UPDATED
A well-connected hot dog-cart vendor received about $3,200 in health inspection tickets, today, after calling a special ‘Little Peoples” Town Hall to confront the de Blasio Administration for not involving local clergy and community leaders about issues in the community.
The tickets included the infractions of not having necessary working equipment, utilizing unauthorized people to serve hot dogs and serving the wieners before they are hot enough.
James Caldwell, president of the 77th Police Precinct Community Council in Crown Heights for the past 17 years, alleged the tickets were in retribution for the meeting. He also said local clergy in the community has informed him that one of de Blasio’s political operatives, Herald Miller, has been trying to discredit him in the Central Brooklyn community.
Miller was a field director on de Blasio’s mayor’s campaign and also served as a field director for New York Communities for Change, an offshoot of the disbanded ACORN organization. He currently works in the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit.
Caldwell, 64, and an army veteran, is the former president of the now defunct Brooklyn United for Innovative Development (BUILD), which was formed as a local support group in favor of and financially supported by Forest City Ratner, the developer of the Atlantic Yards project including the Barclays Center.
Recently, FCR let Caldwell set up a hot dog cart on the plaza of their Atlantic Terminal Mall across the street from the Barclays Center.
The brouhaha between de Blasio and Caldwell erupted after the New York Post reported on Sunday that they had obtained internal emails from Kirsten Foy, a former top aide in de Blasio’s Public Advocate’s Office and now Brooklyn rep to Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, notifying City Hall as “must read” complaints that Caldwell made about the de Blasio administration in Our Time Press, a local community paper in July of last year.
“With de Blasio, the rookie mayor is coming out. He’s not touching the little people in the community. He feels since he’s friends with Al Sharpton and the big wheels of David Dinkins that they don’t have to reach out to us,” Caldwell was quoted as saying in a July 5, 2014 story. “The de Blasio administration would rather just deal with the name-brand clergy.”
Caldwell stood by his comments in Sunday’s Post story, and has since sent out press releases that he is holding the ‘Little Peoples’ Town Hall meeting. It is slated for 7:30 p.m., Thursday, July 9 at the Greater Restoration Baptist Church, 1162 St. John’s Place between Kingston and Albany avenues.
De Blasio spokesperson Karen Hinton said the tickets were issued after a routine field inspection by the Department of Health and no fines have been issued.
“They issued citations that need to be adjudicated at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH), an independent administrative law court, and OATH will determine potential fines based on the final decision,” said Hinton.
NOTE: An earlier version of this story said that Caldwell received $5,000 worth of tickets. That number was inaccurate. KCP regrets the error.
