East River’s annual meeting is on Monday, December 8 starting at 7:30 p.m. It will be held in the auditorium of PS 134/137 on the corner of Grand Street and East Broadway.

There are three ways you can vote:

1. Attend the meeting

Just show up, sign in, get your ballot, fill it out, and drop it in one of the boxes at the front of the auditorium. You can vote for up to four candidates for the board of directors and up to three candidates for the house committee.

2. Mail a directed proxy

A directed proxy is like an absentee ballot — you mark the candidates you want to vote for, sign it, and mail it to the coop’s attorney to be counted with the rest of the ballots.

The directed proxy must be received in the mail by 5:00 on Monday, December 8 — so you definitely can’t wait until the last minute to send this in may have already missed the deadline for mailing this in.

3. Sign a general proxy

A general proxy is a little more open-ended than a directed proxy. It’s more like a power of attorney for just this one responsibility. If you sign a general proxy to your neighbor, your neighbor must bring that piece of paper with her to the annual meeting — she will sign in and vote in your place.

If you are supporting the candidates Cooperatively Yours has endorsed — Lee Berman, Peter Herb, Heather Hubbs, and Don Mathisen — then you can download one of these general proxies and return it to the apartment listed on the bottom of each form. Click each image for a larger PDF.

A few notes about the system

• If you intend to come to the meeting on December 8 but you’re not 100% sure you can make it, sign a proxy so that your vote will definitely be counted.
• If you own more than one apartment, you still get only one vote.
• If there is more than one person on your stock certificate, only one of you needs to sign the proxy or attend the meeting to vote.
• If you sign more than one proxy (directed or general), the one with the later date is the one that is counted.
• If you sign a proxy and then decide to attend the meeting, that’s fine — but if you sign in at the desk in the lobby, your proxy will be invalidated and you must vote yourself. (You can also just walk straight into the auditorium, without signing in, and allow your proxy to stand.)

Questions? Leave them in the comments below.

Cooperators received candidate packets in today’s mail, with instructions for voting by proxy. The candidates for the board of directors are:

• Michele Amar
• Lee Berman
• Dov Goldman
• Peter Herb
• Heather Hubbs
• Malkie Machlis
• Don Mathisen
• Alan Rick
• Thomas Skibicki

Cooperatively Yours endorses Lee Berman, Peter Herb, Heather Hubbs, and Don Mathisen. All four have participated in our open meetings and demonstrate a commitment to our guiding principles and proposals.

For reference, here is each candidate’s bio:

For House Committee, Joseph Hanania has participated in our meetings and advocated for improvements to our neighborhood; Cooperatively Yours endorses his candidacy.

If you have questions about any of these endorsements, please feel free to comment below or email hello@cooperativelyyours.org.

Not content to let any cooperative deed go unpunished, the board of directors has taken over Halloween!

For the past five or six years, cooperator Lee Berman has organized the trick-or-treat list at East River. He’s put out sign-up sheets at the security desks in all four buildings, then collected and compiled apartment numbers onto lists for families to follow on Halloween. It’s not a huge job, and he’s never made a big deal out of it. But I think the cooperators with children who celebrate the holiday, as well as those who like to give candy to someone else’s smiling kids, would agree that Lee deserves a thank you.

Our board of directors apparently feels different. They think the sign-up sheets he’s been using now count as “electioneering” because they have his email address listed in case parents have any questions. So today management was ordered by the board to put out new sign-up lists, on official East River stationery. One staff member was seen this afternoon meticulously copying names from the old lists to the new lists.

For good measure, the board also ordered the color posters with  a link to our online sign-up form to be taken down — more “electioneering”, apparently, because Cooperatively Yours cares about not only Halloween and chili, but also strengthening our financial security, protecting cooperators’ safety and health, and sharing ideas and information with openness and respect.

Guess what: my 7-year-old doesn’t care who gets credit for the trick-or-treat list, just as long as he can dress like a psycho killer and eat fistfuls of candy corn. Right? That’s how Lee’s kids feel too, and, I’m guessing, yours.

The only people with a different idea are the ones who run the place.

Note: you can still sign up online to hand out candy on Friday night and we’ll share whatever names we’ve gathered with the management office so that they can compile a complete list.

When all the trash-talking was done, there was just chili. Nine kinds of chili, nine proud chefs, and over 100 cooperators who came downstairs Sunday afternoon to taste and judge and chat.

Participants were: Minnie Michalski, with a Texas beef & bean chili; myself, with a zombie chili made from freshly killed zombies; Judi Aronowitz, who grabbed a kosher chili from East Side Glatt; Ramon Peña, with a gorgeous presentation of traditional beef chili and rice; KC Sahl, with a New Mexico green chili; Paola Zanzo with a vegetarian option; Juliet Leibon, with a traditional chile filled with love; Yu Duk So with another sumptuous traditional beef chile; and Jim Keenan, with an amazing Italian-inspired chile. No kidding.

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When the eating was over, the judging began. The People’s Choice award was carefully administered and counted by various cooperative children — two of whom just happened to be the sons of winner KC Sahl.

Then our three official judges — cooperators and food professionals all — handed out various kudos and compliments. Just like in little league, everyone got a trophy, but the best traditional chile was awarded to Juliet Leibon aka Chiliet!

Many thanks to our initially reluctant but eventually enthusiastic judges — Andrew Chase from Cafe Katja on Orchard Street; Kevin Heald from Malt & Mold on East Broadway; and Vivian Sorenson from Chopped on the Food Network.

See you next year?

Cooperator Michael Marino has inaugurated Friends of Corlears Hook Park, and has arranged a meeting with representatives from the NYC Parks Department, Partnership for Parks, and Senator Daniel Squadron’s office for Thursday, October 30 at 6:00 p.m. There will be a walk-through of the park and an informal discussion of issues and ideas for improvement.

Corlears Hook is our backyard, and our gateway to the East River. Over the past few years it’s seen a small revival through a new dog run and new baseball/soccer field. Its trees were devastated two years ago during Sandy, though the magnolias that bloom so briefly in the spring are a beautiful sight. And when there’s just enough snow you’ll find kids sledding down the short steep embankment next to the footbridge over the FDR.

And if that’s not enough charm, how about this fun fact from the history books:

So come by Thursday, October 30 — meet in front of the small dog run at 6:00 p.m. — and be a part of improving this lovely, hidden gem.

Email friendsofcorlears@gmail.com for more info, and like their Facebook page.

A few of you have made rumblings in this direction for a couple of years, but this is finally the year it’s going to happen! There’s going to be a CHILI COOK-OFF on Sunday, October 19 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

There will be professional judges, plus a popular winner voted on by cooperators. We are advised that this event will be held rain or shine.

If you want to compete:

• Sign up on the form below, and use PayPal for a $20 registration fee (which helps pay for bowls, spoons, sterno, etc.)
• Cook any kind of chili you like and bring at least 1 gallon (16 cups) for the cook-off. You will not have to divulge any secrets, but you will need to indicate if any basic allergens were used ( milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybean).
• You need to show up Sunday at 1:30 p.m. to set up your station.
• You may cook sides, but you will not be (consciously) judged on your sides.

If you want to eat chili:

• Just show up next Sunday from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the courtyard between buildings 1 and 2 (on the south side of Grand Street).
• Bowls and spoons will be provided, as will some basic soft drinks.

Here’s the registration form:

Have you ever been bothered by the huge amount of garbage you produce every week? What if I told you that you could reduce your contribution to landfills by 70%?

Have you ever come home from work and noticed a pungent smell coming from the compactor rooms on the ground floor? What if I told you that you could make that smell disappear?

That’s the promise of composting, and it’s why NYC is betting big-time that in addition to separating our paper and plastics, we can be persuaded to set our food waste aside as well. The challenge is — as with all waste disposal — creating new carrier routes to pick up the separate trash from the millions of residences in the city.

Now in partnership with the great Lower East Side Ecology Center, which has been promoting composting for decades, you can bring your food waste to a collection point on Grand Street and Clinton on your way to work — Mondays and Fridays , 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Here’s what’s acceptable for composting:

• All fruit and vegetable peelings and pits
• Non-greasy food scraps or leftovers
• Rice, pasta, bread, cereal, etc.
• Coffee grounds with filter, tea bags
• Hair and nails (animal or human)
• Egg and nut shells
• Cut or dried flowers, wreaths
• Houseplants and potting soil

And here’s what’s not acceptable for composting:

• Meat, chicken, and fish
• Greasy food scraps or leftovers
• Fats or oils
• Dairy items (cheese, butter, yogurt, etc.)
• Dog or cat feces, kitty litter
• Coal or charcoal
• Coconuts
• Diseased and/or insect-infested houseplants and potting soil

The best way to collect your food waste during the week is in a plastic bag or small plastic container — a good tip is to keep it in the freezer, so you don’t have to worry at all about odor.

LESEC has five other drop-off locations in Manhattan, and we’re trying to figure out if we can get a pick-up closer to our coop, since LESEC’s HQ and compost processing is at the East River Fire Boat House just on the other side of the FDR from us.

Cooperator Joseph Hanania has a new petition to improve bus service on Grand Street. Here’s his proposal:

Let’s get improved bus service to the Grand Street Coops! Go to change.org and sign the petition. Then, get your spouse/children/friends to also sign. When we have 400 signatures, we will turn it in to the MTA.

To: Carmen Bianco, MTA President

14 A service to the dense Grand St. Coops is far from adequate – even while there are three 14 D busses for every one 14 A bus. The difference is especially noticeable when there are service delays on freezing days, and it takes half an hour — or more — for a jammed 14 A bus to arrive.

This can be easily resolved with a more equitable allocation of 14th Street crosstowns, with half – rather than one quarter – running the 14 A route, and the other half remaining on the 14 D route.

At the same time, the 14 D’s route should be extended. Instead of having its eastern terminus at Delancey St., it should continue two blocks south to Grand St., so that it services westbound Grand St. residents. It would cut back to Delancey St. via Columbia St. to resume its current route. This would add approximately 5 blocks to its route – and attract a lot more customers who are otherwise stuck waiting and waiting.

And yes, it is possible to fight City Hall – and win. I led a petition drive to upgrade the East River tennis courts, which were in lamentable shape. We got nearly 1,000 signatures on that one. The result: Councilwoman Rosie Mendez recently got a $500,000 appropriation in the city budget to get the courts resurfaced next year.

A similar petition requested the NYC EDC, which runs the East River ferry, to create a stop at Grand St. This petition garnered 600 signatures – plus the support of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The EDC is studying putting a ferry stop at Grand St. (You can still add your name.)

By contrast, this petition to improve 14 A bus service should be easier. We are not asking for anything new, merely to improve what is already there.

Sign here!

— Joseph Hanania, hanajoe@aol.com