Dear Editor:
I am writing regarding Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030. The majority of the attention on television and in the newspapers has centered around the congestion pricing issue, a very regressive tax that I believe will negatively affect Queens residents. The mayor’s task force was formed to come up with proposals on how to serve a population that is expected to grow by a million residents by 2030. They had to deal with the impact of the increased pressures on housing, energy, sewage, transportation, parks, playgrounds and infrastructure.
The question I would like to ask is why does education always comes last to this administration? Nothing reveals the flawed priorities of this administration more than the fact that more than twice as many new seats in sports stadiums will be created over the next five years than new seats in schools.
One has to question the administration’s priorities when thePlaNYC task force was explicitly instructed to leave schools out of the plan.
The only mention of schools in the voluminous report, aside from opening up school playgrounds for more hours, is to use school buildings for more housing.This does not seem to be the type of foresight or planningone would expect from a billionaire mayor who has publicly stated that he wants education to define his legacy as mayor.
Let’s remember that these privately owned — but publicly subsidized, in the form of corporate welfare — sports teams will receive sizable amounts from the city’s coffers in the form of substantial tax-subsidies and tax-exemptions. The reported $360 million the city will give the Yankees in subsidies and exemptions could fund eight to 10 new elementary schools, or eight new high schools with 5,000 new seats.This doesn’t even take into consideration the ample city-provided tax-incentives that the Mets and Nets will receive.
What do you think is more important — to have enough seats in our schools for our children to learn or more sky boxes for millionaire team owners to profit from?I can assure you that the vast amount of the seats in the stadiums will not be in a price range that the average middle-class working person will be able to reasonably afford.
Every effort must be made by Chancellor Joel Klein and the mayor to face the urgent needs for more seats and smaller class sizes in our public schools.I respectfully urge the mayor to havethePlaNYC 2030 include the education capital funding needed to allow our public schools to have enough seats to be able to provide students with the sound education they are entitled to under the New York State Constitution.
David Quintana,
Ozone Park
5 years ago
