Julie Won's constitution for affordable housing development

 

Queens Post

Councilmember Julie Won has put together an extensive list of guidelines—with input from non-profit leaders and community organizations– that developers must adhere to when seeking a rezoning in order to get her support in the city council.

Won, who was a Community Board 2 member prior to being elected, says the document aims to democratize the rezoning process, providing the community with greater input as to what is deemed appropriate for development. She said past rezoning decisions were left almost exclusively in the hands of councilmembers and were less “community driven.”

The guidelines she has created is what she refers to as a “living document” that she says will change with the needs of the district and city.

“As an office, we partnered with nonprofit partners to craft our land use principals document and have socialized it with the City Council Land Use division as well as other community partners,” Won told the Queens Post. “This is a living document that will continue to evolve as our community also continues to evolve.”

The guidelines essentially call on developers to do more than what is standard today in order to get their rezoning applications approved. She is calling for greater community outreach (in multiple languages), offer affordable units at deeply affordable levels and to invest in public services.

Won’s guidelines are important since she will ultimately determine the fate of rezoning applications in the 26th Council district, which covers Sunnyside, Woodside, Long Island City and parts of Astoria. The council, which must approve all rezonings, typically votes in lockstep with the representative where a development is proposed in what’s known as member deference.

“We released our land use principles to promote our community’s role in building new developments in our district and bring transparency to the land use process. We want to make sure that developers meet the minimum requirements to do business with our district: community engagement, affordability, and community investment.”

 

Dave Chokshi's health department offices are COVID traps

 

NY Post 

 About 1,000 New York City Health Department employees have signed a letter blasting the agency’s return-to-office guidelines, accusing it of failing to communicate internal COVID-19 cases and not following a “science-informed” approach, including masking and social distancing.

“It’s a huge contradiction because we’re the Health Department,” one agency worker told The Post.

“We, of all agencies, are falling short of implementing an evidence-based and science-informed return-to-office process.”

“We’re not just whiny people who want to sit at home in sweatpants on our laptops,” a second DOH employee said.

“We are all so committed and dedicated to public health, and so hardworking. But we want scientific evidence explaining why it’s safe to go back to the office.”

Their eight-page Oct. 1 letter to DOH Commissioner Dave Chokshi says the agency’s Queens headquarters lacks onsite COVID-19 testing and sufficient supplies of hand soap and sanitizer.

“We’ve continuously found hand sanitizing stations empty on the 11th floor and a lack of hand soap available at 11th-floor kitchen sinks, despite having placed several service requests,” the fed-up public health workers wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Post.

 In addition, not all employees are adhering to mask rules — and instead of having supervisors enforce them, workers are asked to “police each other,” which creates uncomfortable situations, according to the letter.

The open cubicle setting at Long Island City headquarters also doesn’t allow for social distancing because desks are closer than six feet apart, a third DOH worker told The Post.

The letter requests agency officials “regularly provide information about our actual risks at the worksite, based on available evidence,” including the number of staff infected with COVID-19 and the “date of diagnosis at different DOHMH worksites.”

“Be transparent with actual details on airflow, expected transmission rate in our workplace settings, the rationale for removing the physical distancing requirement, and why it is considered safe to have us eat at our desks,” it says.

The exasperated agency workers also want to know why the commissioner didn’t question the mayor’s decision to force all 300,000 city workers back to their desks full-time starting Sept. 13 if it isn’t safe.

They note that Chokshi told them during an internal town hall meeting in August that productivity hadn’t suffered from remote work during the pandemic — despite the mayor saying that municipal workers don’t get as much done at home.

The Health Department has led the city’s response to the pandemic that’s sickened over 1 million New Yorkers and killed nearly 35,000 residents.

This exchange during a very overlooked zoom briefing about the Key to NYC revealed DOH officials flouting these guidelines.

 

Here's some more proof of @NYCHealthCommr's negligence and dereliction. During a #KeyToNYC zoom hearing, a citizen asked about the DOH officials flaunting of pandemic guidelines and the DOH rep suddenly bailed and the @NYCDoITT commish disregarded it and said it was irrelevant pic.twitter.com/yipNCVbOcX

— This is JQ LLC (@ImpunityCity) October 20, 2021

The Blaz goes full anti-mask

 

 NY Daily News 

 Mayor de Blasio balked at the idea of reinstating an indoor face mask mandate in the city on Monday even though COVID-19 infections are ticking back up. Instead, he called for more vaccination efforts throughout the five boroughs.

“Masks have value, unquestionably, but masks are not going at the root of the problem. Vaccination is,” the mayor said during a live-streamed press briefing. “So we do not intend a mask mandate. We do intend to double down on vaccination.”

Over the weekend, some local public health experts and lawmakers began calling for a resumption of indoor mask wearing for all New Yorkers — regardless of vaccination status — citing a slow but steady rise in coronavirus infections driven by the Delta variant.

But de Blasio said in his briefing that it would be “a disservice” to heed those calls and argued all focus should instead be on boosting vaccinations.

“Let’s address the problem by getting more people vaccinated and going right at it, and knocking down this variant,” he said from City Hall. “You know, a mask doesn’t arrest the progress of the variant — vaccination does. So we’re gonna go where the real impact is. That’s the bottom line.”

Democratic Manhattan Councilmember Mark Levine, who chairs the City Council’s Health Committee, took issue with de Blasio’s argument and said an indoor face mask mandate could safeguard New York against a major COVID-19 outbreak while the vaccination campaign continues.

Whitestone Republican Club confident pandemic is over

   

Queens Eagle

New York City’s self described “Guardian” put others at risk Wednesday when he went maskless at a crowded indoor Republican club rally in Queens.

Photos shared by an event attendee show GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante group, without a mask inside a crowded American Legion post during an event hosted by the Whitestone Republican Club — an organization with a history of flouting COVID restrictions. Republican Queens Borough President candidate William Kregler and Council District 19 candidate Vickie Paladino, the club’s president, are also seen without masks inside the hall. 

One photo shows Kregler talking with Charles Vavruska, an aide to Councilmember Robert Holden, while Sliwa stands behind them. None wore masks in the photo. Other pictures show the majority of attendees sans mask inside the crowded wood-paneled room.

“I didn’t feel comfortable with that … it was practically completely maskless,” said the photographer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “I’m a Republican. I voted for Donald Trump twice [but] I don’t want to get COVID.”

They said at least 50 people were present at the event.

Current state rules restrict non-essential indoor gatherings to 50 people or less until March 22 and mandate that people wear masks when unable to remain six feet apart from others.

Sliwa said ditching the mask was a mistake, though he said he did cover his face at others parts of the night.

“I probably should have worn the mask more,” he said. “Upon second thought, more masks should have been worn.”

Land of a thousand dance guidelines

 

Queens Chronicle

You make me feel like dancing — sort of.

More like you make me feel like canceling.

The state announced Saturday that when wedding receptions return March 15, guests will be allowed to dance only with members of their immediate party, household or family seated at the same table.

Dancers will need to wear face masks and stay within their own “dancing areas or zones.” Spaces should be at least 36 square feet in size and positioned at least 6 feet apart from other dance zones and tables.

Live entertainers are allowed but if they’re unmasked or playing a wind instrument they need to be separated from attendees by 12 feet or a physical barrier.

Mickey King, owner of Antun’s in Queens Village, said he has had seven cancellations since the announcement.

“They don’t want to go through the hassle,” he said.

King said potential customers have asked why the measures are necessary if everyone inside has tested negative for the virus.

“I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t have an answer to give them. I felt silly,” he said.

Some customers have pushed weddings back to 2022, “which just leaves me with an empty date, so now I have a date with no revenue,” King said.

“I cannot win. Every time [Cuomo] adds a rule I lost parties.”

He said he is still deciding whether to mark off the dance floor with tape or to just space tables even more apart.

“We’re still playing with different ideas,” King said.

Latasha Smith, CEO and president of Occasions Banquet and Catering Hall in Jamaica, said the governor keeps handcuffing business owners. “Cuomo has already decimated our industry and he’s really put us so far in debt and then they just keep doing it,” she told the Chronicle Wednesday, saying the rules are “really frustrating.”

Cuomo loses another lockdown case

 

 

WGRZ 

And Biden wants this guy to be the nation's attorney general. Minchia.

Fish Feast