CITYWIDE

MORE STUDENTS OFFERED SPOTS AT SPECIALIZED SCHOOLS

More than 4,900 of New York’s top students got an offer yesterday to attend a specialized high school. That number is up by about 300 over last year, when 4,619 students were admitted to specialized schools including the Bronx High School of Science; Brooklyn Technical High School; the High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering; the High School of American Studies; Queens High School for the Sciences; Stuyvesant High School, and Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School.

The increase is due mostly to an increase in ninth-graders admitted to Stuyvesant, which admitted too few students last year.

The Department of Education said 1,921 of the students who were admitted received an offer from their top-ranked school, up from 1,497 last year. About 28,000 students took the specialized exam this year.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

REPAIRS ON HOLD DUE TO BUDGET CUTS

Repairs of toilets, windows, public address systems, and auditoriums throughout the city are being put on hold because of Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to cut $1.3 billion from the five-year capital plan.

Yesterday, city council leaders and union officials presented a breakdown of all the projects that would be cut or delayed. They said school repairs should be the last thing eliminated from the budget – not the first.

“This mayor has not given education the respect it deserves nor has he made it his priority,” City Council Speaker Gifford Miller said, standing in front of I.S. 10 in Astoria. “If he did make it a priority, he would have been just as creative at finding money to fix decrepit toilets and windows in our schools as he has been for a taxpayer-funded stadium.”

I.S. 10 has 80-year-old windows, many of which are cracked and boarded up, but replacing them has been eliminated from the capital plan.

The council found that 31,000 children in 15 Queens schools will not have their windows repaired, and 38,000 children in 37 schools in that borough will not have their fire alarms, security lighting, and security systems repaired.

The situation in Queens is not unique.

Mr. Miller said he’s not surprised that Albany failed to give the city the money it promised to fund the capital projects. But he said the mayor and the council made a promise to the schoolchildren and they should work to come up with the missing money.

Although the council members said schools would be hurt by the cuts, a number of principals contacted by The New York Sun said their schools would be just fine without renovations in the next few years.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MAYOR SAYS BLOOMBERG LP WON’T BE SOLD TO MICROSOFT

Mayor Bloomberg flatly denied rumors yesterday that the company he founded, Bloomberg LP, would be sold to computer software giant Microsoft.

“You’ll have to talk to Bloomberg, but trust me, if they were going to sell the company to Microsoft I would know about it,” the mayor told reporters at the ground breaking of a $236 million hotel, office, and retail complex in Harlem. “There are no plans and there have never been any conversations with Microsoft.”

At a public forum at the 92nd Street Y in November, Mr. Bloomberg, who owns a large share of the Manhattan-based company, raised eyebrows when talking about his former company. “I will not go back to the company,” he said. “What I’d like to do is eventually I will sell the company because if I don’t, my estate will have to.” The billionaire mayor left his business after getting elected in 2001. He is currently running for re-election.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

COUNCIL PROPOSES FREE PARKING ON SUNDAYS

Feeding parking meters on Sundays could become a thing of the past if some members of the City Council have their way. The council’s transportation committee held a hearing yesterday on a bill that would terminate metered parking on Sundays.

“I’m calling on the mayor and the Department of Transportation to leave us alone on Sunday,” said Council Member Vincent Gentile, one of the lead sponsors on the measures, in statement. “I understand that the city needs to raise revenue … but Sunday is the day of worship, fellowship, and family.”

A deputy commissioner at the Department of Transportation, David Woloch, testified against the measure, saying that meters are designed to encourage turnover among parked cars to help area business. Mr. Gentile pointed out, however, that many businesses are closed on Sundays. Though the city has put metered parking on Sunday into effect in more areas over the last two years, Mr. Woloch testified yesterday that many meters have required quarters on Sundays for decades. The chairman of the council’s transportation committee, John Liu, said yesterday he was still undecided on the measure and that more hearings would be held.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

CITY FILES TRADEMARK APPLICATION FOR SLOGANS

Would the “Big Apple,” by any other name, still taste as sweet? New Yorkers may find out. The city has filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark several new slogans describing the city, including “The World’s Second Home,” said Katherine Winningham, a senior city attorney specializing in trademark law.

The application was filed in December, and it will likely take two years for the city to receive a patent on any new slogan, Ms. Winningham said Thursday. The city has up to three years to decide if it wants to use one of its newly patented phrases, she added.

“The World’s Second Home” – a phrase that already has been used by the NYC2012 Olympic-bid committee – is one of the possibilities, although city officials also are “looking at other ones,” Ms. Winningham said. “We have no specific plans yet.”

The city, which will also continue to revel in its status as the Big Apple, does not need a trademark for that nickname because it is in the public domain, said spokeswoman Kate O’Brien Ahlers.

– Associated Press

QUEENS

WOMAN SAVED DURING FILMING OF COMMERCIAL

EMTs with the Fire Department saved yet another life yesterday at a most unusual time, fire officials announced. As they stood on 48th Avenue and Central Boulevard in Queens filming a public service announcement, a woman bent on jumping to her death in the East River ran through the group. Two quick-thinking EMTs, Peter Glennon and Wendell O’Brien, chased the woman and pulled her to safety as she was climbing over the railing that separated her from the icy waters, a fire department spokesman said. The woman was unharmed and sent to Elmhurst Hospital for evaluation.

– Special to the Sun

BROOKLYN

TRANSIT WORKER FINDS BAG CONTAINING BODY PARTS

A transit worker found a bag containing human remains early yesterday inside a Brooklyn subway tunnel, authorities said.

The discovery was made at about 3 a.m. during a routine track inspection outside the Nostrand Avenue station in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The body parts – two legs severed just below the torso – had been stuffed in a plastic bag, police said. Subway service was disrupted for more than three hours on the A line while police investigated.

– Associated Press

MANHATTAN

FAMILY SEARCHES FOR MAN WHO HAS ALZHEIMER’S

An East Harlem family is searching for their father who wandered off from a senior facility on East 107th Street in Manhattan last Tuesday. “Everyone in the family is looking for him,” Paula Milano said of her father, 74-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, Vincente Maldonado. “I honestly don’t believe that he can get back home.”

Earlier this week, Mr. Maldonado got up to use the bathroom at the Senior Health Partners Day Care program where he took classes three times a week, but instead he walked directly out of the building and has not been seen since.

Mr. Maldonado was last seen wearing a light-blue button-down shirt with khaki pants and burgundy shoes, but he does not have a coat. He may also be wearing glasses and carrying a cane. Anyone with information on Mr. Maldonado should call the Alzheimer’s Association Safe Return program at 1-800-572-1122.

– Special to the Sun