State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver made a rare appearance at Community Board 3’s monthly meeting last night. In the Speaker’s remarks, he said the city has refused his request to divert revenues from Basketball City (a private facility opening on Pier 36) to an East River Esplanade maintenance fund.
Silver said he hopes the Economic Development Corp. will reconsider. In the next year, a top priority will be seeing progress in the East River Park project, he added.
Silver also noted a decision by the Masaryk Towers board to repair the crumbling sidewalk on Columbia Street. He highlighted his office’s role in getting the city to repave several streets in Chinatown. The speaker said he is looking forward to working with Andrew Cuomo, the new governor on “shared priorities.” But he emphasized that difficult choices lay ahead, since there will be at least $9 billion less to work with in next year’s budget.
No matter his status in Albany, constituents on the Lower East Side never seem to let Silver forget his roots. In the video below, you’ll see he maintained a pretty good sense of humor as a resident groused about not being able to hear:
Repave the streets in Chinatown? So far they’ve scrapped the top layer of asphalt and left in the middle of the night. That was last week and Division street from Canal to Bowery is still looking like crap. What’s the hold up Silver?
We’re told by Speaker Silver’s office that the prep work on the streets in question has been done and the repaving itself is scheduled to be completed next week.
Why repave that stretch at all? It wasn’t in that poor of an condition that warrant the work done. He should come down to the area and spend a day just sitting and watching.
Hopefully he won’t choke on bus fumes. That area is disgustingly congested with them.
Huh? I thought you were questioning why the work hadn’t been done. Now the work isn’t necessary at all?
It could have been done on consecutive nights or within the week. If you are going to commit to a project like this, don’t leave it in a mess and walk away only to come back to it 2 weeks later. Really, repaving it now with winter coming – how is this wise? Won’t salting and trucks with tire chains damage it? Wouldn’t it be better if it was done in spring – at least we have 6 months or more of nice streets. But really it was not in that bad of a condition to warrant repaving. From your earlier article and if the comment left on it by Ed Chen can be believed, I honestly think Silver did it just to shut us up.
Guess what, the streets are still unpaved. Just the other day I’d had to help someone up who tripped in one of the potholes left when they dug up the stretch of Division street. How long are they going to leave it unpaved? Again if you are going to make a mess, have the decency to clean up after yourself (in a timely fashion). Drop by, take a look if you don’t believe me. All this extra work for nothing when it the funds can be directed to other projects in the neighborhood.