It's been anything but a sleepy first year for Queens Borough President Melinda Katz.
Since her January inauguration, Katz has boosted Queens’ status as “The World’s Borough” and helped oust the free-spending head of its library system.
“The library situation just blew up,” said Katz, 49, who was focused on attracting businesses to the borough when problems at the Queens Library came to light.
“It seemed like there was something else in the news every day about what was wrong there.”
In a series of bombshell articles, Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez revealed Queens Library CEO Thomas Galante made almost $400,000 in salary, raked in another $140,000 from a side job and spent tens of thousands of dollars on meals and concert tickets with the approval of the library’s Board of Trustees.
All of it was charged to his library corporate credit card.
The scandal sparked an aggressive campaign by the normally reserved Katz to force the board to open its books after it refused to make its financial records public.
So the only things she's done for the entire year are:
1) Promote tourism (yawn)
2) Remove the library head (because the media exposed it)
Meanwhile, every other pol has publicly expressed their condolences after attending yesterday's funeral, but the last thing on Katz's Twitter feed is a picture of a party for Leroy Comrie.
We saluted Deputy BP @Leroycomrie as he leaves us to join the state Senate on 1/1. He will do a great job in Albany! http://t.co/GuyCK8xj4v
— Melinda Katz (@MelindaKatz) December 26, 2014
18 comments:
She'd be out on her ass in a corporate job!
Wow - she's really done nothing!
Still tons of illegals, illegal apartments, illegal curb cuts, etc. Nothing ever improves in Queens - it's a borough in serious decline - what the eff is this dim bulb promoting?
BTW - the ethnic food in Corona, Elmhurst and JH has really gone downhill - wasted $60 recently at a terrible Mexican place on Roosevelt! There are 1 or 2 Argentinian steakhouses that are still good but are way too expensive ($100+ for 2), given the neighborhood and interiors!
Tony for Mayor!
A whole year and not one ounce of improvement in quality of life, nothing, nada, zip. Her motto: "We have 130 different languages here."
ASSHOLE.................and that includes Comrie as well.
With the abolition of the Board of Estimate the Borough President has little power with a staff of about sixty and a budget of $5 million.
Melinda Katz encourages tourism? Several burro presidents, as well as a few selected political burros, have been pushing for tourism to Queens for several decades. Face it folks, no foreign tourist will waste their time visiting a backwoods borough with no real attractions. If I were a Parisian visiting New York, would I give up a stop at MOMA to visit the Queens Museum? You gotta be kidding! Yeah, let's attend the dragon boat races in a polluted lake in Flushing (down the toilet ) Meadows Park. Ha, ha, ha!
Can't figure her out. She thinks her ideas are great but she never asks anyone their opinion. She needs to get in touch with the people of Queens and understand the real issues. She can shove the diversity, 150 spoken languages, and the tourism rants you know where....
Even if the tourism thing caught on (which it won't) that just means some low paying jobs. Seems like that is all we have in Queens.
I see daily many, many white vans from Chinatown to Flushing. Aren't they bringing in tourists?
"We have 130 different languages here."
One of those includes whatever dialect Queens EDC exec director Seth Bornstein speaks.
http://www.ourlic.com/space/ray/modules/movie/files/3/5/3453/3453.webm
(starts at 8:24)
I hope they disinfected that mic after Bornstein blabbered, shpritzed and drooled on it.
Those vans to Flushing are likely bringing in restaurant workers. Do not confuse relatives from overseas visiting their Flushing cousins with tourism.
Within 24 hours of being dismissed by the recently reconstituted Queens Library (QL) Board of Trustees on the evening of December 17, former QL President and CEO Thomas Galante announced via his lawyer Hillary Prudlo that he would sue for wrongful termination. The reorganized board had placed Galante on indefinite, paid administrative leave on September 11, citing an ongoing audit of QL’s finances by New York City comptroller Scott Stringer, and investigations by the city Department of Investigation (DOI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding construction contracts awarded by the library.
Out on her ass in a corporate job? Agreed! It's the voters who are the asses that gave her her current job!
To be fair, BP Katz allocated $5.806 million towards the restoration of the NYS Pavilion in Flushing Meadows and convenened a task force that represents elected officials, agencies and advocates to continue the restoration momentum.
As for her promotion of tourism, selling Queens to visitors is a tall order and it will take time before one would see profit in it. As a licensed tour guide, I know. It takes a partnership of local institutions, businesses and residents to make it a success.
Unless you're Marty Markowitz, it's very difficult to successfully market an outer borough to international tourists.
Credit should be given where it's due. On the NYS Pavilion, there are signs of optimism.
Sergey, if you have her ear, tell her to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE BOROUGH HALL PARKING LOT!
Oh, and Sergey, what's your apology for why she's done nothing to stabilize and promote a REAL tourist gem like Fort Totten?
Proving what, George?
What is bothersome is that, if I am not mistaken, Leroy Comrie was running for Queens Borough President against Katz, and then dropped out of the race. Then, he is appointed Deputy Borough President. It sounds fishy. Isn't this the same thing that happened when Karen Koslowitz dropped out of the Borough President race against Helen Marshall and then was appointed Deputy Borough President? Is the rule against the appearance of impropriety still in effect? Queens politics, both Democrat and Republican, is a joke. The career politicians are drawing big salaries on the backs of hard-working taxpayers, while the borough of Queens, not to mention the rest of the city, is becoming, irretrievably, a hell-hole. Why do you think that there is a violation of rules requiring NYC office holders to live in NYC? Politicians do not want to live among the terrible conditions that they played a big role in creating.
Given multiple major issues in Queens, that doesn't seem like a great list of accomplishments.
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