This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated June 25, 2021
In 2007, New York City began the Schoolyards to Playgrounds program, which has converted hundreds of schoolyards at elementary and middle schools to community playgrounds. The asphalt expanse behind David Boody I.S. 228 in Gravesend was to have a new playground opening next spring, but that, unfortunately, has been canceled.
A recent headline read, “Assembly Member Colton Rages Against Proposed Park.” Colton, a vocal opponent of the plan, held a rally by the school last week with a handful of protesters. In a statement, he contended that the new park “will create serious safety, health, and quality of life issues.” On Twitter, he celebrated the cancelation of what he referred to as an “unwanted public park.”
Colton added that canceling a “fake park” had saved “a school yard providing open space for lunch recess, physical classes, dance, school fairs and festivals etc.” The fact is, the Schoolyards to Playgrounds program creates spaces that are only accessible to the public after school hours (including after-school and summer programs), on weekends, and during school breaks.
The new playground would not have prevented the space from being used exclusively by the school during the times Colton mentioned for the purposes he detailed. He either does not know this important detail that an elected official should be aware of or he purposely misled his constituents to incite opposition for a reason that does not exist.
I live across from a schoolyard that was converted to a playground over a dozen years ago, as has been the case with most schoolyards in Southern Brooklyn, and it is great. Across Colton’s district, most elementary and middle schools have had their schoolyards converted and they have been great for their communities.
Colton warned that “drug dealing and gangs” will invade the new playground, but the only thing that these converted spaces have been overrun with are happy children. This space is over 36,000 square feet and used mostly as a parking lot and then generally locked up and inaccessible to anyone outside of school hours, as it was during the early months of the pandemic when school buildings were closed, but many non-playground schoolyards were available for people to have an open space to safely have time outdoors.
Another contention was that the community was never consulted and only informed of the plan at the last minute, but the process began over four years ago with a community visioning session at the school and plans to move forward were formalized in the summer of 2017.
In 2018, Colton vocally opposed a plan to improve the B82 bus route, one of Brooklyn’s slowest and least reliable. At the time, he said that the community was not consulted, despite detailed consultation with the community and its leaders by the DOT and MTA over the previous three years after conversion to a Select Bus Service route had been advised by multiple studies.
Even though this route, which traveled at an average speed less than 5 miles per hour, had 28,000 daily riders and six in ten of the workers in his district commuted by public transportation, he opposed the improvement because it might affect some metered parking spaces. Furthermore, he categorized the plan as “anti-women,” stating that women are those who “work locally” or who “would find parking an increased obstacle in caring for their families.”
“He either does not know this important detail that an elected official should be aware of or he purposely misled his constituents to incite opposition for a reason that does not exist.”
In actuality, nearly two-thirds of Brooklyn bus commuters in 2018 were women and more than three-quarters of people shopping on Kings Highway by the bus route, walked there or took mass transit.
Ultimately, the proposed bus route was implemented, along with safety improvements like additional crosswalks and pedestrian islands, and shorter travel times and more reliable service followed. Sadly, it seems the new playground is dead, thanks to opposition based on false information.
People can disagree about a new bus route or community playground, and the effects of such plans can be debated, but pretending that nobody was informed of the proposal, when that is not the case, is just disingenuous. So is claiming that a school will lose all access to their outdoor space when that is abjectly false. Communities should not be deprived of needed improvements because they are misled.
