Tribeca is embroiled in a bitter neighborhood-school war that some residents say is jeopardizing its sense of community, as well as its future. It's a story repeated from time to time all across New York. The key question will be decided tonight: Which families will be forced out of the beloved PS 234? The school is widely deemed the city's best public elementary school, in part thanks to fervent community support. But over the last decade, the neighborhood has transformed itself from a commercial to a mixed-use area, with thousands of new residents, including young families -- and PS 234 is bursting at the seams. Tribeca's huge popularity -- some 13,500 units of new and converted residences since 2002 -- is "laudable but is swamping the school," says Michael Markowitz, a voting member of the District 2 Community Education Council -- the mostly elected parent body that must resolve the issue.

New Yorkers knew what to expect when the UN General Assembly rolled into town this week: frozen traffic, closed streets, aggressive police presence and interminable speeches by international despots. It's the price we pay for global prestige and economic activity.

If the city eases the burden on businesses, fewer . . . will fold.

NEW York City needs desperately to over haul its irrational property-taxation system now -- so as to stop feeding the vicious cycle of the economic downturn.

By Rosemary Scanlon and Hope Cohen

Oceans of tax revenue--from taxes on incomes, company profits, and real-estate transactions--poured into the city's treasury over the past half-decade, even as municipal spending grew annually. So much money was sloshing around that few noticed--and virtually nobody protested--the system's ever widening disparities. The heavy tax burden on the city's commercial sector and rental buildings increased even as the more favored tax treatment of homes--cooperative and condominium apartments as well as single-family homes--continued. But when the tide of record-breaking Wall Street profits and rapidly inflating real-estate values went out last year, it revealed a landscape littered with arbitrary and inequitable tax policies. Now, to raise the revenue to pay for running the city in this new era of austerity, the authorities find themselves returning to their old standby, property assessments and the varying tax treatments of a range of property types. Because property taxes are set to shoot up, it suddenly matters who is assigned to pay what--and why.