Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson Visits the April Van Nest Neighborhood Alliance Meeting
By Robert Press
The first Monday of the month is the Van Nest Neighborhood Alliance meeting, and for April the guest was Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson. BP Gibson is entering her fourth month, and mentioned many things that have already happened such as the deadly fire at Twin Parks which BP Gibson said killed seventeen people, leaving hundreds still put up in hotel rooms while new living quarters are being found for them. She spoke of a new city policy of agencies communicating with each other when one sees violations from another agency. Her office received over five-hundred new applications for community board seats other than the current board members who submitted reappointment applications. A commitment from Mayor Adams of one-hundred million dollars of the eight-hundred million dollars to refurbish the Hunts Point Market, and keep it in the Bronx. The citywide Saturday Night Lights in one-hundred schools with fifty more to come.
BP Gibson mentioned that there were one-hundred and fifty thousand applications for the one-hundred thousand citywide DYCD summer youth jobs, and then mentioned the various task forces that her office was initiating or bringing back after they were discontinued that were mentioned in her last community meeting. She then took questions such as the need for a middle school in the Van Nest area. BP Gibson said that there has to be a need for the middle school, and a landlord willing to lease the space if there is no city owned land available. On the subject of Bail Reform, BP Gibson said that ninety percent of the people released without bail have not committed another crime, but it is the ten percent who are the problem that something must be done about.
Other questions were about landlords policing themselves when it comes to violations such as no heat, which is turned on before the inspector arrives, The GED program now called HSE, the stoppage of the ERAP program due to the state running out of money, and waiting for more federal money to continue the program. Other questions were about voter apathy, the MTA, Scribe, and #62 which BP Gibson lamented on that has gone on for the past decade that the Bronx is first in everything bad, and last in everything good. Then there was the question of the White Plains Homeless Shelter, and what is next for the building. BP Gibson said that the community needs to keep alert and talk to the owner to find something that the community needs to go there. She warned that another homeless shelter proposal could pop up elsewhere in the community board area in the future. BP Gibson then received a phone call and had to leave, to go to where a shooting had just happened in the Fordham section of the Bronx.
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