MARCH 19 - mARCH 25, 2015 • TIMES 27 Ridgewood group seeks $ to fix neighborhood Special guests visit 104th Precinct Observation Patrol meeting By Anthony Giudice a.giudice@timesnewsweekly.com Members of the 104th Precinct Civilian Observation Patrol (104COP) greeted Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, Assemblyman Mike Miller and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to the group’s March 12 meeting at St. Pancras Pfeifer Hall in Glendale. Katz took the floor and gave a borough-wide update for those in attendance. She said that her office is focused on improving all aspects of life in Queens. “One of the great things, I think, about my job is balancing what’s happening here,” Katz said. “You want to create jobs, but you also want to keep the communities good and pristine. You want to make sure that we are building schools, but you also want to make sure that folks that are living in the community still have that neighborhood aspect.” Katz touted that Queens was named the number one tourist destination in the United States by Lonely Planet Travel Guide and said her office has been focused on balancing the need for tourism in the borough and the communities in Queens. “We want to keep our families in the borough. They’re only going to stay if they can get jobs, and they’re only going to stay if they can educate our children,” Katz said. “But at the same time, keeping the communities the great places that we know that they are and mixing that together and making that okay.” Katz laid out her plans for the future of the New York State Pavilion. In her first year as borough president, over $6 million has been put aside to save the pavilion. “It is going to start to be lit up very soon, within a month or so,” Katz said. Another main point of Katz’s speech was how her office is beginning to get rid of the trailers in schools around Queens due to overcrowding. “No one should go to school that way,” she said. “One by one we are getting rid of the trailers.” Miller and 104 cop members thanked the outgoing 104th Precinct ommander, Capt. Christopher Manson. Manson for all the work he has done for the 104th Precinct and the communities that it serves. He presented Manson with a plaque of appreciation. Public Information Officer of the ATF, Charles Mulham, brought agents from the ATF to the meeting to talk about what he and his agents in the ATF do. “We are one of the only agencies that are really down and dirty, with the locals, dealing with the guns, dealing with the guns and the drugs, dealing with the violent crime,” Mulham explained. Mulham showed two videos and took questions from those in attendance before bringing out some prop guns and weapons for a showand tell. They had several prop guns for those in attendance to handle, as well as a stun gun, a pen gun and a body bunker. BY ANTHONY GIUDICE a.giudice@timesnewsweekly.com @A_GiudiceReport The Ridgewood Local Development Corporation (RLDC) has many plans for the 2016 fiscal year, including performing a feasibility study of creating a new business improvement district along Myrtle Avenue in Glendale between Fresh Pond Road and 71st Place, which includes approximately 302 properties. The nonprofit RLDC serves the economic interests of the commercial and industrial sectors of the Ridgewood/Glendale areas by providing ongoing management of the Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District’s (BID) programs and services, holiday lighting, beautification projects, streetscape improvements and supplemental sanitation services, among other projects and services. In its fiscal year 2016 budget, the RLDC is requesting capacity support of $65,000. This funding will go toward general operating, administrative and operating costs for its Neighborhood Economic Development and Community Improvement Programs. The creation of a new BID would provide the Myrtle Avenue Retail/Commercial District in Glendale the flexibility to finance a wide array of programs, projects and improvements and reliability due to multi-year revenue streams. In order to fund this study, the RLDC is requesting $25,000 to $30,000. The RLDC also requested program support to assist manufacturing firms in the “South of Myrtle Avenue Industrial Area,” which was recently designated an Industrial Business Zone (IBZ), and other “M zoned” areas in Glendale and a portion of Middle Village along and adjacent to the Montauk Branch of New York & Atlantic Railroad, as well as other manufacturing uses in Ridgewood and Glendale. This request requires $75,000 of funding, which would allow the RLDC to use the services of a consultant, graduate student or part-time employee to aid existing staff members with outreach and follow up with regard to providing comprehensive program services to businesses within the newly formed and designated IBZ for the South of Myrtle Avenue Industrial area. The RLDC would work with Business Outreach Center, which already manages the Maspeth IBZ. The RLDC feels that working with local manufacturers is important because they provide good, paying jobs for local residents. They also hope to strengthen the industrial and residential communities, seek opportunities for industrial growth and expansion and resolve conflicts between industrial and residential uses. “A diversified manufacturing base is a sound economic policy,” Renz said in the budget report. “These local jobs produce both primary and secondary benefits from taxes and locally spent incomes.” The RLDC would also like to see the restoration of seven-day garbage basket pickup from the DSNY within the Myrtle Avenue BID. This service has been cut down to only three days a week and the RLDC’s executive director, Ted Renz, feels “this is totally inadequate.” “The first thing shoppers and potential store owners see are Myrtle Avenue’s overflowing garbage baskets,” he said in the RLDC’s expense udget report for fiscal year 2016. “It makes no sense to have a BID augment city services if the city keeps on reducing basic services like sanitation corner basket pickup.” Requests for funds to improve Venditti Square were included in the RLDC budget report. The improvements include upgrading the Venditti Square Clock by installing a Carillon system that would play Westminster chimes and adding LED lighting. The RLDC also seeks to install 3-foot wrought iron fences around planting beds in the square for $25,000. The RLDC is also looking for $20,000 in funding to repair or replace two historic marker signs, one at Carl Clemens Triangle and one at the Myrtle Wyckoff Avenues transit hub that would add important improvements to the plaza. The planting of new trees is also included in the RLDC’s budget plans. Photo by Angela Matua The Venditti Square Clock Photos by Anthony Giudice Borough President Melinda Katz at the 104 COP/ GCOP meeting on Thursday, March 12.
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