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The Proverbial Half Loaf
Joseph Tiraco |
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The Proverbial Half Loaf
Joseph Tiraco |
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He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks. -Euripides Sigmund Freud had little tolerance for claims of accidents and random chance in the realm of human affairs; this animal is far too egocentric and contriving to concede of such occurrences - man is a political animal. This past week, a six year scheme, a long, torturous chain of cause-a-problem-solve-a-problem events in the style of a halting Borgia intrigue, culminated into an all too common, New York City style, transparent raid on the public treasury. Community Board #6 has sent out notices for a hastily concocted July 8 th public hearing on the Metropolitan Avenue school construction site in Forest Hills. The Giuliani-Ratner good-cop-bad-cop routine, played antithetically of course, first perpetuated wide spread consternation among area residents using as of right proposals for shopping malls and multiplex theaters. ( As of right refers to a loophole in the zoning laws supposedly placed there as an exemption for the little guy, but used by Giuliani to build megastores just about anywhere he pleased, hence bankrupting a myriad of little guys.) The Mayor now rescues the community at the last possible moment with the school proposal, buys the property for the city from his own campaign finance chief at an inflated price and walks away smelling like a rose. The terrorized community breaths a sigh of relief, believe they pulled half a loaf out of the fire, and grudgingly accept ( accept is the keyword) the Home Depot misfit the mayor planted in their midst. All very smooth, flamboyant and classical, however, this rouse has disturbing underpinnings beyond fooling all the people all the time. The property, which shares the Home Depot shopping mall land parcel, is heavily contaminated with toxic waste. It was purchased about three years ago by Bruce Ratner for a song in relation to his asking price; he is a New York City commissioner who served as the mayor's fund-raising point man during the last election, a builder who is landlord to a multitude of city agencies; he is a man accustomed to wading hip deep in city politics, and casting a baited hook at the public treasury. The travesty is that no functioning school will ever be built on the site. The property will change hands alright, with the only real money in this deal being forked over by the taxpayers, and carried away by administration insiders. The mayor is term limited, and serving in the waning days of his administration. The actual cleanup of the site and construction of the school will come under another city administration. No mayor will knowingly place school children in harms way. Since the contaminated shopping mall portion of the property is receiving a mere superficial make over, (Home Depot's toxic waste cleanup plan is just so much hot air - literally blowing bubbles in the groundwater which is supposed to reverse decades of industrial chemical abuse to the property, and at the northern part, near Sports Authority, the astronomically high toxic readings have not been addressed at all) attempting to seriously cleanup only the school's portion of the property and groundwater is ludicrous. Should the school plan be approved? And the land purchased even though the taxpayer is being bilked? Yes and yes! Give this mayor his pound of flesh; after all is said and done, the land is all that counts. Moving this parcel into the city' portfolio will change its legal status, giving the community a stronger say over its eventual disposition. So if it is a school the community earnestly wants, then a school they will get, though the time frame may be a lot longer, and the struggle far more pronounced then anyone now anticipates. Before school construction is feasible, all the parcels have to be detoxified, which suggests a federal cleanup program, and further implies that the entire group of parcels eventually become assembled under eminent domain. The founding of an educational institution stretching from Metropolitan Avenue to Forest Park with a campus of some 35 acres is an exciting and ambitious enterprise, a melding of community and school to prosper both through the new millennium and beyond, a gift in perpetuity to the schoolchildren of Queens; imprinting a new brand on the borough more indelible then the Unisphere. This is not a task for the fainthearted. If acquisition of the Ratner property inspires this community to a higher calling, if ownership for the property inflames a passion to do this noble deed, if unity is strengthened and community character annealed, if by successful transfer it imparts to the would be founders through its symbolism the time honored qualities of patience and fortitude, then the property is worth every penny, and bless the mayor for passing this burden into our charge.
The author can be reached for comment
July 1999.
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