Community News
Second Amazon HQ2 meeting at
City Hall causes fireworks
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I FEBRUARY 2019 25
BY BILL PARRY
The second round of the
City Hall battle between
proponents and detrac-tors
of the Amazon HQ2
plan in Long Island City
saw the neighborhood’s
City Council voice, city officials and retail
representatives clash over how and why
the deal was done.
City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer
and state Senator Michael Gianaris
took to the steps of City Hall Wednes-day
with community organizations, labor
leaders and Queens residents to rally
against the state and city’s deal to bring
Amazon’s HQ2 campus to Long Island
City for a package of incentives and
tax abatements worth nearly $3 billion.
Afterwards, Van Bramer took his seat
on the Council’s Finance Committee for
the second Amazon oversight hearing
on the deal “to examine whether the
city is getting a good bang for its buck,”
according to City Councilman Daniel
Dromm, the chair of the committee.
“At a time when we should all be
concerned with income inequality, we
are confronted by a deal that liter-ally
takes billions in hard earned tax
dollars paid by janitors, teaches and
bus drivers only to give it to a man
worth $160 billion,” Van Bramer said
of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos. “And yet
we often hear there isn’t enough money
for mass transit, schools, libraries and
parks. This Amazon debacle must be
an inflection point in our society. Where
we reign in corporate welfare and the
billionaire class and give more power
to the people who have the least in
our world.”
Once again, it was up to James
Patchett, the president and CEO of the
city’s Economic Development Corpora-tion,
to defend the city’s role in the deal.
“For New Yorkers, the exponential
return on investment — putting in zero
discretionary benefits and getting over
$13.5 billion in return — will have a
profound ripple effect,” Patchett said.
“Moreover, the billions in tax revenue
will pay tremendous dividends to our
public institutions; with this windfall, the
city will be able to hire more police of-ficers,
build more schools and improve
social services like medical care and
disability services.”
Patchett explained the $13.5 billion
of additional tax revenue could pay for
every single three-year-old in the city
to attend 3-K for All for the next 16
years, or the revenue could support
289,000 units of affordable housing
or the revenue could hire 5,600 new
public-school teachers with a bachelor’s
degree to work for the next 25 years,
or employ 6,300 firefighters for the
next quarter century.
Amazon sent Brian Huseman, its
vice president for public policy, to re-iterate
that the corporation will create
25,000 new jobs over ten years, with
an average annual salary of more than
$150,000, jobs with full benefits.
“Today, we are announcing that we
are beginning a program to hire NYCHA
residents for jobs in our award-winning
customer service department,” Huseman
said. “This program is not only good for
Long Island City and NYCHA residents,
but it’s good for Amazon, and we’re
excited to access this terrific talent pool.”
Huseman then announced that Ama-zon
has teamed up with LaGuardia
Community College, CUNY and SUNY
to launch a pathway to employment in
cloud computing jobs. The new initiative
is expected to be available in fall 2019
to the tens of thousands of students
who attend those schools.
“LaGuardia’s students represent a
singularly unique talent pipeline for
Amazon — they have a diversity of life
experiences that have prepared them
to contribute to and develop the next-generation
of consumer and enterprise
technologies,” LaGuardia Community
College President Gail O. Mellow said.
“We will work closely with our com-munity,
including Queensbridge public
housing residents and organization
such as Urban Upbound, to secure
funding for this program.”
But Van Bramer is not buying into
Amazon’s latest charm campaign, spe-cifically
the glossy mailers that have
gone out to Queens resident in the
last few weeks. The last round urged
constituents to call Van Bramer and
Gianaris’ district offices and tell them
to drop their opposition to the deal.
“Amazon is apparently spending mil-lions
on these flyers,” Van Bramer said.
“My advice to you, on behalf of my con-stituents,
is stop sending them. They are
not working. Opposition is only growing.
2:1 my constituents have called telling
me to keep fighting this deal. So that
is what I will do. You may have millions
of dollars to waste on these flyers, but
the hardworking people of New York
do not. Stop sending them! Save some
trees! And stop the B.S.”
Photo courtesy of Jimmy Van Bramer's office
/www.qns.com
/www.qns.com
