The West 30th Street heliport recently stopped allowing tourist ‘copters to take off, but the helicopters have simply moved South to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. That’s got Brooklynites and downtown residents complaining loudly, as the Brooklyn Heights Blog has detailed. Upper West Siders have been dealing with helicopter noise for years, as tourists fly over the neighborhood, circle around Central Park, and exit again through the neighborhood. But local officials say the helicopters are now getting even worse, and City Councilwoman Gale Brewer says she’s getting dozens of complaints about helicopters from locals.

Ever since a fatal collision between a small plane and a helicopter last summer, calls for restricting or banning helicopters from New York airspace have increased. Basically the officials keep meeting with the FAA to try to resolve this, but nothing seems to get done.

This is the view you get from a tourist helicopter over the neighborhood. Not too shabby.

“The number of low-flying tourist helicopters over the West Side and Central Park has become intolerable,” Brewer said in a statement. “All through the Easter weekend West Siders were calling and emailing me about this worsening condition. The noise drowns out even normal conversation in people’s homes, and even closing all the windows on a beautiful spring day does little to keep out the continuous sound of low flying helicopters. The residents of the West Side did not move here to live next to an airport, nor do they pay their taxes to do so.”

City officials called a press conference today to try to get the city to strictly regulate the helicopters. Here’s what local officials, including Congressman Jerry Nadler, Brewer, and Borough President Scott Stringer are asking Mayor Bloomberg for:

· Implement a 311 protocol for receiving, responding to and addressing helicopter complaints.
· Increase oversight and planning of the helicopter industry, with a focus on reducing, if not eliminating, tourist helicopter traffic.
· Conduct an assessment of security risks involved in storing fuel at the downtown heliport.

(photos by DannyMcL and Icemanfr75 via flickr)

Nadler had initially signed onto a letter last year with 56 other Liberal representatives telling Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he wouldn’t vote for a bill without a public health care option. But, he said on Tuesday, President Obama did not fight for the public option and so it disappeared from the final bill.

The lack of a public option, as well as an anti-abortion amendment that made it into the bill, almost convinced Nadler to vote No, he said. But getting millions of new people onto the health insurance rolls, and keeping insurance companies from dumping people who have preexisting conditions, was too important to let the bill fail.

Nadler said he’ll keep fighting for the changes he wanted in the bill. For instance, the bill makes virtually everyone in the country get health insurance, whether they want to or not. But it helps subsidize them if they can’t pay. The problem is the subsidies are based on the federal poverty limit, which might go pretty far in South Dakota, but isn’t that much in New York City. Nadler thinks the subsidies should be calculated using the area median income, which would more closely take into account the local cost of living.

Nadler also offered this interesting tidbit: a provision in the bill might actually let states set up their own government-run health care exchanges (public option!) because it gives the states a lot of leeway as to how they run their insurance exchanges. It’s the kind of provision, however, that “might be subject to lawsuits,” he added. (photo by Center for American Progress via flickr)

Jerry Nadler with Julianne Moore and Cynthia Nixon at a 2007 gala. Will they still love him if he votes against health care reform?

The Senate voted on Monday for a health reform bill that drops the idea of  a”public option” to allow people to buy insurance through the government. Instead, the bill says the government should contract with two private insurers that will sell insurance to uninsured people throughout the country while being monitored by the government.

Nadler, who represents the Upper West Side and other parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, is one of the leaders of the 57 Liberals fighting against a watered-down bill. They say a bill that doesn’t allow people to buy into a public health insurance plan will give insurance companies a free hand to continue making money hand-over-fist, meaning costs will continue to skyrocket. But a vote against the bill could mean President Obama’s signature legislation goes down in flames. We posed this question to Nadler’s representatives back in September, before the bill went to the Senate, and they were circumspect. Since then, the public option was died and been revived again, before falling apart at the hands of Joe Lieberman. Now the question takes on a lot more urgency.

We asked Nadler’s communications director Ilan Kayatsky what the congressman plans to do. He reminded us that the bill still needs to be hashed out in a “conference” between the House and Senate. But the Senate has already said the public option isn’t an option.

“He has long pledged to oppose toothless legislation,” Kayatsky wrote in an email. “As far as the endgame, anything is possible!”

Want to tell Jerry Nadler how to vote? His office’s number is 202-225-5635 or you can send an email using this form (don’t send a letter unless you want it to take weeks to get there).

Currently in his 9th term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Nadler represents New York’s Eighth Congressional District, which includes parts of Brooklyn & Manhattan, including the site of the World Trade Center. We seek unpaid student interns for the Spring semester interested in learning the daily, detailed operations of a Congressional office: responding to constituent problems and concerns, writing letters, working with community organizations and other government agencies to resolve problems, and performing general office tasks. College credit is available by arrangement. Interns would work 15-20 hour weeks. Applicants should have completed their first year of college and have an active interest in government. Excellent communications skills, and particularly excellent writing skills are important. Please email resume and cover letter to daniel.weisfeld@mail.house.gov or fax to 212-367-7356. No phone calls, please.

“Frank McCourt was a remarkable writer, but I believe he achieved his greatest impact as a New York City public school teacher for 29 years,” Klein said. “As we gather tonight to celebrate his memory, I’m pleased to announce our intention to honor his legacy through creation of a new public school that will nurture the academic and creative talents of New York City students for generations to come.”

McCourt taught English for 15 years at Stuyvesant High School and some of the people who wanted his name on a school were former students. Friends and allies, including many Upper West Siders, began lobbying to name a school in his honor even before he died in July, and McCourt learned a school might bear his name before he passed away.

In a recent New York magazine piece, his former student Ted Allon recalled talking to McCourt about the school when the author was near his deathbed: “I said, ‘It’s looking very good, Frank, and there’s a lot of good will about it.’ He said, ‘What an honor. What a great thing that would be.’”

The Brandeis school has struggled in recent years, and graduates less than one-third of its students, according to  New York magazine. The city has already opened three specialized high schools there, Global Learning Collaborative; the Urban Assembly School for Green Careers; and Innovation Diploma Plus – a “transfer school” to help older students graduate from high school.

“Today’s announcement is great news for the Upper West Side and for all of the students at the Brandeis campus,” Congressman Jerry Nadler said in a statement.

The city is planning to hold a public forum and produce an impact statement about it before the Panel for Educational Policy votes on the idea. The school would be open to students from all over the city. (photo by David Shankbone).

So what does that mean? It means that, for once, Upper West Side voters could actually have some power in influencing a national public policy issue!

The public option — a government-run health insurance plan that would compete against private insurers — has become the most controversial issue in the health care debate, and President Obama appears to be wavering in his support for it. Liberals say it’s the only way to keep health care costs down, but conservatives think it will open the door to socialized medicine. MoveOn.org held a rally/vigil on the Upper West Side a few weeks ago in support of a public option.

While Obama believes the public option is important, he tried to tamp down the controversy over the issue in a speech to Congress last week, and he warned liberals not to overemphasize it for fear of quashing the whole bill. Because there are numerous health care bills still moving through Congress — some with and some without a public option — it’s unclear what the final legislation will look like.

Nadler has spoken out in favor of the public option and signed onto a letter along with 56 others that said, “Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates – not negotiated rates – is unacceptable… We simply cannot vote for such a proposal.”

He’s even brought the issue up with the president himself.

“I spoke personally to the president last Wednesday and told him that there are a lot of us in the House who would find it very difficult to vote for the bill — no matter what else it does — if the public option isn’t in it, because in that case the bill would do a lot of good things but do it by throwing a money at the insurance companies and the costs will go through the roof and they won’t be sustainable.” Nadler said during a recent telephone town hall he held during the recess.

If Nadler and other like-minded Democrats vote against any bill that doesn’t include a public option, they could force Congress to include the public option — but their “no” votes could lead to the bill failing in the House of Representatives. If he votes for a bill that doesn’t include a public option, the bill would likely pass the House, but he and other Democrats could be giving up their best chance to make insurers compete with the government for Americans’ business.

So will Jerry Nadler vote against any bill that doesn’t include the public option? Sometimes he sounds like he will, but sometimes it’s not so clear. Asked in a recent interview with the Westside Independent what Nadler would do if the public option is off the table, his district director Robert Gottheim said he’s “not going to talk in hypotheticals.” Asked for a clarification on Monday, his office did not respond to requests for comment.

Quite a conundrum. But luckily you can help the congressman make his decision if it comes to that, or at least make your views known to his staff. His office’s number is 202-225-5635 or you can send an email using this form (don’t send a letter unless you want it to take weeks to get there).

Two days after a helicopter and plane collided over the Hudson River, killing 9 people, politicians who represent the Upper West Side said they want new rules for the air space over the city.

City Councilwoman Gale Brewer said she doesn’t think tourist helicopters should be flying over dense parts of the city at all. Helicopters tend to fly over the Hudson before turning East around the 80’s or 90’s, turning South at Central Park, and then heading back to the Hudson over the 70’s, Brewer noted. The flights leave every 3 to 5 minutes, she added.

“West Side Manhattan residents have reported as many as 25 helicopters in 30 minutes,” Brewer said. “These flights are loud, low and dangerous, hovering over tall residential buildings, parks and playgrounds.”

Congressman Jerry Nadler, who represents the Upper West Side as well as other parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, wants the Federal Aviation Administration to regulate the airspace below 1,100 feet on the Hudson.

“It is ridiculous that private planes and helicopters flying through a crowded area are dependent, while in flight, on visually sighting other aircraft and communicating with them,” he said in a statement.

Mayor Bloomberg sounded open to new rules, but wasn’t interested in putting “pressure” on the FAA, the Times reported.

Helicopter tour companies contacted by Westside Independent about the rules declined to comment. (photo courtesy of Councilwoman Brewer’s office)

The money comes from the stimulus act and it was funnelled through the National Endowment for the Arts. Among the recipients was the American Symphony Orchestra and American Symphony Orchestra League, which received $75,000. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Jazz at Lincoln Center each got $50,000, as did the New York Historical Society.

The congressman also announced $25,000 for something called the Dance Notation Bureau. I can see the Republican attack ads already. (photo courtesy Rep. Jerrold Nadler)

Nadler Announces $2.4 Million in Federal Arts Grants (release)