Editorial

Claim Your Tax Credit
You don’t have to be an economic development expert to know that an extra $500 million in the hands of New Yorkers would be a good thing for city residents and the city at large.

That money is there to be had if only eligible low-income residents would apply for the earned income tax credit (EITC). As we report in this issue, city residents took home $1.4 billion from this one deduction but another half a billion dollars went unclaimed.

There are two nonprofits with outposts in our community, Food Change and Money Site that are trying to spread the word and help eligible residents apply for the money they are due. But they can’t do it alone. Local elected officials, community leaders and residents should help get the word out by telling their constituents and neighbors about the EITC.

For Open Meetings
In our last issue, we reported that the first meeting of the Facilities Monitoring Committee for the Croton filtration plant would be closed to the public, but that the participants would discuss whether to open up future meetings.

We are disappointed to report that the Committee decided to keep the meetings closed. We are confident that Committee members will do a good job of advocating for their community, but transparency is always better for all concerned than closed doors.

This is a gigantic lengthy project affecting many different segments of the community. Someone living say, on East 212th Street and Jerome Avenue, has a very different, but equally valuable, perspective on the project than someone living on Knox Place. (There is only one Norwood resident on the committee.) The more people who are involved and able to report to officials problems or concerns with the construction progress, the safer it will be.

We can’t blame this on the DEP. It was reportedly representatives of the local community boards and other officials who argued in favor of the meetings being closed. We hope they’ll reconsider.

No representative of Community Board 8 was present, however. Maybe this is reason enough to reopen the discussion of opening the meetings at the next session on April 7.

Still Time for Sunshine
While we’re talking about open government, we’d like to reiterate our support for Sunshine Week, which begins on March 13. Organized by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Sunshine Week is meant to educate the public about their rights to obtain public information and state and federal Freedom of Information laws.

As we stated in our last issue, information is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. But if we don’t exercise this right, it will atrophy.

We continue to encourage local schools and teachers to discuss these issues with their classes and to even use the state’s Freedom of Information law to obtain records the students might be interested in.

There’s more information at www.sunshineweek.org  and if you want to ask us anything about FOIL, just e-mail norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org. 
 

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