16 MAY 16, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Moya leads charge to reassess zoning Boro Hall gun
BY BILL PARRY
BPARRY@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
Calling the gun violence
epidemic both a public
health and safety issue,
Queens Borough President
Melinda Katz announced she
will cohost a town hall meeting
with Public Advocate Jumaane
Williams and several communitybased
organizations that are on
the front lines in the battle against
guns.
The meeting will take place at
Borough Hall in Kew Gardens
on Thursday, May 30, at 6 p.m.,
just two days before the start of
Gun Violence Awareness Month
in June. City agencies and law
enforcement will be on hand to
discuss how to disarm violence
in communities that continue to
torment youth and families with
devastating consequences.
“We cannot cure the epidemic
of gun violence through policing
and locking up those who run
afoul of the law,” Katz said. “If
we’re serious about ridding our
society of the scourge of gun
violence everywhere, we must
deconstruct the normalization of
gun violence. It is imperative that
as a city, we direct our collective
focus toward prevention through
the promotion of peace and
intervention, as well as increasing
resources to investigate and
prosecute those who traffi c guns
into our communities.”
According to City Hall, crime
has dropped dramatically across
Queens in recent decades, with
both Patrol Borough Queens
North and Patrol Borough
Queens South having seen
murders decline by more than
75 percent since 1990. However,
far too many families are losing
loved ones to gun violence, either
as the victim of the shooting or as
the perpetrator, every day.
“We see the realities of horrifi c
gun violence every day, on
our screens and in our streets,”
Williams said. “Combating this
pandemic means implementing
strategies at all levels of
government and in partnership
with community groups doing
the hard work of violence
prevention and intervention on
the ground.”
Anyone interested in attending
is encouraged to RSVP at www.
queensbp.org/rsvp or call 718-
286-2661.
BY MAX PARROTT
MPARROTT@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
When Long Island City was
rezoned in 2001, the city
estimated the changes
would create about 300 new residential
units. Since then, 10,000 units have
been created; the city missed the mark
by over 3,000 percent.
This phenomenon points to fl aws
in the City Environmental Quality
Review (CEQR), the process that the
city uses to predict how rezonings
will impact neighborhoods. Corona
City Councilman Francisco
Moya is worried about the effect
that these miscalculations will
escalate displacement and school
overcrowding.
“It seems to me that right now we’re
treating New Yorkers in primarily
low-income minority communities
as guinea pigs in a badly designed
experiment. We need to compare
the results of these rezonings to our
original hypothesis in the CEQR study
and see what we can glean,” said Moya
in a statement.
The City Council’s Subcommittee
on Zoning and Franchises, which
Moya chairs, held a hearing on May
7 to assess whether CEQR procedures
useful for accurately predicting
and mitigating the impacts of City
Planning Commission decisions.
As of now, there is no process to
assess the results of CEQR’s analysis
aft er rezonings have come to pass. The
councilman recently submitted two
bills that address
diff erent facets
of the issue: one
aims to measure
r e s i d e n t i a l
displacement
and the other
s e eks to
measure school
overcrowding in
neighborhoods
that have
undergone land
use change.
Moya told
QNS one of his
main concerns
is that the CEQR
manual does not take into account
rent-regulated apartments. Without
this data, he said, it’s difficult for
rezoning process to bring in housing
stock that supports the people already
living in the community. He thinks this
information is crucial for this city to
have in order to fi ght gentrifi cation.
“It’s important when we are in a time
when there is very limited aff ordable
housing stock in the city of New York,
when we’ve seen the drastic rates of
homelessness, when we’re giving
swathes of city-owned property to
developers. Our community should
be the fi rst to receive the aff ordable
housing stock coming in and that’s not
happening,” Moya said.
The displacement bill, Int.1487,
would require the city to conduct a
study fi ve-years aft er the rezoning
received fi nal approval by the City
Council on all areas rezoned aft er
Councilman Francisco Moya File photo
Jan. 1, 2015.
If there’s a shift in the population
of over 5 percent, then that would
be a trigger for the city to look
at what happened and make a
recommendation for amending the
CEQR manual.
The other bill, Int. 1531, would
require the Department of City
Planning to report on the impact
on public school capacity and
overcrowding in recently rezoned
neighborhoods four years and 10
years aft er land use change.
As to what the resulting
recommendations might look like,
Moya says that’s up to the Mayor’s
Offi ce of Environmental Coordination
that administers the CEQR manual.
“That’s on them to tell us,” he said.
“We want them to do a look back
to see what has been working and
what hasn’t.”
violence meet
Katz breaks bread with Kiwanis
Queens Borough President Melinda Katz paid a visit to the Glendale Kiwanis Club’s luncheon on May 2 at
Zum Stammtisch, co-owned by Werner Lehner (second from l.), to thank the organization and its leadership,
including President Tony Sauro (r.) and President-elect Gary Milau (second from r.) for the aid it provides for
needy children and families across the borough. Photo courtesy of the Queens Borough President’s offi ce
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