Good Morning, Brooklyn: Tuesday, August 31, 2021

August 31, 2021 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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$17 MILLION FOR SOUTHERN BROOKLYN HOSPITAL: NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island will rebuild and expand outpatient and preventive health services for the South Brooklyn community, thanks to more than $17 million in capital funding from Mayor Bill de Blasio, the City Council and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. The $17 million investment will fund the renovation of 26,000-square-feet of ambulatory care space, including more than 50 exam rooms for primary care services, and an upgraded ambulatory radiology suite. The renovated ambulatory care space is part of the future NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health campus modernization featuring the new Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospital opening in 2022.

City Councilmember Mark Treyger, who has demonstrated consistent success in securing funding for the city’s public schools, also advocated strongly on behalf of the hospital.

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ELECTRIFYING ENERGY IN HOUSING: A $24 million pilot program will fund electrification activities in affordable housing, as part of an agreement between the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Governor Kathy Hochul on Monday announced the pilot program, which will create a streamlined funding process by which affordable housing owners can access NYSERDA incentives without additional administrative work.

The pilot program also supports the state’s nation-leading goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 85 percent by 2050, as outlined in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

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EMERGENCY SUPPLIES DRIVE FOR HAITI: A Brooklyn interfaith alliance is working to send emergency medical supplies to earthquake-stricken Haiti. The Bridge Multicultural Project, based in Flatbush has initiated a drive for medical and first aid supplies like Band-Aids and antibiotics, as well as non-perishable foods like peanut butter, tab-canned meats, bottled water. A Call for Prayer and Support event takes place at the Bridge’s headquarters, (1894 Flatbush Ave., between Avenues K and L), this Thursday, September 2 at 3 p.m. to receive and organize the supplies.

The coalition, which is in formation, at press time includes more than a dozen Brooklyn and national organizations, including the 67^th Precinct Clergy Council, the Brooklyn Coalition on Health Care Disparities, Council on People’s Organization (COPO), and UJA-Federation.

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GRANT DOUBLES BUDGET OFA CUNY INSTITUTE: The CUNY Haitian Studies Institute (HSI) at Brooklyn College has received $1 million in funding from the New York City Council. According to HIS’s new interim director, Marie Lily Cerat, this grant doubles the budget of the five-year-old institute, and will help support several initiatives, including a digital archive of its collections; a college and career readiness conference for high school students; a civic engagement and leadership development program for Haitian youth.

One of the Institute’s key projects is the development of a Haitian Creole modern language curriculum for industry that will include a massive Creole dictionary project.

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ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY FILM FEST: The Greenpoint Film Festival returns for its 10th annual event during Labor Day weekend. The event, running Friday-Sunday, September 3-5 at the Stuart Cinema & Cafe on West Street, and Film Noir Cinema on Meserole Avenue, will showcase 11 feature films and 27 short films.

The festival, which carries an environmental mission, is teaming up with Broadway Stages, which has made an unparalleled commitment to renewable energy by conveying solar power to their soundstages and productions. Special awards will be given to filmmakers spotlighting important environmental and social issues.

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SENTENCED FOR BROOKLYN BURGLARIES: Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice John Hecht on Monday sentenced a Staten Island man to three consecutive prison terms for a string of residential burglaries here in Brooklyn that were committed within an eight-day period during October 2018. The burglaries took place in Bushwick on October 24, in Bedford-Stuyvesant on October 26 and in Clinton Hill on October 31. Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, calling the defendant a “serial burglar, identified the man as Casey Knight, 53, of Staten Island.

The defendant received a sentence three consecutive prison terms of two to four years, for a total of six to 12 years, following his guilty plea earlier this month to three counts of third-degree burglary.

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POETRY ON BUILDINGS: The Poetry Society of America has launched “Seeing Into Tomorrow,” a series of murals on Brooklyn buildings that celebrate the short poems of Richard Wright. Designed by Doyle Partners, the project, a design of Doyle Partners, commemorates the achievements of writer, who lived on Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene in the 1930s, and aims to inspire residents and visitors alike to “read” the city in new ways. “Seeing Into Tomorrow” is one of the projects funded through the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, under New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) and can be seen at several buildings throughout the Downtown Brooklyn area, ranging from the Fulton Mall shopping district to cultural landmarks like BRIC and the Mark Morris Dance Center to small stores at the NYCHA Whitman Houses.

Best known for his searing depictions of racial injustice in books such as Native Son and Black Boy, Wright spent the final 18 months of his life creating his own distinctive versions of haiku, the traditional Japanese verse form.

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NEW COMPLAINT AGAINST NATIONAL GRID: Several groups that the New York Law School Civil Rights and Disability Justice Clinic and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, represent filed a groundbreaking federal civil rights complaint on Monday, August 30 that they say reveals new documentation publicly for the first time. The group asserts that National Grid misled the local community about the nature of a new natural gas pipeline and accuses the utility of bypassing critical safety and health regulations and ignoring the detrimental impacts on communities of color. The new documentation shows that the company failed to perform required pressure tests and submit critical information to regulators.

The filing also publicly reveals for the first time the extent of National Grid’s gas leaks throughout all of the Brooklyn backbone system, in both new and old parts of the pipeline.

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MOURNING A WIDELY-RESPECTED COLLEAGUE: The scientific community, and NYU- Tandon School of Engineering in particular, mourns the death of Presidential Fellow and Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering Dante C. Youla, called a “towering figure in his field.” His name was immortalized in the Youla–Kucera parametrization in control theory. Professor Youla, during his lifetime, also won several awards, among them: the 1965 IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award for the paper “A New Theory of Broadband Matching,” the 1988 IEEE Control Systems Science and Engineering Award “for original contributions in the areas of circuits, systems and control theory, and the rigorous solution of engineering problems.”

Prof. Youla was elected to the National Academy of Engineers in 1982, in recognition of his contributions to broadband matching in microwave networks and to optimal controllers for multivariable feedback systems.