14 MAY 31, 2018 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Barnwell refl ects on fi rst term and
the future of Assembly District 30
BY RYAN KELLEY
RKELLEY@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
TWITTER @R_KELLEY6
His fi rst term in offi ce may be
winding down, but Queens
Assemblyman Brian Barnwell
is doing anything but that.
In one of the most shocking local
upsets in recent political history, Barnwell
ousted nine-term incumbent Margaret
Markey in the 2016 Democratic
primary before comfortably winning
the general election.
As re-election season quickly approaches,
however, Barnwell said his
campaign strategy is to let his work
speak for itself.
“I’m just working hard. I don’t have
time to get involved in the politics of
it,” Barnwell said. “I’m just too busy
doing my job.”
Barnwell spoke with the Ridgewood
Times at his district offi ce on 69th
Street in Maspeth on May 24, where
he refl ected on his fi rst political experience
and the most pressing needs of
District 30, covering parts of Maspeth,
Middle Village, Woodside, Sunnyside,
Astoria and Long Island City.
Sitting outside on a patio alongside
the building, Barnwell referenced the
scene that plays out inside his offi ce as
the accomplishment of which he has
been the most proud.
The offi ce is fi lled with desks, tables,
chairs and more than a dozen staff
members at the time, with three potential
interns waiting in chairs near the
front door for an interview. Barnwell
is constantly looking for more interns
and volunteers to join his team to help
him get closer to the community and
expose more people to government,
he said.
In total, the team can speak more
than 30 diff erent languages and has
allowed Barnwell to directly connect
with his constituents.
“We never stopped doing outreach.
We never stopped doing tabling at
diff erent locations. We never stopped
knocking on doors and we never
stopped doing phone calls,” Barnwell
said. “I think it’s important to be giving
people access to government and
helping them solve their issues.”
The most pressing of those issues
and the overarching theme of most
of his current bills, Barnwell said, is
aff ordability. Specifi cally, the bill he
is most focused on involves reforming
the city’s system of using area
median income (AMI) to determine
who qualifi es for aff ordable housing.
According to Barnwell, the formula
for calculating AMI is fl awed
because it takes into account the
income levels in large regions rather
than individual neighborhoods,
causing the the baseline value for
aff ordable housing to be higher. In
some cases the AMI formula even
pulls income data from Westchester,
Putnam and Rockland counties,
Barnwell said.
Barnwell’s affordable housing
reform bill would mandate that for
any aff ordable housing projects being
built, only the income levels of
those who live in that particular ZIP
code will be used to calculate what is
considered aff ordable.
High property taxes are also on
Barnwell’s radar, and his other main
bills involve giving more tax exemptions
to senior citizens who own homes
so their property taxes will decrease
as they get older. Barnwell has also
joined other Assembly members in
setting up a commission to study ways
of decreasing property taxes citywide.
“It’s all about aff ordability,” Barnwell
said. “Nobody should be pushed out of
their homes.”
Barnwell has called Woodside home
for most of his life, and his opponent in
the Democratic primary this September,
Melissa Sklarz, lives in the same
housing complex, he noted. When
it comes to his advantages over his
neighbor, who is also a newcomer to
politics, Barnwell said his attention to
detail and willingness to thoroughly
read every bill that he votes on gives
him an edge.
While Sklarz has accused Barnwell
of voting the wrong way on
certain bills, he said, there are oft en
stipulations buried deep within bills
that change their real purpose.
“When I read these bills, while it’s
good for talking points for opponents,
I don’t play that game. I just read the
bill,” Barnwell said. “So I fully expect
for that slander to continue, but I’m
not going to engage in that kind of
stuff . I’m just going to continue to do
my job. But that’s the ultimate problem
in politics nowadays.”
The primary elections, originally
scheduled for Sept. 11, will now take
place on Sept. 13 after legislation
passed that changed the date so it
wouldn’t confl ict with the observance
of Rosh Hashanah and the 17th anniversary
of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks.
Photo courtesy of Brian Barnwell
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