New Brooklyn Public Library Trustees- Can You Imagine?; One of Them Is Carolee Fink, Chief of Staff to Alicia Glen (formerly of Goldman), DeBlasio’s Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development

Carolee Fink, Chief of Staff for Alicia Glen and now a Brooklyn Public Library Trustee by de Blasio's appointment

As of today the Brooklyn Public Library’s web page giving information about its board of trustees and who is on it is not up-to-date.  It is missing some new appointments.  And it doesn’t give the name of the board’s current chair, which is Susan Marcinek who has already chaired her first board meeting.  Ms. Marcinek’s spouse, David M. Marcinek once described as a “deal making partner” as Managing Director at Goldman Sachs connects her in multiple ways with politics and library sales.
               
But maybe the BPL is not too eager for the public to always be up-to-date with who is on the board of trustees.

Before telling you that one of the new BPL trustees is Carolee Fink, you should know that when the BPL sold the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the central destination downtown Brooklyn Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library, which was also a Federal Depository library to access federal documents, that deal was pushed through at City Hall by Alicia Glen, DeBlasio’s Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development.

Ms. Glen came to the city to do development arriving from Goldman Sachs.  In December 2015 when BPL president Linda Johnson told the BPL board of trustees how the sale of that library sale went down, a shrink-and-sink deal replacing the central destination library with a luxury tower, Johnson told the BPL board of trustees that Ms. Glen had adopted the library sale and shrinkage deal as “her own” to “push it across the finish line.”  The secretive final negotiations at City Hall included raiding Department of Education funds for space in the luxury building to help the developer. 

Moreover, the trustees were told that this sale was a “huge turning point for the library system” and “across the city in general” with Johnson `pioneering’ the future of libraries.  And previously Ms. Johnson had told the city council that the shrink-and-sink sale would be a model for all three of the city’s library systems.
                   
Who is Carolee Fink?  Ms. Carolee Fink is Alicia Glen’s Chief of Staff.  Ms. Fink was appointed to BPL board by Mayor Bill deBlasio.  She replaces another of deBlasio’s appointments, Rachel Lauter, de Blasio's appointments secretary, one of his first three appointment to the BPL board.  (Appointments Secretary is a powerful and key administration position.)  Lauter has reportedly headed off to the West Coast.

At their Tuesday April 17, 2018 meeting Ms. Fink was introduced to the BPL board by fellow BPL board member Jordan Barowitz from the Durst real estate organization who said that he had known Ms. Fink “for a number of years” and described her as a “City Hall All-Star.”   Ms. Johnson was quick to add that Ms. Fink was Glenn’s chief of staff and said that Ms. Fink “loves libraries.”

Ms. Fink has been heavily and continually involved in the city’s big and high profile development deals for a number of years.  When Ms. Glen first started Ms. Fink served as her senior advisor.  Before that Ms. Fink advised Glen’s predecessor, Deputy Mayor Robert Steel. Then before returning as Glen’s Chief of Staff Ms. Fink served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer of NYC’s real estate development corporation, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC).  That was a newly created EDC position for her to oversee EDC’s real estate activity as chief development officer.

Ms. Fink has worked on the dispensing of city property, and large-scale projects such as the Hunters Point South development in Long Island City, Queens.  Creating a lot of overlap with other BPL trustees who are involved in development projects, Fink was the lead City Hall Advisor for EDC, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Hudson River Park Trust.  Similarly she is involved with the Downtown Brooklyn partnership.  It has gotten her involved with issues like the failure to create Williamsburg waterfront parks that were promised in connection with development approvals.

Ms. Glen’s Deputy Mayor position gives Glen responsibility for overseeing and coordination with the operations of EDC, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, New York City Housing Authority, Department of City Planning, Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, Department of Consumer Affairs, the Public Design Commission, and the Department of Small Business Services, the Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Housing Recovery Office. The Deputy Mayor also serves as a liaison with city, state and federal agencies and other agencies responsible for the City's economic development and infrastructure, including: NYC & Company, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Housing Development Corporation, Rent Guidelines Board, Hudson River Park Trust, The Trust for Governor's Island, Landmarks Preservation Commission, Board of Standards and Appeals, and Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The development oriented Fink also shows up on boards like the Trust for Cultural Resources of the City of New York, the Build NYC Resource Corporation, and the Moynihan Station Development Corporation and Snug Harbor.

Another BPL board member who does not currently show up on the BPL’s webpage is public finance investment banker David M. Womack (currently at Regional Municipal Finance boutique NYC and previously at Rice Financial Products Company, Citigroup, Gates Capital Corporation,
Fairmount Capital Advisors, Inc., Advest, Inc., Chemical Securities, Prudential-Bache Securities and JP Morgan Chase.) 

Like the new chair Ms. Marcinek, Womack is conveniently close for the BPL’s Grand Army Plaza Library trustee meetings, he's a Park Sloper (Ms. Marcinek is a Berkeley Carroll parent, a Park Slope school.)  Mr. Womack has served recently as Treasurer and Vice Chairman of Poly Prep Country Day School.

Citizens Defending Libraries also has some work to do to keep its web page with information about the BPL board members up-to-date.  We will add information about these two new trustees not yet listed by the BPL itself and perhaps beat them to the punch.

 BTW:  In terms of know knowing who is who or what is exactly what: On April 10th, just a few days before he attended the April 17th BPL Board meeting, BPL Trustee Michael Liburd, as Chair of Brooklyn Community Board 9's land Use Committee (where he is often criticized by the community for pushing through development proposals) was hosting a surprise presentation of the BPL's Central Library Plan, an overhaul that will make the Grand Army Plaza Library less familiar as a library. . .

Near the end of the CB9 Land Use Committee meeting Michael Liburd said “thank you very much library folks” as if these presenters were somehow separate from him---  On the contrary, what he doesn’t say is that he is a trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library, a member of the board to whom the “folks” must report and are accountable to.  If you don’t believe it without seeing it with your own eyes come to a Brooklyn Public Library Trustees meeting and watch these same presenting  “folks” deferentially report to Liburd and the other trustees.  In other words, Liburd is the BPL just as much as they are; he is himself one of these “library folks.”   

This is a particular concern in terms of what then happens immediately afterward—  Liburd tells the Land Use Committee that he is interested in giving “these folks” (he uses that term yet again) “what they are looking for.”  There was no quorum of the committee (a problem in an of itself), but then Liburd has the committee members who are present vote their approval of the proposed plan, himself leading off the vote with his own raised hand voting approval. . .

We throw that in just in case people think that myriad conflicts of interest on the BPL board may not matter.

Currently the BPL, not yet caught up, lists its trustees as such while misidentifying its chair: 

Peter Aschkenasy—Treasurer
Jordan Barowitz —Vice Chair
Michael Best
Nina Collins—Secretary
Anthony Crowell
Joseph Douek
Roseann Fodera
Blake Foote
Abe George
Nicholas A. Gravante, Jr.—Chair
Hank Gutman
Tim Ingrassia
Miriam Katowitz—Vice Chair
Kyle Kimball
Cindi Leive
Michael Liburd
Susan Marcinek
Gino P. Menchini
Cassandra Metz
Brian O'Neil
Kim-Thu Posnett
Lisa Price
Lisa Puleo
Hon. Alice Fisher Rubin
Sandra Schubert
Robin Shanus—Vice Chair
Christina Tettonis
Dr. Lucille C. Thomas
Patrick Train-Gutierrez
Antonia Yuille Williams
Ex-Officio Members & Designated Representatives
•    Hon. Bill de Blasio, Mayor of the City of New York Represented by Rachel Lauter
•    Hon. Eric Adams, President of the Borough of Brooklyn, Represented by Ingrid Lewis-Martin
•    Hon. Melissa Mark-Viverito, Speaker of the New York City Council, Represented by Reginald D. Shell
•    Hon. Scott M. Stringer, Comptroller of the City of New York, Represented by Gregory Davidzon

Want to know more about them?

Hundreds From Inwood Community Resoundingly Oppose Plans For Library Sale and Rezoning- Here’s The News Coverage

Manhattan Times:  Opposition to rezoning resounds/Resuena oposición a la rezonificación

Six hundred residents from the Inwood Community came out before the Manhattan Community Board 12 to `resoundingly” oppose the proposed sale of the Inwood Library for redevelopment and upzoning of the Inwood community to which real estate interests working with city and library officials have wedded that sale.  We understand that, in addition to the 600 residents who got into the meeting, not all of whom could testify, there were probably another 200 members fo the community who were turned away, unable to even get in to the meeting.

Here is recent coverage of what is happening in Inwood.

•    Manhattan Times:  Opposition to rezoning resounds/Resuena oposición a la rezonificación, by Sherry Mazzocchi, February 28, 2018.  (Note: We find it fascinating that the Manhattan Times, important for its political influence and when it supports local politicians, is published by Luis A. Miranda, Jr. Who is in turn the father of a very famous resident of Inwood, Lin-Manuel Miranda so well known for the Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

•    City Limits:  600 People Pack Board’s Inwood Rezoning Hearing, By Abigail Savitch-Lew, February 23, 2018.

•    City Limits:  Ahead of Rezoning Hearing, Inwood Groups Release Merged Platform, By Abigail Savitch-Lew, February 22, 2018

•    Congressmember Adriano Espaillat Press Release: Inwood Library Plan a Trojan Horse for Uptown, March 6, 2018.

Interestingly, plans for the Inwood Library were just released, but they were released too late for community residents to comment on them at the hearing.  Interesting tactic on timing.

•    Curbed: Inwood Library redevelopment will create 175 affordable apartments- The apartments will be part of a 14-story building with a new three-story library at the base of the structure, by Tanay Warerkar, March 7, 2018.

Here is the testimony that Citizens Defending Libraries delivered to the community board:

•    Testimony Respecting Proposed Sale of Inwood Library for Redevelopment and Upzoning of the Inwood Community, February 20, 2018

The community's message in chalk outside the library vs. that of elected officials creating "done deals" without public knowledge or participation: Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer standing next to City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez in blue suit as he promotes the sale of the Inwood Library.  The man with the folded arms on Gale Brewer's other side is from de Blasio's HPD, also there to promote the sale of the Inwood Library. The man with the lowered head is a PR official from the NYPL.

Open House New York Hosts an NYPL Presentation of Its Mid-Manhattan Library “Renovation” Plan

From left to right: Elizabeth Leber, Francine Houben, Iris Weinshall, and Gregory Wessner

On Tuesday March 6, 2018, with Open House New York hosting, the NYPL presented its renovation plans for The New York Public Library’s Mid-Manhattan Library to an audience of architects and the architecturally interested.

The NYPL’s presenters were Iris Weinshall, Chief Operating Officer of The New York Public Library (and wife of Senator Charles Schumer); and architects Francine Houben, Founding Partner/Creative Director, Mecanoo Architecten, and Elizabeth Leber, Partner, Beyer Blinder Belle.  They were introduced by Open House New York Executive Director Gregory Wessner who afterward moderated a brief discussion of the plans with the audience submitting suggested questions on index cards.

One such question submitted on an index card

Open House New York exposes the New York public to important architectural projects, often with site visits.  In this case pictures of the project and a virtual reality film of it were shown on the impressively huge screen of the SVA Theatre at 333 West 23rd Street.

Citizens Defending Libraries equipped the audience with flyers beforehand as they entered the theater.  Our flyer is below.

CDL Flyer for event- Click to enlarge

Here is the text:

What’s Happening to
Manhattans’ Central Destination Libraries?
What’s Happening to NYC’s Libraries?
Where Are the Books?

What happened to the Donnell Library and all its books?  It was sold off for a pittance in a shrink-and-sink deal, replaced by a luxury tower (just like the second biggest library in Brooklyn).  See: PICTURE & VIDEO Gallery: Opening Ceremony For 53rd Street “Replacement” For Donnell Library- “Where the Hell Is Donnell” Demonstration Outside.

Why are we spending millions on a glitzy consolidating shrinkage of the Mid-Manhattan Library and selling off SIBL, the city’s biggest science library, while the architects promise the NYPL trustees that even the paltry reduced book collection that results can later be done away with?  Why are library officials telling us to get our science from the internet as net neutrality is attacked?  See: As NYPL Senior Execs Present Pretty Pictures To City Council Of Expensive Mid-Manhattan Do-Over Renovation They Neglect To Mention One Thing: Rush To Immediately Sell SIBL (at a suspiciously low price?) To Very Interesting Buyer.

Why is the NYPL spending millions to commercialize the 42nd Street Central Reference Library with a wine-serving restaurant to replace its Map Room facilities and a new “exit buy the gift shop” while the famed central stacks designed to hold three million now exiled books sit empty?  See: Citizens Defending Libraries: NYPL’s Presentation of its “Master Plan” to alter and commercialize the 42nd Street Central Reference Library and Committee to Save the New York Public Library: Response to the NYPL Master Plan - Improving A Research Library For The 21st Century.

“There is little in this plan that advances the goal of providing researchers with faster and better access to NYPL’s collections; in fact, the plan to relocate the maps does exactly the opposite. . . NYPL’s promise of an open, transparent, participatory planning process has a hollow ring when its trustees approve a master plan based on a video and a few renderings without public consent. . .   A master plan that ignores the stacks is no master plan at all.” (CSNYPL)

AND Read more at Citizens Defending Libraries about the real estate deals between Blackstone’s Stephen A. Schwarzman and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, their involvement in selling libraries and America’s public assets.

Sign our petition on the web: Citizens Defending Libraries

* * * * 

Francine Houben, the architect from the Dutch firm of Mecanoo

These NYPL presentations are highly scripted and PR vetted before they are made so that when you hear them more than once there is usually little deviation from what you have heard before, even if Tuesday’s presentation was pitched in somewhat more architectural terms.  What is always most interesting is when something slips through the tight seams of the presentation that amounts to an admission against interest, or in the case of architects presenting, an admission against the client’s interest.  In this vein, Francine Houben, the architect from the Dutch firm of Mecanoo made statements about squeezing into the renovated Mid-Manhattan those things they want to fit there.

During her presentation she said:

And of course there is this dotted line [around a color graph up on the screen of multiple functions that it was the goal to include in the building] . . In a way, we wanted too much happening in one building.

And went on just a bit later to say:

I think it will be a very workable building, but at the same time it’s also a compact building.  It’s not that big.  It’s the largest branch library, but it’s not- uh- uh -uh not a very great- uh a big building.   

As Houben faltered, architect Elizabeth Leber of Beyer Blinder Belle, intervened, changing the subject to how the renovated library was intended to provide everybody with an all accommodating cradle-to-grave library experience.

Although Houben referred to the Mid-Manhattan library as the “largest branch library,” that does not distinguish it for what it really is, a central destination library intended to have the most complete circulating collection in Manhattan.  In fact, Mid-Manhattan is a central destination library just like two of the other special function libraries for which the NYPL plans, in a consolidating shrinkage, are now having Mid-Manhattan take over.  Those two other central destination libraries are the once esteemed and beloved Donnell Library and SIBL, the Science, Industry and Business Library.

At one point Iris Weinshall was asked about what was happening to SIBL, including the science library that the NYPL is doing away with entirely.  There was a gasp heard from some in the audience when Weinshall explained bluntly: “We sold it.”  (The NYPL sold it to the fabulously wealthy son of a librarian who made his yacht and vintage airplane fleet supporting fortune in science.)

One of the things that didn’t come out when Houben alluded to how the sufficiency of the remaining space at the renovated Mid-Manhattan could be debatable, was that the renovated library will actually have less space than the existing MML.  That might seem counter-intuitive, since the NYPL is introducing new rooftop space, but Veronika Conant of the Committee to Save the New York Public Library calculates that with only 100,000 square feet, the “renovated” library will have one third less space than the pre-renovation library.  This significant loss of valuable floor space is due to the floor space lost through the creation of atriums in the building.

The overall shrinkage was never made clear when the “renovation” was presented to the City Council or to the Community Board.  Nor was it truly clear when the plan was presented to the NYPL trustees.

The NYPL also tries to obscure the overall shrinkage by pointing out how work space at the library will be transformed into public space, by which they mean space accessible to the general public space (all space, including work spaces at libraries, is “public” space.)

The loss of books at the libraries was obfuscated in the presentations and in the responses to questions.  No one would have known from what was presented that the previous incarnation of the Mid-Manhattan was designed to hold 700,000 books, far more than the 400,000 the NYPL sometimes talks about the new MML holding.  Nor would anyone have known that later the Mid-Manhattan was supposed to absorb another 175,000 books from just one of Donnell’s collection when that central destination library was shut down.

When presenting this MML plan to the NYPL trustees, Francine Houben brazenly assured them that there could be even fewer books in the library in the future: “They are not structural, the shelves, you can take it away later if you want.”  (We have since publicized her remark.)

Before this architectural audience on Tuesday, Ms. Houben was only slightly more circumspect in her phrasing. First she described the central stacks around which the 42nd Street Central Reference Library across the street was famously designed as “problematic” because they are “structural.”  Those 42nd Street stacks were designed to hold three million research books and in a marvel of engineering deliver them efficiently and quickly to readers.

One big difference with the stacks in the SASB Building [i.e. the 42nd Reference Library] is they are structural, which make them very problematic.  Here [in the MLM redesign] is flexible, so I don’t know, in a hundred years there’s maybe more, maybe less books, you can even make something else out of it.  So it’s flexible.

Houben calls the reference library “the SASB Building,” which has been renamed as advertising and brand name burnishment for NYPL trustee Stephen A. Schwarzman, head of the Blackstone Group, recently in the news for being the first CEO to pull in an annual income of more than $1 billion.  His crossing of that financial line this year was probably helped by his spearheading of Trump administration-assisted plans to sell off and privatize American infrastructure.

It must be noted that Ms. Houbenm, along with the Beyer Blinder Belle team, is also one of the primary architects that the NYPL has engaged to "renovate" the 42nd Street Central Reference Library Carrère & Hastings designed building.  So for her to refer to what is almost universally recognized as the genius of that building's design, the way it research stacks are incorporated integrally into its function and plans is supremely disconcerting.  It is also a window into the NYPL's thinking about the building, one at odds with how the NYPL has represented to the public that it has an open mind about the future of those stacks, which it now official says it intends to treat as an afterthought to the "renovation" it is launching for that building.

The presenters were asked about whether the NYPL was going to reduce books because of the concept of the world now being in the “digital age.”  The question was: “Why have books at all?”  Iris Weinshall gave a perfunctory and safe answer about how the NYPL wanted to provide both physical books and digital books while acknowledging the obvious, that people do like to hold physical books.  She steered clear and at a very safe remove from the much more complete answer she could have given and the slew of nuanced issues that question invokes.

Ms. Houben explained the lack of bookshelves and the reduction of books as a vision of the future to which she subscribed:

In a library you should not have shelving that is blocking views.  So if we would put all the books back, so these are the kinds of shelving system, we would only have just have a little bit,  few place, for people sitting together to study.  Come on!: This is not `the library of the future.'

(Science fiction writers, with perhaps better imaginations than Ms. Houben’s, have had a field day imagining the “Library of the Future.”)

There was no discussion about how expensive the “renovation” is, about $2,000 a square foot.

The evening got off to an amusing start with Gregory Wessner, the Open House host for the evening, introducing the discussion with his memories of the blissful refuge that he, as a youth, had taken in Mid-Manhattan’s air conditioning.  Apparently he didn’t get the memo from the NYPL saying that one reason it had wanted to sell Mid-Manhattan entirely (which our library defending efforts helped prevent) was that the NYPL was telling the public that the building couldn’t be adequately air conditioned.

Ms. Houben mobilized against any favorable reminiscing about the old Mid-Manhattan telling the audience that the building smelled: “you could also smell the building.”  Elizabeth Leber. However, was more complimentary about how the building, given its commercial history as a department store, “had great bones.”   It was intriguing to learn that the shape of the site and the building heralds back before that when the a Vanderbilt mansion and carriage house had stood there.  Belying its coherent facade, the building was actually built in phases over time.

Much was made of how architecturally appropriate it was that the MML building is the same period as the 42nd Street Reference library across the street.  No mention was made of the fact that SIBL, just is a ways further south in another former department store on Fifth Avenue, the former Altman’s, is also of the same period with the same good bones.  Those good bones were taken advantage of to make it the “library of the future” in 1996.

The last big news of the evening for the architecturally omnivorous was about the finishes that will be used.  Red carpeting has been chosen because it echos the red carpeting used in the research library across the street.  Also, they have not yet selected furniture, but they know it has to be sturdy and that they should go with vinyls rather than upholstery because of the heavy use.  (The durable furniture that was discarded was worn because it had been subjected to decades of heavy use.)

Iris Weinshall, Chief Operating Officer of The New York Public Library and wife of Senator Charles Schumer who receives significant funds from Stephen Schwarzman and Blackstone

Elizabeth Leber, Partner, Beyer Blinder Belle

Forum: Where Do You Get Your News? What Are The Channels of Public Information Communication You Can Plug Into?

Assembling for News forum

On Sunday, March 4, 2018 Weaving The Fabric of Diversity Committee of Brooklyn's First Unitarian Universalist Congregation sponsored a forum that should be of interest to all library defenders*: Where Do You Get Your News? What Are The Channels of Public Information Communication You Can Plug Into?  It is intended that this forum be the first of a number of such forums relating to this subject.

(* The discussion was moderated by Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michal D. D. White.) 

You can listen to a recording of the forum (one hour twenty minutes): Where Do You Get Your News? (audio via Dropbox) or Where Do You Get Your News (audio via Soundcloud) or
Where Do You Get Your News (audio via Chirbit).

Audio on Soundcloud below.


Audio on Chirbit below


Check this out on Chirbit  

This page will also be updated to supply links to a Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube forum video.
  
The afternoon discussion (at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation Chapel,119-121 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201) was an exchange information and ideas about how to get our information about important events in the world.  The discussion was promoted with questions about such things as: Where do we go to seek reliable news and complete information?  Should the country’s main stream media have reported the recent succession of unprecedentedly calamitous weather events without mentioning climate change?  Does a media drumbeat for war seem off-base? Do we hear about its cost?  Picking up newspapers, do we feel like you are reading compiled corporate press releases? What about Voting irregularities in the last election? As much of media ownership is consolidated in fewer corporations and when a wealthy few with disinformation agendas like the Kochs buy up ownership of outlets like Time magazine, where does truth take refuge to be found?  If your media literacy tells you that the most important part of narratives you are being served is what has been edited out how do you find what fills in the blanks?  Let’s identify what kinds of critical stories go unreported and how can we find out about them.

Conversely, when things need to become news, need to be known by the general public, what channels are there to transmit that information?  When structural reforms need to be made in our society they cannot be made unless we are able to exchange information about the changes that are needed: Serviceable channels for circulating information may be our threshold basic need.  How reliable is social media as an avenue for transmitting information and in what ways is it deceptively not?

Grist For Thought Sheet For the Forum

The sheet below was distributed at the forum as grist for thought and discussion.

Grist for thought.  (Click to enlarge- You can also print it.  Or you can save the image to zoom in on it.)

Facebook Event Pages

Two Facebook Event pages were posted for the event (and are still available for viewing).  The Citizens Defending Libraries is still useful if you want to see posted articles about the media or want to post additional such articles on that page.**  It is also possible to post comments on this page:

•        One Facebook Event Page is posted by Citizens Defending Libraries (if you click on "see all posts" on the event page there are postings of relevant articles for discussion).

•        The second Facebook Event Page is by the UUU Weaving the Fabric of Diversity host.

(** For instance, one piece of reading we suggest that is very relevant to the discussion is the section of Citizens Defending Libraries web page: It's Not Just The Real Estate Industry Threatening Libraries: Examining The Panoply of Other Threats.  Although the purpose of that page is to talk about threats to libraries is is also about threats to free flow of information and the forces that seek to control information or influence how it is presented.

Here are some pictures of that afternoon.

End of February Updates For Library Defenders on Jared Kushner’s Conflicts of Interest (not to Mention Schwarzman and Blackstone) That Put the Public at Risk

As library defenders know, when the Donnell Library was sold NYPL trustee Stephen A. Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group was on one side helping to push the library out of public ownership and Jared Kushner, Trump son-in-law and now “presidential advisor” was a principal financial beneficiary on the other.

Conflicts of interest can lead to the plundering of public assets.

Now we have some end of February, breaking news updates about Jared Kushner’s business conflicts of interest and how the public is apparently jeopardized by them.

Jared Kushner’s temporary high level security clearance has been revoked because of the conflicts of interest his business interests pose.

The Washington Post reported:

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

(See: Washington Post- National Security- Kushner’s overseas contacts raise concerns as foreign officials seek leverage,  By Shane Harris, Carol D. Leonnig, Greg Jaffe and Josh Dawsey February 27, 2018.)

The New York Times reported on the Washington Post's coverage:

     . .  American officials had intercepted conversations among officials from at least four foreign governments — China, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and Israel — about using business opportunities to seek leverage over Mr. Kushner. One American official with knowledge of American intelligence confirmed that one of the countries, the U.A.E., has seemed particularly interested in cultivating ties to Mr. Kushner.

(See: Jared Kushner’s Security Clearance Downgraded, by Michael D. Shear and Katie Rogers Febrary 27, 2018.)

If foreign countries can manipulate Jared Kushner by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and naivete about government, what about our clever homegrown business moguls?

Asked and answered?

The next day the New York Times reported on huge loan deals for Kushner after meetings with him in the White House.   (See: Kushner’s Family Business Received Loans After White House Meetings (Apollo, the private equity firm, and Citigroup made large loans last year to the family real estate business of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s senior adviser) by Jesse Drucker, Kate Kelly and Ben Protess, February 28, 2018.)

And Kushner’s old friend Mr. Schwarzman?

The same Times article went on to report:

Mr. Kushner has also met at the White House with Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the private equity firm Blackstone, which in the past has lent money to Kushner Companies for several projects, though all before the election. Until August, Mr. Schwarzman was the head of a White House business advisory council.

“Blackstone has not done any business with Kushner Companies since the election, nor has Steve ever discussed private business matters with Mr. Kushner,” said a Blackstone spokeswoman.

Does that Blackstone denial serve to give an adequate inkling of what the whole story might be?  Read this from Noticing New York to see what may have been glanced over too swiftly by such an off-hand dismissal.   Also, think about those deals described there that Kushner was making (Scharzamn involved) and probably shouldn’t have been making if Kushner was going to lose his security clearance for these reasons.

Reporting About Multiple Troublesome Real Estate Deal Connections Between Presidential Son-In-Law/Advisor Jared Kushner and Presidential Advisor Stephen A. Schwarzman, New York Times & Press Overlook Connections, Including Library Sale, Monday, January 29, 2018

By the way, that last Times article: What was being discussed in one of those Kushner White House meetings before the loan went out to his business?  It was about “infrastructure policy,” that’s the selling off of American public assets like roads and bridges.  The public loses out when those assets get sold to private interests.  Who is in the front of the line to get them?  Mr. Schwarzman and his Blackstone group- Read the Noticing New York article to learn more.

2018 Brooklyn Heights Association Annual Meeting - (The BHA promoted the sale and shrinkage of the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library)

2018 Annual Brooklyn Heights Association meeting

Wednesday night was the annual meeting of the Brooklyn Heights Association.

Two non-affiliated community grassroots groups were there handing out flyers to promote worthy causes.  One group was assisted in its flyering efforts by the BHA president, but the BHA president sought to quash the flyering work of the other group.  Can you guess which is which?

    •    FLAC (Flower Lovers Against Corruption) was handing out a flyer urging protection of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden against overdevelopment in the form of an upzoning that would result in the intrusion of huge towers around what is supposed to be the protected perimeter surrounding the Garden.  With those new towers the Garden would no longer be experienced as a the bucolic nature preservation it is.

    •    Citizens Defending Libraries was handing out a flyer urging the protection of another public commons, our libraries, and urging that the Brooklyn Heights Association lobby for a bigger “replacement” library to replace the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library that the BHA helped destroy.

The group that the BHA didn’t want handing out information to the attending public was us, Citizens Defending Libraries, and the fact that the Brooklyn Heights Association would seeks to stymie us as we informed the community that we were beseeching the Heights Association to come out for a bigger better library (while selectively helping our comrade-in-arms activist group also looking to preserve the public commons and realm), is indicative of the increasingly elitist and dictatorial behavior of the Heights Association.   . . . Is it purely coincidence that this was the year that the Heights Association abandoned its three decade tradition of fundraising house tours because board no longer thought the general public should be invited in to see the stately homes of neighborhood residents?

Every year in recent history the Brooklyn Heights Association has conducted its annual meetings in ways that increasingly circumscribe public feedback, comment and input about what people want in the community.   The timing of such curtailment coincides to a great degree with something the BHA did against the community’s wishes and disregarding its objections: That was the BHA coming out in favor of selling and shrinking the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library in downtown Brooklyn.

Here are the two flyers, FLAC’s and our Citizens Defending Libraries flyer respectively, handed out at the annual meeting.

FLAC Flyer - Click to enlarge

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Citizens Defending Libraries flyer

Here is the text of the Citizens Defending Libraries flyer:

IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO LOBBY FOR A BIGGER LIBRARY

For years running the Brooklyn Heights Association supported the sale and shrinkage of the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the central destination downtown Brooklyn Heights Business, Career and Education Library.  As a result, replaced in a luxury tower shrink-and-sink deal, that library, now a hole in the ground, will be smaller, more underground and will have far fewer books (while a looming tower overshadows Cadman Plaza Park).

Not long before, BHA support had won the community the expansion and complete upgrade of the library.  It is not too late for the BHA to reverse course again and lobby for a bigger replacement library.  (This would also restore funds raided from the Department of Education!) 

ALLOWING SALES THAT LOOT OUR LIBRARIES,
(pushing our libraries out the door to plundering plutocrats, handing them over to developers) HAS CONSEQUENCES

It has been noted that if Steve Mnuchin had been vigorously prosecuted at the local level for his business’s mortgage fraud, misrepresentations, backdating and falsification of documents to rev up the pace of his OneWest foreclosure mill, he wouldn’t be Treasury Secretary, appointed by Donald Trump today- Similarly, had NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigated the shrink-and-sink Donnell Library plunder with Blackstone’s Stephen A. Schwarzman involved on the selling side and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner as principal financial beneficiary, those two Trump henchmen might not be in significant positions of power today.  The whole political landscape at the national level could be different, not to mention having healthier local politics.

When our local officials and organizations allow the corrupt plundering of valuable public assets, like the shrink-and-sink Brooklyn Heights Library deal modeled on the sale of Donnell with some of the same people in the background, it feeds the beasts who go on to prey on us in so many other ways.

It doesn’t serve us that Stephen A. Schwarzman, spearheading Trump’s economic policy and sale of American infrastructure, is also one of Senator Schumer’s biggest donors, just as Schumer’s wife’s connections with selling libraries and privatizing public assets also do not.  City Councilman Steve Levin misleadingly assured that he would do his job and insist on transparency respecting the library sales but, betraying his constituents, never has. Thus the lack of transparency in Brooklyn Heights helps Donnell sink unchallenged into the sunset (even as Preet Bhrara investigated the mayor’s play-to-play).

Sign our petition on the web: Citizens Defending Libraries

The BHA reported this year that it had constructively received a donation of $2 million from the law firm of  Jenner & Block for the pro bono work that attorney Richard Ziegler has done attempting to block development of towers at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.  Unfortunately, the faltering fights against development in the park, the over-tall Pierrehouse included (same architect involved in trashing the library) are examples of fights where the BHA entered the fray late.  “A stitch in time saves nine.”
                                       
The Heights Association’s cause–de-jour at the meeting is an effort by the association to get legislation passed in Albany to allow reconstruction of the cantilevered BQE (Brooklyn Queens Expressway) roadways under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to be handled through a “Design Build” contract rather than through the normal competitive bid processes that are normally prescribed for this kind of public construction.  The Brooklyn Heights Association is promoting passage of the legislation with a petition and other lobbying efforts including a bus trip to Albany.

The BHA’s featured speaker of the evening, NYC Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner and Chief Bridge Officer Robert Collyer, addressed the subject.  Interestingly, he mentioned that the Pier 6 Towers being built near the BQE in Brooklyn Bridge Park and other luxury towers going up in the vicinity were going to make the needed repairs to the BQE more difficult to do.  He said that the impending tower construction was creating a “narrow window” to get the repairs done as efficiently as possible.  We know that some library defenders have raised the question of how construction to build the luxury tower to replace the library may conflict awkwardly with BQE repairs as it is predicted that the Hudson Companies construction at the former library site will often block both Clinton Street and Cadman Plaza West.  This might happen just as traffic from the BQE is diverted through the same set of neighborhood streets.

Collyer noted that Furman Street under the BQE needed to be raised because of climate warming and rising sea levels.  He said there was no plan to raise the levels of the BQE roadways.

When Mr. Collyer was asked why the “Design Build” legislation was not yet enacted, he said that it had not passed in the NYS senate, but said that he did not comment on politics.

The Brooklyn Heights Association has communicated to the community its conclusion that the BQE should be reconstructed via a “Design Build,” contract and it has communicated this to the community as if it is a no-brainer.  It did not offer for discussion any of the reasons that “Design Build” could be less preferable.  The BHA may have reached the right conclusion about this, but it is hardly a no-brainer.

“Design Build” diminishes certain competitive bid and cost protections.  It also scrambles loyalties and duties of those doing the construction for better and/or worse giving the overseeing city public works engineers less control over the project.  It could possibly be argued that the balance of interests in play if a “Design Build” contract is used for this section of the BQE is that the work, including work on the Heights Promenade would be completed more quickly, but at a higher cost paid for by all the city’s residents.  (Neither is absolutely provable or certain.)

Through performance specifications, one has to be careful that “Design Build” does not encourage inappropriate cost cutting on the part of the contractors.  For instance, costs may be cut that increase the cost of maintenance and repair later on.  That is one reason that one of the several variations of “Design Build” contracts are DBOM contracts, “Design-Build-Operate-Maintain” contracts.  But as you contemplate such a concept, you may begin to recognize how “Design Build” partakes in an overall and increasing tendency to contract out more and more of the traditional work of government to the private sector.

There is plenty of work, there are plenty of endeavors, that, final analysis are probably best handled by the private sector, but when more and more work is handed off to private sector and the government that is supposed to oversee that work and is simultaneously starved of resources it can be a problem.  It is especial a problem when there is corruption that needs to be protected against.  It should be remembered that government is supposed to be the guardian of the public interest, even if it is more and more often abdicating or selling off that function.

Point of interest: When it came to the sale and shrinkage of the library, Citizens Defending Libraries asked the Brooklyn Heights Association to get involved in fighting the corruption involved and the Brooklyn Heights Association declined.

Quite a few times during the meeting Mr. Collyer was asked about what design decisions were being made with respect to repairing the BQE and answered that he didn’t know, that was to be determined . . . (in essence by a contracting out).  His answers in this regard were quite consistent with being headed toward a contracting out of such analysis to the private sector with a “Design Build” handling of the matter.

Here are articles about the considerations inherent in deciding whether or not to do a “Design Build” contract.

    •    American City and County- The growth (and growing pains) of design-build construction, Edward J. Pabor and Richard Pennington, April 1, 2012 (terrible date for a serious article)

    •    Schiff Hardin- Seven Legal Issues Unique to Design-Build, by Mark C. Friedlander, June 5, 2015

    •    Design-Build Effectiveness Study, Final Report, Prepared for: USDOT - Federal Highway Administration, January 2006

Want to read more about the meeting?  Here is where you can go:

    •    Brooklyn Daily Eagle- Repairs to Brooklyn Heights BQE & Promenade hit home at BHA Annual Meeting- Waterfront tunnel not option, dire local traffic scene feared; Bus trip to lobby Albany, By Mary Frost

Testimony Respecting Proposed Sale of Inwood Library for Redevelopment and Upzoning of the Inwood Community

The community's message in chalk outside the library vs. that of elected officials creating "done deals" without public knowledge or participation: Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer standing next to City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez in blue suit as he promotes the sale of the Inwood Library.  The man with the folded arms on Gale Brewer's other side is from de Blasio's HPD, also there to promote the sale of the Inwood Library. The man with the lowered head is a PR official from the NYPL.

Here is the testimony that Citizens Defending Libraries has submitted to Manhattan Community Board 12 and its Land Use Committee respecting the proposed sale of the Inwood Library for redevelopment and the upzoning of the Inwood community.

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February 20, 2018

Mr. Wayne Benjamin, Chair
Land Use Committee
Manhattan Community Board 12
c/o Ebenezer Smith, District Manager
Manhattan Community Board 12
ebsmith@cb.nyc.gov

Re: Testimony respecting proposed sale of Inwood Library for redevelopment and upzoning of the Inwood community

Dear Manhattan Community Board 12 and Land Use Committee:

Don’t let the NYPL and de Blasio administration put another notch in the belt sacrificing a public library to real estate interests with real estate deals that harm and don’t benefit the public as they waste and squander public assets.  We are asking that Manhattan Community Board 12 and its Land Use Committee not let another such notch be put in that belt with the sale for redevelopment of the Inwood Library which is tied in with another attack on the Inwood neighborhood. . . that is the upzoning of the neighborhood as real estate greed goes on the war path.

As the community will surely testify, the upzoning will drastically change the character of the neighborhood with the expected introduction of upsurging gentrification that will displace existing residents.  Existing lower income residents are likely to be hit especially hard.  Plus what thought has been given to how the existing fabric of the neighborhood and its culture will be shredded as change evicts the familiar and affordable mom and pop stores?

The sale of the library has been laminated to the upzoning.  Why?  What a strange thing to do.  At the developer meeting held in connection with the prospective sale of the Inwood Library the developers when they asked were told by city and library officials the library sale would only go forward if the upzoning goes forward.  Therefore the developers were told not to prepare any packages of proposals that did not assume that the upzoning would not go forward at the same time.

But to show you how out of control this process is, a developer at the meeting noted that the Request For Proposal guidelines specified that the proposals for a redevelopment of what is now the Inwood library should take into account the character and nature of the surrounding neighborhood.  The developer pointed out that the upzoning was going to change the neighborhood tremendously, probably in ways that can’t even be predicted.  He asked whether proposals should take into account the character of the existing neighborhood or the character of the neighborhood as it might possibly be after the effect of the rezoning.  “You figure it out,” library and city officials told him.  That illustrates not only how out of control these proposals are, it also illustrates an attitude that is execrably cavalier.  The last thing it illustrates is just how completely laissez faire public officials are being in turning over the public welfare to the whims (or worse) of the real estate industry and those trolling for profit at public expense.

The real estate industry looks at libraries, not as the community does, but as playthings with which to manipulate the community and perhaps bamboozle it into accepting what is against the community’s interest.  At a January 12, 2015 New School conference that addressed the real estate uses of libraries the New School’s host told the assembled professionals that in the end “a library is real estate” and that she had found:

it's often a nice placating gesture in a real estate development. You want to do commercial development?: Put a library in it and you win a new public that you might not have had on your team initially.

The sale of the Inwood Library may have been strangely and confusingly laminated to the upzoning in this instance, but probably the greater fool-or-confuse-the-community manipulation associated with the proposal to redevelop and privatize much of the site where the library now stands is the talk of the so-called affordable housing that is unlikely to replace the affordable housing lost when existing residents are displaced.

It is wrong to sell a library that has just been renovated and expanded.  It is impossible to recoup that investment when you destructively tear down and have to rebuild all over again.  The proposal is to give up most of the library real estate that the public now owns and put a replacement library in the bottom of a privately owned residential building.  That means the library can never be expanded when it needs to be.  If the library were to be put into a city-owned building that was also commercial it could be expanded, but that is not the proposal. .

. . . The proposal is the shrinkage of what the public owns, a shrinkage of the public realm, a shrinkage of the public commons.  And because libraries are the public commons that represent democracy so quintessentially, this is a shrinkage of democracy.  Because the shrinkage is laminated to an overall upzoning of the neighborhood that shrinkage is proportionately all the greater.

And the NYPL and de Blasio officials do not care one whit about that loss.  At the meeting they held for developers submitting RFP’s to tear down the Inwood library and acquire the site for redevelopment we made sure certain questions were asked and answered.  Will developer proposals supplying a bigger library get extra credit? No. Will developer proposals supplying more above ground space for the library get extra credit?  No. Will developer proposals that create the possibility for an expansion of the library in the future get extra credit?  No.  Is there a particular shape or configuration that would be good for the library that officials would like to specify would be good (rather than just leaving the public with the dregs after the developer has creamed off for itself the space the developer likes best)?  No.   

It is to be remembered that all these Nos were after the plan to sell the library was presented to the community as a `done deal’ with unaccountable local politicians signing onto the plan before it was ever communicated to the public for reaction in any way.

As others in the community will surely testify, the library is an essential ancillary facility to the neighborhood schools it abuts and is immediately proximate to.  These schools stand to suffer loss for a generation of the student classes passing through.  This loss should not be underestimated.  No interim arrangement is going to come close to meeting the community’s true needs- But then, from the standpoint of the real estate industry, and therefore city and library officials, that is not the point.  Don’t let them put another notch in their belt.

If you let them sell the Inwood Library for a concocted real estate scheme, you put every other library in New York City more at risk.  And even if you want to move out of Inwood after the rezoning and loss of the library you stand to be affected in those other neighborhoods.

Citizens Defending Libraries, formed in the beginning of 2013, has been witness to the callousness of the many concocted plans of the real estates industry supported by the library and city administration officials. We invite you to study our web page where we lay out and catalogue a record on the part of those officials that is not at all pretty.  Please consult the attached addendum with more information about what is on our web page.  It is the intent of Citizens Defending Libraries to shine a light and hold accountable over the long term all those participating in the irresponsible sale of our libraries.

Sincerely,
       
Michael D. D. White
Citizens Defending Libraries   

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Citizens Defending Libraries Web Page Information

Citizens Defending Libraries Main Web Page is at:

https://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2017/12/citizens-defending-libraries-main-page.html

Or you can read the page LONG FORM if you want to read straight through to go more deeply into topics without clicking on them to do so as you read:       

https://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2017/12/

Here is the way that our web page now breaks down into important subject headings, each of which can be individually read:

SIGN OUR PETITION TO SUPPORT LIBRARIES (Defend our libraries, don't defund them. . . . . fund 'em, don't plunder 'em)

When Citizens Defending Libraries Started and Why
Achievements of Citizens Defending Libraries

What Libraries Are Affected By New York City Plans To Sell Libraries As Real Estate Deals, Shrink And Underfund Libraries And Eliminate Books?

Are The Libraries Being Shrunk, Pushed Underground, Books and Librarians Eliminated Because the World Is "Going Digital"? NO, That's NOT a Reason It Should Happen.

Are Libraries Just Too Expensive a Luxury to Pay For? Absolutely NOT!

NYC Libraries Are Being Sold For Huge Losses And For Minuscule Fractions of Their Value

WHO Is Selling Our Libraries?

When Did The Plans To Sell Libraries (Plus The Launching of The Concomitant Underfunding of Libraries) Begin?

It's Not Just The Real Estate Industry Threatening Libraries: Examining The Panoply of Other Threats

Who Is Hurt Most When Libraries Are Defunded and Dismantled? The Poor, The Racially Discriminated Against, Scholars, Future Leaders

How Many Books Are Disappearing From New York City Libraries?

Why Turning Libraries Into Real Estate Deals Isn't The Good Deal Library and City Development Officials Describe

Selling Libraries And The Broader Issue of Private Sector Plunder of Public Property
   
The Biggest Lies To Watch Out For When Officials Sell Libraries

How To Defend Libraries - What You Can Do