Daily News from New York, New York • 320

KL THE NEWS 2 ui In Brooklyn CuG people spealc I is IWTJI listening? crime and vandalism would flourish, both on the platforms of the abandoned shuttle stations and at the bus stops that would replace them. Still others like Frank Lewis, an aide to Bedford-Stuyvesant Assemblyman Woodrow Lewis, denounced the proposed shuttle closing as smacking of racism. TURNING THE MTA's own statistics against it, Frank Lewis, who graduated from Yale in 1976 with a degree in math and statistics. GARBAGE MONEY There is cash in trash as an East Flatbush community group learned last week when it received a $203 check from the Boro Recycling Centers, at the opening of the private firm's new facility. Sanitation Commissioner Norman Steisel hailed the firm's role and let it be known that the city will begin a study of its own in one of four Brooklyn and Queens areas to see if it is practical to get into the curbside pickup of recyclable refuse.

And no, the commissioner wasn't upset about competition from private recycling outfits, Bob Kappstatter reported. There is enough garbage to go around in this town. COURT IN THE ACT Three modest but significant steps In the community's efforts to cope with crime were taken last week. A $100,000 state grant went to the Midwood Kings Highway Development Corp. to finance and coordinate a number of civilian anticrime programs in five police precincts.

The Board of Estimate approved $60,000 for transportation of victims, witnesses, and court monitors here and in Queens. And the district attorney's office announced a new felony-indictment waiver program for those who confess their guilt. Hopefully, it will short-cut the court-sentencing process and help reduce court caseloads. NE WET, STORMY night last week, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority came to a high school in Prospect Heights, supposedly to listen to what the people of Brooklyn had to say about the MTA's plans to close an ancient, short elevated subway line called the Franklin Ave. shuttle.

I use the word "supposedly" here because everyone who came to Clara Barton Vocational High School on that rainy night was given a memo entitled "Franklin Shuttle Fact Sheet," which was worded in such a way that one had to wonder whether it made any difference at all what people said to the board of the MTA about the Franklin Ave. shuttle. "The Franklin shuttle structure is 75 years old and severely DRIDCINQ THE GAP In case you missed it, there was another of those "mark-your-calendar" items in these pages last week. The centennial of the Brooklyn Bridge is May 24, 1983. City Council Majority Leader Thomas J.

Cuite thinks the Postal Service should issue a special stamp for the occasion and sponsored a resolution urging it to do so. JAMES SOCIAL MATTER Several hundred senior citizens at Murrow High School, concerned and confused over the changes, real and proposed, in the Social Security system, last week let Rep. J. J. Pickle (D-Texas), chairman of the House Social Security subcommittee, know they are about fed up with all the tinkering taking place in Washington.

"1 sure knew I was in Brooklyn. They weren't bashful," the Texan later told James Harney. DASIN STREET The Court St. office district In downtown Brooklyn is not likely to disappear and give way to apartment although some smaller office structures might be converted, the city's Office of Economic Development reported last week. That reassured Borough President Howard Golden, who, In another economic matter earlier in the week, called upon Mayor Koch and the Port Authority to create a special unit to speed the development of the proposed fisheries complex at Erie Basin.

offered this argument: J'The JFK Express, which carries approximately 1.7 million passengers a year, most of them middle class and white, is projected to operate at a deficit of about $1.2 million a year in 1981-82. Meanwhile, the Franklin Ave. shuttle, which, including the number of passengers who transfer between the two lines it connects, carries perhaps 2.4 million passengers, most of them black and Hispanic, and costs $1.8 million a year to run," Lewis said. "Do you propose," Lewis asked the MTA board, "to cover the operating deficit of the JFK Express by shutting down the Franklin Ave. shuttle?" Bedford-Stuyvesant State Sen.

Vander Beatty went so far as to call Ravitch and the MTA board "liars," insisting that he and other black state legislators had been promised that the shuttle would not be closed. And just about everybody who spoke said it would be a shame to eliminate the one direct subway link between southern and eastern Brooklyn and the cultural attractions such as the main Public Library, Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Museum. ALL OF THIS is true. But then again, so are the MTA figures that show that in terms of the number of riders who enter them directly, the Franklin Dean Park Place and Botanic Garden shuttle stations have for years been among the least-used stations in the entire subway system. And if the MTA has its way, the shuttle, which has periodically been out of service over the years because of structural hazards, will be out of business for good by Nov.

1. So while it was good to see such an outpouring of community concern and such a unanimous stand against the attempts of a governmental agency to exercise its will on an unsuspecting community, it may all be for naught The MTA has been considering closing the Franklin Ave. shuttle for years, and this time it may very well succeed. At one point during her testimony, Katie Davis, who is battling incumbent Mary Pinkett for the 28th District City Council seat, turned to the audience of less than 200 persons and said: "The MTA is not going to save the Franklin Ave. shuttle.

We are going to have to save the Franklin Ave. shuttle." Her words may very well be prophetic. FEDERAL FUNDS City environmental officials settled for less than half a loaf last week, accepting $20 million in federal funds from state authorities for repairs to the worn-out Coney Island sewage-treatment plant. Councilman Leon Katz had won a round in Brooklyn Supreme Court, which ruled that the state should immediately release $46 million for the repairs. The state, however, is appealing the ruling.

deteriorated, the fact sheet began. "A' mm structural rehabilitation of the line is needed. This rehabilitation will cost approximately $60 million. an outlay of funds can not be AND THERE WAS an added ring of finality in the rest of the memo, statements that seemed to indicate that it is only a matter of time before the Franklin Ave. shuttle will be a memory.

limited-stop buses will be added along the B-48 route. Free bus-to-train transfers will be issued on the new entrance to outbound A and CC trains will be opened at Classon Ave." The fact sheet concluded bluntly with the statement that it costs the Transit Authority about $2 million a year to run the shuttle on its five-station route between Franklin Ave. and Prospect Park and said bus service running along the same general route would cost only about $500,000. But the people who braved the elements to come to the public hearing that night ordinary people who use the shuttle to get to work be-" tween the Brighton and Eighth Ave. lines, the businessmen whose businesses depend on the traffic the shuttle brings, the politicians who need the votes of the people of central Brooklyn weren't buying what the MTA had so neatly pack aged for sale.

SPEAKER AFTER SPEAKER sat before the board Carol Bell amy, Robert F. Wagner Richard Ravitch and the rest and told them that they felt there was much more to. the proposed closing of the shut tle than mere economics. Some, like Richard Raskin of the 77th Precinct Businessman's Association, said it would signal the death of the Bedford-Stuyve- sant'Crown Heights community by limiting access to a large segment of that area's businesses and ultimately forcing those businesses to close. Others like Sharon Peterson, who needs the shuttle to get to and from her job as medical librarian at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, said THAT BOARD LOOK Maybe the Brooklyn Borough Board needs a truant officer.

It met last week, and on its agenda was an item to implement a new city law allowing, its members who are paid city councilmen and unpaid Community Board chairmen to name stand-ins to represent them three times a year. The board was unable to act because there were so many absentees that no quorum was present, Albert Davila reported. By Owen Fitzgerald OTIIZR FEATURES Action Lin 5 Walter Kaner 6 Upbeat 20 Faces Places K6 Mailbox K10 You Can Do It K16 Animal World K1fl I7JS1D2 STOnY Rep. Fred Richmond (D-Drooklyn) finds himself In a hasslo with arch-conservative Sens. Jesse Helms and John East (both North Carolina Republicans) over the farm bill.

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