Oh, jeeze, I was not going to post today, too busy, but I should have been flogging this one for WEEKS. This is BIG - affects everyone who works or plays (or has any future hopes of working or playing) on or beside New York City's waterways:
From the Department of City Planning website:
"The Department of City Planning is currently preparing a Comprehensive Plan for the over 500 miles of New York City’s waterfront, defined as New York Harbor and its tributaries, creeks and bays. Vision 2020 will build on the original Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, published in 1992, and the city’s experience over the past 18 years in order to set forth a new long range vision for a 21st Century NYC waterfront. Specifically, Vision 2020 will identify key opportunities for improving our waterfront and outline strategies to realize this new vision."
First citywide public meeting is scheduled for -
Date: April 8, 2010
Time: 6:00 PM- 8:30 PM
Location: Murry Bergtraum High School, 411 Pearl Street, Manhattan
Notice via the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance (link is to Waterwire article with more details) and the NYC Watertrail Association.
7 comments:
thanks Bonnie!!! we gotta gooooooo.
i'd love to be there, but gotta work. take notes!
Interesting meeting, incredible range of speakers, only really weird/annoying moments were the stumping-for-votes moment from a politician and oh yes, Ed Kelly from the Port of NY/NJ spoiling yet another fabulous speech with that stupid "bike/horse on a highway" thing. :(
Those were just the lows, though.
Did take notes & will try to get something up this weekend.
stayed over 3 1/2 hrs--not as long as true troopers like Frogma, Rachel Golub (ice water swimmer), Amy (Tug Cornell) and others. That tells you how many people were glad to have a chance to express (including people with projects NOT in NYC--argh!!! very annoying!) Alas, the PA system sucked.
very happy: towing industry had a representative (Thornton), there was another mariner who spoke well "You never get a pothole in the water!"
lot of work to be done...
That was Ed Kelly. That's why his resentment of recreational boaters bugs me so deeply - because everything else he says is really, really strong, and I'd like to give almost everything he says an unreserved round of applause - but then he keeps pushing for nanny state regulation for the recreational set.
I wish he could come to grips with the fact that that particular horse is long since out of the barn & drop it.
Or at least modify what he says so it doesn't sound quite so dismissive.
I wonder if he realized how many people in that room were recreational boaters?
And it's not even his idea - either he lifted Andrew McGovern's quote from this 1998 NY Times article - look partway down P.2 for the quote. And actually, it might help clarify why hearing that again bothers me so much to give the context in which the horse on a highway argument was being used back then:
"With more kayaks, sailboats, rowing skiffs and other pleasure craft appearing along the West Side piers, representatives of the shipping industry are calling for a kind of zoning for harbor waters, placing busy shipping channels off-limits to pleasure craft."
I don't know if that is what Ed Kelly is after - but I can't hear that phrase without remembering that threat - which I'd thought was SO far behind us now.
"either he lifted Andrew McGovern's quote"...
OR that is simply still the party line among certain sectors of the commercial interests.
Post a Comment