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TB Sidelines B’klyn Teach by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Friday, April 20, 2001

Teachers at a Park Slope, Brooklyn, middle school learned yesterday that a colleague who had been out of school for over two weeks was hospitalized with tuberculosis.

Health Department spokeswoman Sandra Mullin confirmed that a member of the staff at Middle School 88 has active tuberculosis but said the risk to anyone else at the school is very low.

Mullin said students will be sent home today with a letter to their parents explaining the situation. People at the school who had contact with the staff will undergo TB screening.

TB infects about 8 million people a year worldwide, and kills 2 million a year.

Health Department officials say New York City’s infection rate of the disease has declined drastically in the past eight years.

April 20, 2001
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STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION Rare street hopes makeover will be worth all the hassle By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Monday, April 09, 2001

Residents of quiet 74th St., a few blocks from the Narrows in Bay Ridge, have been waking to the quaking of their homes lately as heavy machinery rolls in.

Repairs to step street at 74th St. and Colonial Road in Bay Ridge have delighted tenants, though they must endure intrusion of heavy machinery.

It is the start of a major project to replace the unusual step street linking Ridge Blvd. and Colonial Road at 74th St., as well as repair the street’s sewers and water mains.

“Let’s face it, it has to be done,” said Blanca Ortiz of 115 74th St.

But that doesn’t mean she enjoys it. “I’m in bed this morning and the bed, along with the house, was shaking,” Ortiz said.

She quickly called Janet Richichi, community construction liaison from the city Department of Design and Construction.

“I told her that I hope our houses don’t develop cracks because of the pounding,” Ortiz said. “She told me that she’d consulted with the engineers and that they’re not supposed to pound beyond a certain degree so as to not cause any damage.

“It’s an inconvenience, and the noise, but it has to be done.”

The consolation for the neighborhood is that its unusual public steps finally will be repaired.

Assemblywoman Joan Millman (D-Bay Ridge) secured the $300,000 that Community Board 10 officials told her in 1997 it would cost to fix the steps.

“In my enthusiasm and my naiveté about how these things work, I thought it was going to happen, like, right away,” Millman said.

When city officials inspected the project, they found that the sewers and water mains needed total reconstruction along with the stairway. It took the intervening four years to get the $786,000 estimated cost for the project into the budget, with the city Department of Environmental Protection picking up the tab for the remainder of the project.

City Design and Construction Department Deputy Commissioner Matthew Monahan said the street above and below the steps would have 600 new feet of curb, three fire hydrants and five catch basins to draw off rainwater, along with the new steps, sewer and water main, when the project is completed in July.

The repairs were long overdue, said Steve Harrison, chairman of Community Board 10. “The steps are unsafe,” he said.

“That they are fixing them is something that makes us ecstatic.”

Step streets are more common in the Bronx, but Brooklyn, being part of Long Island, is flatter. Harrison believes only two such street steps exist in the borough, the set under reconstruction and another set on 76th St.

Marylou Notaro of 145 74th St., who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years, praised the city workers doing the job but said she was concerned about what would happen to a community garden on either side of the steps.

“About 10 years ago, we turned an area that was a dumping ground into a beautiful garden, and people from all around the neighborhood came to admire the roses and the tulips and the daffodils,” Notaro said.

“I’m hopeful that after the construction is done, we can restore the garden to the beautiful garden that it once was.”

April 9, 2001
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HERO, BROTHER, EVERYMAN: BRONX MONUMENT IS ONE ALL OF US CAN EMBRACE By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, May 24, 1998
The monument to Cpl. Walter J. Fufidio, which has come to serve as memorial to those who served in World War II and the other wars that have followed, stands almost nondescript most of the year in the square named after him.
It will be spruced up in time for Memorial Day, for those who want to remember.
But for the surviving Fufidio brothers, the monument is a shimmering beacon to the good old days, to the values of sacrifice, family and community that typified that old Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx, something current and future generations can take lessons from.
Arthur, the oldest, went into the Air Force. Walter came next and he couldn’t wait to join up. He was in the Marines. Michael followed, joining the Navy in August 1945, but the war ended three weeks later. And George, the baby of the family, was too young to fight.
“We belonged in World War II and everybody knew it,” Michael Fufidio, now 71 and a resident of Melbourne, Fla., said. “A lot of us volunteered and for a small neighborhood, we sent a lot of people off to that war.”
In scenes that were probably repeated in every neighborhood, block, or corner in the city, kids played seemingly endless games of stickball in the streets one day and the next day their families were seeing them off to go fight in a distant war.
Michael Fufidio, their father who himself fought in the World War I a few short years after arriving in America from Italy in 1914, would take three of his sons over the Spofford Avenue hill to go to the Longwood Ave. station.
Walter Fufidio, an artilleryman, would participate in the campaign that came to symbolize the United States Marine Corps: The bloody invasion of the volcano island of Iwo Jima and the planting of the America flag on Mount Suribachi.
Nearly all of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers defending Iwo Jima were killed. Among the 6,821 Americans killed was Cpl. Walter Fufidio. In the waning days of that campaign, Marines undertaking a mop-up operation were pinned down by shattering shell fire from a fortified Japanese position.
As his posthumous Navy Cross Medal, second only to the Medal of Honor in American military honors, described, Walter was without cover when he delivered a steady stream of neutralizing shell fire against the enemy position, enabling his infantry unit to charge and wipe out the resistance.
“He galantly gave his life for his country,” the citation read.
George Fufidio said his mother took the loss very hard. Anna Fufidio, now 96 and living in a Throgs Neck nursing home, visited her son’s grave at St. Raymond Cemetery on Tremont Ave. for many years afterward.
“She’d go up there and she’d wipe the snow off the grave,” George Fufidio, who is 62, said.
In the years after the war, Michael would serve 20 years in the New York City Police Department and Arthur and George each served 20 years with the city Fire Department.
Arthur Fufidio was reflective when asked what lessons should be drawn from his brother’s monument. Government officials make wars and call on regular folks like him, his brothers and the other boys they grew up with to fight, he said.
“We were meant to serve and that was it,” Arthur Fufidio said. “It doesn’t seem like the world is in any different position now. That was supposed to be the war that ended all wars but we seem to live under a constant threat of war.”

May 24, 1998
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SENIOR CITY-ZENS; They left only to find there’s no place like home

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, October 26, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

Horst Liepolt left New York City in 1995 for Berlin, where he was born 70 years ago, only to discover his heart belongs to the Big Apple.

Ditto for Dolores White, now retired, who yearns to live in the city again.

Howard and Arlene Sommer, in their 50s, are giving the city another whirl after their children flew the coop. And, two years into their return from a 40-year sojourn in suburbia, Mort and Sonia Goldstein are loving every second of life in the city.

In all the good notices New York City is getting for its historic reduction in crime and improved quality of life, not to mention the burgeoning economy, a little-remarked-upon but growing trend is that the city is also becoming haven to a group that appreciates the big town’s excitement: retirees and the so-called “empty nesters.”

Although statistically difficult to measure, anecdotal evidence confirms that a growing number of retirees, especially former New Yorkers, are choosing the city and spurning such traditional retirement locales as Florida, California and Arizona.

Commissioner Herbert Stupp of the city Department for the Aging said he is not surprised.

“It’s a very senior-friendly city, perhaps the most in the country,” he said.

New York is a good place to grow old because of all its conveniences, including access to health care, the most developed mass transit network in the Western Hemisphere and discounts everywhere for seniors, Stupp said.

Retirees themselves cite the ease with which they can live, the excitement of the city and its cultural offerings.

But Charles Longino Jr., a demographer at Wake Forest University, was brutally blunt on the reason the elderly are returning to the city.

“They are coming back because they’ve gotten old and widowed in Florida, and their health is failing, and they want to be near their families,” he said.

Andrew McPherson, a junior equity research analyst at Salomon Brothers, concurs.

Seniors often move to warmer climates when they retire, he said. But as they hit their mid-80s, especially when one spouse dies, they have a harder time getting along on their own.

“The kids still live up in the Northeast. Then the issue is, every time Grandma slips and falls or has a problem, the kids have to hop on a plane and fly down to Florida,” McPherson said.

It makes more sense for Granny to be near the family.

And, sensing a need, developers in the city are offering upscale continuing care and assisted-living apartment buildings, where older residents receive personal care, including help with getting dressed, bathing and medication.

Glenn Kaplan, chairman of the Kapson Group, which owns and operates 20 such facilities in the region, said his firm has another 22 on the drawing board or under construction, including five scheduled to open in the city within three months. Other developers recently opened senior care apartment buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Other evidence supports retirees who say they are returning because of their love of the city and what it offers. Real estate firms, which are on the front line of selling and renting homes and apartments to the returnees, say they are experiencing a boom.

Andrew Heiberger, president of Citi Habitats, which rents more than 3,500 apartments a year in the city, said returnees make up about 6% of his business, up from about half that just a few years ago. His firm found an apartment for Horst Liepolt just this month.

Liepolt was a Grammy-winning jazz record producer who ran the Sweet Basil jazz club in Greenwich Village for 10 years before returning to Berlin with his wife, Clarita, two years ago.

“I thought with the Wall coming down, and with the whole rebuilding thing, it was going to be like the Wild West and honky-tonk, something happening, excitement,” Liepolt said.

He found quite the opposite.

“In those 2 1/2 years, there was no excitement, only Doomsville.”

Contrast that to an awestruck Liepolt visiting New York for the first time almost 40 years ago.

“You see it in movies, you see it in pictures, but it was another thing to actually be here. It was amazing. That was it. I felt very good and right at home,” Liepolt said.

It’s a sentiment Howard Sommer, a 57-year-old president of an investment fund who was born and reared in the South Bronx, understands.

Sommer’s journey took him briefly through Chicago before plopping him down in Long Island for 30 years of the whole suburban treatment: two children, a big house on 31 /2 acres, a swimming pool and a tennis court.

But when the kids grew up and went to college and, upon graduation, moved to Manhattan, Howard and Arlene Sommer, 55, found themselves with too much house. Howard was itching to get back to the city, but his wife was not too sure she was ready to give up the space and comfort of their home and the bonds she formed over the years.

They sold the home anyway and have been renting a Manhattan apartment for seven months now. Arlene is back in school studying to become a psychoanalyst. And Howard is having a terrific time.

“At this point in my life I want to be in the middle of everything,” Sommer said. “I love stepping out of my apartment and being on the streets and all the people and the energy and the excitement. . . . It’s good to be a New Yorker again.”

When she turned 65, Sonia Goldstein decided it was time that she and her husband, Mort, leave Plainview, L.I., and return to the city, where he was reared.

The dossier: 40 years in the suburbs, three children, a dog and a large house that had an office for Mort, a psychologist. He needed some convincing because the move meant ending his practice. Solution came in the form of a two-day-a-week practice on Fire Island. He feels now he has the best of both worlds.

And Sonia is just loving it.

“New York is the place to be when you are retired,” she said. “You are not dependent on a car. You can get to wherever you want to go with mass transportation, and you are not locked in isolation in your home.”

The couple has subscriptions to practically all the cultural institutions in the city.

“The way we get together with friends that we don’t see as much anymore is we have subscriptions with them,” Sonia Goldstein said. “So, I have a subscription to Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theater Club, the Roundabout and then in between, my daughter and I love the ballet so we go to that, either traditional ballet or Alvin Ailey.”

The older-than-60 crowd numbers 1.3 million in a city of 7 1/2 million people, so cultural institutions, even as they court families and younger audiences, find their base is highly dependent on retirees.

At the Roundabout Theatre Company, for instance, more than 30% of the 35,000 people on its subscription roll identify themselves as retired, said marketing director David Steffen.

“It’s important that everyone realize that there is this huge influx of people coming back into the city,” he said.

Dolores White, for one, has been to all the retirement places and thought they were nice — but not for her.

And when she says “I’m a city girl,” she doesn’t mean just any city.

“I’ve been to Chicago, which I liked. I was in San Francisco. I liked it. I’ve been to Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, but I like New York the best,” White said.

The 68-year-old former teacher grew up in Brooklyn, and remembers cutting class to see Frank Sinatra at the Paramount in the 1940s. She remembers Harlem, Little Italy and Chinatown.

She is now working on exchanging her rambling East Northport, L.I., home for an apartment in the Tribeca-Battery Park area, or in Brooklyn Heights.

“There’s such an array of cultural activities, restaurants, shopping . . . you could just sit on the stairs of some of the office buildings and people-watch for hours,” White said.

The city’s rejuvenation recalls for her the old days.

“We felt very free in those days, traveled in the subway with ease. I see that coming back. I see it coming back again. That is what is drawing me back to moving back to the city,” she said.

Original Story Date: 10/26/97

October 26, 1997
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60 Rally for Slain Teen By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, July 6, 1997

The Rev. Al Sharpton led about 60 marchers yesterday in peaceful protest of a grand jury decision that exonerated a white city cop in the shooting of a black Washington Heights teenager last April.

Roma Cedeno, mother of the slain youth, Kevin Cedeno, 16, spoke of her sadness at her son’s death.

“Nobody’s doing anything about it,” she said. “I’m not surprised at the decision at all. The mayor himself called it a ‘justifiable shooting’ within 24 hours after my son was killed. It all started from there.”

Protesters carried signs saying “Police Don’t Shoot White Males in the Back” and chanted “No Justice, No Peace.”

The rally, at McKenna Square, in front of the 33d Precinct at 165th St. and Amsterdam Ave., was the first of what would be weekly protests in front of the precinct, Sharpton said.

On Monday, a group of Washington Heights residents are expected to march around the square 16 times to mark Cedeno’s age at the time he was shot in the back by Police Officer Anthony Pellegrini.

Pellegrini and other officers were responding to a report of youths fighting and shots fired on April 6 when the shooting occurred. Cedeno and a group of friends had been drinking and fighting when they saw officers arriving. Cedeno’s friends, knowing he was on probation and that he had a machete in his possession, urged him to run.

Pellegrini testified before a grand jury that he shot at the youth after mistaking the 23-inch machete for a shotgun.

Last week, a Manhattan grand jury declined to indict Pellegrini.

Sharpton called the decision unacceptable.

“Just like we didn’t let a grand jury stop us with Bernard Goetz, we will not let a grand jury stop us on Kevin Cedeno,” he said. “Justice is a matter of our struggling until we win.”

Monique Kelly, 26, an administrative assistant at North General Hospital in Harlem and a resident of Washington Heights, said she came to protest because she has cousins, nephews and nieces about Cedeno’s age. “This could be anyone’s kid,” she said. “It makes you live in fear with the police officers who work here.”

Edward Hughes, 36, of Roselle, N.J., said he doesn’t believe the police version of the incident. “It is Kevin Cedeno today, it could be my son tomorrow.”

Captain Garry McCarthy, commander of the 33d Precinct, watched the rally, his arms folded while standing in front of the stationhouse. He later spoke with community activists to schedule a meeting.

“I’m looking to open a line of communication,” said McCarthy. “If we don’t communicate we’re never going to come together.”

July 6, 1997
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RUDY DISSES STATE DEPT: Curbs Diplo Parking Plan By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, April 13, 1997

Mayor Giuliani opened a new front in the New York City vs. the Rest of the World battle over diplomatic scofflaws, threatening to withhold scores of extra parking spaces promised to foreign envoys.

The mayor announced the get-tough plan in retaliation for the U.S. State Department’s revision of the terms of a crackdown on diplomats, many of them United Nations envoys, who rack up scores of unpaid parking tickets.

Giuliani said the original plan called for the city to designate 310 additional curbside spaces for diplomatic parking. In exchange, the city was authorized to tow and yank the license plates of diploscoffs who build up unpaid tickets for more than a year.

But after the State Department modified that plan Friday, Giuliani said the city wouldn’t come through with the extra parking.

“We’re certainly not going to go forward with all of those parking spaces,” he said.

What’s more, the mayor warned, the city may take back some of the 110 new spots that have already been designated for diplomats.

“This is an old rule I have. When I make a deal, I keep it. If you make a deal, you have to keep it — and they haven’t,” Giuliani said of the State Department.

“We haven’t decided yet exactly how many we are not going to go forward with, but we are definitely going to refuse to go forward with some percentage of them because the State Department has not gone forward with their part of the deal.”

Neither State Department officials nor UN representatives could be reached for comment yesterday.

However, the new skirmish may escalate international pressure for action at a UN General Assembly session on the dispute that was authorized last week.

Foreign diplomats voted for the session because, they say, the original crackdown plan violated principles of diplomatic immunity.

Original Story Date: 041397

April 13, 1997
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Now Call Interboro Jackie’s Basepath By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JON R. SORENSEN, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Thursday, April 10, 1997

The Interboro Parkway, 5 twisting miles that often require major league reflexes from drivers, will be renamed for baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, officials said yesterday.

The change is expected to be made official by Monday — the eve of a Shea Stadium celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the day the Brooklyn Dodger great broke baseball’s color barrier.

New 6-by-8-foot signs will name the route Jackie Robinson Parkway.

“We want to do it in time for the game on Tuesday night, so that when people go to that game they can travel on the Jackie Robinson Parkway,” said Mayor Giuliani, who asked state lawmakers and Gov. Pataki to make the change.

“It’s appropriate that we are naming a parkway for him because Jackie Robinson paved the way for all of the African-American ballplayers that came after him,” said Giuliani.

Charles Cesaretti, executive vice president of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, called the renaming “a marvelous way . . . to not only remember Jackie Robinson the man, but also a man who contributed a great deal to the City of New York.”

Word of the renaming came as former Robinson teammate Don Newcombe said the Dodger great should have a national holiday named in his honor. “Why hasn’t the government honored him the way it should?” the former pitcher asked.

Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947 and sparked Dodger teams that won six pennants and one World Series before he retired after the 1956 season.

The parkway being renamed in his honor winds from Jamaica Ave. in Brooklyn — a long fly ball from the site of the old Ebbets Field, where Robinson starred — to Kew Gardens in Queens, not far from Shea Stadium.

Fittingly, the tree-lined road that was first opened in 1935 even passes by Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens, the site of Robinson’s grave.

Like Robinson, who was a terror on the basepaths to opposing teams, the Interboro has had a reputation as dangerous for drivers because of its narrow lanes and hairpin curves. A $43.1 million upgrade in 1989-91 widened the roadway, improved the dividers between lanes and installed other safety features.

“Jackie Robinson was baseball as far as my family was concerned,” said Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry (D-Queens), co-sponsor with Sen. Serphin Maltese (R-Queens) of the Albany bill needed to approve the name change.

Original Story Date: 041097

April 10, 1997
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29 Job Agencies Cited as Slackers By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullThursday, March 27, 1997

Job-seeking New Yorkers are being ripped off by unscrupulous employment agencies that charge illegal fees, refuse to give refunds and violate other regulations, a new city investigation shows.

Six consumer investigators who went undercover and applied for jobs through 29 employment agencies this month uncovered violations of city rules at all but three of the firms.

In all, the investigators found 51 violations — like those that confronted Deirdre Archibald, a Brooklyn mother of two who said she got a runaround when she sought a job through a Queens employment agency in 1995. The investigation found:

Six of the 29 firms operated without required city licenses.

Nine companies illegally charged fees as high as $100 before placing the applicants in jobs. Fees may be charged only after placement.

Ten of the firms failed to post required signs indicating their license numbers, fee schedule and where dissatisfied clients can file complaints.

City consumer investigators padlocked two other Manhattan agencies — J & U Employment Agency and 8 Chatham Square Employment Agency — for continuing to operate without a license after being cited by investigators last year.

“It is really unconscionable and a disgrace that employment agencies throughout the city are luring the public in with false hopes of jobs and ripping them off,” said Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jose Maldonado.

If found guilty, the companies could face fines totaling $37,100.

Archibald, a Grenadian immigrant, said she found out about unscrupulous practices she went to the City Wide Employment Agency in Queens to seek a secretarial position. Her resume outlined her work experience in Grenada and New York.

Archibald said the company charged her $100 up front — then failed to deliver and gave her the runaround when she demanded a refund.

“I was very angry. It was very stressful,” said Archibald. “They gave me a lot of petty excuses.”

Archibald said she demanded her money back after months of constant calls to the firm produced just one job interview — and she did not get that position.

“When I went back for the refund, it was such a hassle,” Archibald said. “Every time I went there, somebody had a backache and couldn’t look through the books right now.”

She filed a complaint with the Department of Consumer Affairs in August. The complaint produced an $80 refund in December. The refund helped the firm avoid being cited for a consumer violation.

The owner of City Wide Employment Agency denied Archibald’s allegations. The woman, who declined to give her name, said Archibald missed several appointments to settle her refund application. One refund check even was reissued because it expired, the woman said.

“This license is my life, my bread and butter,” she said. “Whatever we do, we have to do honestly. It is my life.”

March 27, 1997
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They Rent & Rave To Ax Hikes By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Wednesday, March 12, 1997

Facing an unprecedented loss of state rent protections, hundreds of tenants packed a municipal hearing yesterday and called on the City Council to preserve the regulations.

Carrying signs and shouting at landlord advocates, the tenants demanded that the Council meet an April 1 deadline for reauthorizing laws that restrict the size of rent hikes for more than 1 million city apartments.

Walter Gambin, 52, an upper West Side tenant, said renters are being pinched from all sides, including by politicians serving the interests of landlords. “They’ve got a lot,” Gambin said of the landlords. “We don’t. Why do they want to take more from us?”

The tenants jeered as Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, defended state Senate plans to let the rent laws expire in three months.

Anderson said government rent regulations have depressed the city housing market to the point where developers have shied from constructing rental buildings.

The hearing, where one tenant was tossed out of City Hall for rowdiness, marked the latest skirmish in an emotionally charged battle over rent laws.

At yesterday’s hearing, the tenants demanded that the Council certify a recent survey that found the rental vacancy rate in the five boroughs remains below 5%, the official measure of a housing emergency.

The Council has until April 1 to vote on the issue.

Council members are expected to approve the politically sensitive emergency designation by an overwhelming margin, and Mayor Giuliani–facing reelection this year–is expected to sign it.

The focus then will shift to Albany, where State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer), a long-time foe of government rent regulations, has threatened to end the rent-protection system.

Bruno’s threat has taken on heightened importance because the GOP-controlled state Senate can simply let the rent laws expire June 15, despite opposition from the Democratic-run Assembly.

Gearing up for the battle, tenants yesterday warned City Council members not to reverse their long-standing support for the rent laws. Some advocates showed up at the hearing with lists showing honor and dishonor rolls of Council members who in the past have voted to curb the protections.

“I don’t think City Council members running for reelection want to get caught on the side of landlords,” said Jenny Laurie of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, a tenant group.

Copyright 1997 Daily News, L.P.

March 12, 1997
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THE ZERO PROBLEM; Computer Glitch May Byte Big Apple

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

January 3, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and GEORGE MANNES, Daily News Staff Writers

New York City is facing a mother of all computer glitches that could cause key city services to crash in the next two years. Welfare, pension and payroll checks for thousands of New Yorkers may be mailed or computed incorrectly, or stop flowing from government coffers.

Computers that handle vital information, from birth certificates to tax assessments, also could go on the blink.

The problem is in mainframe computers that use just two digits to store dates and aren’t programed beyond the 20th century. In three years, when the calendar changes to a “00” year, the computers will read 1900, not 2000.

The computers then could assume that a driver’s license set to expire Feb. 1, 2000, had expired 100 years earlier.

Known as the Year 2000, or Y2K, problem, it affects thousands of computers nationwide and has sparked a huge effort in corporate America to solve the problem.

But the city is far behind some private corporations in coming to grips with the glitch.

New York won’t even have a full assessment of what needs to be done until June, the Daily News has learned.

“Every New Yorker that depends upon the city to send a check could be at risk of not receiving that check,” said City Councilman Andrew Eristoff (R-Manhattan), chairman of the Council Task Force on Technology in Government.

Donna Lynne, director of the mayor’s Office of Operations, said the city is set to hire a consultant this month to inventory city computer systems and assess what needs to be fixed, and at what cost.

If city agencies are saying at this late date that they’re still assessing the situation, “they’re probably dead meat,” said Howard Rubin, chairman of the Hunter College computer science department and a nationally recognized expert on the Year 2000 problem.

Computer programs tripped up by the date could grind to a halt or spit out unpredictably inaccurate data.

If agencies don’t tackle the Y2K problem, said Steve Newman, first deputy city controller, “all kinds of financial analysis, budget analysis, would just be wrong.”

Some city agencies, like the Department of Finance, which spent about $30 million on a new system in 1992, are replacing aging computers with modern units that solve the problem.

The mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, city controller’s office and city Financial Information Services Agency plan to replace accounting and bookkeeping programs rather than try to fix the date problem.

Sources close to the project said it should cost about $50 million, although no official estimates were available.

Lynne said systems the city bought in the past 18 months for the Fire, Police and other departments don’t have the problem.

Fixing the glitch throughout city government could require a mind-numbing process of investigating millions of lines of computer program commands. Experts said it could require an army of costly outside consultants and overtime for city employes.

For example, sources at the Human Resources Administration said it has more than 3 million lines of computer code to review. The controller’s office has 500,000 lines of code that covers monthly pension checks for 220,000 retired city employes.

January 3, 1997
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