December Community Board Meeting Recap
By Kami-Leigh Agard
With the holiday season in full swing, this month’s Community Board 14 meeting, held this past Tuesday, December 10, at Knights of Columbus, was like a family gathering with opposite sides of the table offering both news to cheer about and sobering warnings.
The meeting kicked off with updates from the local NYPD precincts.
NYPD Transit warned about juveniles train surfing and sleeping commuters who report stolen items. The rep said, “Our numbers are up because of the juveniles, especially those surfing the trains. Also, passengers, who fall asleep on their train commute, report stolen items. Sleeping passengers reporting stolen items is probably our biggest issue. Our Neighborhood Community Officers (NCOs) are constantly dealing with the crowd in the afternoon during the rush hours, mainly to prevent those things. We’re even employing our drone units for added surveillance.”
The 100th Precinct rep was all smiles as she thanked the community at large for their successful Veterans Day Breakfast and Thanksgiving Food Giveaway and Holiday Toy Drive. “We just want to thank everyone who supported and volunteered at our Thanksgiving Food Giveaway. We were the only precinct in Queens South that did that, and it was very successful. We thank the Kiwanis Club, the local civic organizations and volunteers that participated. It’s nice to sit around your own Thanksgiving table, knowing that you made a difference and fed someone in the community that day. For our Second Annual Veterans Day Breakfast, we thank the Neponsit Homeowners Association and all the volunteers for their support. We know everyone in this room loves us, loves the 100th Precinct, love the community, and we love you back. So, we can’t wait for 2025. Happy wonderful holidays to everyone!” she said.
Representatives from the offices of Rep. Gregory Meeks, Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato, Councilwoman Joann Ariola, Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers, and Queens DA Melinda Katz were next to provide some updates.
Jose Reina from Congressman Gregory Meek’s office reported the following. Firstly, the Department of Homeland Security will be enhancing their security standards for NYS-issued IDs by following through with the Real ID Act, which was delayed a couple of years ago due to COVID 19 related backlog issues. Enforcement is expected to begin by May 7, 2025. Only travelers possessing the ID will be accepted and allowed for domestic air travel. For more info, visit the Department of Motor Vehicles. Secondly, Social Security recipients should expect to see a 2.5% increase to their cost of living adjustment payments starting in 2025. And thirdly, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will be increasing their shipping service options to improve their operations and maintain financial stability, which falls in line with their delivering for “America 10-Year Plan,” which was implemented back in 2021. The price increase for the shipping service option will be applied towards Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express, which will jump up by 3.2%. Reina also advised that USPS Ground Advantage will jump up by 3.9%. Large scale shippers can expect to see a 9% increase above parcel select services. The price increases are expected to be implemented by January 19, 2025. For more info, call Congressman Meeks’ office at (718) 725-6000.
A rep from Senator James Sanders Jr. shared that on Monday, December 16, the senator is hosting a NYS Reparations Remedies Pre-Mixer Event at Rochdale Village Ballroom (169-65 137th Avenue, Jamaica, NY). For more info, call: (718) 327-7017.
District 31 Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers gave quite a sobering testimony about not just her stance, but the possible future of Mayor Eric Adams’ City Of Yes plan. She shared that last week the City Council voted 31 to 20 in favor of the City Of Yes for the housing opportunity, which was one of three components that also included carbon neutrality and economy opportunity. The council passed the carbon neutrality and economic opportunity components. Regarding the much-debated housing component, Brooks-Powers said, “I had a lot of challenges with the housing component, which was why during the committee vote, I abstained my vote. There were some additional concerns that I had in terms of what the outcome would be. Now while the vote passed the committee that day, it’s important to understand the land use process.
“When something comes before the council, there is a 50-day clock that was already activated. The 50th day of that clock was the day of the committee hearing vote. That means the moment to kill the City Of Yes plan was on that day. So, I understand that people were concerned that when the final vote came, why didn’t I vote no? That was not on the table. I was not elected to come here and not be transparent with you on how we do things in the Council. I thought it was very important to be here at Community Board 14 personally to answer questions, talk about the vote and explain the process. Last week, the vote that took place was either to vote for the modification that passed in the committee two weeks prior, or to vote it down. Voting down the modifications would have reverted the City Of Yes to the original version, which I was always against. The original version called for a lot of things that I thought were extremely harmful to our district. Over the course of the two weeks from the committee vote and the final vote, I held a number of meetings with the Adams’ administration, Department of State Planning, City Council speaker staff and community stakeholders to talk about the additional concerns that I had.”
The councilwoman also noted that she is co-sponsoring a bill with District 24 Councilman James Gennaro on updating the inland flooding map, which will ultimately affect the City Of Yes blueprint.
