November 24, 2019 Your Neighborhood — Your News®
LOCAL
CL ASSIFIEDS
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Borough president candidates spar at forum
BY MAX PARROTT
The borough presidency may
be be considered by some as an
open-ended “cheerleader” role,
but the four Queens borough
president candidates stuck to
a few consistent themes during
a recent Rockaway candidate
forum: transit, labor and their
relationship with community
boards.
The Good Government, Regular
Democratic Club held the
forum on Nov. 14 in Beacon Rehab
& Nursing Center in Rockaway
Park, where Councilmen
Jimmy Van Bramer, Costa
Constantinides and Donovan
Richards and former Councilwoman
Elizabeth Crowley each
took turns giving the peninsula
residents their backstory and
responding to concerns.
One might have expected
Richards, the Rockaway City
Council representative, to have
the home court advantage in
the forum, but the timing of the
event would have it otherwise.
Earlier in the day, the City
Council voted in approval of
the Edgemere Commons, a
transformative 11-building
mixed-use complex with over
2,000 units of below-marketrate
housing in the heart of the
Rockaways — a project that the
Rockaway Community Board
had voted against.
One member of Community
Board 14 who was present at the
forum took it as an opportunity
to test the candidates’ loyalty to
community boards across the
borough, asking each candidate
to sign a written pledge to back
“any and all” community board
recommendations as borough
president.
In the course of addressing
the crowd, Crowley and Van
Bramer signed the pledge.
And, based on a previous
conversation with Constantinides,
the community member
took the liberty of signing
the pledge for Constantinides,
who arrived late. But once the
councilman got there, he made
no objection.
Confronted with his recent
friction with the community
board, Richards, on the other
hand, refused to sign and criticized
his opponents for doing
so.
“It’s very important you
look at the record of individuals
before they sign a pledge
like this. There is no council
member who agrees with a
community board 100 percent
of the time,” said Richards. “At
the end of the day, we should be
mature enough to sit at a table
and make plans together.”
During the course of his
speech, Richards billed himself
as a fiscal leader and dealmaker
with a history of bringing
economic development projects
into his district and access to
the levers of power.
Councilman Donovan Richards addresses his constituents during a
borough president forum in Rockaway Park. Photo: Max Parrott/QNS
“Leadership is not about a
popularity contest … Leadership
is about being able to cultivate
relationships because relationships
cultivate results and
then leverage the opportunities
that come,” he said after declaring
his strong relationship with
the mayor and governor.
Richards also went on the
offensive over Van Bramer’s
stance on the Amazon HQ2
deal. After Van Bramer left the
forum, Richards called him out
for signing two letters of support
for Amazon to come into
Long Island City before pushing
against the project.
In his speech, Van Bramer
framed himself as a unionraised
dissident who has used
his position on the council to
stand up to those in power and
fight for what he believes is
right.
“What happens when the
mayor and governor reach an
agreement to the exclusion of
any CB involvement-bypassing
ULURP altogether? Bypassing
all elected officials together? …
What I said is that it is not going
to happen,” said Van Bramer.
Like Van Bramer, Crowley
touted her union roots as a
member of the D.C. 9 International
Union of Painters and Allied
Trades from her previous
career as a restorative painter.
She described the recurring
theme of her campaign as the
fight for Queens to receive its
fair share of resources.
Constantinides highlighted
his environmental platform, explaining
that his motivation to
run stems from being attuned
to the climate crisis.
“I don’t have to tell anyone on
this peninsula what Hurricane
Sandy brought. I don’t have to
tell anyone here what climate
change is doing to our communities
— what this could potentially
mean for us in the borough of
Queens,” Constantinides said.
In addition to their positions
on the community board, all of
the candidates said they would
be open to exploring the reactivation
of a long-closed Rockaway
branch of the MTA. Even
Crowley, who has made the reopening
of the Lower Montauk
Branch of the LIRR a pet project,
said that she thought the two
projects could work in concert
together.
After the meeting, Constantinides
and Van Bramer responded
to QNS’s reporting to
clarify that they had not meant
to agree the exact wording of
the pledge, but that they had
only meant to indicate their
willingness to consider community
board recommendations.
Reach reporter Max Parrott
by e-mail at mparrott@schnepsmedia.
com or by phone at
(718) 260-2507.
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