The waste hauler set to benefit from a proposed exemption to the Big
Apple’s stringent caps on trash hauling employed the son of the lawmaker
who led the fight to create the loophole, The Post has learned.
The company, Royal Waste Services, hired Councilman I. Daneek
Miller’s son in August 2017 and he remained on the company’s payroll
through at least 2019, according to records the company filed with city
officials at the time.
That means that Miller’s son, Coron, was employed by Royal Waste as
the lawmaker led the effort in 2018 to kill legislation that initially
imposed the caps and for at least one of the years that Miller, himself,
says he worked to weaken the reforms.
Those efforts controversially culminated in July when Council Speaker
Corey Johnson fast-tracked Miller’s legislation, which would have
lifted the caps for haulers in his Queens district for four years —
before reversing course amid allegations of favor-trading.
Good government advocates called for the city’s ethics watchdogs —
including the Conflict of Interest Board — to probe the connections
between Miller and Royal.
“There’s enough here to warrant an investigation by COIB and the
Department of Investigation,” said John Kaehny, the executive director
of good government group Reinvent Albany.
In response to questions, Miller (D-Queens) said that his son left
the company “more a year ago,” but could not provide an exact date. He
denied that Coron’s employment had any bearing on his repeatedly efforts
to undo the 2018 hauling caps.
While Donald Trump battles Bill de Blasio over the
mayor’s decision to dump the former president as operator of a Bronx
golf course, the city is playing through — proposing a new firm to run
the Ferry Point links.
A notice published Monday
shows a company called Ferry Point Links LLC is set to be awarded a
13-year Parks Department deal to take over the Jack Nicklaus-designed
18-hole course at the foot of the Bronx-Whitestone bridge.
A firm incorporated under that name in late August, state
corporation records indicate — sharing both an executive’s name and
address with one of the city’s biggest homeless shelter operators, CORE
Community Services.
An attorney for the former president vowed to fight the
city — and the proposed new golf course operators — for control of the
links, charging Trump is a victim of “political retaliation.”
A spokesperson for the city Department of Parks and Recreation said that CORE will be teaming up with Bobby Jones Links,
an Atlanta company that will be “managing the operation of the
concession.” CORE Community Services did not respond to requests for
comment Monday, and Bobby Jones Links was not immediately reachable.
According to the notice posted in Monday’s City Record,
Ferry Point Links, LLC will pay a minimum of $300,000 a year to the city
— or a share starting at 7% of the gross proceeds and gradually
escalating to 10% by year 13, whichever is higher.
Those terms are slightly more favorable to the operator than those granted to Trump in 2012, in a 20-year deal struck to salvage a troubled project. Trump also committed $10 million to build a clubhouse.
Remnants of Hurricane Ida
dealt New York City a sudden, costly lesson in the effects of climate
change — and city officials don't want to be caught unaware again.
A city-penned new study — "The New Normal: Combatting Storm-Related Extreme Weather in New York City" — released Monday outlines $2.7 billion in steps to fight severe storms.
Mayor
Bill de Blasio said many recommendations by the study's extreme weather
task force, such as evacuation preparations and travel bans will go
into effect, soon. Others, such as a $100 billion overhaul of the city's
sewer system to accommodate previously unseen rainfall, will take
longer and likely require federal help, he said.
"We
know the climate crisis demands of us a lot of changes, a lot of new
approaches," he said. "We also know it is manifesting as something
that's shocking: more severe, more sudden. The type of weather that
we've never seen before, literally in our lives — kind of stunning,
brutal weather changes that have a horrible impact on our people."
Ida on Sept. 1 claimed 13 lives, broke a city record for the most
rainfall in an hour and flooded streets, subways and basement apartments
across the city.
De Blasio said the storm
showed the need for the city to set up its own weather tracking and
alert office. He said information currently provided by the National
Weather Service, while appreciated, isn't specific enough for the city.
A
new city-run weather system would be analogous to the NYPD's
Counterterrorism Bureau set up after the Sept. 11 attacks — an added
level of warning able to work more quickly for the city than federal
agencies.
"So, my
simple summary would be having a private forecasting capacity to just be
that second set of eyes, just like you go to a second opinion with the
doctor, to tell us if what we're seeing from the National Weather
Service looks like the whole story, whether there's the possibility of
things happening earlier, higher impact, what level of alert we should
go to," he said. "Someone dedicated to thinking from the New York City
perspective, not the whole nation perspective."
Comptroller Scott Stringer decried Mayor Bill de Blasio’s spending of $6.9 billion worth of fast-tracked city contracts,
while announcing Tuesday he’d taken the mayor to court to put a stop to
the “unacceptable” practice enacted in response to the COVID-19
pandemic.
The comptroller’s lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, is aimed
at bringing back procurement laws and regulations that mandate
comptroller oversight on City Hall’s spending — regulations that have
been suspended since March 2020.
“This mayor does not have a great track record on
transparency, [Freedom of Information Law], and good government, and
I’ll be damned if we’re going to walk out on December 31 with $7 billion
truly unaccounted for,” Stringer said at a press conference in Lower
Manhattan.
“We can’t let this man’s hubris outlast the pandemic, or even his mayoralty,” said Stringer, who in June received just five percent of first-choice votes in his failed bid to succeed de Blasio.
On March 16, 2020 — just before the COVID-19 pandemic reached its
peak in New York City — de Blasio signed an executive order that put a
pause on regular procurement rules, with the aim of expediting the
process with which the city buys goods and services during the
emergency.
But as the Big Apple bounces back from the pandemic’s throes,
Stringer wants to bring back normal checks and balances on city
spending.
“The mayor has extended the procurement emergency powers more than
100 times, including as recently as last week, allowing the city to
continue to spend without the oversight that my office is charter
mandated to provide,” said Stringer on Tuesday. “People, this is
unacceptable.”
“We’re gonna get to the bottom of this,” the city’s top bean counter vowed.
It's taking Stringer 14 months to get to the bottom of this, and since then the Blaz has made his job wholly irrelevant. What a wimp.
The Independence Day celebration started early for many New York
activists and groups seeking taxpayer funding — thanks to the seasoned
pork stuffed into the record-spending, $98.7 billion city budget just approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council.
Awash with nearly $16 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds, a
lame-duck de Blasio and many-term limited Council members rammed more
discretionary funding into virtually every nook and cranny of the
budget, documents reviewed by The Post reveal.
Council members have the authority to steer millions of dollars to
pet programs — and boy, did they ever, likely saddling the next
administration and New Yorkers with a yawning deficit.
The amount of funding spent via council initiatives exploded from $376 million last year to
$516 million this year — a 37 percent increase, according to city
budget documents. The overall increase is even up 13 percent over the
$454 million spent in the pre-pandemic Fiscal Year 2020.
Some of the money seems to be burning a hole in people’s pockets,”
said Andrew Rein, executive director of the Citizens Budget Commission.
Rein said that in general the mayor and council “are not spending the
federal money wisely and strategically” and are leaving the next mayor
and council with a projected $5 billion budget gap.
The budget documents show that Speaker Corey Johnson, in particular, is leaving the council with a bang.
The funding under Johnson’s direct control — the Speaker’s
Initiatives to Address Citywide Needs — skyrocketed from $6.79 million
last year to $34.65 million in the Fiscal Year 2022 budget the council
passed on June 30. That’s a 410-percent increase.
The boost in spending surfaced after critics privately grumbled that
Johnson used his power over the budget as a slush fund to leverage
support in his run for city comptroller, a position that is intended to
serve as a fiscal watchdog for the city.
And the boost wasn’t merely making up for cuts in spending during the
pandemic last year. Two years ago, the Speaker’s Fund spent $12.8
million — so, it’s still up 170 percent from pre-pandemic spending.
“This dramatic increase in Corey Johnson’s use of taxpayer dollars to
benefit his campaign is another example of corruption. Once again,
Corey uses the budget to favor those who support him and to punish those
who question him,” said Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a rival in the
Democratic primary for comptroller.
“Another reason why I insisted on more transparency in the budget
process, before the primary when the speaker was using the budget to buy
votes.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio has quietly moved to rename and make permanent first lady Chirlane McCray’s embattled billion-dollar ThriveNYC mental health initiative, shifting the program into City Hall and creating the Office of Community Mental Health to house it.
De Blasio signed the executive orders inking the changes without
fanfare on Wednesday, a few days after the initial announcement was
buried by the news of sexual harassment allegations leveled against city
Comptroller Scott Stringer.
The transition was swift.
The next day, City Hall sent a press release that identified
ThriveNYC’s top honcho, Susan Herman, as the “director” of the new
Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health.
ThriveNYC went entirely unmentioned in the Thursday statement, though
the email address for inquiries from the press still used the
‘thrive.nyc.gov’ domain.
Meanwhile, the website for McCray’s controversy-scarred initiative
quietly added a banner to the top that reads: “We’re becoming the
Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health. Learn Why.”
It’s a far different picture than the one painted by Hizzoner and
McCray as they rolled out the new office during his daily press briefing
on April 29.
“And third, we want this work to deepen and we want to make sure it’s
community focused. So, [we’re] establishing a permanent Mayor’s Office
of Community Mental Health,” said de Blasio during that morning press
briefing.
“In the end, the way to reach people with mental health challenges is
early and often – it’s schools, it’s at community-based organizations,
it’s in shelters, it’s in so places where people need help, but,
historically, have not had a place to turn,” he continued. “This vision
and this office will ensure that mental health services are available at
the grassroots all over the city.”
You know what this means right? This means Chirlie is not leaving.Tweed-le Dumb.
You may recall the post here where Paul Graziano analyzed NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson's "Planning Together" legislation to change the NYC Charter to favor developers and remove community input. This past Monday, Graziano went head to head with Annie Levers, Assistant Deputy Director, New York City Council Office of Strategic Initiatives, at Community Board 8's Land Use Committee. You can watch the debate yourself. It's worth the time invested so you can clearly see what is going on:
The legislation was then voted on and unanimously rejected. Last night, the full board met and it was again unanimously rejected.
Earlier in the day, a rather long-winded and inappropriate email was sent out to Council Members to refute the information presented, which will no doubt result in a deluge of Community Board rejections. (Click to enlarge each segment)
The final insult came when Council Members - but not Community Boards - received word of an official public hearing on the legislation that was hastily scheduled for February 23rd.
So folks, you better get off your keysters and sign the petition in the sidebar and provide testimony at this "public" hearing (that they don't want you to know about), and make it clear to your City Council representatives that they are to vote no on this bill.
If you're concerned about the hard work your neighborhood has done to achieve the proper zoning, please read the entire report presented below and sign the petition to stop it.
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) wants to eliminate single-family zoning across New York City, but some community representatives are concerned the change will cause more bad than good.
The plan, introduced in December, is intended to “streamline” housing development by establishing a new commission, made up of members appointed by the mayor, City Council and borough presidents, which would set construction targets for each community district.
Johnson claims the Planning Together initiative would close racial and economic disparities, but urban planner Paul Graziano argues it would instead ruin the character of Queens.
“This is what set off the red flags for me: the main pillar of this report is based off a complete lie — I’ll just say it straight out,” Graziano said at a Jan. 20 Community Board 8 meeting. “The complete lie is that the rezonings that occurred under the Bloomberg administration were to help white, wealthy neighborhoods at the expense of all others ... This isn’t true.”
Graziano, who presented before CB 8 on his own accord, said he had designed about half of the Bloomberg-era rezonings and called Johnson’s statements “outrageous” and “dangerous.”
The majority of single-family zones in the borough are in northeastern and southeastern Queens, Graziano said, and most neighborhoods there are not largely white. To illustrate his point, he presented maps of each borough neighborhood that was rezoned between 2005 and 2013 with maps courtesy of the CUNY Graduate Center that show demographics by block.
A decision to award a 15-year Rockaway Beach Boardwalk concession contract to a new company could result in the eviction of a handful of beloved boardwalk businesses, say worried beachgoers and eatery owners.
The New York City Parks Department has contracted with Rockaway Beach Bazaar LLC, a company formed by the owners of Brooklyn Bazaar and nearby Riis Park Beach Bazaar, to renovate, operate and maintain three beachfront cafes, one shop and 20 additional units for the next decade and a half. The properties include the popular bars and restaurants Rippers, Low Tide and Caracas.
The LLC outbid Rockaway Beach Club, a coalition of local business owners that won the contract to operate concessions at Beach 106th, Beach 97th and Beach 86th Street in 2011. The Rockaway Times first reported on the contract.
The longtime tenants and many of their customers say they worry the new operator will evict the eateries or raise rents.
“The Rockaway Beach club has been the umbrella of love, hard work and fostered the CULTURE of the Rockaway we all know today,” the Rockaway Beach shop Zingara Vintage wrote on Instagram Friday.
The store is located on Beach 91st Street, about two blocks from the boardwalk, and opens occasional pop-up shops outside Rippers. “It’s because of them that so many of us have had the times of our lives on the Rockaway Boardwalk,” Zingara said.
Zingara’s post also described a concern among many boardwalk businesses: even those offered leases to remain in their beachfront buildings may lose control of bar sales, a crucial moneymaker.
“This would crush their business,” Zingara said. “And what about the dozen or so other small businesses that operate in the concessions ? Where will they go?”
The businesses in place have weathered COVID-19 and helped restore the boardwalk in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, said Rockaway resident Sarina Parachini, whose husband owns Rippers, located near Beach 86th Street.
“These are all Rockaway businesses owned by people from the Rockaways,” Parachini said. “We just got through COVID. We were on the boardwalk for Sandy, we rebuilt after Sandy in a huge way.”
To quote a scene from the surreal suspense series Twin Peaks; “It’s happening again.”
As I documented here for afew yearsnow
this LLC, which has had almost as many name changes as Eric Prince’s
war mercenary corporation Blackwater to adapt to the times and also to
cover for their past failures from their own bottom line decisions, got tasked by NYC Parks and National Parks Service to “revitalize” Riis Park
with their annual summer event of upscale foodie and leisure lifestyle
culture consumerism. And as I observed and reported, while it did much
to rejunivate the boardwalk with new concessions which included the
restoration of the Riis Park Bathhouse, there was absolutely no
improvements to infrastructure or even basic environmental maintenance
like a sufficient amount of garbage cans or even intermittent collection
of trash which piled up like sand dunes at the end of the night.
And after all that prospective allure the concept of the Riis Bazaar
LLC conveyed, many areas and public amenities remained in ruins during
their time here.
The only revitalization that occurred in Riis Park only happened where
the Bazaar’s concessions were set up and it was never more pronounced
than this year of the pandemic.
"Former NYC Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia is running for NYC Mayor this year. Below is a portion of her plan to address the affordable housing and homelessness issues. I received this today via email. She was soliciting for campaign contributions.
These two issues are important to work on, however, some of her proposals are rather shocking and reflect the increasing attacks on our contextual rezonings and our fight against dangerous illegal conversions. Again, this is a portion of Ms. Garcia's Policy Statement.
Is this what we can expect to hear from other candidates for Mayor this year?" - anonymous
Housing supply has not kept up with demand. We added 500k New Yorkers over the last decade, but only 100k units of new housing.
Public dollars cannot fund all affordable housing, but we can make it easier and faster for private partners to build.
That means comprehensive upzoning to ensure all neighborhoods - particularly those rich in transit, jobs, and great schools - have their fair share of affordable housing.
We need to get creative: end apartment bans and legalize basement apartments, accessory dwelling units, and single-room occupancy apartments (SROs).
Accelerate approvals for new housing construction by streamlining the ULURP and environmental review process, especially for affordable housing projects.
Crowded houses and apartments are often cited as a source of spread, particularly in Los Angeles, which has some of the densest neighborhoods in the US Households in and around LA often have several generations — or multiple families — living under one roof. Those tend to be lower-income areas where residents work essential jobs that can expose them to the virus at work or while commuting.
This is exactly the pattern in NYC as well. High income areas, where 2-3 people live together in an apartment, such as LIC, Greenpoint and most of Manhattan, have low spread. A lot of people living together in a small space is going to encourage spread. When Cuomo talks of this being a virus of density, he means the city as a whole. But it's the indoor density that counts.
But also remember that for decades the city's position was that if you push for lower zoning in neighborhoods where illegal conversions are rampant, or demand enforcement of existing occupancy codes, you are a racist. We have groups now pushing for legalizing cellar and attic apartments, which in many cases have no ventilation. This isn't going to stop the spread, but rather encourage it.
Remember this as the dope-a-crats chide people over wearing masks and wanting to eat indoors. This entire pandemic response is a classic case of tweeding in lieu of actually governing effectively.
From NY1:
A Manhattan State Supreme Court judge on Wednesday refused to halt the rollout of ranked-choice voting in New York City, a major victory for advocates of the new system of voting that is set to be part of city elections next year.
With military and overseas ballots set to go out on Friday for a Feb. 2 City Council special election, Justice Carol Edmead declined to issue a temporary restraining order or to set an expedited hearing schedule in the case which was brought by six City Council members and several organizations.
“This Court is disinclined to take any action that may result in the disenfranchisement of even one voter or take any action that may result in even one voter’s ballot being nullified,” Edmead wrote in her decision.
A major donor to Bill de Blasio’s aborted presidential
campaign and seller of COVID-related gear to New York has scored a seat
on a powerful board controlled by the mayor.
Charlie Tebele, whose business has hawked hoverboards out
of a New Jersey warehouse, joined the board of the New York City
Economic Development Corporation, with his first appearance on May 6,
meeting minutes indicate.
A spokesperson for de Blasio said the mayor made the
appointment on March 18 — one week before Tebele and the city signed the
first of nearly $119 million in no-bid contracts for masks and
ventilators.
The nonprofit is the city’s chief vehicle for steering
subsidies and real estate to private businesses, including the failed
2018 proposal to usher Amazon to Long Island City. Last year, EDC
received more than $2 billion via exclusive contracts
from the city Department of Small Business Services, making it City
Hall’s single largest contractor, according to city comptroller records.
As THE CITY has previously reported, Tebele’s firm
Digital Gadgets LLC secured three emergency contracts in late March to
sell masks and ventilators to the de Blasio administration as the
coronavirus crisis surged and the city scrambled to secure gear.
The administration later canceled
the largest of those contracts, for $91 million in ventilators and
breathing kits, after the life-saving ventilators did not arrive — but
not until after advancing $9.1 million to Digital Gadgets.
The
firm has continued to be a major supplier of N95 and other masks to
city government, with payments totaling more than $25 million since
March 30 registered in the comptroller’s Checkbook NYC system.
Federal records show
that Digital Gadgets received Paycheck Protection Program aid of
between $150,000 and $350,000, covering a dozen workers in New Jersey —
even as the firm and a new Manhattan-registered company associated with
Tebele called Digital Gadgets Medical LLC scored tens of millions of
dollars in COVID-related business from New York, followed by Cook
County, Ill., and other local governments across the U.S.
Gov. Cuomo appointed dozens of generous donors to a board helping
advise the state on re-opening and lifting New York coronavirus
restrictions, The Daily News found.
Thirty-seven Cuomo donors who’ve collectively given him nearly $1
million were put on the “New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board”
created last month, according to a News analysis of campaign filings.
Nineteen advisory board members have donated at least $10,000 to Cuomo campaigns and all but two have given $1,000 or more.
The Cuomo donors account for 28% of all advisory board’s 134 members –
and 21 have shelled out $427,550 for the governor since January 2017
alone.
Cuomo said in April the board will “help guide” the state’s phased
re-opening “and ensure businesses are following the necessary guidelines
to preserve public health as we work towards a new normal."
The advisory board includes leaders of unions, trade associations,
businesses, education institutions, nonprofits and sports teams, as well
as big names in real estate, health care, finance and commerce.
Advisory board members are unpaid but their advice will help Cuomo and
the state develop coronavirus policies that could ultimately benefit
their industries or the businesses and organizations where they work.
“It is deeply disturbing that Governor Cuomo is exploiting the pandemic
to promote his billionaire campaign donors to lead the recovery while
ignoring the needs of parents, children and educators," said Jasmine
Gripper, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education. "We
need a Governor who will demand New York’s billionaires pay their share
so our state can recover from COVID-19 — instead of cutting schools and
furthering pay-to-play politics.”
Some things never change — even during a pandemic.
Mayor de Blasio appointed at least 80 donors to advisory groups that
were formed to help shape New York City’s response to the coronavirus
pandemic, the Daily News found.
The coronavirus advisers have collectively given Hizzoner at least
$176,282 — including $44,320 last year, according to a News analysis of
campaign filings. That’s not counting thousands that their relatives
gave to de Blasio or any taxpayer funding that the mayor got when
certain donations were matched with public financing in city races.
The donors account for nearly a quarter of some 330 people de Blasio
appointed to 10 COVID-19 advisory councils and a “fair recovery task
force" this month.
While the advisers are unpaid, their guidance will help the city
develop coronavirus policies that could benefit the businesses and
organizations where they work.
De Blasio has faced multiple investigations into his fund-raising
practices, including whether his administration was favorable to donors
and others with business before the city. Prosecutors eventually decided
against charging de Blasio or his aides — but they still said he
intervened on behalf of donors seeking favors from City Hall.
The mayor’s office said advisers have “no decision-making power,” but
de Blasio himself has stressed the importance of seeking outside input
to bolster the city’s response to coronavirus and other issues.
The councils include industry leaders, head honchos and prominent
figures in all aspects of city life: transportation; large business;
small business; construction and real estate; education; faith; labor;
nonprofit and social services; health, and arts, culture and tourism.
While the 10 sector advisory councils will help shepherd the city’s
efforts to reopen the economy and lift coronavirus restrictions, the
“fair recovery task force” is focused on a broader postpandemic
recovery.
“We know that we as a city government, we can take all the best
information and come up with the right game plan, but we need to always
run it by the people who actually do the work,” de Blasio said last
week.
Just like de Blasio's deal with the Podolsky's it looks like the city way overspent again. This time for the animal shelter in Ridgewood. The city paid 13.2 million dollars for property worth about $946,000. That's 12.3 million dollars that could have been used in an emergency like, oh, I don't know, in case there was a global pandemic or something less catastrophic but economically devastating.
The real kick about this is that this deal was made when Bill de Blasio was running for president and was barely showing up to City Hall at the time.
The chockablock density that defines this part of Queens may have also have been its undoing. Doctors and community leaders say poverty, notoriously overcrowded homes and government inaction left residents especially vulnerable to the virus.
You call your district the “epicenter of the epicenter.” What makes your district specifically so vulnerable to all this?
"Well, we have a lot of service workers that live here, undocumented folks that live here, immigrants who are here, and oftentimes, we see that those folks are of lower income, and in order to survive, they have to live in overcrowded, illegally converted homes, which only makes the spread of COVID worse. So there’s really no place for many people who live in my community to self-isolate because sometimes they live 20 to 25 people in a house. We’ve seen this on numerous occasions here in the district." - King Tweeder Council Member Danny Dromm
But remember, folks, if you want to downzone your neighborhood or prevent out of character development, you're racist and should move to the suburbs.
If the MTA is redesigning the Queens Bus Network and including a limited stop Astoria-Downtown Brooklyn route (QT1), why the hell are we moving forward with the BQX (other than tweeding)? Non-brainwashed minds want to know.
Well folks, it takes a lot for me to come out of semi-retirement to weigh in on current events, but this whole Neir’s Tavern situation became such an unnecessary debacle that I can’t sit idly by and not call attention to some things.
Yesterday, Mayor de Blasio - himself a millionaire landlord and facilitator of citywide hotel-shelter slumlordship - decided to tell the owner of Neir’s that greedy building owners are awful. Where the hell was he when the LPC denied the landmarking bid for it back in 2016? A lot of the worry over the bar's fate could have been avoided if the LPC stopped doing what it always does to Queens history. And he can request that the “new” LPC (minus Meenakshi Srinivasan) take a second look at it.
Now, Loycent Gordon is not only an immigrant but also the black owner of a small business. This is EXACTLY the type of entrepreneur that fauxgressives want to be seen helping. But perhaps because Loy is also a lover of Queens history, and therefore a threat to development, he was totally disregarded for years. Except, that is, after he became so desperate that he felt forced to plead with the mayor on his radio program. How utterly sickening.
How the hell did we as a society get to this point?
And another question for those of you out there in Crapland… did you hear those January crickets yesterday? That sound was coming from every borough president candidate out there as an establishment dating back to 1829 almost went dark.
And why did the owner really have a change of heart? The NY Times explains:
Mr. Holden, a Democrat who represents the area, said the negotiations were tense until it became clear that a major problem for Mr. Shi was that he could not get a mortgage because the building lacked a proper certificate of occupancy and did not meet current zoning rules.
Mr. Holden said an agreement was reached under which his office would work to ensure that the building met all requirements; the city would make a small business grant available to improve the property; and Mr. Shi would raise the rent much less than he had proposed.
So while we can all celebrate that a piece of Queens history has been temporarily spared, keep in mind that the lease is only for 5 years and in 2026 this might happen all over again. And in the meantime, it's very likely that the next piece of Queens history that gets threatened won't have the stars align for it the way this one did. Because we keep electing the same lame tweeders over and over and over again and the rare ones who actually give a damn like Holden will be gone. (Why the hell did Michael Gianaris show up to the victory party when he did absolutely nothing?)
A big thank you and shout out to the media who realized the significance of this story and what it would have meant to lose Neir's and used the power of the press to call attention to it. All of the stories were pretty good (and I read or watched them all), but 2 really stood out to me: Corey Kilgannon's original NY Times piece and PIX11's story. Check out the reaction of the news anchor at the end. He totally gets it.
It's 2020, people. Wake up already, heh?
- QC
I like to add (again) that de Blasio's Landmark Preservation Committee refused to give Loycent and Neir's landmark status because they felt that a bar that has existed 190 years was not historically significant enough.
Congratulations to Mr. Gordon and the staff at Neir's and a great job done by Councilmember Holden and Assemblyman Miller (leave it to de Blasio to try to bigfoot credit for it). Here's to five more years, hopefully there will be better and moral officials running this city in the future.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory over Rep. Joseph Crowley shocked New York political observers, in part because Crowley was thought to have a strong foothold in his native borough of Queens, where he is chairman of the county Democratic Party.
At first, it was assumed that demographic turnover in his district, which spans northwestern Queens and the northeastern Bronx, had harmed Crowley, as the Italian and Irish populations have been supplanted by Latinos and Asians.
Demographic turnover was indeed to blame for Crowley’s loss, but not the kind that was widely assumed. But some of the election districts in which Ocasio-Cortez performed best were in mostly white neighborhoods in western Queens. The congressman fell victim to gentrification and that force may upend expectations in Democratic primaries throughout Manhattan and western Brooklyn and Queens. And the rise of younger voters who are newer to their districts and unattached to incumbents could power insurgent candidates throughout New York City.
So you had your minions usher in all this development for tower people and the tower people voted against you. How deliciously ironic!
THE RISE OF Congressman Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., has coincided with lucrative lobbying contracts for his younger brother, John Crowley, an attorney who goes by the first name Sean, and previously specialized in wills and estate law.
Sean Crowley serves as a partner at Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP, a powerhouse law firm with offices in Albany, New York City, and Washington, D.C., that advertises its ability to connect clients with congressional leadership.
Over the last decade, clients with interests before Congress have retained Sean Crowley through his lobbying firm, paying more than $4.5 million to influence and monitor government policies, according to a review of contracts by The Intercept.
Clients in recent years have included Oracle, AbbVie, NBCUniversal, Juniper Systems, New York Community Bancorp, Abbott Labs, and Elections Systems & Software.
In many cases, the interests of Sean Crowley’s clients have overlapped with his elder brother’s legislative and political work.
Wow, you don't say? Now why did the Queens Courier choose to print this 900+ word ass licking piece instead of delving into this shady business?
Italicized passages and many of the photos come from other websites. The links to these websites are provided within the posts.
Why your neighborhood is full of Queens Crap
"The difference between dishonest and honest graft: for dishonest graft one worked solely for one's own interests, while for honest graft one pursued the interests of one's party, one's state, and one's personal interests all together." - George Washington Plunkitt
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