CBN to ESDC: Where the Hell's The AY Ombudsman?

The Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods, which includes about 40 neighborhood and block associations in Brownstone Brooklyn, held a press conference about an hour ago to call attention to the Empire State Development Corporation’s failure to comply with one the major promises it made last spring—to appoint an ombudsman to oversee the construction (and related safety issues) of the Atlantic Yards project. (The CBN is also one of 26 groups suing New York State over the legitimacy of the environmental impact statement.) With one near-disaster in the meantime and no signs of a good faith effort on the ESDC’s part to work to address the community’s safety concerns, CBN is trying to draw some attention to the matter. 132 days ago the ESDC pledged to hire an Ombudsman to represent Community concerns and problems during the Atlantic Yards preparation and construction, said CBN Steering Committee member Eric McClure in an email to the media on Friday. That’s twice as long as the ESDC allowed the public to respond to last year’s Environmental Impact Statement. That was a complex and huge task, but somehow the Community got it done. What’s the holdup on keeping their word to the Community? As CBN spokesperson Jim Vogel pointed out at this morning’s press conference (note to organizers: it’s a good idea to show up on time at your own protests), without the ombudsman in place, all the public is left with is a Ratner-sponsored community liaison office which, according to Vogel, is nothing more than an intern with a cell phone. The most telling moment of the morning, however, had to be when one the foreman inquired what the gathering was about. When told it was to get ESDC to cough up the oversight it had promised more than four months ago, the foreman just smirked, as if to say, “Good Luck.”