New York Desk

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The New York Sun

CITYWIDE

Council Overrides Veto Of Gas Prices Bill

The City Council issued its first override of a mayoral veto of a bill introduced under Speaker Christine Quinn, a move Ms. Quinn downplayed as a simple matter of disagreement between the two sides of City Hall. The council voted 43-6 to implement what the speaker said was a consumer protection bill that prohibits gas stations from changing their prices more than once a day. The measure is aimed at price gouging, but in vetoing it, Mayor Bloomberg said the law “unduly interferes with private enterprise” and would not help consumers. Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn have developed a close relationship since she took office in January. “This is the first matter where we were unable to come to a place of commonality and compromise,” Ms. Quinn told reporters yesterday.‘The mayor and I are going to agree to disagree on this.”

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

Tenants’ Bid To Buy Apartments Snubbed

A group of tenants of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village housing complexes said yesterday that their tenant-backed bid to buy the housing complex was snubbed by its owner, Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Met-Life is looking to sell the complex, with more than 100 buildings containing about 11,200 apartments for as much as $5 billion, but tenants and some local politicians want to buy the property to preserve it as affordable housing. The local council member, Daniel Garodnick, said at a press conference on the steps of City Hall yesterday that he was told “in no uncertain terms” that the tenantbacked group would not qualify to make a bid. This prompted council speaker Christine Quinn to say that the council would look at legislative and legal means to compel the landlord to accept a tenant-backed bid. A broker for CB Richard Ellis, Darcy Stacom, who is marketing the properties for Met-Life, said yesterday that the brouhaha is based on a misunderstanding. She said Met-Life always intended to accept a bid from the tenant-backed group when it successfully qualifies as a bidder.

— Staff Reporter to the Sun

Study Supports City’s Opposition to Social Promotion

A study released yesterday bolstered the position of city officials to end social promotion at the city’s public schools. Researchers from the University of Arkansas found that students in the Florida school system who were held back made significant reading improvements over students who went to the next grade level despite poor academic performance. The researchers focused primarily on the Florida school system, one of a handful in the country, including Texas, Chicago, and New York City, that rely on test-based promotion to ensure that students only proceed to the next grade if they pass a certain threshold on a standardized test. Present when the researchers presented their findings, the city’s schools chancellor, Joel Klein reiterated Mayor Bloomberg’s stated commitment to academic accountability: “If we don’t get serious about changing the system, we won’t get the results we need,” he said.

— Special to the Sun

Area Airports To Get Upgrades

Projects to ease traffic and spruce up the scenery around New York City’s airports are taking off, a group of officials announced yesterday. John F. Kennedy International and La Guardia airports — both located in Queens — and Newark Liberty International Airport in nearby Newark are on track to see a record of more than 100 million travelers this year. The trio of airports handle more passengers than any other airport system in North America, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the facilities. But all that activity means increasingly snarled traffic. The city is spending $25 million to improve access to both Kennedy Airport and the nearby hub for its new AirTrain. The rail link connects to the subway system and commuter trains, enabling riders to travel from the terminal to Manhattan in less than an hour. Other projects include streetscape improvements, like adding more trees and foliage along nearby roads, as well as additional traffic studies around La Guardia Airport. The makeover projects account for about $40 million of about $100 million in upgrade money included in the lease agreement signed by the city and the Port Authority in 2004.

— Associated Press

MTA Distributing Safety Information Brochures

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is distributing more than 750,000 updated copies of emergency evacuation information brochures to subway and commuter railroader passengers in the next several days to coincide with National Preparedness month, officials said yesterday. “It is important that customers know what to expect in the event of an evacuation and how to interact with emergency responders to keep them safe in an emergency,” the MTA’s chairman, Peter Kalikow, said. The portion of the brochures handed out on the subway will now also contain information in Chinese, Russian, Haitian Creole, Korean, Arabic, and Urdu, officials said.

— Staff Reporter of the Sun


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