According to the release, three area business owners and a real estate broker met with the commissioner of New York City's Small Business Services, which oversees BIDs across the city, and told him that Brighton BID Executive Director Yelena Makhnin has allowed the organization to become stagnant, and demanded an investigation of her activities. Cymbrowitz's office said that the businesses say Makhnin repeatedly rejected proposals to improve the district, including rejoining the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, increasing garbage pickups and the number of receptacles, removing illegal vendors from storefronts and producing brochures and other materials about Brighton Beach. The release also noted, "Merchants believe Makhnin may be working on political campaigns on city time and want [Small Business Services Commissioner Robert] Walsh and the inspector general to investigate." "It's only political," Makhnin told Sheepshead Bites. "He's using the commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services as the ax against Yelena Makhnin." "Small business owners have to jump from one hoop to another to get everything they need from city agencies," said Brighton Beach BID's executive director, Yelena Makhnin, who organized the event. Yelena Makhnin The following Op-Ed is written by Yelena Makhnin, executive director of the Brighton Beach Business Improvement District, representing businesses on and around Brighton Beach. Makhnin wrote this piece after the fatal shooting on the boardwalk on Thursday, June 9. She believes that the NYPD leadership should have been more responsive to local safety concerns about beach overcrowding on hot holidays, providing the 60th Precinct with appropriate personnel. She also said that the reverberations around sensational shooting like this can create a false perception of the neighborhood, devastating local businesses long-term.

"The mission of the BID is very close to the Chamber's goals, because we also believe in health, education and unity," explained Yelena Makhnin, President of the Brighton Beach BID."Only if all businesses work together can we prosper, so we would like more business professionals, individuals and their families to come to our 'Little Russia' and visit our Brighton Beach businesses.We strongly believe that whoever came to this event left with a great warm feeling of what Brighton Beach has to offer. "Ms. Makhnin and Rosemary Aponte, Marketing Director-Northern Region for Affinity Health Plan, certainly shared some of that warmth during their welcome greetings to the enthusiastic crowd at the event.Afterwards, Ms. Makhnin drew the names of six door prizewinners of beautiful gift baskets filled with products offered by local merchants of the Brighton Beach BID.Ms. Makhnin also graciously presented Brooklyn Chamber President Kenneth Adams and Vice President of Membership Darryl Hollon each with a beautiful bottle of Russian wine."The Chamber loves coming out to visit this unique retail shopping district in Brooklyn, and we thank Yelena, her staff and the folks at Affinity for making this event a fun evening and huge success," said Darryl Hollon.

Yelena Makhnin, head of Brighton Beach's Business Improvement District, says there's an increasing population of street prostitutes on certain corners in that neighborhood just to the east, some black and Latina, others "ladies from the former Soviet Union."Makhnin suspects they might also be moving indoors, to brothels.They could also be moving to other parts of Brooklyn.Chocolate, who lives in East New York, comes to Coney Island to work the streets because it's safer.Out here, she thinks the worst that might happen to her is that a guy might not pay her for a date.In other neighborhoods where she has worked--Canarsie, Sheepshead Bay and all the other strolls in Brooklyn--you can expect much worse, "everything from the guy put a gun to your head and say he's going to kill you if you don't do this or that, to keep you in the car and have all his friends come do you."In East New York, a friend of hers was almost killed out tricking last summer."They beat up my girl so bad, they left her for dead," she says, her chin trembling."She's brain-dead now."

The show's characters do represent "a small portion of our community," acknowledges Yelena Makhnin, executive director of the Brighton Beach Busines s Improvement District. But she says her neighborhood by the Brooklyn boardwalk is mostly "a very intelligent, very well educated, hardworking community. Makhnin, of the business improvement district, agrees, saying she's "not offended" by the show. "It's not a documentary; it's a commercial TV project, with stereotyping," she says. Unfortunately," she adds, "this is what the public buys.

Yelena Makhnin, executive director of the Brighton Beach Business Improvement District, fired off her own letter in response to Lisyanskiy. As many of you already know, Ms. Yelena Makhnin, has recently taken issue with our campaign to promote a fair and stereotype free depiction of the Russian-speaking American community in an upcoming Lifetime reality series, Brighton Beach. She did so in a letter which takes a reproachful tone and speaks to neither substance nor merit of our ongoing effort. We write to you today to set the record straight and assure you that contrary to Ms. Makhnin's accusations, we have done our homework and have continuously tracked all that is publicly known about the show's development process. In absence of official announcements and in light of how little is known about the coming series, Ms. Makhnin's assurances that "that 'Brighton Beach' reality show will not portray Russian-speaking community in a bad way" are baseless and irresponsible. To be clear, Ms. Makhnin is not a spokesperson for the Lifetime Network and is in no position to operate as such. Yet for reasons still unknown, Ms. Makhnin, a Community Board member, has chosen to align herself with the network's corporate interests - not the interests of our community. Those of you who know me best are familiar with my decade-long record of public service, as well as my continuous strives to advance ethnic and religious tolerance throughout our community and beyond. It is in this spirit that I publicly defended Ms. Makhnin not long ago, when another member of Community Board 13 slighted her immigrant background. Our letter of concern about Brighton Beachhas only one mission: toespouse the same virtues of tolerance for all members of the Russian-speaking and immigrant communities.