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QC01282016

26 THE QUEENS COURIER • JANUARY 28, 2016 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com editorial THE QUEENS PUBLISHER & EDITOR CO-PUBLISHER ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF VP, EVENTS, WEB & SOCIAL MEDIA ART DIRECTOR ASSISTANT TO PUBLISHER ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR ARTISTS STAFF REPORTERS CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS EVENTS MANAGER CLASSIFIED MANAGER CONTROLLER PRESIDENT & CEO VICE PRESIDENT VICTORIA SCHNEPS-YUNIS JOSHUA A. SCHNEPS BOB BRENNAN ROBERT POZARYCKI AMY AMATO-SANCHEZ NIRMAL SINGH ALAN SELTZER STEPHEN REINA RON TORINA, JENNIFER DECIO, CHERYL GALLAGHER KATRINA MEDOFF, ANTHONY GIUDICE, ANGELA MATUA, ALINA SURIEL CLIFF KASDEN, SAMANTHA SOHMER, ELIZABETH ALONI DEMETRA PLAGAKIS CELESTE ALAMIN MARIA VALENCIA VICTORIA SCHNEPS-YUNIS JOSHUA A. SCHNEPS Schneps Communications, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361 718-224-5863 • Fax 718-224-5441 www.qns.com editorial e-mail: editorial@queenscourier.com for advertising e-mail: ads@queenscourier.com Entire Contents Copyright 2015 by The Queens Courier All letters sent to THE QUEENS COURIER should be brief and are subject to condensing. Writers should include a full address and home and offi ce telephone numbers, where available, as well as affi liation, indicating special interest. Anonymous letters are not printed. Name withheld on request. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, AS WELL AS OP-ED PIECES IN NO WAY REFLECT THE PAPER’S POSITION. No such ad or any part thereof may be reproduced without prior permission of THE QUEENS COURIER. The publishers will not be responsible for any error in advertising beyond the cost of the space occupied by the error. Errors must be reported to THE QUEENS COURIER within fi ve days of publication. Ad position cannot be guaranteed unless paid prior to publication. Schneps Communications assumes no liability for the content or reply to any ads. The advertiser assumes all liability for the content of and all replies. The advertiser agrees to hold THE QUEENS COURIER and its employees harmless from all cost, expenses, liabilities, and damages resulting from or caused by the publication or recording placed by the advertiser or any reply to any such advertisement.  SNAPS QUEENS SNOW TRACKS IN BAYSIDE / PHOTO BY STEPHEN REINA Send us your photos of Queens and you could see them online or in our paper! Submit them to us via our Instagram @queenscourier, Facebook page, tweeting @queenscourier or by emailing editorial@queenscourier.com (subject: Queens Snaps). What are your plans for Valentine’s Day? “Probably working.” Angelo Velonakis “I’m just going to be staying home with my husband and baby.” Ly Narajus “Just sleeping, watching TV. A normal Sunday.” Karim Day “I’m far away from my loved one, so I’ll be staying home.” Nikki Abdullah BY ERICA SIUDZINSKI “I’m a professor, so grading papers.” Sharon Lintz street talk “I have no inkling of what I’m doing that day!” John Clarke “Having a nice dinner with my boyfriend.” Maria Gonzalez  “Girls’ night out dinner together!” Dulce Martinez & Yanci Portillo Forget us no longer in Queens Valentine’s Day is just a couple of weeks away, and we believe we have the perfect gift for our city’s special someone, Mayor Bill de Blasio — a bouquet of forget-me-nots. In many ways, de Blasio was right in the post-mortem examination of what went wrong in Queens during and after the Blizzard of 2016. Even so, the fact is that it took the city an extra day to plow Queens completely — and that is unacceptable to the 2.3 million people who call the “World’s Borough” home. At a Monday press conference, de Blasio acknowledged that the city would concentrate its efforts on getting Queens dug out on the strength of extra resources brought in from Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx — where that job had already been done Sunday. Queens residents living on side streets lost a day’s pay because they couldn’t get their cars down the block and go to work. Some Queens businesses lost a day’s income because their owners couldn’t get there to open shop; other businesses lost income from regular customers unable to leave home and do their shopping. The “World’s Borough” was, as de Blasio correctly pointed out, buried in record amounts of snowfall that varied from neighborhood to neighborhood, and the Sanitation Department’s efforts to clear the streets were complicated by many factors — the amount of snow, narrow roadways, stranded vehicles and nimrods who threw snow off their cars and sidewalks and into the streets. But Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx had many of those same problems and were relatively back to normal by Monday morning; Queens was anything but normal. We want to believe Mayor de Blasio when he says that the city would do a full review of how it handled the Blizzard of 2016 and make the necessary adjustments to improve its response to future storms. But we’ve seen this song-and-dance before from other mayors who bungled their response to blizzards in Queens — most recently, just six years ago under Michael Bloomberg. Queens should no longer feel like a second-class borough of the city, and it is up to this administration to shatter that perception once and for all. For a mayor who campaigned on ending the “tale of two cities” and who faces re-election next year, de Blasio should do all that he can to make Queens feel part of a united New York City — starting by securing proper services for this borough at its next hour of need. Maybe the forget-me-nots will help remind him of that.


QC01282016
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