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The Paper of Record forr Greenwich Village, Vii ll l l ag g e, East Village, Lower East E Side, Soho, Union Square, Ch Chinatown h iin na att o ow w n and Noho, Since 1933
May 24, 2018 • $1.00 Volume 88 • Number 21
Pols decry ‘L’-ack of handicap access in subway shutdown BY LESLEY SUSSMAN
P
oliticians, L train riders, community group leaders and transit advocates converged in the rain at 14th St. and Third Ave. last Thursday morning to demand that the M.T.A. make the L train stations at there and at Sixth Ave. fully accessible to people with disabili-
ties, handicapped senior citizens and parents with infants ahead of a planned shutdown of the line next year for extensive renovations. These stations and others along the L line from Bedford Ave. in Brooklyn to Eighth Ave. in Manhattan are scheduled to ACCESS continued on p. 33
Tree-mendous win in Dist. 3 ‘P.B.’ vote PHOTO BY MILO HESS
BY SAM BLEIBERG
T
he winners of Council District 3’s Participatory Budgeting vote were unveiled Sunday at Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s “West Side Summit” on the High Line. Johnson announced that, based on residents’ voting, the grand winner, to get full funding off $242,000, was a
proposal to install 200 tree guards on tree pits throughout the district. Phyllis Waisman, who helped submit the winning proposal, said of the guards, “They planted so many new trees. They’ll protect the new trees from dogs, elements.” Other winners included $250,000 for electronic bus stop signs with arrival times, BUDGETING con continued on p. 43
The spirit of Gene Kelly must have been gracefully softshoeing over Saturday’s Dance Parade amid the rain. Hundreds upon hundreds of per formers hoofed it down Broadway to Tompkins Square Park where things ended with a dance festival.
Croman even worse behind bars: Tenants BY SYDNEY PEREIR A
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teve Croman, one of the city’s most notorious bad landlords, may be locked up Downtown in the Tombs, but his tenants are still suffering. Tenants at 141 Ridge St., for example, have been living without cooking gas since last September. “We ask, when will there be a stop to Croman’s behavior?” Silvana Jakich, a representative of the 141 Ridge St. Tenants As-
Hudson R. Park @ 20......pp. 13-32
sociation, said at a rally for Croman tenants last Thursday. Jakich has lived in the Lower East Side building since 2003. Since Croman bought it in 2012, she and other tenants have dealt with apartment woes from no heat and hot water to no cooking gas. Last October, Croman was sentenced to a year in jail for fraudulently refinancing loans and tax fraud. But, as he has been for years, he is also accused of harassing rent-regulated tenants
out of their apartments through dangerous construction and gut renovations, among other practices. When rent-regulated tenants move out, the units can often be filled with market-rate tenants paying much higher rents. That type of construction and apartment gutting — often illegal — is what has left 141 Ridge St. tenants without gas for nearly nine months now. “We have been working diligently to restore cooking gas at CROMAN continued on p. 6
Patel set to go 1-on-1 vs. Maloney now .............p. 2 Pols on Progress, ‘Tech Hub,’ S.B.J.S.A......pp. 8-12 www.TheVillager.com