Thank you for giving me the
opportunity to speak today. My name is ______________. I reside in Windsor
Terrace/Kensington and am speaking on behalf of myself and my community.
My comments will focus on
your plan for the 44th Assembly District and, specifically, your decision to
place portions of the neighborhoods of Windsor Terrace and Kensington in two
different Assembly Districts, the 44th and the 51st. We believe both
neighborhoods should be wholly within the 44th AD, as they have been
historically.
Your decision to put portions of both Windsor Terrace and
Kensington into different Assembly Districts makes both impacted ADs less
compact and contiguous and also divides two long-established and discrete
communities with common interests, demographics, and a history of positive civic
activism.
Simply stated, it is contrary to many of the bedrock principles which
should guide fair redistricting and good government.
Specifically, we ask that
you make Green-Wood Cemetery along 20th Street the western border of the 44th AD, not the Prospect Expressway as in the draft plan, and Green-Wood Cemetery along
McDonald Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway out to 39th Street the northern boundary
between the 44th and 51st ADs. This is a shift of only a few blocks but makes
complete sense geographically.
Without this change, the portions of Kensington
and Windsor Terrace cut out of the 44th AD will be a small afterthought in the
51st AD, divided from that district by the hundreds of acres of Greenwood
Cemetery.
The 51st AD contains the entirety of the thriving neighborhood of
Sunset Park and that neighborhood historically dominates that district. The
inevitable result of the draft plan is that the few blocks of Windsor Terrace
and Kensington attached to the vast bulk of Sunset Park will be underserved.
The proposed plan also dilutes the ability of vital neighborhood institutions
to advocate on behalf of their respective constituents. Two local elementary schools, P.S. 130 and P.S. 230, several local places of worship, such as Immaculate
Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church, the Flatbush Jewish Center, which, despite its name, is
in Kensington, and the Darul Jannah Masjid and Masjid Nur Al-Islam will all see
their catchment areas, now wholly within the 44th AD, divided between the 44th
and the 51st AD.
This is especially troublesome with respect to the mosques
which serve the growing South Asian community in Kensington and will now have
to petition two different Assemblymembers rather than having a single point of
contact.
Historically, the entirety
of the two discrete, cohesive, and well-defined neighborhoods of Kensington and
Windsor Terrace have been in the same Assembly District. This is true since at
least the reapportionment following the 1970 census.
Indeed, the phone number
for the local Assembly District Office has remained unchanged since 1974, and
many of my friends and neighbors have told me that they have it memorized or on
their speed dial. This is not just an interesting but irrelevant tidbit, it is
testimony to the fact that, at least in Brooklyn, the Assembly District is the
smallest unit of government and, traditionally, the most responsive to local
needs.
In the 1950s, Robert Moses
built the Prospect Expressway and inflicted a still-obvious scar on Windsor
Terrace and Kensington. The people of Windsor Terrace and Kensington banded
together and protested Moses’ plan, but unlike more affluent neighborhoods, such
as Brooklyn Heights and Greenwich Village, they lost, and the Prospect Expressway
was built.
Moses’ wound, however, drew the Windsor Terrace and Kensington
communities closer together, and over the following decades, they jointly fought
and defeated repeated ill-advised rezoning proposals to first permit large-scale
manufacturing and then residential overdevelopment in these thriving working
class neighborhoods.
We ask that you not reopen the wound Robert Moses
inflicted. Please make Greenwood Cemetery, not the Prospect Expressway, the
boundary between the 44th AD and the 51st AD. Please keep Windsor Terrace and
Kensington intact.
Thank you for your time.
