Week of May 25th: Assembly Meetings, City Permit Headaches & Pushing for Clean Streets

Happy Sunday Better Block Crew and welcome to our 4 new subscribers, bringing our group to 34 people. In this group we have community activists, elected officials and constituent services reps all with the same goal: getting things done to improve our blocks. This week, we made meaningful progress on property tax reform, removing the Wasp's nest in Williamsburg and improving the vacant buildings near Fulton and Claver. Let's dive in!

Where we made progress this week:

• We had our meeting this week with Phara Souffrant Forrest, State Assembly Member. Phara's concerns about property taxes are similar to what this group is concerned about: how do we protect older residents whose taxes may go up? We aligned on next connecting with State Senator Gounardes who has been a vocal advocate of improving the system. In order to ensure our concerns are included in any reforms, we've also reached out to every member of the Real Property Taxation committee, and are setting up time with Zohran Mamdani's office and Simcha Eichenstein's office this coming week. The more people we speak to, the more likely we can ensure any property tax changes stay affordable for North Brooklyn residents

• Remi Meehan has been navigating the bureaucratic maze  of the Park's department to remove a dangerous Wasp's nest in front of a local small business in Williamsburg. Remi first reached out to an exterminator, only to learn that the city requires a permit to remove a Wasp nest from a city tree. The permit is a detailed application that asks for a city/layout plan and a site plan of the tree! After consulting with constituent services, he also learned that a certified arborist must be retained to submit a tree work permit, all at his expense. It's been a month's worth of emails to get rid of the nest, something that would probably take less than 30 minutes if the city just gave permission. A key insight in how our city governs, which also rings true with our vacant properties, is local blocks should be empowered more to just solve problems themselves. Kudos to Remi for persevering, we're not stopping until this problem is solved

Where we hit some walls: The situation in front of the vacant buildings on 1105 Fulton and 26 Jefferson unfortunately remains unchanged. I took some photos of 1105 Fulton yesterday (see attached), and the scaffolding has resulted in more trash than I've ever seen in front and the distinct aroma of urine now permeates the space (for those who don't know, it is the responsibility of the property owner to keep this clean). On the positive side, Chi Osse's office has connected us directly with the Deputy Commissioner of DOB to discuss next steps with both of these properties, we expect to speak next week. We're also looking into writing a demand letter to the owners of both properties to put additional pressure on them to take better care of their properties. If you're interested in signing on to that, let me know!

Spotlighting a new issue: The trash situation on Fulton Street from Classon to Nostrand continues to be problematic. It's a frequent source of 311 complaints, and having walked that block many times, I've experienced it directly. We're actively doing discovery to understand the current state of the problem with the leader of the Bed Stuy BID next week to learn more about what we can do. If this impacts you, reply to this email and we can work together to ensure we have cleaner streets

How you can help:

1. If you believe in what we're doing at the Better Block Project, forward this update to your friends, we want to meet them. We want to bring in more community members to expand our impact and support each other!

2. We're still actively looking for an attorney to join our efforts. We're exploring working with a pro bono practice or individual attorneys, so if you have a recommendation or know someone that might be a fit, let me know!

Finally, we're super excited about our June 8th Community BBQ  and have over 20 RSVPs so far. Please be sure to RSVP here. Building strong community requires showing up, in person, so I hope to see you there. If you want to be a part of planning the event, I can add you to the May 26th planning discussion.

That's all for this update! As always, if you want to unsubscribe, just reply and I will take you off the list.

Have a great week,

David