The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports that St. Francis College, a four year liberal arts institution that has made its home in Brooklyn Heights since 1963, will be moving to new, smaller quarters in a high rise building being built above the Macy’s store on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Although St. Francis plans to expand its student population from its present 2,700 or so to 3,500 by 2026, the Eagle story quotes a representative of the school as saying that while the present building at 180 Remsen Street (photo by C. Scales for BHB) wasn’t “designed specifically to be a campus” the new space is, and therefore will use its square footage more efficiently.

The Eagle quotes “officials” as saying the new “space will include a 6,600-square-foot library, a 300 seat auditorium, a cafeteria, two art gallery spaces, and plenty of outdoor space, with a terrace and rooftop.” It’s interesting that there’s no mention of athletic facilities. St. Francis fields intercollegiate teams in a number of sports, including basketball, soccer, volleyball, water polo, diving, and swimming. While the soccer team has done its practice on the fields at Brooklyn Bridge Park, other sports have used the ample indoor facilities at the Generoso Pope Athletic Complex, which is part of the same 180 Remsen building which will presumably be sold to a developer to be demolished, no doubt for high rise (the building is outside the Brooklyn Heights Historic District) luxury apartments. Update: SFC Athletic Director Irma Garcia provides this information:

Because our new Wheeler building campus does not have a gymnasium or pool on site, we are making special plans for indoor teams that rely on those facilities, including aquatics, basketball and volleyball.

SFC will partner with nearby educational institutions, to use their indoor facilities in the short term after our move. SFC is developing a permanent solution for its indoor sports and other athletics facilities longer term. More information will be announced soon.

What will we Heights residents be losing because of this? An auditorium with ample space for neighborhood meetings and for cultural events, a lobby with inviting and interesting art exhibits, and a swimming pool available for community use during limited hours. Oh, yes, and for many of us, a place to vote.

The Brooklyn Heights Association will have its 2020 Annual Meeting this coming Wednesday evening, February 26 at Founders Hall, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street (between Clinton and Court).  The meeting starts at 7:00, but you’re advised to come early. Last year’s meeting was standing room only for later arrivals. All are invited; you need not be a BHA member to attend.

This year’s meeting will feature a panel discussion, followed by Q&A from the audience, on the problem of empty storefronts and how to keep commercial corridors like Henry and Montague streets “alive and thriving.” The BHA will present an update on its work on local issues, including an update on the BQE repair.  Community service awards will be presented to the volunteers who mapped the plantings in the Promenade Gardens to facilitate replacement of anything lost because of the BQE repair, and to architect and urban planner Marc Wouters for his work with the BHA to show there are alternatives to the Department of Transportation’s plan to place a temporary highway at the location of the Promenade.

Theater 2020, Brooklyn Heights’ own award winning professional stage company, will present the James Lapine/Stephen Sondheim musical comedy Into the Woods at the Founders Hall Theater, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, in a run of sixteen performances beginning Thursday, February 21 and continuing through Sunday, March 17.

“Into the Woods,” where the characters in the fairy tales of Grimm, come alive wishing for a better life, first looking out only to their own self-interest, but learning in the end that true happiness comes from a collective caring about others. Told in a hilarious book by James Lapine with glorious music and lyrics by the master Stephen Sondheim, we discover that while we may lament our lot, we can do something about it, just remembering “No One Is Alone!” Awarding winning Producer/Director David Fuller sets this production in a refugee resettlement camp, somewhere in the world today.

Performances will be Thursday through Sunday each week; you may buy tickets here.

Our feline friendly City Council Member Stephen Levin has $1.5 million for capital projects and (this is new) $20,000 for expense funding, all to be distributed in accordance with the wishes of constituents in the 33rd Council District (which includes Brooklyn Heights). There will be two Neighborhood Assemblies in the Heights — one at the Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont Street (corner of Clinton) on Wednesday, September 12 from 6:30 to 8:00 PM; and one at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street (between Clinton and Court) on Tuesday, October 16, also from 6:30 to 8:00 PM — at which you may present or discuss ideas. You may also submit suggestions here. You may also contact Mr. Levin’s Participatory Budgeting Director, Benjamin Solotaire, at bsolotaire@council.nyc.gov or by phone at 718-875-5200.

The Brooklyn Heights Association and others are urging local residents to attend Community Board 2’s public hearing at 6:00 PM this Wednesday, March 28 at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, on the appliction by a developer to build two residential towers, one 74 and one 38 stories, on a site bordered by Flatbush Avenue, Scheremrhorn and State streets, and Third Avenue. For renderings of the proposed buildings see here (the aerial rendering shows the even taller 9 DeKalb, on which construction began last year, in the background).

Although the site is some distance from Brooklyn Heights, the BHA and some local residents believe opposition is necessary because approval would signal openness to more dense residential development in the Downtown area, straining local infrastructure and blocking sunlight. Also, Third Avenue could be a major route for trucks diverted from the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, if necessary, during the reconstruction of the cantilevered portion below the Heights.

Those who attend are invited to speak. You will need to sign up to speak when you enter, and speeches are limited to two minutes.

Assassins is a musical comedy conceived by Charles Gilbert, Jr., and brought to life with a book by John Weidman and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Playwrights Horizons gave it an Off-Broadway run in 1990, but it didn’t make it to Broadway until a Roundabout Theatre Company production in 2004, with Todd Haimes as Artistic Director. It’s now being staged by Theater 2020 at Founders Hall, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street.

Theater 2020’s choice of this relatively obscure piece of Sondheimiana has proved to be prescient, as the nation has, once again, been thrown into conflict over gun violence. At the play’s beginning the entire cast is on stage when David Fuller, the play’s director, takes on the role of a carnival barker urging them all to take a shot at a President. They line up, get their guns (cap pistols), and fire away at targets, all the while singing Sondheim’s opening (and closing) number, “Everybody’s Got the Right.”

Fuller later returns to the stage in different guises, most prominently as a bumbling Gerald Ford who takes a pratfall worthy of Chevy Chase, and who survives two assassination attempts. The first is by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Jana Bernard), whose gun fails to go off; the second by Sara Jane Moore (Elizabeth Kensek), who misses. Yes, the play includes failed, as well as successful, assassins.

The entire cast is superb, but I want to give special mention to Danny Wilfred (left in photo above), who plays Charles Guiteau, assassin of James Garfield, along with several other parts, and Amber Dewey (right in photo), who plays many roles, including a balladeer; the anarchist Emma Goldman, who has an encounter with Leon Czolgosz (Evan Maltby), assassin of William McKinley; and Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of John F. Kennedy. She plays these varied roles with great alacrity. Mr. Wilfred brings a powerful intensity of energy and charisma to his portrayal of Guiteau, a delusional, narcissistic con man who kills Garfield following the President’s rejection of his hopeless request to be named ambassador to France.

As I noted above, the play is timely because of our current focus on gun violence and its causes. Guns were used by all of the successful assassins, as well as all but one of the unsuccessful ones. The deranged Samuel Byck (David Arthur Bachrach) didn’t plan to shoot Richard Nixon. His plan, which was foiled, was to hijack a plane, which likely would have involved use of a gun, and crash it into the White House. As for the motivations of the real and would be assassins, only Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth (Josh Powell), and Leon Czolgosz, clearly appear to have acted for political reasons only (although one of the characters suggests that Booth was impelled to act because of his anger over some unfavorable reviews and rivalry with his actor brother, Edwin). Giuseppe Zangara (Robert Farruggia), whose attempt to assassinate the then President Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was foiled by a woman’s hat in front of him, claimed to have acted out of hatred of capitalism, although some have claimed that his real target was Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who was killed by Zangara’s supposedly stray bullet, and that Zangara was acting as a hitman for the mob. There has been much speculation about what motivated Oswald, given his having been murdered shortly after the assassination. His interrogation by the Dallas police provided little other than his response to the question, “Are you a communist?”, which elicited the response, “No, I am not a communist. I am a Marxist.” As with Zangara, there has been speculation that the Kennedy assassination was mob inspired.

As for the rest, Guiteau had the delusional belief that a speech he had made was the cause of Garfield’s election, and that the President owed him an ambassadorship. Fromme and John Hinckley (Christian Doyle), whose bullet hit but failed to kill Ronald Reagan, were both obsessed. Fromme loved the then imprisoned Charles Manson, and believed that a presidential assassination would create chaos during which he could be freed. Hinckley longed for Jodie Foster, and thought that killing Reagan would at last make him worthy of her notice and affection. Moore, at her sentencing, said that “at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger.” Thirty two years later, on her release from prison, she said she regretted having been “blinded by my radical political views.”

The play ends with a reprise of the opening song, Sondheim’s “Everybody’s Got the Right”, which ends with the words, “Everybody’s got the right/ To their dreams.” Does everybody?

I recommend this play without reservation. Credits are also due to musical director and pianist Brandon Adams, costume designer Ben Philipp, lighting designer Giles Hogya, choreographer Judith Jarosz, and production stage manager Maria Marrero. Here’s another review. For a schedule of remaining performances see here, and you may buy tickets here, or at the door.

Last June we noted here that a procedure called “design/build”, in which the same contractors bid on both the design and construction aspects of a project, could greatly shorten the time necessary to do the vital reconstruction and repair work on the cantilevered portion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, beneath Brooklyn Heights and the Promenade. In December we observed that, without design/build, the project could be delayed beyond a point at which it would be necessary to divert trucks from this stretch of the highway onto Brooklyn Heights streets.

The Brooklyn Heights Association has been very active in the effort to get design/build approved. Last Friday morning there was a demonstration (photo) sponsored by State Senator Brian Flanagan and Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, held at the Montague Street entrance to the Promenade. Design/build will also be the principal topic of the BHA’s Annual Meeting, to be held on Wednesday, February 28 at Founders Hall, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM. Finally, the BHA has chartered a bus to take concerned residents to Albany on Tuesday, March 6, to meet with legislators whose approval is crucial to the project. Seats are limited, so you should register here as soon as possble, or call 718-858-9193. Although the BHA’s maim page on the BQE reconstruction says there is no charge for the event, the registration page linked above requires a $30 “event fee.” Perhaps this can be avoided by using the phone option.

Our friends at Community Board 2 have advised us that Mayor Bill de Blasio will be at St. Francis College, Founders Hall, 180 Remsen Street, on Wednesday evening, October 18, for a Town Hall to which all are invited. Admission is free. The event begins at 6:00; doors will open at 5:30 and close at 6:30. The Town Hall is presented by City Council Member Stephen T. Levin. If you want to attend, please RSVP by Monday, October 16 at this website, e-mail to brooklyntownhall@cityhall.nyc.gov or phone 212-788-7929. Space is limited.

This Thursday, October 12 at 11:10 AM, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, will present its annual Dr. Francis J. Greene Honors Lecture. This year’s lecturer will be Professor Gregory Claeys (photo) of Royal Holloway, University of London. He will speak on the topic, “From Utopia to Dystopia.”

Professor Claeys’ research focuses on social and political reform movements as well as utopianism and early socialism. He has taught at prestigious universities around the world including the Australian National University, Canberra, Keio University, Tokyo, the University of Hanoi (2008), and the University of Peking.

The lecture is open to the public, and admission is free.

Sorry for the late notice. City Council Member Steven Levin (photo) has advised us that there will be a Participatory Budgeting meeting at St, Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, on Tuesday evening, September 26 starting at 7:00. Levin has a kitty of money to spend on projects in his district, which includes Brooklyn Heights and nearby areas. The purpose of the meeting is for you to let him know what you’d like some of this money used for. If you want to attend, you may RSVP, but you may also just show up. If you can’t make it, you may submit a suggestion for a project that needs funding here. There’s a list of past funded projects here. If you have any questions you may contact Benjamin at bsolotaire@council.nyc.gov or 718-875-5200.

We’ve just been advised by City Council Member Stephen Levin (photo) that, because of a scheduling conflict, the Sanitation Town Hall meeting, originally scheduled for this evening, has been postponed until Thursday evening, April 13 from 6:00 to 8:00, at St. Francis College auditorium, 180 Remsen Street. According to Council Member Levin:

The Department of Sanitation will be present to answer questions pertaining to the CleanUp NYC Initiative; Litter Basket Replacement and Additions; Increasing Collection; Street Cleaning Enforcement; Containerization; and Organics Recycling Expansion. There will also be free reusable bags for attendees.

Update: the Town Hall has been postponed to April 13 (see above). The Brooklyn Heights Association has advised us that there will be a Sanitation Department Town Hall Meeting tomorrow evening, Wednesday, March 22, starting at 6:00 p.m. at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street.

Let the Department of Sanitation know your issues with litter and trash. In addition, the placement of litter baskets and litter collection, street cleaning enforcement, and Organics Recycling will be among the discussion topics.

The Town Hall is sponsored by City Council Member Stephen Levin.

The Brooklyn Heights Association will hold its annual meeting at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, at 6:30 p.m on Monday, February 27. The meeting will feature a panel discussion, “The BQX Project: Is the City on the Right Track?” “BQX” is the proposed Brooklyn-Queens Connector, a trolley line that would run from Sunset Park, Brooklyn on the south to Astoria, Queens, on the north. Its exact route has yet to be determined, but it would run roughly parallel to the East River with some diversions inland, possibly including one to pass Brooklyn Heights to the east. The discussion will be moderated by James Dwyer, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist known for his coverage of transit issues.

Community Service Awards will be presented to long time community activist Irene Janner, Love Our Pool, PS8/MS8 Principal Seth Phillips, and the Pier 6 Legal Team. The meeting is free and open to all, whether or not BHA members.

On Thursday afternoon, February 2, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be at Founders Hall, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, as part of the College’s Thomas J. Volpe Lecture Series. She will be joined for conversation by her former law clerk, Sparkle Sooknanan, a 2002 St. Francis graduate. Doors open at 12:30 p.m.; everyone is asked to be seated by 1:15 and the program will begin at 1:30 promptly. Security will be tight, so please don’t bring backpacks or large bags. Admission is free, but you must have a ticket; they may be obtained by e-mailing events@sfc.edu or calling 718-489-5372.

Given the President-Elect’s ambitious announced starting schedule, by the time of this event someone may have been nominated to take the place of the late Justice Scalia and join Justice Sotomayor on the Court. This may lead to interesting conversation.

Photo: public domain, via Wikipedia.

The Brookyn Heights Association will hold its Annual Meeting on Wednesday, February 24, starting at 7:00 p.m., at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street. The meeting is open to all. The guest speaker will be Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson (photo), who will speak on “Keeping Brooklyn Safe in an Equal and Just System”. A brief Q&A will follow. The program will also include presentation of community awards by actor, Channel 13 host, and Heights resident Tom Stewart. Refreshments will be served following the meeting.

This Friday, February 12, starting at 3:00 p.m., in the Callahan Center of St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, St. Francis College will launch its Self Awareness and Bonding Lab (SABL), led by professors Marisa Cohen and Karen Wilson. SABL will consider questions like,”Does color affect your level of romantic attraction? Does social media impact our approach to dating?”, many of them proposed by students. “Participants will be able to send messages to their Valentine via social media while learning about relationship science and how it affects our everyday behaviors.” The SABL launch party is free and open to the public; desserts and other refreshments will be served.

Our local and highly regarded small college, St. Francis, is not only an academic powerhouse but also a contender to be reckoned with in basketball and in water sports. This weekend the college will celebrate “Big Splash II”, a celebration and reunion, and a fundraiser, for the Terriers’ men’s and women’s swimming, water polo, and diving teams. All are invited.

This Friday evening, December 11, from 6:30 to 9:30, at Founders’ Hall, 180 Remsen Street (between Clinton and Court) “Big Splash II” will give you an opportunity to meet current and former aquatic athletes and coaches at a gala event, and to contribute to the teams’ future success. Srdjan Mihaljevic, a 2001 St. Francis alumnus, vice president at Morgan Stanley and former member of the water polo team, as well as coach of the men’s team in 2012-13, when he took them to the NCAA Final Four, said “My association with the program shaped me into the man I am today, and much of my success I owe to St. Francis.” Friday evening’s festivities will be followed by an alumni water polo game on Saturday.

Admission to “Big Splash II” is $50 per person or $75 per couple; tickets may be purchased here. Questions? Contact Carl Quigley, St. Francis’ assistant athletic director, at cquigley@sfc.edu

Former Brooklyn Heights resident, Pulitzer and multiple Tony award winner Arthur Miller (1915-2005), remembered for his plays The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, The Misfits, A View From the Bridge and many others, will be the subject of a centennial conference at St. Francis College this weekend. While tickets to the event, which includes a dramatic reading by Broadway actress, and Miller’s sister, Joan Copeland, as well as a Muslim/Syrian production of A View from the Bridge, various lectures and panel discussions, and a reception, are expensive and appear to be limited to members of the academic community and St. Francis alums (but, hey, who can’t claim to be an “Independent scholar”?), there is one event, a staged reading of Miller’s All My Sons by “On the Verge” of Ithaca College, which, according to this Eagle story, is free and open to the public. The reading takes place in Founder’s Hall, 180 Remsen Street, at 1:00 Sunday afternoon, October 18.

Margaret Atwood (photo), the multiple award winning Canadian novelist (The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, and many others), poet, literary and social critic, inventor (the LongPen), and environmental activist will be at St. Francis College, Founders Hall, 180 Remsen Street next Friday evening, October 9, for a conversation with Isaac Fitzgerald, editor of BuzzFeed Books and “former biker bar employee” (New York Times). They will discuss Atwood’s latest novel, The Heart Goes Last. Afterward, they will take questions from the audience.

The event is free and open to all. Tickets will be distributed at the door. The line forms beginning at 5:00 p.m., doors open at 6:00, and the conversation begins at 7:00.

As we previously reported, this Wednesday, July 15, the full Community Board 2 will consider the recommendation of its Land Use Committee that the proposed sale of the Brooklyn Heights Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library be approved, with conditions. The meeting will be held at St. Francis College, Founders Hall, 180 Remsen Street, starting at 6:00 p.m. Following whatever action the Community Board takes, the matter will next go to the Borough President, who will hold a public hearing at Borough Hall on Tuesday, August 18, starting at 6:00 p.m.

Tomorrow (Monday, July 6) at 6:30 p.m. in the Founders’ Hall of St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, there will be a meeting of the Community Board 2 Land Use Committee to reconsider the proposed sale by Brooklyn Public Library of the Brooklyn Heights branch to a developer who seeks to raze the existing structure and build a high rise apartment and commercial building with a new library on its ground floor and in some below grade space. At its previous meeting, the Committee “could not reach an affirmative vote.” While no time has been scheduled for public comment, Citizens Defending Libraries is urging members of the public to attend.

Community Board 2’s Transportation Committee will meet tomorrow (Tuesday, April 21) evening at 6:00 in the first floor board room at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street. According to C.B. 2:

The agenda … includes presentations by the DOT on proposals for a Brooklyn Heights Slow Zone, extension of the bicycle network on Schermerhorn Street, and bike corrals on Myrtle Avenue at Adelphi Street and Bond Street at Pacific Street.

Interested members of the community are invited to attend.

This Thursday, April 16, starting at 11:10 a.m., there will be an observance of Yom HaShoah, commemorting the victims of the Holocaust, at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street (between Clinton and Court), featuring Rabbi Joseph Potasnik (photo), Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights, and Cantor Shira Lissek.

Rabbi Potasnik will discuss the topic of Being Human in the Face of Inhumanity, while Cantor Lissek will offer personal experiences from her family history and a collection of songs, including El Maleh Rahamim (A Memorial Prayer for the six million), If the World Had Cried, and Hatikvah (the Israeli National Anthem). She will be accompanied by Oran Eldor on Grand Piano.

The event is free and open to all.

Joyce Carol Oates, winner of a National Book Award and author of We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Accursed, will read from her new collection of short fiction, Lovely, Dark, Deep, this Friday evening, October 10 starting at 7:00, at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street. The stories have been described as ” display[ing]…Oates’s astonishing ability to make visceral the fear, hurt, and uncertainty that lurks at the edges of ordinary lives.” There will be time for audience questions and answers, and the author will sign her books, which will be available for purchase. The event, which is sponsored by BookCourt, is free.

It’s time once again to help City Council Member Steve Levin decide how to spend a kitty of $1 million in his district, which includes Brooklyn Heights. There will be a community meeting on Thursday, October 16 at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, at which you may present and discuss your ideas. You may also present them on line here.

David Cronenberg, the Canadian film director “known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood”, will read from his first novel, Consumed, Thursday evening at 7:00 at St. Francis College Auditorium, 180 Remsen Street. The event, presented by Book Court, includes a release party, reading, audience Q&A, and book signing. The event is free; no RSVP necessary.

Assemblywoman Joan Millman will hold her final (she is not running for re-election) Senior Fair this Friday, June 27, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street (between Clinton and Court). The fair will feature free information and assistance from the NYC Department for the Aging, the Heights & Hill Community Council, the Senior Umbrella Network of Brooklyn, AARP New York, the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs, the NYS Comptroller’s Office, Social Security, and others. There will be free blood pressure tests, giveaways, and refreshments. Admission is free, and no reservation is required. For further information call Assemblywoman Millman’s office at 718-246-4889.

Thanks to reader Susan Raboy for bringing this to our attention.

The highlight of the weekend is the Brooklyn Heights Association’s annual Landmark House and Garden Tour, to be held this Saturday, May 10 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.. Houses on display this year range from an 1820s vintage Federal style frame house (photo; by Judith Angel) to a condo in a recently converted parking garage. There’s more information here. Tickets, the price of which is fully tax deductible, are $40 ($30 for BHA members) and may be purchased here.

The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival will continue through tonight (Thursday, May 8) through Sunday, May 11, with many films being shown at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema and others at Founders Hall, St. Francis College. There’s a complete schedule here. Brooklyn Heights Cinema will also be showing The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Lunch Box. More information and showtimes are here.

Bargemusic has three “Masterworks” concerts scheduled this weekend. On Friday evening at 7:00 pianist Tanya Bannister will play works by Handel, Harold Meltzer, Sidney Corbett, and Beethoven. On Saturday evening at 7:00 Wendy Sutter on cello and Olga Vinokur on piano will perform the second in a series of the complete cello and piano works of Beethoven. On Sunday afternoon at 4:00 there will be a concert of works by Beethoven and Mendelssohn performed by the Williams Chamber Players. There’s more information and buy tickets here. Saturday afternoon at 3:00 there will be a free, family oriented “Music in Motion” concert. Doors open at 2:30; first come, first seated.

On Sunday at 4:00 p.m.the Brooklyn Historical Society will present a screening of Twenty Feet From Stardom, an Oscar winning documentary that reveals “the untold stories of the backup singers for some of our greatest musical legends.” After the screening one of the show’s stars, Lisa Fischer, who has done backing vocals for the Rolling Stones, Beyonce, and Aretha Franklin, will talk about her career. Admission is $10, or $5 for BHS members; reserve tickets here.

Don’t forget the Dance Party on Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 this (Thursday) evening, or Smorgasburg on the Pier 5 uplands Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. On Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Main Street entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Park in DUMBO, “Seining the River Wild” will give adults and kids an opportunity to see and learn about the wildlife in the East River. The event is free, but space is limited. More information and RSVP here. On Sunday, starting at noon, there will be a free Docent Tour of Pier 1.

The Eagle reports that the nine proposals to take over the Long Island College Hospital campus submitted by the March 19 deadline, four of which would continue LICH as a full service hospital, will be presented to the public on Tuesday evening, March 25, from 6:00 to 8:00, at St. Francis College Auditorium, 180 Remsen Street. The proposals can also be viewed here. The forum at St. Francis is sponsored by several community organizations, including the Brooklyn Heights Association and the Cobble Hill Association.

Want to be in on planning how City Council Member Steve Levin, who represents the 33rd Council District that includes Brooklyn Heights and nearby neighborhoods, spends a budget of $1 million? He’s scheduled a Neighborhood Assembly this Tuesday evening, October 22, from 6:00 to 8:00 at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street (between Court and Clinton).

In New York, Participatory Budgeting (or PB) is a relatively new program where district residents participate directly in the city budgeting process, deciding how to spend $1,000,000 in city funds. These funds can go towards capital projects in our parks, our schools—or wherever else the residents of our district decide.

Neighborhood Assemblies are an important early stage of the Participatory Budgeting process. Before we all come together next April to vote between several developed proposals and decide how our money should be spent, these meetings provide residents the opportunity to take an active role in shaping the conversation. These brain-storming sessions allow residents to bring up their ideas and concerns and ultimately set the foundations for the projects that will be developed and eventually voted on by our community. Two hours of your time will help make Participatory Budgeting a success.

If you want to get more involved in the participatory budgeting process, you can sign up to volunteer.