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Rudy, Merchants In Mega Food Fight

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

November 27, 1996

by BOB LIFF and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers

Mayor Giuliani and opponents of the city’s megastore plan yesterday accused each other of failing to talk turkey on Thanksgiving food prices.

Merchants fighting the plan said the city Department of Consumer Affairs used bogus prices for a survey that found New Yorkers would save 30% on Thanksgiving fixings if they shopped in a food superstore instead of small, neighborhood markets.

The survey, released by Giuliani on Sunday, showed a basket of seven holiday food items cost $23.25 in small city markets — compared with $18.96 in a suburban supermarket and $18.27 in a city food superstore.

“The price of not only turkeys but all of the items that are in the Thanksgiving basket at independent supermarkets in the City of New York are substantially lower than the mayor’s press release would indicate,” said Howard Tisch, president of the Metropolitan Food Council.

Giuliani, however, claimed the survey prodded city grocers to slash prices by up to 16% since Sunday.

“Finally, these places were exposed for gouging people in New York City, and what happened is some of them reduced their prices,” Giuliani said.

“For the mayor to claim that he has reduced the prices further would require a feat of legerdemain that no wizard could ever perform,” shot back Tisch, who insisted the prices were set two weeks ago and haven’t changed.

The dispute escalated the fight over Giuliani’s plan to allow megastores of up to 200,000 square feet in manufacturing zones without approval by community boards or the City Council. Forcing stores to undergo time-consuming zoning and community reviews discourage developers from locating in the city, administration officials say.

City Council members, who are expected to vote on the issue next month, have said they will reject the plan unless megastores are subject to some reviews.

Original Story Date: 11/27/96

November 27, 1996
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Fifth May Hafta Stand Kiosks

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

November 15, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

Step aside, Saks Fifth Avenue. Move over, Bergdorf Goodman. And Tiffany’s, watch out. Newsstands may soon be coming to New York’s ritziest real estate.

The city plans to add 100 stands to the 330 already operating around Manhattan. And officials of the Municipal Arts Society said Deputy Mayor Fran Reiter told them that Fifth Ave. — home of some of the city’s toniest shops — won’t be held “sacred” when locations are picked.

Fifth Ave. merchants and esthetics experts look askance at the prospect of stands that might further congest the already heavily crowded sidewalks.

“We feel it’s inappropriate. Fifth Ave. has always been free of bus shelters and newspaper stands,” said Vanessa Gruen, special projects director for the Municipal Arts Society.

“My advice to the administration is not to go down that path,” agreed Tom Cusick, president of the Fifth Avenue Association.

Merchants along the avenue have traditionally resisted any sidewalk vendors. Their combined opposition — and heavyweight political clout — blocked any newsstands from springing up along Fifth Ave. between 42d St. and 57th Sts.

But the plan eyed by Mayor Giuliani’s administration and the City Council would replace the existing newsstands and open the new sites as part of a broader effort to open 30 automatic public toilets and 3,500 bus shelters.

City officials said all of the new fixtures would be carefully designed kiosks, probably with ads on the sides to help pay for installation and maintenance.

“We think it is going to be beautiful,” said Reiter, stressing that no locations have yet been selected.

In a bow to merchants’ fears, Reiter said any kiosks eventually designed for Fifth Ave. might be smaller, cylindrical structures that would take up less sidewalk.

The merchants weren’t appeased.

“Whether it is a square or rectangle or round shape, we don’t believe that newsstands makes sense,” complained Cusick.

But a sampling of Fifth Ave. strollers yesterday found support for the city plan. “I don’t think it will hurt if they regulate them — maybe keep them two blocks apart,” said James Morrison, 25, of Astoria, Queens.

November 15, 1996
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Rudy Hopes O’C Stays in Pulpit

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

November 11, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and LAWRENCE GOODMAN, Daily News Staff Writers

Mayor Giuliani said yesterday he would like Cardinal O’Connor to stick around awhile longer — and refused to place bets on who would be the next to lead the Archdiocese of New York.

“I better not start rating the possible successor to Cardinal O’Connor,” Giuliani said. “Cardinal O’Connor, hopefully, will continue to be with us for a long time. Maybe there’ll be an extension again of his term.”

O’Connor, 77, handed in his retirement papers to Pope John Paul almost two years ago but was told to stay put.

Yesterday’s Daily News reported that O’Connor (left) will probably stay on the job until Easter, and four possible successors are being considered: Bishop Henry Mansell of Buffalo, Bishop Edwin O’Brien of St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark and Bishop James McHugh of Camden, N.J.

The faithful at Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral had mixed reactions to O’Connor’s leaving.

Some demanded the Vatican find a successor quickly, and many said they were looking for someone with more liberal positions than O’Connor has.

“It’s time to change,” said Dorothy Chiozzi, 72, who frequently comes in from Medford, Mass., to attend services at the cathedral. “Women should be allowed to be priests. We need someone who is a little more liberal.”

O’Connor was in Rome yesterday attending celebrations of the Pope’s 50th anniversary as a priest and was unavailable for comment.

The archdiocese’s spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, said any discussion of a successor is premature.

“Cardinal O’Connor is the archbishop of New York,” Zwilling said. “He will remain the archbishop until he dies or the Pope tells him otherwise. It’s a waste of time for all this attention to be paid to something that might not happen for several more years.”

Henry Kielkucki, president of the teachers union at the archdiocese’s schools, said O’Connor has failed to connect with Catholic youth.

“O’Connor is far too conservative,” Kielkucki said. “The Church has to appeal more to young people. The kids, especially girls, are not really in tune to religion. The Church has turned its back on women.”

But Lisa Marrero, 29, a doctor from Manhattan, said she’ll be sorry to see O’Connor leave.

“He’s never afraid to defend Catholic teaching and he’s never afraid to apologize,” she said. “Nobody will ever replace him in my heart. I’ve grown up with him.”

Original Story Date: 11/11/96

November 11, 1996
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Teachers, Principals Eye Edition Additions

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

November 9, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and LAURA WILLIAMS, Daily News Staff Writers

City teachers and principals yesterday were drawing up shopping lists to spend $70 million promised by Mayor Giuliani for new textbooks.

“I already have my orders worked up,” said Yve Douglass, principal of Public School 3 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

“At the top of the list is to buy new social studies books,” she said. “Then I will buy reading materials. Then I will buy grammar books. I don’t have to worry too much about math books; math doesn’t change too much.”

The mayor yesterday confirmed that he’s earmarked tax revenue from a Wall Street boom to buy books for public schools.

The $70 million comes on top of $69 million already in the schools budget for texts this year.

“The infusion of money is for the purpose of curing what is reported to be a problem for some time — that some of the textbooks are 15, 20, 25 years old, out of date,” Giuliani said yesterday at PS 191 on W. 61st St. in Manhattan.

The Board of Education has begun assessing schools to determine which have the greatest need, said spokesman David Golub.

The money should be available within six months, Giuliani said.

School administrators said the money will help fill a gaping need.

State funding for textbooks allows for about $35 a year per student, well short of meeting demand, administrators said.

“One good social studies book is $35,” Douglass said.

“We have social studies books from six, seven years ago,” said Sheryl Moye, principal of PS 97 on E. Houston St. “In this world, things are changing as we’re talking. Look at Eastern Europe.”

Administrators said they see the funds as a sign that relations between City Hall and Livingston St. have warmed.

November 9, 1996
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Rudy Sez He’s Tops, And Dems Are Flops

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

November 9, 1996

by DAVID L. LEWIS and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers

Mayor Giuliani fired the opening salvo of the 1997 mayoral battle yesterday, slamming potential challengers as inexperienced, extremist or “machine politicians.”

While insisting he hasn’t decided to seek a second term, the Republican mayor for the first time dropped his strategic refusal to rate the chances of possible opponents.

Giuliani also touted his own political strengths, saying any reelection campaign would focus on double-digit decreases in city crime rates during his tenure.

“When I say it’s the capital of the world, which I began saying in my inaugural speech, people now accept it,” the mayor said in an interview set to air tomorrow on WCBS-TV’s “Sunday Edition.”

Giuliani criticized six possible Democratic challengers who were listed in a recent Quinnipiac College poll. Several responded with sharp return attacks. Among his exchanges:

He tabbed Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger as the Democratic front-runner, and said: “Democratic primaries are won by the most extreme candidate and, ideologically, she is the most extreme of that group.”

Messinger spokesman Leland Jones voiced surprise at the sharpness of the attack just 72 hours after Election Day, saying, “It is a little surprising that the campaign hasn’t even started, and the mayor has already decided to go negative.”

Giuliani accused City Controller Alan Hevesi of politicizing his office and labeled the Queens Democrat “very much an old-fashioned machine partisan politician.”

Hevesi shrugged off the Giuliani attack. “He is simply trying to start another personal fight,” Hevesi said.

Giuliani labeled Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer as “very much the product of Bronx machine politics.” The mayor noted that Ferrer succeeded Stanley Simon, who went to prison for his conviction in a racketeering case prosecuted by Giuliani.

Ferrer did not respond to a request for comment.

Giuliani said former Police Commissioner William Bratton would be a weak mayoral candidate because of “inexperience in many, many other areas of government.” Bratton could not be reached for comment.

The mayor said two other candidates — City Councilman Sal Albanese (D-Brooklyn) and the Rev. Al Sharpton — wouldn’t stand a chance in a Democratic primary, much less against him.

Sharpton dismissed the attack and Albanese argued he was more qualified to be mayor than Giuliani.

Original Story Date: 11/09/96

November 9, 1996
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89 + 77 = 1 HAPPY TWOSOME

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Thursday, November 07, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

He’s 89. She’s 77. For more than a decade, they lived across the street from each other, strangers in their Brooklyn neighborhood.

Yesterday, 14 years after chance brought them together on a bus trip, they tied the knot at City Hall.

And a beaming Mayor Giuliani did the honors.

“I don’t believe this am I dreaming this?” asked an overjoyed Mildred Sussman, choking back tears of joy as she kissed new hubby Al Satloff.

“She is just a very beautiful, very kind lady,” said Satloff.

The storybook courtship took root and flourished at the Trump Houses in Coney Island. Sussman lived in one building, Satloff in another.

In 1982, both signed up for the same bus trip to the Catskills.

Satloff was in the front seat when he saw Sussman struggling with her valise. Ever the gentleman, the Brooklyn retiree helped her with the bag and played Fred to her Ginger during the four-day trip.

Both were alone. His wife had died after 53 years of marriage. And she had lost her husband of 44 years.

After the trip and several dates, they became a happy couple.

“He’s a great dancer, a good lover, everything a girl could dream of,” Sussman said yesterday, recounting how friendship turned to romance.

After living apart, the couple decided to make the relationship official.

Michele Heitzner, a former Coney Island district leader who is a friend of the couple, and Giuliani arranged for the wedding ceremony in the City Hall Blue Room.

Sussman wore a periwinkle blue dress with handkerchief bottom. Satloff sported a blue, pinstriped suit.

The bride’s son, Mark, 52, his wife, Marilyn, and other relatives and friends witnessed the nuptials. Giuliani pronounced himself honored to formalize their union, then pronounced the happy couple husband and wife.

GRAPHIC: THOMAS MONASTER DAILY NEWS PIECE O’ CAKE: Newlyweds Al Satloff, 89, and Mildred Sussman, 77, dig in after City Hall nuptials yesterday. Mayor Giuliani officiated at the wedding.

November 7, 1996
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Council Will Keep Curfew off Street

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

October 28, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

It’s lights out for a proposed curfew for city teenagers. The plan, introduced with fanfare during the summer, is all but dead after it gained virtually no City Council support, Council leaders say.

The Council’s 21-member Black and Latino Caucus is opposing a curfew, and a Daily News survey of key Council members found the measure is short of the 26 votes needed for approval.

Councilwoman C. Virginia Fields (D-Manhattan), said, “I don’t think the climate in New York City is right for it.”

The plan’s chief sponsor, Councilman Thomas Ognibene (R-Queens), conceded last week that approval prospects appeared dim. He is drafting amendments to water down the bill in a bid to rally support.

They include allowing kids to stay on the street late if they are outside their homes and starting the curfew at midnight.

If that effort fails, Ognibene said he will try to take the issue “over to the people” by gathering the 45,000 signatures needed to authorize a citywide ballot referendum.

“I’m sorry if my Council members can’t get past emotional issues and start dealing with protecting the lives of children,” said Ognibene.

His original bill would ban unsupervised kids under 18 from city streets after 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and after 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The bill includes exemptions for those traveling to or from work, school, sports contests or religious and community-sponsored events.

Violators would have to perform 25 hours of community service the first time they were caught out after hours and 50 hours for subsequent offenses.

Parents who knowingly allowed their kids to violate the curfew could be slapped with fines of as much as $75 for a first offense, rising to $250 for additional violations.

Ognibene said teen curfews — which this year drew support from President Clinton — have reduced juvenile crime in many cities. A U.S. Justice Department study showed that 146 of the nation’s 200 largest cities have some form of curfew for kids.

However, a News poll in July found New Yorkers almost evenly divided on a curfew. The idea met with overwhelming opposition among teens.

The Black and Latino Caucus refused to support the measure, despite a recent pitch from Ognibene, the Democrat-controlled Council’s Republican leader.

“It’s not going to be easy to enforce, and there is the attitude of cops to our communities and the distrust that has been building,” said caucus Chairman Jose Rivera (D-Bronx).

October 28, 1996
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MEGASTORES OK’D; Fight looms for planners

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Friday, October 25, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and PETER GRANT, Daily News Staff Writers

In one of the most sweeping zoning changes in 35 years, the city Planning Commission yesterday approved Mayor Giuliani’s plan to open up the city to massive superstores.

But the unusually close 8-to-5 vote set the stage for what promises to be a bruising City Council battle over the measure, one of the cornerstones of the mayor’s economic strategy.

Opponents vowed yesterday to push for major changes in the plan to protect small businesses and neighborhood shopping areas.

Critics say that small businesses would be devastated by an invasion of as many as 57 superstores like Kmart.

Even Planning Commission Chairman Joe Rose, who has been spearheading the proposal, acknowledged that the administration faces strong opposition. “It’s going to be a tough battle, no question about it,” he said.

In yesterday’s vote, the commissioners selected by Mayor Giuliani and Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari voted in favor of the plan. Appointees of the other borough presidents and the public advocate were opposed.

Giuliani’s plan would allow construction, without review by the public, of superstores of up to 200,000 square feet on the hundreds of acres of underused manufacturing land in the city. Such developments now require a lengthy approval process.

Supporters contend the city loses some $1.5 billion a year in retail sales to the suburbs, where superstores abound.

They predict the rezoning would mean $50 million in additional sales tax and about 13,600 jobs.

But opponents claim that the lengthy approval process should be preserved so that the stores do not destroy neighborhoods.

“Superstores can be bad neighbors,” said Commissioner Amanda Burden, who voted against the plan.

To placate critics, the Planning Commission modified the proposal yesterday. Communities were given greater ability to review superstore plans and make suggestions on how they would be designed and how traffic would be routed. The changes also exclude five streets from the manufacturing zones covered by the proposal and would block megastore development in areas saturated with the so-called big boxes.

But opponents said the changes do not give community groups or elected officials ways to block unpopular plans.

Critics also charged that the excluded streets — such as Metropolitan Ave. in Queens — were picked because those areas voted heavily for Giuliani.

City officials denied the charge and said the areas were excluded because the plan is limited to sites on wide streets and the excluded streets do not meet that definition.

The Council will vote on the proposal before the end of the year. More than 20 of its 51 members have said they will vote against it unless it is changed dramatically.

Original Story Date: 10/25/96

October 25, 1996
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City XXX-pulsion Plan Put on Hold

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

October 25, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JAMES RUTENBERG, Daily News Staff Writers

Times Square sex shop owners yesterday said the red-light district would stay lit as a state appeals court temporarily blocked the city’s plan to start restricting X-rated businesses this weekend.

Smut shops advertising “Live Girls” and hawking such videos as “Slut Hunt III” continued to do a brisk business as managers and employees said they have no plans to move or change their inventory.

“We’re not going to go anywhere,” vowed a manager at the company that owns Show World and other porn establishments near Times Square. “We’re confident we’re going to get the relief we’re entitled to under the United States Constitution.”

The defiant boast came after the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court yesterday issued a stay blocking the city’s plans to start closing about 150 X-rated video shops, topless bars and other porn businesses under a zoning law that restricts the location of sex shops.

Yesterday’s court action temporarily overruled a Manhattan Supreme Court decision on Wednesday that upheld the zoning law — enacted by the city in a bid to disperse heavy concentrations of sex shops.

The appeals court set a Nov. 15 hearing on the legal stay, followed by December arguments on the zoning law itself.

Lawyers for the sex shops and the New York Civil Liberties Union declared victory after the appeals court issued the stay.

“There will be no closing of any of the adult establishments,” said Herald Price Fahringer, who represents a coalition of more than 100 X-rated businesses that claim the zoning law violates First Amendment rights of free speech.

But Mayor Giuliani and City Council leaders yesterday predicted the city eventually would win court backing to launch the shutdown plan.

“We are quite confident that we’ll prevail,” Giuliani said. “Not only did we prevail in the State Supreme Court already, but essentially throughout the country these kinds of provisions have been upheld by courts.”

October 25, 1996
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Statue Unveiled, Hil Hails Eleanor

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

October 6, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and DON SINGLETON Daily News Staff Writers

Two American First Ladies came together in Riverside Park yesterday afternoon, one the current occupant of the White House and the other a larger-than-life bronze statue.

With songs and speeches and flags that rippled gently in the sunshine of a perfect early autumn day, Hillary Rodham Clinton led a crowd of thousands in dedicating the statue of her predecessor Eleanor Roosevelt.

The sculpture, portraying the lanky Roosevelt leaning against a rock, her chin resting on her hand as if she is in deep thought, stands on a low rise in the park’s 72d St., bounded by three mature trees and between two park benches. It is the first statue of a woman ever commissioned for a city park.

Clinton was greeted by a crescendo of applause and cheers from the audience as about a dozen placard-carrying people chanted, “Stop the welfare cuts.” The demonstrators were hustled off by police and park security officers. From the window of an apartment on W. 72d St., someone unfurled a banner that proclaimed, “Eleanor would have saved the safety net.”

A chorus of boos greeted Mayor Giuliani, but quickly subsided when he bagan to speak about Eleanor Roosevelt, a mother of five who was born on W. 37th St., married on E. 76th St. and kept a home on E. 65th St.

The mayor called Roosevelt “a great American, a woman committed to public service, the First Lady of the world. . . . one of the greatest figures in our century.”

“I must say that when the statue was unveiled I had just a great overwhelming emotional feeling,” Clinton said.

Then, after a long pause, she made a self-mocking reference to Bob Woodward’s book “The Choice,” in which the author reports that she took part in imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi.

“And I have to tell you that when I last spoke with Mrs. Roosevelt she wanted me to tell all of you how pleased she is by this great, great new statue.” The crowd applauded wildly.

October 6, 1996
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