East Bronx Community Board 10 will have a lot of its plate to deal with when it returns from its summer hiatus this month.
That includes a city food recycling program being suddenly plopped on its plate like so much mashed potatoes, low flying planes, traffic issues from new malls, a controversial assisted living facility on City Island and more cops for the local precinct.
The food waste recycling pilot program, part of a city-wide rollout, will call on locals in Country Club, Silver Beach, Edgewater Park, and parts of Throggs Neck to separate food scraps from the rest of their garbage, said CB 10 chairman John Marano.
District manager Kenneth Kearns said that while the board did not receive advance notice about the program, the Sanitation Department wants to start it this month.
“The community board was taken off guard by the Sanitation Department’s early start date,” said Kearns. “The board felt that we should have had months of notice. We would have liked to prepare the community better, but we are doing what we can do now.”
The board had a DSNY speaker at its Sept. 12 municipal services meeting, and plans to have one again at its general meeting at Schuyler House, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19.
Another issue on the agenda is dealing with the Federal Aviation Administration on what many see as low-flying planes, said Marano. Representatives of Board 10 held a meeting with FAA officials on Tuesday, Sept. 10, he said.
The construction of a new mall at Brush and Lafayette avenues also has CB 10 looking into ways to mitigate traffic once the Throggs Neck Shopping Center opens, said Kearns.
“We will ask for some traffic mitigation, including the opening of the Ring Road [under the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge] for trucks,” said Kearns.
There are a whole host of issues regarding the competition of the Throggs Neck Shopping Center, said Kearns.
Kearns charged that a traffic study done by the developers did not meet the needs of the community. The board recently did its own traffic study with the help of an urban planning graduate student from Columbia University.
The CB 10 traffic plans calls for the dedication of exit lanes from the Hutchinson River Parkway going northbound for “mall-only” traffic,” said Kearns. It could be achieved through new signs and road markings.
Other concerns of the board are waiting for a revised plan for an assisted living facility proposed for City Island that’s currently before the Board of Standards and Appeals, more officers for the 45th Precinct, and a return of a drug module at the 45th Precinct or better staffing of the one it shares with the 43rd Precinct.
