Assemblyman Vito Lopez and City Council candidate Maritza Dávila, left, and Councilmember Diana Reyna. — Photos by Aaron Short.

Why has Bushwick’s largest social service organization chosen to close a key youth center, claiming a lack of funds, while refusing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a city councilmember? Aaron Short digs deep into a petty and bitter political contest between Assemblyman Vito Lopez and Councilwoman Diana Reyna that leaves the children of the neighborhood’s low-income working families as the real losers.

For two months, Councilwoman Diana Reyna and the leaders of the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council (RBSCC), one of the largest youth and senior service providers in Brooklyn, have been locked in a bitter funding dispute, resulting in the elimination of a popular summer camp and afterschool program for Bushwick children.

After twenty years, the Hope Gardens Multi-Service Center’s youth program will be discontinued today and ten staff members will lose their jobs.  Hope Gardens is one of the centers managed by RBSCC, and the program serves over 70 children, many of whom live within several blocks of the Center in Hope Gardens, Bushwick proper’s only public housing project.

Three weeks ago, Hope Gardens’ youth counselors heard rumors of the program’s dissolution.  The rumors were confirmed when temporary Director Sandy Christian said their contracts would indeed end on June 30th because the program did not receive funding for the next year.  Christian replaced long-time Hope Gardens Director Anna Gonzalez, who died one month ago.

"They said there was no summer camp because Sandy didn’t find any replacement funding," said Joanna Gomez, the program’s afterschool Director.  "Sandy said (RBSCC Executive Director) Chris Fisher didn’t want us to have any meetings with the parents or write them letters."

Hope Gardens staff held a meeting with parents anyway to explain that there would be no summer camp for their children this year at Hope Gardens and encouraged them to find other programs in Bushwick, though many parents and staff believe this would be difficult since existing summer programs have long waiting lists and the public school is nearly over.

"They didn’t give employees a chance to find other jobs and they didn’t give their parents a chance to find other programs and it is hard to bring their children to places like Six Flags and Splish Splash because they work full-time," said Tiffany Perez, a youth counselor and tutor with Hope Gardens.  "The kids have nowhere else to go."

 
Halloween at the Hope Gardens Youth Center is hereby canceled. Click to enlarge.

The youth program may have been caught in the middle of a petty and increasingly spiteful campaign for City Council in Bushwick.  Incumbent Councilwoman Diana Reyna is seeking a third term for the office, but faces a highly competitive race against Community Board One District Manager Gerry Esposito and Maritza Dávila, a housing organizer who works at Ridgewood Bushwick.

The relationship between Councilwoman Diana Reyna and Assemblyman Vito Lopez has deteriorated to the point that Lopez has encouraged and endorsed Dávila to run against her, despite the fact that Reyna used to be Lopez’s District Chief of Staff.  Reyna claims that Lopez gave only tepid support for her re-election campaign four years ago and resented her independence from the office, though Lopez points to a very specific episode regarding an 8-unit development on Jefferson Street that Reyna had been holding up for approval in City Council.

"We need to have a political coalition that works together," said Lopez at an endorsement rally for Dávila at City Hall two weeks ago. "Marty [Dilan] and I work together and Maritza and I work together. There’s one link that’s missing."

The political divisions in Bushwick have not prevented Reyna from distributing funding to RBSCC, including the Hope Gardens summer youth program.  Over the past year, Reyna has given nearly a quarter of a million dollars ($279,214) in discretionary funds to the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and its affiliate senior and youth centers.

The fact that Reyna has given so much money to an organization whose leaders are strongly and vocally opposed to her reelection perplexes some.  It has particularly perturbed Gerry Esposito, Reyna’s other significant opponent in the city council race.  Esposito’s campaign manager, Morgan Pehme, believes that Reyna and Lopez have a closer relationship than it appears, and has been positioning Esposito as an anti-establishment candidate.  Pehme did not return calls for comment by press time, but he has indicated the Esposito campaign will release a statement further explaining the matter.

But this year, Ridgewood Bushwick is receiving none of the funding — already allocated by the City Council in a budget vote last Friday — that it normally receives from Reyna’s office. Sources within the Reyna campaign say that RBSCC Executive Director Christiana Fisher ordered youth and senior center directors to refuse discretionary money from the councilwoman’s office, just before the deadline for submissions of the FY 2010 budget to the Council’s finance office.  Several calls to Fisher were not returned. 

"Center directors were asking Chris Fisher, ‘We need the money, why are we denying the money from Diana?’" said Antonio Reynoso, a spokesperson for Reyna’s campaign.  "No senior center director is going to want to deny money.  They all said call Chris Fisher, she doesn’t want to do that."

On March 31, Reyna’s office sent a letter, via fax, to Fisher reminding her to submit budget requests for her centers for the 2010 fiscal year, after learning that Fisher was refusing to sign any allocation applications.  In her response, dated April 1st and excerpted below, Fisher cited criticisms from Reyna’s office concerning the nonprofit’s operations as well as several RBSCC projects currently in development for affordable housing. 

What concerns me are the unwarranted attacks and criticisms of our programs and staff that have been occurring over the past few years.  Your action of holding up the approval of a tax abatement enabling us to build eight more units of affordable housing for months and months without merit, your speaking out against our role in the re-development of the Broadway Triangle (even though our track record speaks to our unquestionable ability to successfully develop a project of this magnitude and said project is NOT located within your Council district), and your confronting one of my staff at a community meeting by informing that staff person that RBSCC would receive no future funding from you are all actions evidently aimed at undercutting our credibility, our funding and our role in the community.  The success of any non-profit greatly depends on these factors and therefore it is impossible to have a working relationship with a person who undermines what we do on a regular, on-going basis.

On April 6th, Reyna sent her response to Fisher, excerpted below, acknowledging receipt of the previous letter but noting the passage of the Council’s budget deadline. 

It is unfortunate your untimely response did not afford any opportunity for services in our community to continue as funded by my office through Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, Inc. As evidenced by my contributions to RBSCC, Inc., since elected to office in 2001, your accusations and political tone are uncalled for and unappreciated. 

Although your response alluded to other important matters, they were irrelevant to my initial letter.  Your reference to the unsurpassed quality of RBSCC’s work is all the reason I have provided funding for the services made available to my constituents.  The lack of any effort by your office to seek funding through my office for FY2010 speaks unfavorably to the good work you claimed in your letter.

Reyna was also disturbed by a directive allegedly sent from Fisher’s office that RBSCC center directors must ask Reyna to give one week’s notice before scheduling visits to any senior and youth centers run by Ridgewood Bushwick.

"One week’s notice?  It’s unheard of!" said Reynoso, of Reyna’s office.  "Usually we give them courtesy calls.  Before, it’s been a couple of hours notice, and it’s never been an issue.  Now it’s an issue."

Reyna has ignored the request and visited constituents in several RBSCC senior centers in Bushwick and East Williamsburg.  So far, she has not heard a response from the RBSCC leadership.

"Every time she goes, the seniors love Diana, the seniors cheer, they give her hugs and kisses.  It’s not about the seniors.  This is all politics. This shouldn’t be about politics, not with seniors," said Reynoso.

The dispute has put RBSCC center directors, many of whom enjoy close working relationships with both Reyna and Lopez, in a difficult position.  The late Anna Gonzalez particularly worked well with political leaders throughout the community.  Though her absence may not have prevented further divisions from both political camps, Perez, the Hope Gardens counselor, believes that she would have been able to save the youth program.

"Anna adored the youth program and she loved helping the community," said Perez.  "It’s unfair to say that we don’t have the funding at all because they don’t have the funding.  If Anna were around, she would have found the funding."

Interestingly, Ridgewood Bushwick will be collecting $441,875, earmarked for senior and youth services, from other councilmembers’ discretionary allocations, including $350,000 from the Brooklyn Delegation, introduced by Brooklyn Councilman Lewis Fiddler. RBSCC refuses to comment on why the Hope Gardens services will be downsized even while making up Reyna’s portion of the funding from these other sources.

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