Municipal elections will not be held in towns across our coverage area until Nov. 7, but this election season has officially kicked off as candidate filing opened on Friday afternoon,
What’s the cost of losing one’s mind?
A Brooklyn council member is demanding that the city investigate whether the economic benefit of helicopter travel to, from and simply around the city outweigh the horrendous, but harder-to-calculate, deleterious affect of the noise and pollution created by the wheezing whirlybirds.
Council Member Brad Lander put in a preliminary legislative request for such a “cost-benefit” study after the legislature’s Economic Development Committee took up a bill this week to consider limiting helicopter companies’ use of city-owned heliports to slightly lower-noise vehicles. Lander said he was motivated to demand more information because the Council simply does not know if the city has made the right economic calculation by putting the desires of tourists and well-heeled travelers ahead of every day New Yorkers who are suffering on the ground.