s latest health crusade — backed by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn — would raise the smoking age from 18 to 21, reports todays New York Postimages

“A bill introduced in the council Monday by Quinn and Health Commissioner Thomas Farley would make New York the first major city in the country to raise the minimum age to buy tobacco to 21.

“That will literally save lives,” Quinn said. “The more difficult it is for [young people] to gain access to tobacco products, the less likely they are to start smoking. The more likely they are to live longer.”The bill is a sign that Quinn, a leading mayoral contender, would carry on Mayor Bloomberg’s trademark public health agenda if elected. Though Quinn opposed the mayor’s move to ban big soda, she made it clear Monday that she admires his health initiatives, which critics deride as creating a nanny state. Continue reading “Raising smoking to 21”

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Tacoma wins again

imgres“Tacoma was the right blend of the right size and had the factors we looked for in the criteria,” Matthew Breen, editor of the The Advocate and the man behind this year’s list, told weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden.

The occasion of these remarks was the naming of Tacoma, WA, yet again, as the top pick of The Advocate’s “Gayest Cities in America.”  As NPR’s story continues, deciding factors include “criteria like the number of LGBT elected officials and whether a city has legal protections for people who are transgender and bisexual resource centers. Then the magazine adds in some tongue-in-cheek factors: concerts by Glee cast members, roller derby and gay rugby teams, and “fabulous” shopping — measured by the number of Whole Foods, West Elm and Pottery Barn stores.

“We start with a baseline of cities that have 150,000 people or more and we take all of our criteria,” Breen says. Continue reading “Tacoma wins again”