There were various important presentations at Thursday night’s 57th Assembly District Democratic Organization meeting. First, Mr. John Castelli and Ms. Arlene Markarian reviewed some of the community programs and initiatives offered by Brooklyn’s District Attorney Charles Hynes. These programs are examples of Mr. Hynes progressive philosophy of criminal justice which focuses on prevention, intervention and rehabilitation. You can find more information here.

City Councilmember Letitia James gave an update on the Mayor’s recently announced 2010 budget. “It’s a bad bad budget,” she said. There are thousands of proposed job and service cutbacks, including:

• Layoff of over 900 teachers
• Closing of 3 daycares in Fort Greene
• Closing of fire engines and fire stations
• Police, sanitation and home services cutbacks
• Cutting Meals-on-Wheels and senior centers

“No one was spared! This community will feel a lot of pain and will have to make lots of sacrifices, but I encourage you to raise up and work together to fight these cutbacks,” said the Councilmember. She asked the community to go out and show their support at rallies, protests and press conferences.

In other news, Councilmember James said she will be supporting the reelection of Senator Kirsten Gillibrant. She said that potential democratic candidate Harold Ford Jr. “does not know the difference between Brooklyn and Buffalo.”

There was a representative from New York State Senator Eric Adams’s office explaining the important role the upcoming 2010 Census will play in federal funding and representative for our community. In the 2000 census, only 40% of Brooklyn residents mailed in their census forms. This meant Brooklyn missed out on 60% of the federal funds it was eligible for over the past 10 years. We lose $3,000 per person per year ($30,000 lost over 10 years) for every person who does not complete and mail a census form. Also, the number of elected officials in our community is dependent on the census numbers. The lower the census number, the less elected officials we have.

She explained that census enumerators will not eliminate the need to mail in census forms. They are responsible for collecting data to help the federal government better its statistics, and are not census counters. There will be Census Sites throughout Brooklyn where residents can pickup lost or misplaced forms.

Census forms will be mailed on March 17, 2010 and the Senator is asking that they be mailed back April 1, 2010.

*The next meeting will be held Thursday, February 25, 2010 at the Teen Challenge Center (444 Clinton Ave.) where topics will include:

• Clinton Hill AARP presentation on fire safety
• Open discussion on the races for Governor and Senate