Saturday, February 20, 2010

The rallying cry: Fewer trees! More community board lackeys!

From the Queens Gazette:

Board 14 Chairperson Jonathan Gaska said, “The community boards’ budget is 0.02 percent of the city’s total budget and we are going to have 6 percent of all city-wide layoffs.”

Gaska also voiced the opinion of other district managers that planting fewer trees in Queens would reduce spending and prevent community board layoffs. He explained, “The mayor spends over $1,000 to plant a tree. If the mayor plants 28 less trees in each community board, you will not have to cut community boards. You will not have to have 48 layoffs. You will not have to have 48 people on welfare or food stamps.” Community Board 7 District Manager Marilyn Bitterman suggested cutting the planting of new trees by 40 in each community district to help restore proposed cuts to the boards. “How can I run an office with a one-and-a-half-person staff?” she asked, expressing the fears of many of the chairs that reduced funding would result in reduced staffing. Board 7, which covers Flushing, College Point, Whitestone other communities, is the largest of the city’s 59 community boards with 259,000 residents living within its borders. Marshall concurred, adding, “Queens has more trees than any other borough. A few less trees wouldn’t hurt us.”

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know what?

That crowd looks like the faces you see at your local friedly post office dressed in their Sunday best.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I think it looks more like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Karen is a clown and Leroy is one of the balloons....

Anonymous said...

A thousand dollars to plant a tree?

Anonymous said...

"A thousand dollars to plant a tree?"

Most of the cost is to create the tree pit. When Keyspan donated money to plant trees in CB1 (Astoria/LIC), and this $1000 figure was quoted at a meeting, I pointed out that there were plenty of already existing EMPTY tree pits and therefore more trees could be planted for the same amount of donated money. I was asked to provide the locations of those empty tree pits, and Parks actually planted trees there. (This was my zone for the 2005/2006 nyc street tree census.) ~ Eppie

faster340 said...

There is one tree on my block and it's in front of my house! I wish they would come down my block and plant some more. It just makes things look nicer...

Anonymous said...

Wait a second ... St. John's University got a huge number of trees free under the Mayor's "Million Tree" Planting --perhaps 1,000 trees)-- and they planted them on the Jamaica Campus, and now the community boards of Queens have to PAY to buy the street trees??

Hey ... audit this one!!

Anonymous said...

This is the woman that was re-elected by the people of Queens to an illegal third term in a landslide?

We get what we deserve.

Anonymous said...

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:2LZ9VJnbPxkJ:www.torchonline.com/news/2009/03/18/+St.+%22John's+thousand+trees+will+go+a+long+way%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

March 18, 2009 Editorial in The Torch -- St. John's Student paper

Anonymous said...

Mr. Mayor wants folks only to deal with stuff through 311. Cut those pesky Community Boards who despite all their faults actually provide a forum for folks to find stuff out, ask questions, and even yell and scream at govt in our local communities. I'd rather the 200 grand to a Community Bd than millions for bike lanes and plazas no one asked for.

Anonymous said...

i'll take trees over community boards anytime. More trees less public officials. Trees don't lie or steal.

Georges said...

Give me the trees - community boards do nothing for me.

Anonymous said...

My God! There are so many empty tree pits all over the place, they should start with those and only create new ones when the empty ones are all filled, if that saves nearly $1,000 a pop, that's just common sense.

CityPragmatist said...

Trees are planted using capital (bonded) dollars. Community boards have to be funded from the "expense" budget, which, by law, must rely on current tax revenues. The two budgets are not interchangeable.

Anonymous said...

So, today we have learned they are issuing bonds to pay for thousand dollar tree pits.

I hope that works out.

Anonymous said...

19 trees were planted across the play ground at P.S.159Q located at 33rd.avenue/205 street, Bayside on June 2009. 15 trees died by August 2009. these 15 trees were replanted on December-January 2010,during the freezing snowfall weather.

the cost of this act is outrageous,but destroying the ball field forever for the local community teens is as well.

The Fushing Phantom said...

In the original horticultural capitol of America...Flushing...
CB#7 want's to plant fewer trees?

Bitterman must be as dumb as a (wooden) post and most likely
jealous of any tree's IQ.

I've got a better idea...instead of planting fewer trees...let's plant her in retirement.

Maybe her $85,000 annual salary should be cut in half if she's that concerned about losing staffers.

Hey...we live in hard times and each of us has got to make some sacrifice.

BETTER YET...DUMP THE WHOLE DAMN COMMUNITY BOARD SYSTEM!

They're nothing but decorative deadwood...sucking the life blood from us taxpayers.

One live pollution eating tree is worth at least 10 average CB members!

were watching you said...

Why is CB#7 paying around $80,000 a year in rent...first to "TDC" (Wellimgton Chen's buddies a la Willets Point) and later to "Golden Ox"?

A little steep even for Flushing!

What are the other CBs around NYC paying by comparison?

Anonymous said...

CB7, what does Community Board mean anyway? They do nothing for the community, they seem to be working for all the developers in the area. Gene, Chuck, Bitter, why doesn't Halloran start looking into the questionable actions of CB7? This kingdom created by these people is disgusting. They do whatever they want, and are not held to any standard. Kelty infamously spits out misinformation as fact and when corrected attempts to A; shout down the other person B: ignore the other person (who is quoting fact) or C: ____. $85,000 a year not a bad gig if you can get it. who does one need to know? No wonder she hasn't retired yet. What is her pension going to be like? She looks old enough to be tier 1. God Bless America no?

Anonymous said...

cb7 what is it exacty that they do for the "Community"? They ignore taxpayers calls, civics requests,and any issue that is not beneficial to a developer. Congestion approved, with no enviornmental impact studies conducted, BITTERman makes $85,000 a year and probably a Tier 1 pension worth Millions. Kelty rules with an Iron fist, and Appelian does his bidding. They pass the buck and ignore the taxpayers. They buffer for the City Council and the poor local suffers. Why not dismantle the whole thing and start from scratch with people who have a vested interest in the community? Or lets get rid of them altogether and hold City Councilmembers that we elected accountable?