I hope you are all doing OK in this blizzard!

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Dear Neighbor,

I hope you are all doing OK in this blizzard! If you are fortunate (like me) to be watching the snowfall blanket our city outside your window from a warm home, let’s take a minute to really appreciate Sanitation, Transit, Fire, NYPD, health care, food, delivery and other essential workers who are out working today, some in 12-hour shifts. (And to be extra grateful for our homes, remembering the people that don’t have them.)

Our team is hard at work today, so please reach out if you experience any loss of heat, hot water, or are concerned about a vulnerable neighbor in today’s storm. You can follow the City’s Severe Weather Updates ([link removed]) , and even track the progress of DSNY’s snow plows ([link removed]) (something DSNY added after extensive Council hearings following the great snow debacle of 2010.

Speaking of that team: I want to take a minute to introduce you to the new (and continuing) team in our 39th District City Council office, and tell you a little about the work they’ve been up to. Following some recent transitions, we have a great team in place to help solve problems, respond to constituents, manage participatory budgeting, review and improve the Gowanus rezoning, and of course, do all we can to support vaccine distribution and get us to the other side of the Covid-19 crisis.
* Megan Flynn, Chief-of-Staff ([email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) ): Megan has been with our team for over three years, and quickly emerged as one of the best staff we’ve ever had at providing constituent service. Many of you know her from that work, or from her staffing the Fortis/Cobble Hill Task Force, or the North Slope/Sewer Replacement one. We’re thrilled she’s now leading the team as Chief-of-Staff.
* Julia Ehrman, Director of Land Use & Budget ([email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) ): Julia runs point on the Gowanus Neighborhood Rezoning, which will soon begin its public review process (more on that soon). She also leads our work on discretionary expense and capital funding in the City budget. A trained city & regional planner with a degree from UC Berkeley, Julia specializes in the kind of planning that combines community voice, values, and thoughtful analysis.
* Lara Lai, Education Liaison/Participatory Budgeting ([email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) ): Lara has been our part-time Education Liaison for the past year and a half providing hands-on support to every school in the district. She led the campaign to win the “Open Streets for Schools” program (ok, it’s a little snowy today for outdoor school). Now, she’s working full time, and has taken on responsibility for participatory budgeting as well -- where great projects are in the works.
* Nicole Krishtul, Community Liaison ([email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) ): Nicole, a graduate of Hunter College where she was a JK Watson Fellow, joins us after three years working at the NYPD. Nicole speaks Russian, and has a passion for urban development, history, and recommending the best food in Brighton Beach.
* Fawziyah Siddiqui, Community Liaison ([email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) ): Fawziyah graduated recently from St. John’s Law School, and she just passed the bar exam! She picks up the work of Shahana Hanif, with a mix of constituent service work and support for community organizing in Kensington. Fawziyah speaks Bangla and loves community advocacy, racial equity, and finding the best biryani in New York City.

This team is already off to a great start! At a time when we can use a little good news, let me tell you two stories about what they’ve been able to accomplish in the last week alone:

Vaccine support: Immediately upon starting in our office, Fawziyah and Nicole began working to provide support for people struggling to make vaccine appointments -- especially seniors, people without good tech access or skills, and those who speak Bangla or Russian. We don’t have any special access to appointments, but they’ve become diligent, patient coaches, utilizing every resource we can find (like NYCVaccineList.com ([link removed]) ). On Friday, thanks to a tip from a constituent, they were able to schedule 18 appointments for people who had been struggling to make one, mostly Bangla and Russian speakers, largely at the Javits Center.

A new industrial refrigerator for CHiPS: During outreach to explore how participatory budgeting could address food insecurity, PB delegate Troy Ogilvie learned that CHiPS (for decades a warm and welcoming soup kitchen and supportive housing in Park Slope) was in dire need of a new industrial refrigerator. It would be a great PB ballot item -- but PB funds wouldn’t arrive until the fall, and CHiPS needs the refrigerator now. So Troy told Lara Lai, who worked with Megan Flynn to put it in our email newsletter. Lo and behold, an anonymous donor stepped up to cover the entire cost. A CHiPS board member writes: “No application, no hassle; we are just to let her know the amount and she will send a check. Oh, and she said to get what we wanted, not just the cheapest model.”

Those newsletter asks have also led to the recycling of over 25,000 Fresh Direct bags to emergency food providers and mutual-aid groups (also coordinated by Lara)!

Finally, I wanted to share a little reader feedback that brightened our week:

“I finally got vaccination appointments for myself and my husband, and it felt like winning the Lotto. The only reason I succeeded is because I used the brilliant, volunteer-made site NYCVaccineList.com, which I learned about by reading all of the Brad Lander office newsletters.

This is not the only time I've received valuable information from your newsletters and mailings--items I had not seen elsewhere. I just hope I'm not in a tiny minority of constituents who actually read the newsletter all the way to the bottom. I love that exasperated volunteers figured out they could and should do better than the city agencies. Anyway, many, many thanks to the dedicated Lander staff for keeping the information flowing.”

We know our newsletters get long sometimes (sometimes?!), but we’ll do our best to keep providing useful information -- and also to keep working hard so that our City shows up for everyone. Newly-released data shows cruel and unacceptable racial disparities in vaccine distribution ([link removed]) so far, something we must correct. We’ll have more to say about that in our Covid-19 newsletter on Wednesday.

Stay safe and warm, and help shovel an older neighbor’s walk if you can!

-- Brad (with a whole lot of help)

P.S. We all continue to work remotely, so you can contact us by email at one of the inboxes above, or the general inbox at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) . Or you can still call us at 718-499-1090 and leave a message and we’ll get back to you.

Our new staffers Fawziya Siddiqui and Nicole Krishtuf (you can tell these weren’t taken today!):




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Contact us:
District 39
456 5th Ave Ste 3
Brooklyn, NY 11215-4076
USA
[email protected]
718-499-1090

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