Development
Wherever we walk in our communities these days, houses where old friends and neighbors once lived are being torn down and replaced with overpriced, out-of-scale luxury condos and boring strip malls. It’s as if a new city is being built all around us, squeezed into the tiniest spaces of our existing communities. And as we wander, we might reasonably ask what the City is doing to accommodate all these new residents and businesses. What improvements to the public transportation system are being planned? What expansions of the public school system are in the works? What about the sewer system, the healthcare system, or police and fire protection? What about asthma rates as a result of all the new traffic? What about pollution?
Environment
Our planet is facing a crisis of historic proportions. Global warming threatens to alter climate patterns, undermine food and water supplies and flood coastal cities, including New York. Future generations will suffer the worst consequences of global warming, but even today we are experiencing the adverse health effects of air and water pollution; the economic costs of soaring energy prices and an overtaxed electricity grid.
Transportation
I believe that public transportation is the indispensable support system for our city. Everything we love about living in Brooklyn–from our pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and shopping districts to our fine schools, playgrounds and public parks—depends on an efficient and reliable system of subways and buses. Public transit is good for the environment, good for our health and good for our quality of life.
Education
A quality education is the right of every child and is the bedrock of a functional democracy. Unfortunately, here in New York City, our public school system is failing too many of our children. Class sizes are too big. Teachers are overwhelmed. The high school graduation rate is at an appalling 50 percent. Poor districts are punished for low test scores—and denied the resources to improve them. Parents panic that their children won’t have a place in a good middle- or high-school. And every year, frenetic development places thousands of new students into a system that simply can’t absorb them.
Accountablity in City Government
Secret slush funds. Public officials using our tax dollars for their political agendas. Millions of taxpayer dollars stashed in bogus accounts. Almost every day, the headlines bring new evidence of a culture of corruption in the New York City Council. We Brooklynites are all too familiar with the unethical ways of our elected officials. For decades, we’ve suffered through a corrupt Democratic Party machine that hands out judgeships and other posts to political allies rather than to the most qualified candidates. As voters, we deserve a better class of public officials than we get.