The Buzz

HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT: “Put your notebook down—this isn’t news!” State Senator Liz Krueger scolded Chelsea Now, before last Friday’s City Hall press conference about her and Senator Thomas Duane’s proposed moratorium on Mitchell-Lama conversions (more on that important issue in the next Chelsea Now). But how could we avoid reporting a story, albeit five years old, that involves the senator in a leather jacket and dark sunglasses, at a party shortly after her 2002 election win, singing “Hit me With Your Best Shot, Joe Bruno!”? The rest of Krueger’s story, with Duane giving his rendition, of “Moon River,” and the two ending with a duet (song forgotten), seemed less surprising somehow. But we think it still counts as news, because the Google bots can’t find the story (can’t you break news years late?). And we have it on good authority, aka Duane chief of staff Laura Morrison, that “Tom Duane singing anything but “Moon River” is news!”

THICKENING FOG ON CLEARING THE AIR: New York City’s mailboxes and radio airwaves are filling with debate about Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing proposal, most framing it as an issue that Manhattanites favor and outer-borough folks are against. But this week, Community Board 4’s Transportation Committee, asked to take a position on the plan, nearly turned it down, and attached unexpectedly strict conditions to their possible approval. At issue is not so much the $8 car fee for entering the business district “box” during rush hour—though car owners like former board chair Walter Mankoff still growled about that—but a proposed $4 fee for Manhattan drivers actually moving their cars within the exemption zone. “This means that if I use alternate side of the street parking, I’m going to be charged double?” Miguel Acevedo asked Chelsea Now. “This is a real problem.” Noting that London, whose congestion pricing plan is being hailed as a model, gives city residents a 90 percent discount on its 11-pound congestion fee, the committee voted 5-4 to give conditional approval to a resolutioni endorsing Bloomberg’s plan, but only if it exempted all actual residents of the zone from paying the fee, and gave them a discount on the $8 fee for entering their own home borough. Committee chairs Jay Marcus and Christine Berthet, both passionate public-transportation advocates, were startled at the high emotions of some committee members: Berthet voted against the measure because of all the demands attached, while Marcus mused: “Most people I know in Manhattan don’t use cars to get to work every day, so a 6 a.m.–6. p.m. charge isn’t so much of a hardship. Maybe we really are looking at a division between people who use their cars to go about their business, and those who don’t.”

N.Y.U. big dig: It’s nearing two months since New York University reached a deal with 250 Mercer St.’s co-op board under which they agreed to support N.Y.U.’s expansion of its co-generation plant under Mercer St. — a major, two-year project. Yet, the agreement still hasn’t been signed, and some residents of the co-op who oppose the project keep claiming the deal has fallen through. But Alicia Hurley, N.Y.U. associate vice president for government and community affairs, put those rumors to rest. “There has been lots of back and forth,” Hurley said. “They have a final version now for sign-off. There are no problems or areas where we haven’t been able to come to agreement; these things simply take time.”