Ask the Bronx Borough President: September 2025

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Ask Your Advocate Jumaane D. Williams: April 2025

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News 12 Staff

0825askthebronxbpbblock

Welcome back to this edition of Ask the Borough President with Bronx BP Vanessa Gibson here in studio once again. I figure now's a good time to give some of those who ask questions on social media a little love. so we're gonna get to this question from Diane. She posted on our Facebook page specifically talking about the Legionnaires' disease outbreak that we're seeing, uh, in Central Harlem, but also we are seeing some increased numbers here in the Bronx. She writes, what is the update on the increased amount of Legionnaires? Disease cases in the Bronx including Parkchester. I know that we here on News 12 got an update from the Department of Health today saying that they've seen now a total of 4 cases so far this year concentrated in that Parkchester South condominium complex. I believe that's up from 2 cases that were reported earlier this month. I think people probably see what's happening in Harlem and get very afraid and scared that it could happen here at home. Any updates. On mitigation efforts that are underway, right, right, so the laws in place and obviously based on what happened 10 years ago in 2015 from the Bronx where we had the Legionnaires' outbreak in the South Bronx and Highbridge. I was in the city council and we passed laws that really ensured that all owners of cooling towers, both residential and commercial, disinfect, inspect every three months. There is a database now that's monitored every owner. Passing our register their cooling tower with the city, so there's a process, right? It's not perfect. Uh, the cases that we saw in Parkchester Condominium South, there were two cases identified in the same zip code, the same area earlier this year in 2025, and now two additional positive cases of Legionnaires in that same area. So the landlord now has to go in and disinfect that clean that cooling tower cleaning. It and then doing another inspection, working closely with DOHMH there are inspections done to make sure and testing the cooling tower to make sure that the presence of the Legionella bacteria is not in the cooling tower. It is alarming and obviously what's happening in Central Harlem we're looking very closely at we're right across the bridge and we wanna make sure that we are holding the owners accountable. Cooling towers all over the city and sometimes. You don't see that many of them are on the roof, but it controls the air conditioning, just the ventilation, and it's the presence of the Legionella bacteria, right, that gets exposures through basically through the air right through the cooling and cooling system through the vaping vapors, um, and so what we also tell people is that if you are older adult, if you are uh faced with certain vulnerabilities when it comes to health issues, uh, please make sure if you see any of the. Symptoms which are very relative to a cold or flu that you go to the doctor, your primary care doctor and get tested for Legionnaires so we encourage that because we wanna be safe then sorry so we wanna use every precaution that we possibly can. Yeah, knowledge is power in those situations especially, and it's good to hear that accountability is part of that conversation as well. Let's get to more callers that we have waiting on the line. I believe we have Shalitha from who's dialed in this evening. Shalitha, thanks for the call and what's your question? Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm wondering if um community members can submit applications to get the cameras installed to address the illegal dumping because it's a reoccurring problem where I live. I know my myself included, I've covered stories specifically in Class and Point regarding illegal dumping there so that's something so relevant, yes, so we are again making an announcement this week about a significant level of capital funding to the Department of Sanitation. There is a new memorandum of understanding with sanitation and parks where we're able to install security cameras in parks through sanitation to go after illegal dumpers. What we see across. The borough is not acceptable. Sanitation does a great job. A lot of clean up efforts to all the volunteers and organizations. Thank you, thank you, thank you, but it's still not enough. There are people that purposefully come into our communities and illegally dump debris, construction debris, tires, household items. I mean, you see all sorts of things just kind of thrown on the sidewalks incredible that people just do this with no care in the world. It's not acceptable, so. We will put class in point on our list. I definitely encourage you to reach out to Community Board 9. We will work with the local precinct, both PSA 8 and the 43 precinct, which is right across from you, and we will make sure that we can prioritize, uh, the money of course is never enough, but we are going to be very deliberate and very intentional in looking at the areas where we do have habitual offenders where we have documented 311's document. To cases of just patterns of illegal dumping, it is something that is just so aggravating, and we will make sure that we can take care of it as best we can. Good to know that action is on the way and Shalitha, stay tuned. Perhaps Classic Point we'll get some of those cameras. I want to try to get to one more caller that we have on the line as well. Cruz, who's dialed in from Kingsbridge this evening. Cruz, what's your question this evening? I'm gonna ask you to keep it tight so that the BP has enough time to respond. OK. Whenever you're ready, Cruz. I'm ready. Go for it. Can you hear us? What's your question? Yes, thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it. Uh, my question is, what are you going to do about noise control in the Bronx? It's out of control. Every night you have cars passing by with these mufflers making firecracker sounds. You can't sleep. I have people from uh from other neighborhoods come in front of my building, driving these motorcycles, uh, hanging out all night. I called 311. It doesn't help. I apologize for interrupting, but I wanna make sure that BP has enough time to respond before we have to get to. We would love to talk offline and get the specific location within Kingsbridge. Uh, NYPD now has something called Q Teams, which are quality of life teams that are rolled out in every precinct, all 12 across the borough. So depending on the. 4652 we reach out and we'll have uh the Q teams go out and they will issue a summons. All right, that's great to see that they're already on the ground. How do we feel about the fact that they're here throughout the borough now? Have we seen kind of the, the benefits of their presence already? Absolutely, and we want to make sure the Q teams know the precinct councils now that they start meeting in September. We'll make sure that they are introduced. They are formerly the NCO offices that we had in our sectors, and they're now Q teams and their only job. Is a focus on quality of life 311 noise, speeding motorists, all the things you think about block driveways, things that often don't get attention because they're not violent issues of crime. They will get addressed now through the Q teams right, so Cruz, now you know the Q teams are there to address exactly these issues. Alright, we have a lot more to get to on the other side of this break a reminder if you have a question, you can dial in right now and stay with us here on News 12 The Bronx. We've got more. Ask the borough president right after this.

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0825askthebronxbpcblock_2025-08-25-19-33-10

Welcome back to this edition of Ask the Borough President with Bronx BP Vanessa Gibson. We've reached that point in the show where we look ahead to the health tip for September. I can't believe we're talking about September, but what's the health tip? So the health tip for September is healthy aging Month. We're recognizing all of our older adults and we are promoting ways that people can stay healthy no matter what age they are, recognizing that age is just the numbers, staying active, eating a well balanced diet, and surrounding yourself with positive people. And I also wanna recognize National Health Center. week that we celebrated two weeks ago all of our incredible community-based health care centers. We thank you, thank you, thank you for all the great work you do keeping us healthy. Yeah, there are so many of them here in the Bronx and such important work that's being done by all of them as we prepare for September, we've also got some events on the calendar that you've got to share with us. Yes, we do. Our summer concert series finale is happening on Sunday, August 31st, 12 to 6 p.m. at Co op City section 5 in the Greenway. We have our 9. 11 memorial service this year Day of remembrance on Friday, September 12th, 12 to 2 at Lou Gehrig Plaza. The African Heritage Festivals happening Saturday, September 13th, 10 a.m., 5 p.m. at Crotona Park. We have a night show roundtable on Thursday, September 18th from 4 p.m. to 60 p.m. at our office Borough Hall. We are empowering older adults on Saturday, September 20th, 20 p.m., 50 p.m., 2401 White Plains Road. Fashion Week is coming back Monday, September 2, I'm sorry, Thursday, September 25th from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Bronx Borough Hall, and we're gonna have a great time celebrating our Bronx fashionistas and our models, and they always look so fabulous. There's so much to celebrate and it really is such a beautiful event, so something to look forward to. I can't talk about September and not bring up back to school, and I know that as families are getting ready to send their kids back this year. Doing it a little differently with this bell to bell ban that kids are gonna have to adjust to. What advice do you have to families as we kind of make this adjustment and of course any words of encouragement to our students and the ban is to to reduce distractions to allow kids to really pay attention while they're in school without any, you know, uh, losing focus. So I wish everyone a very, very successful, productive and exciting school year so all of our educators, principals, administrators, parents, teachers, guardians, adminis Everyone that makes our schools so successful, thank you for your commitment, your dedication, your love, your passion, serving with purpose. We have amazing students that are uh just so driven, so creative. They are ambitious and bold. We love you young people have a wonderful school year and we wish all of you the very best of success. That's the enthusiasm we need to start off the school year on the we are, we are ready for school we are ready and we thank you so much for this conversation and thank you all for tuning in. We'll see.

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News 12's Amanda Bossard sits down with Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson to answer YOUR pressing questions in this month's edition of Ask the Borough President.

Ask the Bronx Borough President: August 2025

News 12's Amanda Bossard sits down with Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson to answer YOUR pressing questions in this month's edition of Ask the Borough President.

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