New York Desk

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

MANHATTAN


KERREY TO STAY AT NEW SCHOOL THROUGH 2011


Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska senator and a member of the September 11 commission, said yesterday that he has signed on to remain as president of New School University through June 2011.


“I like the city, I like the school, and I’m not done,” Mr. Kerrey said. He said he intends to continue to improve the reputation of the liberal arts-based university over the next six years. “We don’t have precise figures, but we intend to have a pretty impressive increase in the number of undergraduate students who come from high schools throughout the world,” he said. Mr. Kerrey, 61 and a Nebraska native, served as that state’s governor and senator before taking the helm at the New School in 2001.


– Associated Press


CITYWIDE


CIT Y FIRE DEATHS COULD BE LOWEST IN 85 YEARS


The city is on its way to recording the lowest number of civilian fire deaths in 85 years, Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday. With a week and a half to go before the end of the year, 81 civilians have died in fires in 2004, down from 125 in 2003. The fewest number of fatalities on record occurred in 1919, when 77 people died. The average response time of 4 minutes and 20 seconds has remained about the same during the past several years, according to city statistics. The average number of fire deaths during the 1990s was 164; in the 1980s, 234, and in the 1970s, 278.


– Associated Press


JUDGE DENIES VELELLA REQUEST FOR FREEDOM


A judge on the state’s highest court denied a request yesterday by a former state senator, Guy Velella, to stay out of jail, as a lower state court ordered this week.


Court of Appeals Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick declined to issue an interim stay blocking the order from the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court that Velella has to return to jail on Monday. The appellate division ruled he and his co-defendants were illegally freed by a local sentencing review board in New York City in September after serving just more than three months of a sentence for accepting bribes from public works contractors.


– Associated Press


BUS COMPANY EMPLOYEES EXPECTED BACK AT WORK


Union leaders promised that drivers of private bus lines in Queens and Brooklyn would return to work today, Newsday reported. The private bus companies had stopped running on Wednesday when workers staged a sickout due to an ongoing contract dispute.


This past weekend, the bus company employees voted to authorize a strike. The newspaper also reported that the president of the Local 1179 Amalgamated Transit Workers Union, John Longo, said the drivers would work another week but lack of progress in negotiations could still result in a strike. In the meantime, the city has permitted Dollar vans to service passengers at bus stops in areas with limited transit options, according to the city’s Web site.


– Special to the Sun


WESTCHESTER


CLINTON RETURNS TO THANK HOSPITAL STAFF


VALHALLA – President Clinton, slim and smiling, returned yesterday to thank doctors and staff at the hospital where he learned in September that he needed quadruple bypass surgery.


“I was really delighted to walk in here instead of coming in a wheelchair, and I’m even more delighted to be able to walk out,” Mr.Clinton said as he helped open a new cardiac catheterization center at the Westchester Medical Center.


On September 3, Mr. Clinton went to the medical center, which is not far from his home in Chappaqua, for an angiogram after suffering chest pains and shortness of breath. The test revealed narrowing of several vessels of his heart, and he was transferred to New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, where he underwent a quadruple bypass three days later.


– Associated Press


ALBANY


PATAKI HIRES NEW SPOKESMAN


David Catalfamo, a former top economic development official in the Pataki administration, took over yesterday as chief spokesman for Governor Pataki. Mr. Catalfamo, 40, becomes the fourth person to hold the director of communications post in the governor’s 10 years in office. Lisa Dewald Stoll, a former top Pataki campaign aide who held the communications post since January 2003, left the administration on Wednesday. She had no immediate plans for another job, saying she was going on vacation. Ms. Stoll had replaced Michael McKeon, who is now a public affairs consultant in the private sector. He had become Mr. Pataki’s chief spokesman in March 2000. Pataki’s first director of communications, Zenia Mucha, is the chief spokeswoman for the Walt Disney Company. – Associated Press


POLICE BLOTTER


COMMISSIONER PROMOTES 70 OFFICERS, NOTING DROP IN MURDERS


With a nod towards a citywide murder rate that has dropped to a 41-year low, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly congratulated 70 newly promoted officers for helping “to make this year one of the most peaceful this city has ever known.”


The police department has recorded 544 homicides, the lowest tally since 1963, and a 4.6% drop in citywide crime so far this year. In addition, the city has the lowest crime rate out of the 25 largest cities reporting to the FBI, Mr. Kelly said.


“We’re boasting a little today, because your performance over the last year calls for a little boasting,” Mr. Kelly said at a promotion ceremony yesterday.


– Staff Reporter of the Sun


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