26 THE COURIER SUN • DECEMBER 18, 2014 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.couriersun.com editorial letters sun WWW.COURIERSUN.COM Victoria Schneps-Yunis Joshua A. Schneps Bob Brennan Tom Topousis Amy Amato-Sanchez Nirmal Singh Graziella Zerilli Stephen Reina Ron Torina, Jennifer Decio, Cheryl Gallagher Liam La Guerre, Cristabelle Tumola, Angy Altamirano Katrina Medoff, Eric Jankiewicz, Salvatore Licata Cliff Kasden, Samantha Sohmer, Elizabeth Aloni Cristabelle Tumola Demetra Plagakis Warren Susman Celeste Alamin Maria Valencia Daphne Fortunate Victoria Schneps-Yunis Joshua A. Schneps Publisher & E ditor Co-Publisher Associate Publisher Editor-In-Chief VP, Events, Web & Social Media Art Director Assistant to Publisher Assistant Art Director Artists Staff Reporters Contributing Reporters Web Editor Events Manager Senior Acc ount Executive Classified Manager Controller Office Manager President & CEO Vice President Schneps Communications, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361 718-224-5863 • Fax 718-224-5441 Sales fax: 718-631-3498 www.couriersun.com editorial e-mail: [email protected] for advertising e-mail: [email protected] Entire Contents Copyright 2014 by The Courier Sun All letters sent to THE COURIER SUN should be brief and are subject to condensing. Writers should include a full address and home and office telephone numbers, where available, as well as affiliation, indicating special interest. Anonymous letters are not printed. Name withheld on request. No such ad or any part thereof may be reproduced without prior permission of THE COURIER SUN. 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IDENTIFY THIS PLACE Go to www.queenscourier.com and search “Identify This Place” to find out where this is Cops need the mayor’s support The latest incident this past weekend where two police officers who were part of the contingent to ensure that the rights of protestors were protected were viciously attacked by several of them is outrageous! What is even more outrageous was the comment made by Mayor de Blasio that those officers were “allegedly” attacked by those protestors. It is high time for Mayor de Blasio to fully support the work of the officers of the NYPD. These men and women risk their lives each and every day to uphold the law and to ensure the safety of all New Yorkers, including the Mayor and his family. These protestors have every right to protest, but not with unnecessary violence against police officers who are there to ensure their rights to peacefully protest. Throwing a garbage can off the Brooklyn Bridge and smashing the window of a police cruiser with another certainly is not peaceful. Now the protests are beginning to get way out of hand and, unfortunately, there are those instigators who will ramp up the violence and brazenness and incite others to do the same. Our police need our support, and the mayor needs to get his act together! John Amato Fresh Meadows City needs to do more to stop Utopia Parkway flooding Queens residents who live along Utopia Parkway in Fresh Meadows have been subjected to decades of chronic flooding, constantly repairing their homes from heavy downpours that antiquated sewer and catch basin systems can no longer handle. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has promised relief to area residents in the form of “green infrastructure,” creating more permeable surfaces to absorb rainwater, and the construction of a new holding tank to retain water. None of these have materialized and our residents are hurting more than ever as severe storms become more frequent. The DEP has the resources to update our sewers and catch basins on Utopia Parkway but instead continues to neglect the area. We can no longer stand by as basements, bathrooms and garages overflow with untreated sewage every time it rains. This is a completely unacceptable public safety hazard and DEP needs to be held accountable. Superstorm Sandy was a wake-up call for our city: recurring severe weather is a reality we need to prepare for, and outdated infrastructure leaves us vulnerable to catastrophic damage. Families that live along Utopia Parkway live in constant fear of the next storm, and our city needs to respond with large-scale projects that can mitigate the flash flooding that occurs when they experience even small amounts of precipitation. As public advocate, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged the city to invest in new drain systems for Fresh Meadows residents, bringing unprecedented attention to the issue. Since then, however, the city and DEP’s silence has been incredibly concerning. This isn’t a new problem; it’s persistent and systematically ignored, and the people who live on Utopia Parkway are due much needed relief for their suffering. City Councilman Rory Lancman Raise gasoline tax to raise funds for Highway Trust Fund Legislation to fund the national Highway Trust Fund continues to be deadlocked in Washington. This vital funding source to cities, states and transportation agencies used to pay for both highway and transit projects, and it is on the verge of running out of money sometime soon. Past presidents and Congress more interested in winning another term in office have repeatedly kicked this can down the road. The national gasoline tax used to support the Highway Trust Fund was last raised to 18.4 cents in 1993. Taking any action to raise this tax by only pennies per gallon years ago would have resulted in an ample robust Highway Trust Fund today. With gasoline at record low prices today, isn’t now, 21 years later, the right time to raise both our national and state gasoline tax? These actions could easily raise the billions necessary for maintaining a state of good repair for highways, bridges and public mass transportation along with potential system expansion. Larry Penner Great Neck We’re number one — but we knew that Our secret is out. Queens, our humble home, was singled out last week as the nation’s top tourist destination. The only surprise to us is that it took so long. Anyone living here understands what an amazing place our borough has become, particularly for its incredible diversity. For tourists, the experience of visiting Queens is like taking a world tour. Traveling from one neighborhood to another can be the cultural equivalent of crossing continents. The sights, smells and sounds on any given street in our borough conjures up the feeling of being in some far-off place. There is no other locality in the nation that features such a wide variety of dining. And we’re talking about authentic cuisine made by chefs who learned their craft in distant lands. Every neighborhood in our borough has become an ethnic niche. Take Jackson Heights, for example. That one community has more diversity than most cities in America. Add a surging arts community anchored by world-class film and TV production, museums and art studios, and you begin to see that Queens is more vital and exciting than ever before. Certainly, more people want to be here — to live and to visit. All of what Queens has to offer is nestled between spectacular shorelines on three sides. Views of the world’s greatest skyline looking west, tranquil waters of the Long Island Sound looking north and the Atlantic Ocean with its miles of public beaches on the south. So congratulations to the nation’s largest tour guide publisher, Lonely Planet, for recognizing Queens. It’s about time. The community must be heard before developing Sunnyside Yards With so little land available for development in New York City, elected officials and private developers are increasingly turning to a legacy of our industrial past — sprawling railroad yards — to make way for sweeping new projects. The latest rail yard to fuel flights of fancy is the collection of tracks in Sunnyside sprawling across 167 acres. That’s 10 times larger than the World Trade Center site and vastly larger than the 28 acres of rail yards on the far West Side in Manhattan now being developed into a new district of skyscrapers. We’ve heard all sorts of proposals for Sunnyside, from new housing to a massive convention center. Before moving forward on any proposal, we want to know that the city and state will get the input of people who live in western Queens who will have to live with the project. Sunnyside Yards is too big to railroad down the throats of its neighbors.
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