First I would like to clear up a few points. The “Ferry Point Community Advocates” is a Civic Group. We never stopped “advocating”

for the original members quality of life issues that were represented in the original “Ferry Point Civic Group” developed back in 1973.

 Many of the original members have passed on or moved from this area only to be replaced by the current homeowners and residents.

Along with the “Ferry Point Community Advocates” which are all residents of Ferry Point, there is another group that formed to fight

 the expansion of the proposed Golf course into the West side of our nearby Park. This group “Friends of Ferry Point Park” is a separate

group of various people from all over the city that are interested in this Park. Our executive board is composed of people from Edgewater,

Queens and the Bronx (so far).

There have been various people willing to step up and attempt to slow down the development of Ferry Point into an “Industrial Zone”.

With hours and hours of volunteered time, paper, ink, postage, phone bills etc. these people felt a need to defend this community against

 “mis-use” that would degrade the quality of the residents that care for their homes and yards and children in a way that contributes value

 and beauty to the overall image that affects the larger community. These people took on large controversial projects that would have

 damaged Ferry Point’s future as a whole (illegal filling of waterfront land, asbestos transfer station, Iroquois Natural Gas Pipeline and

facilities and more of course). Each person who has led our existing members has accomplished tremendous feats for such a small group.

To thank a few I would like to list the following:

Catherine Poggi ,Founder of FP Civic Group (www.ferrypointcivic.org) archives under construction.

Joanne Miller, Co-Ferry Point Civic Association

Maria Meli, Co-Founder Ferry Point Civic Association

Dorothea Poggi , Founder Ferry Point Community Advocates (www.ferrypointcommunity.org)

Victor Ocasio Vice President Ferry Point Community Advocates

The so called “new regime” that has incorporated one of the previous names of the groups, shows no respect or appreciation

of the hard work and volumes of personal time that the previous leaders have put into their neighborhood. This may be

contributed to their lack of knowledge of these tremendous accomplishments due to 25 years of them complacently ignoring

 the problems that occurred away from their small block. While their block was surrounded by ever increasing industry we could

 have used their help. Now just a few are claiming “how did it happen?”. They are looking to take the blame off of themselves

 for non participation and place it on hardworking representatives and Elected Officials.

Well this is how it works, putting aside outright corruption of course. Any Mayor would be looking for increased revenue and less out of City Pocket expense. They offer incentives and tax abatements to developers who are willing to develop areas that are not pulling in revenue for the City. These Developers not only support Campaign funding but also often wave the possibility of leaving the Bronx over the heads of the “Powers that be”. The “Powers that be” do not want this on “their watch” especially if they are climbing the political ladder. So they find ways to keep the Businesses and developers happy (usually at the expense of the residential neighborhoods around the development).

The “powers that be” use jobs and tax revenue as excuses for overdevelopment and destruction of the quality of life of small neighborhoods that do not hold many votes or dollars for their future “endorsements”.  In the mean time the public is placated with ribbon cuttings and holiday parades while the community is slowly slipping away.

We are in the process of forming the Brush Avenue Action Council. This will be a coalition of the many diverse uses of the Ferry Point Area. This alliance of Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Educational, Environmental, Recreational uses will help to get things done in a sensible time period to keep this very busy but small area functioning smoothly. Normally this would be hard to do given the conflicting uses of this Street and area, BUT from conversations I have had with all, we believe it is the proper time to work together to the benefit of Ferry Points future.

Dorothea Poggi/ President FPC Advocates

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

> Henry Perry just cannot get used to the 10 p.m. curfew notice posted
> since October in the Bronx apartment building where he has lived since
> 1963. Or the sign-in sheet, where the newer residents dutifully log
> comings and goings. Or the 24-hour security guard seated at a
> desk in the
> lobby.
>
> “She came when the homeless people did,” Mr. Perry, a wiry, gray-
> hairedman of 68, nodded at the guard last week.
>
> Twenty-one of the 50 units in Mr. Perry’s five-story brick
> building are
> now occupied by homeless families as part of a Bloomberg
> administrationprogram that has turned dozens of apartment
> buildings throughout the
> city, most of them in the Bronx, into de facto homeless
> shelters. Known
> as cluster-site housing, the program contracts with nonprofit
> agencies to
> temporarily place families in apartments; it has swelled in two
> years to
> 1,503 apartments from 1,092, at an estimated cost of $59 million this
> year.
>
> With the number of homeless families in New York at near-record
> levels,cluster-site has quietly replaced the costly and controversial
> scatter-site housing program that the Bloomberg administration
> pledged in
> 2002 to wipe out. Unlike the previous program, it uses nonprofit
> agenciesto provide employment help and other social services to
> the homeless
> families, who spend an average of 284 days — about nine months —
> in the
> apartments.
>
> But while rent-paying tenants in the buildings are not subject
> to the
> curfew or sign-in requirements, many complain that their
> landlords have
> been pushing them out to make way for homeless families because the
> cluster-site program pays far more — an average of $1,730 — for the
> units, many of which are rent-stabilized (Mr. Perry pays $248.68 a
> month). Many say they have been intimidated with repeated notices
> regarding rent or other matters, and that they were never
> notified of the
> impending changes in their buildings (the city says it notifies
> residentsonly if more than half the building will be used).
>
> At Mr. Perry’s building, on Mosholu Parkway in the northwest Bronx,
> longtime tenants were stunned on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008, when several
> homeless families arrived in vans, carrying their belongings in
> shoppingbags, and were swiftly ushered into recently renovated
> apartments.
> “They’re going to bring in homeless people, and then they’re
> going to
> make us homeless,” said Deonarine Srikishun, 64, who pays $830 a month
> for the two-bedroom apartment where he has lived for 27 years.
>
> Advocates for the homeless condemn the cluster-site program for
> temporarily solving one problem by creating another: displacing
> low-income residents. Rather than put homeless people in temporary
> apartments, they say, the city should give more of them the federal
> subsidized housing vouchers known as Section 8.
>
> “The city is shooting itself in the foot,” said Steven Banks, the
> attorney in chief for the Legal Aid Society. “It is far more
> costly to
> house families in apartments as shelter than to house them in
> permanenthousing.”
>
> But Deputy Mayor Linda I. Gibbs, who oversees homeless programs, said
> cluster-site housing worked well because it provided families with
> caseworkers who develop independent living plans, including target
> move-out dates and employment goals. Families are expected to
> abide by a
> curfew, keep their rooms tidy — there are weekly inspections —
> and search
> for jobs.
>
> “Our strategies are focusing on helping the families to become
> economically independent,” Ms. Gibbs said.
>
> The controversy over cluster-site housing comes amid Mayor
> Michael R.
> Bloomberg’s years-long battle to reduce the city’s homeless
> population.He declared in 2004, when there were 38,000 homeless
> on the city’s rolls,
> that he hoped to cut the number by two-thirds within five years;
> instead,the city is currently housing 35,000 people.
>
> Putting homeless people into apartments began during the Giuliani
> administration as an emergency measure to relieve overcrowded
> shelters.By 2002, it had grown from 50 units to more than 2,000,
> and was widely
> criticized as an expensive failure costing $2,900 a month per
> apartment.After a public outcry, Mayor Bloomberg and Ms. Gibbs,
> then the
> commissioner of homeless services, vowed to shut down the program.
>
> Technically, they did. According to the Department of Homeless
> Services,there were 723 scatter-site units in December 2006; by
> January 2007,
> there were zero. But in a new column of data, labeled “cluster sites,”
> there were 1,092 units, a number that slowly crept up throughout 2007.
>
> Unlike the scatter-site program, in which the city paid rent
> directly to
> landlords and provided little else for the families, the
> Department of
> Homeless Services works with five nonprofit agencies that seek out
> landlords, negotiate rents and offer support services to tenants
> in the
> 127 cluster-site buildings. Before the agencies establish longer-term
> contracts with the city, they are paid $90 per diem, about
> $2,700 per
> month, per family.
>
> Robert V. Hess, the homeless services commissioner, said each
> apartmentwas inspected before a homeless family moved in to make
> sure it was
> suitable.
>
> But at 3001 Briggs Avenue, a 26-unit building in Bedford Park in the
> Bronx that has been largely taken over by the cluster-site
> program in
> recent months, there are 315 open housing-code violations,
> according to
> city records, including complaints of broken windows, peeling
> lead paint,
> mice, roaches and bedbugs.
>
> Outside the quiet, run-down building on Sunday afternoon, a security
> guard in a dark blue jacket patrolled the front door while a
> group of
> children played in the lobby.
>
> Dominique Gee, 15, who was carrying a bag of laundry, paused
> outside the
> entrance of the building, where she moved with her mother,
> stepfather and
> sister three days earlier. “It’s not too bad, except we’re not
> allowed to
> have visitors,” she said. “So if we want to see somebody, we
> have to come
> outside.”
>
> The cluster-site program at the building is run by Aguila Inc., an
> organization that began working with the city in 2000 with 55
> scatter-site units; it now operates more than 300 cluster-site
> units in
> the Bronx as well as standalone shelters for single adults.
>
> According to public records, Aguila received $9.2 million from the
> Department of Homeless Services in 2006. Peter Rivera, the executive
> director of Aguila and the son of the Bronx state assemblyman of
> the same
> name, did not return calls seeking comment.
>
> Fernando Tirado, the district manager for Community Board 7 in
> the Bronx,
> said he had been bombarded with calls from residents on Briggs Avenue.
> (Howard Miller, the manager of the building, did not return repeated
> telephone messages.)
>
> “It has become apparent to us that landlords have been forcing tenants
> out, either through coercion or through other means,” said Mr. Tirado,
> who called the cluster-site program “despicable.”
>
> Geraldine Salvatorelli, whose 91-year-old father is among the few
> remaining rent-paying tenants there, said: “It was easy to get
> most of
> them out — they owed back rent.”
>
> Mr. Hess, of the homeless services department, says the city
> investigatesthoroughly when it receives information that tenants
> have been
> intimidated, and had confirmed two such cases over the last
> three years.
>
> “We’re not going to allow anything to happen where other tenants are
> going to feel that they’ve been pushed out so we can occupy
> more,” he
> said.
>
> At the building on Mosholu Parkway, Mr. Srikishun, 64, said his
> landlordhad wrongly accused him of owing more than $8,000 in
> back rent, slipping
> notices under his third-floor apartment door.
>
> “He’s torturing me with these papers under the door, every
> month,” Mr.
> Srikishun said, his voice rising in anger. “All these things are
> fabricated.” He says he has always paid his rent and owes
> nothing. The
> property managers, Lev Management, did not return calls.
>
> Despite the opposition, the number of cluster-site apartments appears
> likely to keep increasing, given the deepening recession and
> state budget
> cuts to homelessness-prevention programs.
>
> “We certainly understand the pressure they’re under,” said John
> Reilly,the executive director of the Fordham Bedford Housing
> Corporation. “But
> to take existing affordable housing off the market, it just
> seems like
> it’s an agency solving its own problem, but not solving the city’s
> problem.”
>
> Catherine Barbosa, an elementary school teacher who pays $1,050
> a month
> for a two-bedroom apartment in one of the cluster-site
> buildings, said
> she sympathized with the problem — but not the solution.
>
> “I understand that homeless people, they need a place to live,
> they don’t
> need to be out on the street,” she said. “I don’t pay rent to
> live in a
> homeless shelter, that’s how I feel.”

I first want to apologize for not keeping in touch through the Bronx Times Reporter for the last 2 Columns. I have been extremely busy and had to prioritize my time.

May 1^st brought 150 student volunteers from the Millennium Arts Academy to Ferry Point to for fill their 2^nd annual Community Service Day. Ferry Point Community Advocates gives special thanks to our Friends of Ferry Point Park group who organized along with the school and Partnership for Parks to have the Gloves, bags, signs, banners and tools ready to accomplish the many tasks. The group was separated before hand into smaller groups to Weed, Plant, Recycle plastic from the salt water marsh, Clean Water front of Hindu debris and BBQ for all. It was a wonderful day. The volunteers were polite, and did a great job.

May 15^th I was invited to speak and hand out certificates to the Millenium Arts students who participated at Ferry Point. I was surprised to find that this year the entire Millenium school had each student work in the community. Some served food to the seniors, some did an art project to decorate some offices, others worked in two community gardens. A guest speaker who wrote the original poem that Pres. Obamas “Yes we can” came from was there to read it to the students.

May 11^th was the Park committee meeting of Cm. Bd. 10. First there was another discussion of the Hutchinson River Greenway. There was quite a gathering of interested Community and Alternative Transportation (Cyclist) groups in favor of constructing the Greenway as is ASAP. Suggestions were given such as treating the project as phase one and two so as not to delay the construction. This Greenway is already paid for and many want to see it go through before some of the funding dries up.

After the Greenway Discussion I gave a power point demonstration with snap shots of the work that we have done at Ferry Point Park. The presentation covered the three living Memorials at the Park (9/11 Hilltop Grove) (9/11 Memorial Forest) (Throggs Neck Memorial Grove). It also covered the 6 registered Littoral Cleanups, the many waterfront cleanups, the tree stewardships, daffodil plantings etc.

We have had over 900 volunteers at our Park under our supervision over the last Spring to Spring season. A lot has been accomplished but we need to catch up to the many years of neglect. We are looking forward to the comfort station and the new synthetic soccer field.

May 10^th was not only mother’s day but Catherine Poggi (my Mom) celebrated her 85^th Birthday with her family. Catherine is still a intensely intelligent woman with a “can do” attitude.

May 16^th brought” It’s My Park Day” to Ferry Point Park. The scheduling was a bit confusing due to the weather. 100 volunteers were scheduled but we only got 50 due to weather reports of rain throughout the day. There were free  Plastic Water Bottles (Thank you Parks), Aquifina water (Thank you Pepsi), Hot Dogs and watermelon (thank you Friends Group) for everyone.

May 18^th was the Meeting of Hutchinson River Restoration Project where we discussed and planned our brochure, canoe survey day, cleanup and tabling at City Island Fair June 6&7

May 21^st was our NEBCA meeting which turned out to be a bad day for a meeting and we will be more careful with the next June Meeting where we will have each committee bring their concerns to the North East Bronx Community Alliance so that we can continue to combine our efforts and support each other in achieving a better quality of life for the entire community.

May 22^nd is the final HRRP meeting for the brochure reproduction.

May 25 complete and send 1^st annual FP survey of needs

June 1^st will bring a meeting with Pepsi a Rep from Sen. Kleins office, and Ferry Point ( Community Advocates & Civic Association)

June 6&7 City Island Arts & Crafts Street Fair (HRRP Table)

June 7^th Canoe Trip To photograph and sample water of the Hutchinson River

June 2009:

Ferry Point Community Advocates

716 Brush Avenue, Bronx, NY 10465   718-892-7303

6/23/2009

Attention Personnel Departments

of Businesses located on Brush Ave.,

    For many years the residential Community of Ferry Point has under gone a renaissance of Economic development. This has changed the area from a sleepy waterfront community surrounded by wetlands, woodlands and the Hutchinson River Parkway into a busy hustle and bustle of various sized vehicles using Brush Ave.

    Our members vary in age and capabilities. They and other residents of these 3 blocks have endured all the construction and the changes. As expected they are also suffering through this economic downturn. Some have been laid off and or let go from their place of employment. To help this community stay vibrant, employed and housing quality families we hope you will consider our request for your business to notify our community group of any job positions that may come up in the near future.

    Of course we are not expecting any favoritism or bending of any of your rules. We just feel that if there is an opening it would be beneficial to the entire community of Ferry Point/Brush Avenue to give the immediate neighborhood residents a try.

    We are a very fair group of people that will do our best to disseminate this information as quickly as possible to all the residents regardless of affiliations.

                                                     Thank You for considering the community that you do business in,

                                                                                Founder/President

                                                                                  Dorothea Poggi

Read our weekly FP Com. Advocates column in the Bronx Times Reporter Community Section.

Find past articles on www.yournabe.com  (search Ferry Point)

 www.nydailynews.com (search Dorothea Poggi)

716 Brush Avenue, Bx NY 10465

Some items of interest:

We have an egret that has decided to hang out in the Art forms Parking Lot (old Pro Foods) along Brush Avenue. He or she is quite a sight with its white elegant neck bobbing around as it walks up and down the hill.

Raccoons are starting up again; there is a group of three that visit Mary Maher’s property at night, I have seen a single large one that comes over from the waterfront and makes his way through the neighborhood each night at dusk, that same fellow finds my back yard around 2:30am. Please tell your children not to approach any wild animals, they are “wild”. They should wash their hands after being outside; as raccoons carry a “deadly” parasite in there feces that are harmless to them but can cause death in a human.

Three of the neighborhood children that join us for Halloween, Emanuel, Hailey and Junior joined me for a garden lesson which was more fun than educational. They watered the plants and each other and me this hot Saturday. They poked at the goldfish, checked out the wild birds, feral cats, played with worms and screamed with delight as they saw Butterflies, bees, wasps and hornets all doing their jobs and not bothering anyone.

Survey update:  News 12 knocked on neighbors doors located near Ferry Point Park and covered their concerns about the West Nile virus. I again verified with a Representative of the Builders Group John Krupa that the drainage would be installed by the end of July but I also asked for the water to be drained ASAP. John said that by Tuesday of next week, the water would be pumped from the “Swale” into drains located on Pepsi Property that are connected to the Sewer Line.

The large deep hole  along the curb of US Mail Depot on Brush Ave. has been reported to 311 and the number has been sent on to Ken Kerns. The one left behind by DEP in front of 712 Brush is under investigation due to the close proximity to a manhole cover. The one in front of 710 is on the list again.

BAAC: Brush Avenue Action Council should have some neighborhood security vehicles on the road already. Watch for the BAAC logo also on the garbage pails that will be available for the pedestrians along Brush Avenue.

NEBCA: North East Bronx Community Alliance next Directors meeting is July 23 at 7:00. We will discuss our plan of action to remedy and prevent Foreclosed homes from becoming eyesores throughout Community Board 10 area. We also have a tentative PowerPoint presentation by the Dept. of Health on the subject of West Nile Virus. Jeff Then will distribute pamphlets and cover the problem of standing water on these vacant properties as well as other sources.