By Charles Hack
The accountant’s bottom line is leaving Brooklynites more vulnerable to terrorism and ignoring the needs of those who want to catch a bus to the airport, Nottingham Association members charged recently. Anyone who wants to take a low-cost express service to LaGuardia or John F. Kennedy airports will likely have to go to Manhattan first. And something should be done about it, a Nottingham Association officer told a representative from the borough president’s office at the group’s February meeting, held at P.S. 193, 2515 Ave. L. “There are six million people in Brooklyn, yet you have to go in Manhattan to get a $12 bus,” said Bruce MacIntyre, first vice-president of the Nottingham Association. New York Airport Service, for example, which is based at Second Avenue in Brooklyn, does not run airport services from the borough. “New York Airport Service is based in Brooklyn but there is no service from Brooklyn,” said MacIntyre. Riders instead have to schlep up to Grand Central, Port Authority Terminal or Penn Stations in Manhattan to get a dedicated service to LaGuardia or JFK airports in Queens. Calls to the company were not returned in time for publication. Bella Vice, a representative from the Brooklyn Borough President’s office, said that she would look into the complaints. But it isn’t just Brooklynites’ needs that are going ignored. The security of the whole country could be sold out by the federal government, some in attendance argued. Reva Sokol, a representative from Assemblymember Steven Cymbrowitz’s office, encouraged Nottingham Association members to call their elected representatives following a decision to transfer control of United States ports to a United Arab Emirates-based company. Dubai Ports Worldwide is taking over operations of six American ports, including one in New York, from a London-based company. Sokol says she worries that the $6.8-billion sale will leave the country vulnerable to terrorist attacks, by allowing a company from a country that the 9/11 hijackers used as an operational and financial base to control six U.S. ports. “I am very uncomfortable with that,” said Sokol. There are four good reasons why the UAE could be a bad choice to control the ports. The FBI has said the hijackers used the UAE’s banking system to transfer money for the Sept. 11 attacks; the terrorists planned the attacks inside the UAE; hijackers traveled through the UAE to reach the United States and one of the hijackers was born in the UAE, according to newspaper reports. “We are letting the fox guard the chicken coop,” said Dr. Zev Stern, a member of the board of directors of the Nottingham Association.
