8 THE QUEENS COURIER • JULY 18, 2019 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Queens Community Boards grill Census Bureau over language access
BY MAX PARROTT
mparrott@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Queens Borough President Melinda Katz
and Community Board representatives
across the borough grilled the New York
Regional Census director on July 15 about
the obstacles that the “World’s Borough”
faces to receiving a fair count in 2020.
At the meeting at Borough Hall, Jeff
Behler, the director of the New York branch
of the Federal Census Bureau, presented
a plan detailed the bureau’s plans to open
four offi ces in Queens, hire around 10,000
of workers and roll out programs that are
designed to collaborate with local groups.
In a question and comment period aft er
the presentation, the group of board representatives
and Katz treated it as a forgone
conclusion that the borough will be
undercounted in the survey. Th ey identifi
ed two major obstacles toward ensuring a
fair count: foreign language access and getting
funding to community-based groups.
“I know this is probably a ‘no,’ but is there
any safety net? What if the numbers come
back that are clearly wrong? What if Queens
shows an undercount of a mass amount?
Because I’m just telling you that’s going to
happen,” said Katz.
“Th is is really it. You get one count every
10 years,” Behler responded.
In addition to setting the time frame
of the census rollout, Behler’s presentation
emphasized the importance of the
data, which will determine the number of
Congressional seats Queens gets in addition
to its portion of the $675 billion in
federal funding that is allocated across the
entire country.
Anticipating the suspicion that the legal
battle over including the citizenship question
on the survey has engendered in the
undocumented population, Behler emphasized
the security measures that protect
each individual’s data.
“Every piece of data that is being provided
to the census bureau can’t be shared with
anyone else. Period. We can’t share it with
local, state law enforcement or Homeland
Security,” he said.
As a means of building trust, Behler highlighted
a service the Census Bureau off ers
called the partner program where they send
out representatives to any local organization
that wants to hold an educational forum –
be it at a place of worship or a restaurant.
It is the Mayor’s Offi ce, not the Census
Bureau, however, that takes on the key role
of hiring community groups to actually do
the work of door knocking to get residents
to fi ll out the survey. Th is year the state budget
includes $20 million for this outreach –
only half the amount advocates requested.
Katz did not know off the top of her head
the timeline or process through which community
organizations – especially ethnic
groups with strong ties to the foreign language
speakers – can apply to hire census
workers. Th e Mayor’s Offi ce did not immediately
respond to comment with this information.
Behler received pushback on this topic
aft er he revealed that the bureau only off ers
its services online, by phone, by mail in 12
languages in addition to English. In the U.S.
at large, this covers 99 percent of all U.S.
households, but, as the group pointed out,
that statistic doesn’t hold much water in
Queens where there are over 160 languages
spoken and 26 percent of residents who
have limited English profi ciency.
“In our district of Community Board 1,
we were completely undercounted to the
point that our census count shows that we
were going from 210,000 to 177,000 citizens
in one of the fastest growing communities
in the world,” CB 1 District Manager
Florence Koulouris. “We have Greek, we
have Benghali, we have Italian,” she said.
None of those three languages are included
in the 12 that the Census Bureau off ers.
Koulouris’ claim that her district was
the most diverse in the borough caused an
uproar from the other community board
leaders.
“Th ose are fi ghting words around here,”
laughed Katz.
Fatal fi re in East Elmhurst deemed homicide: NYPD
BY MARK HALLUM
mhallum@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
A deadly house fi re that devastated a
family in East Elmhurst last week has been
ruled a homicide aft er an investigation by
not only fi re marshals, but detectives who
swarmed the scene aft er FDNY knock
down the fl ames.
FDNY pulled fi ve victims from second
fl oor of a two-family home at 23-49 93rd
St. where they pronounced a 23-year-old
male and six-year-old female dead at the
scene.
A man of 76 was also retrieved but later
died in the hospital, and as it stands, the
only injured individuals to survive were
a 35-year-old female and 10-month-old
male who were transported to Cornell
Hospital. An FDNY offi cial told QNS the
baby was in “very critical condition.”
With the fi re starting around 4 p.m., the
scene quickly evolved from being dominated
by fi refi ghters to being handed over
to NYPD by around 7 p.m. Crime scene
vans from the Detective’s Bureau were
present with investigators taking neighbors
aside to speak with them privately.
Th e family was left to grieve in the street
while NYPD conducted their investigation
A relative grieves at the scene of a deadly fi re in East Elmhurst on July 10.
throughout much of the night.
One man who went by the name Victor
said he is friends with a man of about
40 who lives on the fi rst fl oor with his
10-year-old daughter. While Victor was
out at the time and did not see the fi re
break out, he expressed concern for his
friend was not answering his phone.
FDNY said the fi re only eff ected the
fi rst fl oor.
Photo: Mark Hallum/QNS
NYPD has not released the names of the
victims citing proper family notifi cation
was still necessary as of Th ursday morning
and did not directly attribute the cause
of the fi re to arson.
As of 1:30 p.m., July 11, FDNY still has
not announced the cause of fi re and a
spokesman said they are still investigating.
NYPD said the investigation is ongoing
with no arrests at this time.
Photo: Max Parrott/QNS
Queens Borough President Melinda Katz speaks at the July 15 Queens Borough Cabinet meeting in
Kew Gardens.
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