SCA = School Construction Arboricide

The old St. Aloysius school on Seneca Avenue in Ridgewood has been purchased by the School Construction Authority, which has plans to demolish the building and replace it with a new elementary school (across the street from PS305, which is also brand new but already full and which is a few blocks away from PS290, also under construction).
Anyway, the company hired by SCA that erected the scaffold around the building has damaged every one of the surrounding street trees.
These are relatively young trees, planted only a few years ago, and we're already going to lose them because a tree protection plan was not implemented as required.
Do agencies in this administration actually communicate with each other?
So Bloomie's planting one million new trees? How about protecting the ones already here?
There's gotta be a better way than this.
But this is Queens, so no one cares. Not the community board, not the council member, not the school construction authority, not the parks department.
And look at all the municipal contracts the offending scaffolding company has!

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Construction safety responsibility hanging in the balance

From the Daily News:

The Scaffold Law is the last of its kind in the nation. The thrust of it is this: If a construction worker using scaffolding or a ladder is injured, the burden is on the contractor to prove the job site was safe.

But now a furious battle is unfolding in Albany to remake the law, pitting some of the most powerful political interests in New York against each other, with hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance premiums and payouts — and, some argue, the safety of workers — hanging in the balance.

The law simply states that contractors and owners must protect workers from falls by using equipment that is “constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection.” It is silent on the issue of a worker’s liability in an accident.

Legislation sponsored by Sen. Patrick Gallivan (R-Erie) and Assemblyman Joe Morelle, a Rochester Democrat, would for the first time add language that requires juries to consider the actions of workers in weighing injury lawsuits.

A coalition of developers and contractors organized by the pro-business Lawsuit Reform Alliance is aggressively pushing lawmakers to pass it by June 20, when the legislature is set to adjourn.

A flurry of bills is expected to pass at the last minute, and both sides believe the Scaffold Law amendment is in play.

In years past, contractors and the powerful Real Estate Board of New York have tried to kill the law outright. They failed, due in part to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), who is of counsel to a law firm that specializes in personal injury cases.

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