8 NOVEMBER 21, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Borough president candidates spar at forum
BY MAX PARROTT
MPARROTT@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
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.
“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 union-raised 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.
Councilman Donovan Richards addresses his constituents at the Nov. 14
borough president forum in Rockaway Park. Photos: Max Parrott/QNS
Former Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley signs a pledge to follow “any
and all” community board recommendations as borough president.
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