Heckscher Playground Renovations Top Bklyn. Board 4 Meet Two pieces of the new equipment will be ADA accessible as well, according to the plans. The handball courts will remain where they are, and be restored to a better condition. “The reason we are doing that is mainly ... the cost of keeping it, is advantageous to us,” Thingue explained. The Parks Department will not have to file for more permits to move the courts. Plans for the basketball court include moving the hoops back to the fencing to create a high school regulation playing area. The water fountains will have ADA accessible drinking stations. The plans also include the installation of a mister area where park-goers can cool off. The security lighting will Deputy Inspector Max Tolentino, commanding officer of the 83rd Precinct, addressed the board and the public at the Brooklyn Community Board 4 meeting last Wednesday, Jan. 21. Katz In First Boro Address: ‘If It’s Good For Families, It’s Good For Queens’ improve the quality of life for residents of her borough. To improve small businesses, nearly $2 million was invested to improve the commercial corridors throughout many neighborhoods. “From Jamaica Avenue to Beach Channel Drive, Steinway Street to 116th Street, these streets are home to thousands of small businesses—the backbone of our economy—that hire locally and sell locally,” Katz said. The borough president said her administration is also helping small businesses thrive is by working closely with agencies on programs such as the “Business Acceleration Team,” which will help business owners resolve outstanding violations quicker so they can get back to running their businesses. “In addition to connecting businesses with government resources, we’re working with agencies to link our underemployed to job opportunities,” Katz said. During her first year as borough president, Katz’s office sponsored or co-sponsored eight job fairs leading to 450 applicants getting hired. She also helped launch the Jamaica Planning Initiative. Aside from local businesses, tourism was one of Katz’s main priorities in her first year as borough president. She sees tourism as one of the strongest tools for growing Queens. The first action Katz took was to change all the signs leading into the city from all the bridges and tunnels. They now read, “Welcome to Queens—The World’s Borough.” “Great neighborhoods, shopping, professional sports, booming new businesses and nightlife, arts and an incomparable array of cuisines from all over the world, Queens is a unique borough, unlike any other,” Katz boasted in regards to “Lonely Planet” tour guide naming Queens the number one travel destination for travelers in the U.S. Katz believes another way to grow Queens is to invest in local cultural organizations and infrastructure. “Significant investments in our infrastructure are also key to our success,” Katz claimed. “I am committed to this because it will make the difference between staying competitive or stifling our growth potential.” Katz outlined some of the projects her administration helped invest in during her first year. “Last year we secured nearly six million city dollars to start the restoration process,” of the New York State Pavilion Katz said.K atz has been appointed to serve on the committee on airport redesigns and modernization by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. She applauded his administration, along with the Port Authority, for investing billions of dollars to redevelop LaGuardia Airport’s central terminal and airport infrastructure, and for proposing to create an AirTrain between LaGuardia Airport and the 7 line and Long Island Rail Road in Willets Point. Aquarter of the capital budget for Fiscal Year 2015 was allocated to cultural organizations throughout the borough. This money will be used for upgrades like, “green energy for the Queens Botanical Garden, sound for the popular Queens Theater, lighting for the historic Flushing Town Hall,” Katz announced. “The funds will renovate Selma’s House at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, and expand worldwide exhibits at the QueensMuseum.” In addition, she provided funds for other cultural programs that fuel tourism, including the annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival, the Jim Hensen exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image, heritage events at the Turkish Cultural Center and performances at the Thalia Spanish Theater. “We’ve talked a lot about the city’s investments in our infrastructure and business, but the number one economic investment we can make for our families is, of course, education,” Katz told the audience. Queens school districts rank among the highest in overcrowding rates across the city, yet they manage to have some of the highest graduation rates coupled with some of the lowest dropout rates, Katz claimed. This overcrowding in schools has led to some classes to be taught in trailers being passed off as classrooms. By year’s end, Katz said she will have all the trailers at P.S. 5 in Jamaica, P.S. 70 in Astoria, P.S. 92 in Corona and Richmond Hill High School removed. Other schools that will soon be trailerless in the next few years include P.S. 11 and I.S. 125 inWoodside, P.S. 163 in Fresh Meadows and Bayside High School, Katz announced. Another thing Katz has taken issue with in the school system is Common Core. “I can tell you what I am not a fan of: it’s Common Core,” Katz said. “Although I agree we need standards ... I feel in my gut, though, that there’s something wrong here.” She hopes to work together with school boards to fix this problem, “because when it comes to the quality of our kids’ education, there’s no limit for better,” Katz said. Katz also summarized her efforts to reform the Queens Borough Public Library amid scandal last year, when questions surfaced regarding spending practices by the library’s top executives. With the help of Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, State Sen. Mike Gianaris and Mayor Bill de Blasio, Katz said she was “able to reform and restructure the board, which included removing the nowformer trustees who had blocked transparency around the Library’s finances.” Other than schooling and the library scandal, one of the main topics of concern for Katz’s first year as Borough President was affordable housing, especially for seniors. “In Richmond Hill, we cut the ribbon on 65 units of senior affordable housing at the Richmond Hill Living Residences. In South Jamaica, we’ll have 52 units of senior affordable housing on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard in partnership with the Calvary Baptist Church,” Katz announced. “In Corona, we’ll break ground on another 67 units of senior affordable housing at the HANAC-Corona Senior Residence ... and we’re working on more.” Thousands more units will be available in the near future with the completion of Hunters Point South and Astoria Cove. Katz said that, “as a city, we’re at a tough crossroads. But in every challenge there is opportunity, to make it better, stronger.” Before beginning her speech, Katz asked the audience for a moment of silence to remember the sacrifice of Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu who were gunned down last year and to reflect on the legacy of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who died earlier in the year. -CONTINUED FROM PG. 1- consist of flood lighting throughout the park, not sports lighting, as Thingue said. The time line for this project will continue at the end of April when the design transmittal will be submitted, with construction on the park to commence in the spring of 2016 and project completion by April 2017. 83rd Precinct Deputy Inspector Maximo Tolentino, commander of the 83rd Precinct, announced the final crime statistics from 2014 for his precinct. According to Tolentino and the CompStat report, there were 1,797 total crimes in 2014, compared to 1,910 crimes in the previous year. “Our only increase was in the area of burglary, where we took 496 compared to 399 last year, for an increase of 97,” Tolentino announced. “We are going to be concentrating on the area of burglaries.” The cops of the 83rd Precinct took 61 guns off the streets of Bushwick this past year, a success according to Tolentino. “We want you to be proactive ... before you become the victim of a crime,” Tolentino told the community. Another point of concern for Tolentino, the 83rd Precinct and cops everywhere is the rise of threats to the NYPD. “You make a threat on the Internet, we are going to be watching and we’re going to attempt to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law,” Tolentino said. This is in response to the murders of Detectives Rafael Ramos andWenjian Liu. -CONTINUED FROM PG. 3- TIMES, THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 2015 • 20 Let The Times Newsweekly Classfieds Work For You! Call Us Today At 1-718-821-7500 (photo: Anthony Giudice)
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