DANIEL DROMM, Democrat for City Council

Council Member Daniel Dromm speaks at the "Youth Speak Out on Education" presentation at the Children's Aid Society. 4/1/10. photo by William Alatriste

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Education

From Times Newsweekly: By Sam Goldman

The area’s newest lawmaker came to the Monday, Mar. 1 Communities of Maspeth and Elmhurst Together (COMET) meeting at Bethzatha Church of God in Elmhurst to talk about his work so far and his future plans.

City Council Member Daniel Dromm told the crowd that his Jackson Heights office is “off to a good start,” with 30 of 48 constituent cases solved at the time of the meeting.

Among the issues solved are tree plantings, pothole filling and social service requests.

Dromm also told the crowd that he wants to add seats to School District 24, adding that he hopes to persuade the Department of Education to lease the Blessed Sacrament School building in Jackson Heights.

The topic shifted to health care, with Dromm telling residents that Elmhurst Hospital Center is straining to accommodate the increase in clients stemming from the loss of nearby St. John’s Queens Hospital.

As a mitigation measure, he wants to add more primary care facilities to the area, to prevent residents from “using Elmhurst (Hospital) as a doc- tor’s office,” leaving the staff to tackle more urgent cases.

Finally, he shifted to quality-oflife issues. “We have a lot of plans,” said Dromm. “I believe in the broken windows theory.”

One plan involves getting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to lease some of the commercial spaces at the 74th Street/Roosevelt Avenue transit hub, which Dromm claims is quickly becoming dilapidated inside.

He then took questions from the crowd, including one from Ellen Kang on how he plans to help small businesses in the area.

Dromm pledged to “cut that red tape” and reduce the amount of paperwork necessary so small businesses get up and running faster.

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment, Education, Health Care, MassTransit, Press

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Fire, Unions

From The Queens Courier: By Camille Bautista

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, CulturalAffairs, ImmigrantRights, Press

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Education

From Irish Echo: By Irish Echo Staff

Recently elected New York City Council member Daniel Dromm, and community organizer Mary Lanning, are grand marshals for the annual Inclusive St. Patrick's Parade in Queens this Sunday, March 7. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn are also expected to march.

The parade, also known as the "St Pat's For All" parade, begins at 43rd Street and Skillman Ave. in Sunnyside and ends at 61st St. in Woodside.

"Our St. Pat's for All 2010 is a generous coming together of businesses, communities and musicians who for a few hours turn the streets of Sunnyside and Woodside into an Ireland of the welcomes," said parade organizer Brendan Fay.

Dromm, he said "is the New York City Council's only openly gay Spanish-speaking Irish American."

New groups in this year's parade include members of the Chilean community who will use the event to raise awareness of their country's recent earthquake and tsunami tragedies. Also in focus will be Irish patriot Roger Casement for his humanitarian work in Africa and South America.

Labels: CivilRights, CommunityOrganizing, CulturalAffairs, ImmigrantRights, Press

From Queens Chronicle: By Willow Belden

After a four-alarm fire tore through a commercial strip in Jackson Heights on Saturday, destroying eight businesses, local elected officials are denouncing the mayor’s proposal to close 20 fire companies across the city.

The blaze, which began in a furniture store on 37th Avenue between 84th and 85th streets, appears to have been caused by a malfunctioning boiler, according to the FDNY. No one was killed or injured, though dozens of people were evacuated from an adjacent apartment building, and nearby businesses sustained damage.

The fire started around 10 a.m. and burned for more than three hours, with some 200 firefighters working to contain it.

It took the FDNY three minutes to get to the scene. If it had taken any longer, many say, the damage could have been significantly more devastating and likely would have resulted in fatalities. That’s why some are calling on the mayor to rethink his plans to downsize the Fire Department.

“For a fire of this scale, you need manpower, and you need it here quickly,” said Leroy McGinnis, Queens trustee for the Uniformed Firefighters Association. “Seconds matter.”

In his proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year, Mayor Mike Bloomberg called for 20 fire companies to be closed — a measure he says is necessary to help close the city’s $4.9 billion deficit.

Bloomberg hasn’t specified which companies he would close, but McGinnis and various local politicians say it doesn’t matter; any closures would affect the city as a whole. That’s because engine and ladder companies are routinely taken out of commission for training sessions, parades and other events — leaving neighborhoods with fewer vehicles and staff than usual, and forcing firefighters to come from farther away to respond to emergencies.

If the city eliminates 20 companies more, neighborhoods would be stretched even thinner, and response times would increase, according to critics of the mayor’s plan.

“Any closing of a fire company has a ripple effect,” McGinnis said, adding that if firefighters had had to come from farther away to reach the Jackson Heights blaze, the fire would likely have consumed adjacent buildings.

City Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) and Assemblyman Jose Peralta (D-Jackson Heights) held a press conference on Monday, calling on the mayor to reconsider his plan.

“We need to ensure the safety of our residents,” Dromm said. “We cannot afford to risk peoples’ lives with these closures.”

The Bloomberg administration contends that the city can’t afford to keep all its fire companies running. “In tough economic times, every agency has been asked to do more with less, including the Fire Department,” Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor, said in an email.

Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Middle Village), chairwoman of the Fire and Criminal Justice Committee, said the city’s financial woes don’t justify the cuts.

“Fires don’t care about budgets,” Crowley said, adding that downsizing the FDNY could cost more in the long run than maintaining the Fire Department’s current numbers. “We cannot shift the costs from the city to the citizen,” she said. “We cannot shortchange our safety by forcing these cuts upon our New Yorkers.”

Trimming fire companies isn’t a new strategy to deal with deficits. In 2003, Bloomberg closed six engine companies, and last year he proposed cutting 16, though the City Council blocked the measure.

In December, the city reduced the number of firefighters in each unit from five to four, though the positions were restored the following month, amid strong criticism from the firefighters’ union.

Dromm said he will urge colleagues in the City Council not to approve a budget that includes cuts to engine companies for FY 2011.

Labels: Budget, CommunityOrganizing, Fire, Press, PublicSafety

From The Queens Courier: By Tonia N. Cimino & Claudia Cruz

As the remnants of the six stores ravaged by a four-alarm fire in Jackson Heights were razed, neighbors and other business owners reflected on the loss to the local economy.

“It’s a big tragedy,” said David Samaia, owner of Franco’s Corner, located one block away from the inferno. “These people lost a lot. Some of these businesses have more than one owner that will be affected. Employees lost their jobs. In this economy, it’s hard enough trying to find jobs.”

It was just before 10 a.m. on Saturday, February 13 when the fire started inside the Acme Furniture store located at 84-09 37th Avenue. It took 39 units with 168 firefighters to get the blaze under control – in three-and-a-half hours – but not before it chewed through conjoined storefronts and forced people from their homes.

Fire officials, who said there was a “significant delay” in calling 9-1-1, have determined the cause was a defective boiler on the first floor.

Locals credit the FDNY – which was fighting hot spots for hours after the fire and arrived on scene in just three minutes – with a job well done.

“It could have been a much bigger disaster if the fire department didn’t show up as fast as they did,” said Alex Chin, owner of Kelly Han Dry Cleaners, Inc., located at 84-11 37th Avenue. “I might not be here in this store if they hadn’t.”

Chin continued, “When I saw the smoke, I thought the fire was from my store. The fire was so close. I just stayed across the street and watched. I feel extremely lucky that it wasn’t me. I feel bad for those other business owners. I knew most of them — they were my friends.”

Though the Chin family’s cleaners sustained a little bit of water damage near the front door, an official with the Office of Emergency Management on scene on Sunday, February 14 – on the phone with the Department of Buildings (DOB) – deemed it structurally safe.

The DOB, however, determined the six stores were structurally unstable and ordered them leveled on Sunday, February 14. A spokesperson for the agency told The Courier that in 2003 and 2005, violations were issued at the site because one store had been subdivided.

As of Monday, February 15, Chin said his dry cleaning business was open. “All of our machines are working so far, knock on wood, so we plan to stay open,” he said.

However, Ilona Pozniakiene was not so lucky.

An employee of Colony Wine & Liquor Store on the corner for 10 years, she said she saw the flames from her kitchen window a few blocks away. “I’ve lost my job,” she said.

“The flames were as huge as the building,” said Councilmember Daniel Dromm as he surveyed the damage and helped a few business owners – from storefronts not affected by the fire – get back into their stores. “This will have a tremendous affect on the community because it was eight businesses and all ‘mom and pop’ stores.”

Dromm said that he is unsure at this time as to the monetary loss, though city agencies are working to determine this. He continued, “I have already conducted meetings with five of the eight business owners affected and the Department of Small Business Services has arranged to give those affected immediate assistance.”

“It’s horrible. It’s terrible at this time with the economy being so bad,” echoed Fannie Beylot, who lives on 79th Street. “Your heart goes out to these people. All of these stores have been here forever.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Fire, ImmigrantRights, Press, PublicSafety

From The New York Times: By Fernanda Santos

There were a Russian liquor seller, an Ecuadorean manicurist and a Dominican barber. There was Thomas Kourakos, 83, who is from Greece and who opened his shoe-repair shop in 1956. And there was Maria Solano, 54, who is from Peru and who opened her party-favor store in 2006.

Along 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, from 84th Street to 85th Street, a diverse global cast toiled every morning in an equally diverse collection of neighborhood stores.

They could count on the Uruguayan furniture salesman to shovel the sidewalk after snowstorms, on the Ecuadorean accountant for financial advice and on one another for companionship.

Yolanda Mitsis, 59, a Colombian aesthetician who had a skin-care clinic on the block, described their relationship as “una cadenita,” or a little chain. But that chain was broken Saturday morning when flames, water and smoke pulverized 8 of the 15 stores on the block.

“I used to say hi every morning, when they walked by,” Alex Chin, 59, a Chinese dry cleaner whose shop was spared by the fire, said of the people whose businesses were destroyed. “It feels very lonely without them.”

A malfunctioning boiler inside a furniture store between Mr. Chin’s and Mr. Kourakos’s shops sparked a blaze that raged for four hours, forcing the evacuation of a neighboring apartment building and requiring 168 firefighters to bring under control, officials said.

No one was seriously injured, but the flames left a crater of mangled metal and charred brick in the heart of a commercial strip that has offered many immigrants a foothold in a new city.

For the lucky ones, like Mr. Chin and Abdul Rahim, an Afghan who owns a fabric store on the block, life goes on. Those not so lucky lost pretty much all they had.

“Everything I had saved I invested in this store,” said Robinson Valderrama, 30, who is from Colombia and who last year opened a clothing shop, Stylus Boutique, in a storefront facing 84th Street. He has a 9-year-old son, a 21-month-old daughter and a 7-year-old stepdaughter. His wife is unemployed, and the store was their only source of income, he said.

Mr. Valderrama did not have insurance. Ms. Mitsis thought she had insurance, but said that when she called to check on Tuesday, she found out that her policy had lapsed. Ms. Solano had coverage but said it would not offset her losses.

Then there are people like Amada Sánchez, 51, the manicurist from Ecuador, who rented a work station at La Pelukeria, a hair salon. She accepted only cash and kept it at work, in a small cardboard box that she emptied every Saturday at the end of her shift, she said.

“I had worked like crazy all week because of Valentine’s Day, but the fire burned my money,” Ms. Sánchez said dejectedly, estimating that she probably had $1,000 in the box. She said the fire also burned her nail polishes, nail drying machines and the rest of her equipment.

Very little has been recovered from the debris. A contractor in charge of the demolition said his crew had salvaged seven helium tanks and a cash register from Ms. Solano’s party-favors store, Lalita’s, with $1,400 inside. They also retrieved a filing cabinet and a safe from the liquor store, facial vaporizers from Ms. Mitsis’s clinic and a pair of pedicure chairs from the hair salon.

“I would love to have the businesses that were destroyed come back, but to be honest, I don’t know if it’s going to happen,” said Councilman Daniel Dromm, who represents the neighborhood and who spent much of the weekend at the fire scene. “This was devastating to people’s lives.”

Their loss is more than just material. Mr. Kourakos, the cobbler, was working in the back of his shop when flames erupted next door. Because he is hard of hearing, he did not know that Ms. Solano and her husband, Julio Aragón, had been calling out his name, unsure if he was still inside.

Ms. Solano said Mr. Aragón visited Mr. Kourakos every morning after he had helped her roll up Lalita’s gates. If a Spanish-speaking client needed Mr. Kourakos’s services, Mr. Aragón helped translate. If Mr. Kourakos had to bring a heavy box into his shop, Mr. Aragón would carry it. If Mr. Kourakos had trouble pulling nails from the heels of a shoe, Mr. Aragón would do it for him.

Mr. Aragón dashed inside Mr. Kourakos’s shop, Tom’s Shoe Repair, even as smoke and flames threatened to overpower him. Mr. Kourakos emerged wearing an apron smeared with shoe wax. His winter jacket, keys and all the machines and memories he had amassed in more than five decades had been left behind.

“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” his daughter Jeannie Kourakos said. “He went there to work, but he had a social life with the people who worked around him. They’d come in, bring him a doughnut; they stopped by to say hello. He’s going to miss his friends.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Fire, ImmigrantRights, Press, PublicSafety

From Queens Gazette: By John Toscano

Two Jackson Heights lawmakers, joined by area Fire Department officials, cited a devastating fire in their area to emphasize demands that no firehouses be shut down because of anticipated budget cuts.

The massive fire destroyed a commercial strip on 37th Avenue between 84th and 85th Streets.

City Councilmember Daniel Dromm (D–Jackson Heights) declared:

“We cannot afford to lose any firehouses anywhere in the city. If one firehouse closes, firehouses in other communities will be called upon to cover those other communities. That will leave everyone short of firehouse coverage if an emergency occurs.”

Joining Dromm, Assemblymember Jose Peralta (D–Corona/Jackson Heights) stated he would work closely with Dromm “to ensure that the businesses affected by this devastating fire receive the resources and assistance they need to recover and rebuild”.

Then turning to the firehouse closing issue, Peralta said, “This weekend’s fire further reinforces the critical need to keep all firehouses open. We cannot afford to have less fire protection in our neighborhoods: Our lives and our businesses depend upon it.”

Dromm, a former school teacher said something must be done to correct “the false impression that response times [in fires] are down.”

The freshman lawmaker noted: “Response times are now calculated in a different way. These changes are troublesome.” He explained,

“Response times are now calculated not to include the time a caller spends making the emergency call to 911. This creates the false impression that response times are down. Also, response times only consider when the fire engine arrives on the scene. It does not take into account the amount of time it takes to stretch hose lines, get water on the fire or administer EMS. Providing services could take another 10 minutes or more.”

Dromm also praised the firefighters for doing “an excellent job here in Jackson Heights over the weekend”.

Labels: Budget, CommunityOrganizing, Fire, Press, PublicSafety

Labels: Budget, CommunityOrganizing, Fire, Press, PublicSafety

 

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment, Fire

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment, Fire

From Western Queens Gazette: by Thomas Cogan

Community Board 3’s first meeting of 2010 at the board’s usual meeting place, I.S. 227, the Louis Armstrong School in Corona, three politicians introduced themselves and talked. A spokesman for a local ambulance service sought letters of approval for a plan that would expand its territory. There was a new election of board officers. Near the end of the meeting, there was word of a proposal to build an elementary school, while the MTA proposal to eliminate free transit fare for students was not appreciated.

City Councilmember Daniel Dromm was the first politician to the front of the room. New to political office, he first defeated incumbent Helen Sears in a primary race for nomination to the City Council’s 25th district seat then won the November election, where, he acknowledged, his share of the vote was 75 percent. Just after being inaugurated, he was named head of the council Immigration Committee.

Dromm has a 25-year background teaching in city schools and spoke first of educational matters. He noted that the local problem of overcrowded classrooms would be allayed considerably if an arrangement could be effected for public school students to fill 700 seats at the now closed Blessed Sacrament elementary school at 34-20 94th St. “It would be like getting a new school,” he said. He praised the Renaissance Charter School, a K-12 school that has operated at 35-59 81st St. for nearly a decade. Turning to another critical area, he deplored the healthcare situation since the recent closing of three Queens hospitals, saying the closings have had a particularly severe impact on Elmhurst Medical Center, where people in need of treatment often must wait nine or 10 hours just to be admitted. He said that several primary care centers are needed locally, and added that he and Congressmember Joseph Crowley have been trying to gain funds from the federal stimulus package, which might be used toward getting some of those centers.

He said that day laborers, widely seen as a great problem in the vicinity of Roosevelt Avenue, should instead be seen as those “least amongst us” that he learned about in his Catholic youth. Allowing that they have caused some problems, he said that they need community centers to address their situation of being unattached to just about anything. He praised the closing from time to time of 78th Street to make it a play street for children, hailing Board 3 Member Ed Westley for his part in bringing it about. Considering the number of local restaurants, he said that Jackson Heights should stage something like Atlantic Antic in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue neighborhoods. He concluded by saying: “The strength of our community is the diversity of our community.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, CulturalAffairs, EconomicDevelopment, Education, Environment, HealthCare, ImmigrantRights, Parks-Playgrounds, Press

From Elmhurst Times: by Jeremy Walsh

Consistently low graduation rates at Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood and Long Island City High School and Newtown High School in Elmhurst have placed all three institutions on the list for state and federal funding that would either completely make over the schools or close them entirely.

The state-issued list of 57 schools with graduation rates below 60 percent or consistently low scores on state English and math exams was released last Thursday. It includes 10 schools in Queens.

City Councilman Daniel Dromm’s (D-Jackson Heights) office has scheduled a meeting with Newtown HS staff. Dromm said he opposed closing the school.

“In general, my impression of Newtown has been that ... people were happy with Newtown and I have not heard any problems,” Dromm said, praising the state DOE for informing his office when the report was to be released. “I hope they’ll let us in on what the decision making process is.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Education, Press

El Diaro/MANUEL E. AVENDAÑO:

Una delegación de concejales neoyorquinos, encabezada por la presidente Christine Quinn, viajará mañana a Puerto Rico para reunirse con la familia de Jorge Steven López Mercado, el joven homosexual de 19 años de edad, que fuera brutalmente asesinado el pasado noviembre.

“El mensaje que queremos enviar al gobernador (Luis Fortuño) es que el resto de los Estados Unidos está viendo este caso y que quiere que se haga justicia”, dijo Quinn, en declaraciones exclusivas a EL DIARIO/LA PRENSA.

La presidente del Concejo Municipal agregó que decidió ir a la isla cuando escuchó acerca del crimen, de lo “increíblemente brutal que fue contra una víctima tan joven”.

Quinn expresó que se ha sentido “muy molesta” por la manera en que se ha manejado el caso, con el silencio del gobernador y por el trato que se le dado a la víctima “casi como a un criminal”. “La forma de tratar este caso ha sido ofensiva y atroz”, dijo Quinn.

Por su parte, la concejal Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan) dijo a este diario que los concejales de Nueva York se unirán a otros funcionarios electos de Chicago, donde la comunidad puertorriqueña ha recaudado fondos que serán entregados a los familiares de López Mercado.

Los ediles Rosie Méndez (D-Manhattan), Danny Dromm (D-Queens) y Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens) integran también la delegación.

“Queremos que el gobernador entienda que el silencio no es aceptable”, dijo Mark-Viverito. Agregó que pese a que desde el 2002 existe una ley contra los crímenes de odio en Puerto Rico –firmada por la entonces gobernadora Sila Calderón- “hasta el momento no se ha llevado un caso a la corte”.

El cadáver de López Mercado fue hallado el 13 de noviembre en la ciudad de Cavey. Había sido decapitado, desmembrado y parcialmente quemado.

Labels: CivilRights, CommunityOrganizing, Espanol, Press

Daniel Dromm and members of the Keltic Dreams Irish dance group performed “Y.M.C.A.” at his inauguration party on Sunday.

Huddled with aides last week in a room upstairs from his future district office, which the incumbent he defeated in the Democratic primary had yet to clear out, City Councilman Daniel Dromm ironed out the final details of his inauguration party.

They discussed when the bagpipes would chime in, who would sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and which line would be recited by each of the four judges administering the oath of office. “And when the show begins, we’ll do the drag queens and then Randy Jones,” he said, referring to the original cowboy in the Village People.

Mr. Dromm’s choice of entertainment was at once a personal indulgence (“I’m a fan of early disco,” he explained) and a tongue-in-cheek statement of his sexuality. He is the first openly gay elected official to represent Jackson Heights, Queens, a neighborhood known for its diversity of people and cuisines that enjoys a more obscure distinction as a haven for gay men and lesbians.

At first glance, it might seem incongruous that gay people would find acceptance in a place that is home to large populations of South Asian and South American immigrants, who usually hold conservative values. In the days leading up to the general election, Mr. Dromm’s Republican opponent, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Mujib Rahman, tried to turn his rival’s sexual orientation into a campaign issue, denouncing Mr. Dromm as a “radical gay activist.”

Still, Mr. Dromm, 54, won with nearly 75 percent of the vote.

Jackson Heights was not always this way. Mr. Dromm, a veteran gay activist and former teacher at an elementary school, recalled that a police helicopter hovered overhead, in case violence broke out, when the neighborhood held Queens’s first gay pride parade in 1993. Tensions had been running high since a gay man from Colombia, Julio Rivera, was stabbed to death in a bias attack three years earlier.

What Mr. Rivera’s killing did, though, was expose the divisions and intersections within the many worlds that define Jackson Heights. Problems still persist: Just last month, a gay man reported to the police that he was beaten by bouncers at a Mexican restaurant on Roosevelt Avenue. But for gay people and Latinos, at least, “it’s not a matter of coexisting, but a matter of how much they overlap,” said Joe Rollins, 48, a political science professor at the City University of New York who is gay and has lived in Jackson Heights for eight years.

It is exactly this sense of mash-up multiculturalism that many gays said had attracted them to Jackson Heights, along with its vast subway network and its housing stock, ample and relatively affordable apartments with luxurious gardens and ornate architectural flourishes.

That it has a gay subculture “was a sort of bonus, but not a deciding factor,” said Alfonso Quiroz, 37, who four years ago began organizing monthly dinners that now draw more than 30 people — most of them gay men, but also some lesbians and a heterosexual couple.

“It was never about your ethnic background, your religious background, your sexual orientation, or about being rich or poor,” said Mr. Quiroz, a spokesman for Con Edison who has lived in Jackson Heights since 2003 with his partner, Jeff Simmons, 45. “It was really about feeling comfortable here.”

Glenn Magpantay, 41, and his partner, Christopher Goeken, 42, moved to Jackson Heights from Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, in 2004 because “we wanted a place where we could raise a family,” said Mr. Magpantay, a civil rights lawyer. He is of Filipino descent, Mr. Goeken is white and they have an adopted son, a 3-year-old black boy named Malcolm.

“To us,” Mr. Magpantay said over empanadas at a Colombian restaurant on 37th Avenue, “living in a racially diverse neighborhood was very important.”

Gay men said they were not afraid to hold hands with their partners while walking the streets. And while there are gay bars and clubs on Roosevelt Avenue — patrons described the scene as twice as fun as Manhattan’s, but half the price — there is no sense of an enclave like there is in Chelsea, where gay people seem to inhabit a world of their own, they said.

“Jackson Heights happens to have a lot of gays, but it’s not a gay neighborhood,” said Jeffrey Reich-Hale, 35, a hotel sales director who was eating at a neighborhood restaurant. “We have our problems, but you really feel like everyone belongs everywhere.” In recent years at the Queens Gay Pride Parade, which Mr. Dromm helped found, sidewalks have been packed with immigrant men, women and children cheering as gays from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru pass by, waving their countries’ flags. It is the city’s largest gay parade outside Manhattan and it has “a real neighborhood feeling, with people coming out with their folding chairs, their coolers, like you’d see on Memorial Day,” said City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who is a lesbian and has been one of the parade’s most loyal participants.

But at his inauguration party on Sunday, in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Mr. Dromm made sure to point out that as a councilman, he would not embrace “a gay agenda,” but causes that are important to the people he represents, like traffic and parking improvements, additional parkland and the creation of a day laborer hiring site. (His district also includes parts of Corona, Woodside, Elmhurst and East Elmhurst, which has a sizable Chinese population.)

“I believe that our struggles as progressives, as gays, as immigrants, as Latinos, as South Asians, as African-Americans, as Asians, as Muslims, as human beings, is one and the same,” he told an audience of about 600 people. “We are fighting to make people’s lives better.”

Written by Fernanda Santos. Published New York Times January 15th, 2010

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Press, Progressive

City Council Member Daniel Dromm joined union and community members will pledge not to patronize Amish Market Tribeca until the owners demonstrate a reversal of their stand against workers rights. Dromm was joined by the leadership of UFCW Local 1500, the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York, the New York Central Labor Council, and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment, Unions

City Council Member Daniel Dromm (D/WF-Jackson Heights) encourages you to donate to the victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. Every dollar contributed can help save a life.

The musician Wyclef Jean has a long-standing charity program to help Haitians - Yele Haiti. Please consider making donations to Yele Haiti or the American Red Cross.

Here are the links:

American Red Cross

Yele Haiti

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Grassroots

From NYPost: by Jeremy Walsh

The same day last week that the MTA approved a doomsday budget that eliminated two subway lines in Queens, elected officials in Jackson Heights called the agency’s attention to a potential lost funding source: the 74th Street-Roosevelt Avenue transit hub.

“It is absolutely shameful that the MTA is considering throwing students under the bus before pursuing revenue from these valuable properties,” City Councilman-elect Daniel Dromm said of the new budget, which includes charging students for trips to and from school. “The MTA must focus on all revenue opportunities before they talk about any service cuts or massive fare increases for students.”

State Assemblyman Jose Peralta (D-Jackson Heights) said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority “needs to look deep into their reserve fund and find appropriate sources of funding.”

Assemblyman Michael DenDekker (D-Jackson Heights) also urged alternate methods of increasing revenue.

“Before the MTA starts to implement any service cuts at all, it should check all available financial resources, such as the leasing of MTA property and all other revenue sources they have,” he said.

The $132 million 74th Street station project took five years to finish, Dromm’s office said. It boasts 14 commercial spaces that could be rented out to tenants.

At the time, elected officials said the MTA Real Estate Committee had received a stunning number of applications for the storefronts. But when the new facility opened in November 2006, merchants complained that the MTA charged much higher rents than other landlords in the neighborhood.

MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said 11 of the commercial spaces at the station are either currently occupied or licensed and awaiting the tenant to move in.

The largest of the spaces, a 4,000-square-foot storefront on the street level, is empty right now because the vendor is having problems with his architect, Ortiz said.

“What we said was, ‘As a sign of good faith ... would you increase the amount that you give the MTA up front as a security deposit?’ And he did that,” Ortiz said. “He’s assured us he’s coming.”

Dromm’s office pointed out another transit hub, the Fulton Street station in Manhattan, was recently renovated with 20,000 square feet of commercial space that goes for $150 a square foot annually.

The 74th Street station was the 14th-busiest of all the MTA’s subway stations in 2008, serving 16.4 million passengers that year.

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment, MassTransit, Press, QualityofLife

From New York Daily News by Clare Trapasso:

They wait on the city's streetcorners, often shivering in the cold, hoping someone will drive by and offer them a job. Soon, they will be able to come indoors.

Beginning next month, day laborers will be eligible for job training and social service programs in three Queens neighborhoods under a new $1.2 million initiative paid for with federal stimulus dollars.

But advocates say they won't be satisfied with anything less than full-fledged immigration centers.

Councilman-elect Daniel Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) said he plans to advocate for permanent centers during his term.

"We need to address the problems that day laborers face holistically, rather than piecemeal," Dromm said.

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment, ImmigrantRights

From Village Voice: by Candice M. Giove
As shoppers scurried to snatch up last minute gifts inside the Queens Center Mall, local elected officials and community organizations painted the shopping destination's landlord, Macerich, as the latest Grinch in the ongoing fight for living wages -- just days after the city council rejected a Kingsbridge Armory plan that had no living wage requirement.

Most of the 3,100 retail workers in the sprawling urban mall earn $7.25 an hour.

Standing on a snowy corner of Queens Boulevard, Santa symbolically held gift-wrapped boxes marked "living wages." A menacing green Dr. Seuss character represented the mall owner. Activists from Make the Road New York, a citywide organization focusing on economic justice, demanded that the landlord place a living wage clause in its leases -- which would require stores to pay $10/hour with benefits, or $11.50 without.

The mall, which lures over 26 million consumers a year and is considered one of the most profitable malls in the country, has already completed a $275 million makeover, adding thousands of square feet of shopping space and parking to the already busy site.

Like many major commercial property owners in New York, Macerich saved $48 million in taxes through the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program between 2004 and 2009. Make the Road New York predicted that by 2018 those abatements will total $129 million.

Even after years on the job, most mall employees barely climb the earnings ladder, the report said. Their examples include Juan Cucalon, a 28-year-old, $8.25-an-hour cashier at Victoria's Secret who struggles to pay a $400 rent with monthly earnings of $600, and Saa'datu Sani, whose earnings rose to $8.47 an hour at J.C. Penney after eight years.

The group and the officials plan to continue their campaign against Macerich with street demonstrations and letters. "Just like the story of Scrooge, where the ghost visited him on many occasions," said Councilman-elect Daniel Dromm, "we're going to come back, and we're going to visit this mall on many occasions until we get what the community needs."

Dromm, whose predecessor, outgoing City Councilwoman Helen Sears, was the lone supportive vote for the Kingsbridge Armory plan, said that he would pay special attention to ensuring that developers kept their promises.

Activists were also angry over what they portrayed as unrealized guarantees for a community space at the mall. "They're unwilling at this point to open that space up to desperately needed community programs like English as a second language or an afterschool program," Friedman said.

Their report claims that local teens become mall rats, vacuously hanging out in the food court, while a tourism office stands as the only community-oriented space in the mall.

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, EconomicDevelopment, Grassroots, LeFrak, Unions

From TimesLedger: by Anna Gustafson
Rego Center spurs worries, Dromm visits Community Board 6

Mitigating traffic around Rego Center should be a top priority for City Councilman-elect Danny Dromm, members of Community Board 6 told the incoming legislator at their meeting last week.

CB 6 Chairman Joseph Hennessy, other members and area resident Hersh Parekh said they were worried that the Rego Park shopping center slated to open in February could bring with it burdensome traffic. Rego Center will include such stores as Costco, T.J. Maxx and Kohl’s.

“We’re very concerned about the traffic,” Hennessy told Dromm. “We’d like to meet with the developer and the [city] Department of Transportation.”

Dromm, who will replace outgoing Councilwoman Helen Sears (D-Jackson Heights), attended the CB 6 meeting Dec. 9 to introduce himself to board members. Councilwoman-elect Karen Koslowitz represents the majority of the area covered by CB 6, but Dromm has constituents in part of Rego Park. He will represent the area where Rego Center will be located.

The center is a 6.6-acre site at the intersection of Junction Boulevard and 62nd Drive next to the Long Island Expressway and directly behind the Rego Park Mall, which includes an Old Navy, a Sears and a Bed, Bath & Beyond. The site is managed by Vornado but owned by Alexander’s Inc.

According to a Nov. 2 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the development will be a 600,000-square-foot shopping center on four levels and will include a parking deck with about 1,400 spaces. As of October, 138,000 square feet had been leased to Costco, 134,000 square feet leased to Century 21 and 132,000 square feet leased to Kohl’s.

District Manager Frank Gulluscio and Hennessy said Vornado officials told them T.J. Maxx had also signed a lease.

Parekh, a Rego Park resident, said at the meeting he wasworried that traffic from the center could make parking impossible for residents.

“I know traffic is a very, very big concern for people,” Dromm said. “We need to get on top of that.”

Dromm told community board members that education was one of his main concerns and said he hoped to work to bring more seats to a district notorious for its crowded classrooms.

“Education has always been my passion,” said Dromm, a former public school teacher.

The incoming lawmaker said he also wanted to work on health care issues in the borough, particularly in light of the closure of St. John’s Hospital in Elmhurst. Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica closed at the same time as St. John’s last February. Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills closed not long before St. John’s and Mary Immaculate shut their doors.

Dromm said he is looking into bringing in health facilities to “alleviate overcrowding in area hospitals.”

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Education, HealthCare, Transportation

From Queens Chronicle: by Willow Belden

Since the Metropolitan Transportation Authority renovated the subway station at 74th Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, several retail spaces on the station’s street and mezzanine levels have stood empty, and elected officials say that should change.

Assemblymen Jose Peralta (D-Jackson Heights) and Michael Den Dekker (D-Jackson Heights), along with City Councilman-elect Danny Dromm and several community leaders, gathered outside the station Wednesday morning requesting that the MTA rent out the spaces.

They said the transit authority could bring in much-needed revenue and added that the neighborhood would gain a more welcoming face without boarded-up storefronts.

“Before the MTA starts to implement any service cuts at all, it should check all available financial resources, such as the leasing of MTA property and all other revenue sources they have,” DenDekker said.

Peralta echoed those sentiments. “Suitable funding sources, like the ones at the 74th Street station, are available yet they are not included in the financial equation,” he said.

Dromm added that the community is suffering because of the vacancies.

“People get out of the subway, and the first thing they see are these boarded-up stores, and it’s really a blight on the neighborhood,” he said.

The MTA says it has already rented out six stores and four news stands at the station and added that it is working to have tenants in the rest as soon as possible.

One of the largest empty stores, a 4,000-square-foot facility, is slated to become a bakery and coffee shop, according to spokesman Kevin Ortiz, but is running behind schedule because of problems with the architect. Ortiz said the tenant has paid a security deposit but couldn’t say when the cafe will open.

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, MassTransit

From NY1:
JACKSON HEIGHTS, NY, December 16, 2009 -- Despite the city's economic crisis, the MTA has failed to lease valuable commercial space at the 74th Street/Roosevelt Avenue station in Jackson Heights, Queens. After the station was renovated with millions of dollars of taxpayer money, the MTA has missed out on significant income by not leasing these properties.

Yet the MTA is currently trying to close a nearly $400 million budget gap by planning dramatic cuts to bus and subway service. Also on the chopping block are the free MetroCards that half a million of New York City’s students use to get to school. City Council Member-elect Daniel Dromm along with Assemblyman Jose Peralta, Assemblyman Michael DenDekker and many community leaders, demanded that the MTA pursue leasing these commercial properties to generate revenue to prevent drastic service cuts at a press conference held in front of the Roosevelt Avenue station.

“It is absolutely shameful that the MTA is considering throwing students under the bus before pursuing revenue from these valuable properties” said City Council Member-elect Daniel Dromm. "The MTA has neglected the Jackson Heights community by failing to lease these properties. The MTA must focus on all revenue opportunities before they talk about any service cuts or massive fare increases for students."

“The MTA needs to review their operational policy every time they feel they need to make cuts, because it is not working. If it’s not the hard working men and women of this State that is usually affected, then it is our senior population. Now, they turn their darts on our students, making it much more difficult for them to get to and from school,” stated Assemblyman Jose R. Peralta. “The MTA needs to look deep into their reserve fund and find appropriate sources of funding. The funding situation turns even more confusing when suitable funding sources -like the ones at the 74 Street Station- are available yet they are not included in the financial equation.”

Assemblyman Michael DenDekker said, "Before the MTA starts to implement any service cuts at all, it should check all available financial resources such as the leasing of MTA property and all other revenue sources they have."

The impact of these abandoned-looking storefronts on the community is also a main concern. These vacant storefronts have been a blight to the neighborhood with a boarded-up streetscape that promotes vandalism, graffiti, crime, and sanitation problems. The MTA's failure to maintain this property has negatively impacted the surrounding small businesses and residential community.

Meanwhile, transit hubs like the Fulton Street station are anything but neglected. According to the New York Times, the Fulton Street station enjoys 20,000 square feet of retail space after its recent renovation, and is reported to command about $150 a square foot annually. Why the MTA hasn’t been able to take advantage of its own commercial space at Roosevelt Ave station isn’t exactly clear.

Located at 74th Street, Broadway, and Roosevelt Ave in Jackson Heights, Queens, the transit hub benefited from a $132 million renovation in 2005. The main objective of the overhaul was to ease movement within the facility, one of the few in the system that allows transfers between an underground stop and an elevated line. As one of the only dual bus and subway stations in the city, it is the second busiest in Queens, with over 42,000 people using the station daily.

Labels: CommunityOrganizing, Mass Transit, QualityofLife

From Times Ledger: by Jeremy Walsh

The wound is still fresh for gay and lesbian constituents of Queens and state senators like Hiram Monserrate (D-East Elmhurst), who voted against same-sex marriage two weeks ago.

Organized by groups like the LGBT Coalition of Queens and the Western Queens Same Sex Marriage Alliance, protesters marched on Monserrate’s office in East Elmhurst Saturday and Sen. George Onorato’s (D-Astoria) office Sunday.

Although the politicians and their staffers were not in the offices, the group got plenty of looks — both positive and skeptical — from Corona residents as they marched north from Roosevelt Avenue.

“I want everyone to hear that I am not a second-class citizen,” said Sara Pomar, a same-sex marriage activist from Woodside. “It is irrelevant, my sexuality, but we all deserve the same civil rights.”

City Councilman-elect Daniel Dromm, a longtime Queens activist for gay rights who will represent Jackson Heights, Corona and Elmhurst come Jan. 1, said Monserrate indicated he supported same-sex marriage in a survey he filled out for the Empire State Pride Agenda. He and the Queens Democratic Party are endorsing state Assemblyman Jose Peralta (D-Jackson Heights) to challenge Monserrate in the 2010 Democratic primary.

“He violates the rights of the LGBT community, he violates the rights of the immigrant community, the African-American community, the Latino community because we are all in this struggle together for equal rights,” Dromm said, calling on same-sex marriage supporters to campaign throughout the borough, including Howard Beach, the home turf of state Sen. Joseph Addabbo (D-Howard Beach), who also voted against the bill.

State Assemblyman Michael DenDekker (D-Jackson Heights) accused Monserrate of not representing his constituents.

“If he did he would have looked and saw that the three Assembly members that make up this district all co-sponsored the legislation,” he said.

Elmhurst resident Sebastian Maguire called Monserrate a liar over his recent claim in a NY1 interview that no one had contacted him to encourage him to vote for the bill.

“Raise your hand if you personally called him, approached him, anything,” he told the crowd. At least a dozen hands went up.

Richard Allman, president of the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City, said the influential group would be focusing its political efforts on Queens in 2010.

“Yes, Sen. Monserrate, in addition to this being political, it’s personal because you’re standing in the way of me and the man I love and that I intend to spend the rest of my life with,” he said. “And you will be stopped.”

German Morales, an Elmhurst resident who is HIV-positive, warned that gay rights and the rights of HIV and AIDS patients are interconnected.

“I love him. He’s my friend,” he said of Monserrate. “But he’s not my political friend anymore.”

Labels: CivilRights, CommunityOrganizing

from Edge:
Hundreds of people marched through the College Point section of Queens on Oct. 17 to denounce what police have described as an anti-gay hate crime that nearly claimed a local resident’s life.

Daniel Aleman, 26, and Daniel Rodriguez,Jr., 21, allegedly beat Jack Price, 49, outside an all-night deli on the corner of College Point Avenue and 18th Avenue around 3 a.m. on Oct. 9. Price’s sister-in-law, Joanne Guarneri, marched arm-and-arm with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Congressman Anthony Weiner, City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr., Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and other politicians, activists and local residents down College Point Avenue. She also spoke at a rally at a local park.

"They [Aleman and Rodriguez] nearly beat my brother-in-law to death for $10 and a pack of cigarettes," Guarneri said. "We have to stop violence in College Point. We have to take back our streets."

Amanda Guarneri echoed her mother’s anger before she and other members of her family marched.

"They [Aleman and Rodriguez] are a disgrace," the 15-year-old told EDGE. "They should be locked up forever. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy."

Quinn, members of Price’s family and others who spoke at the rally were quick to praise the New York Police Department and local residents for the way they feel they have responded. Openly gay City Council candidate Danny Dromm, who co-organized both the march and rally, told fellow marchers he wanted to send a powerful message against anti-LGBT hate and bias crimes.

"We’re here to say enough is enough," Dromm said.

Price, who suffered a broken jaw, bruised ribs, a collapsed lung and other injuries, remains hospitalized in a Queens hospital. He told the Daily News he thought he would not survive.

"I thought I died," Price said.

photo credit:
flickr:theoccasionalflag
flickr:newyorkcitycouncil

Labels: CivilRights, CommunityOrganizing, LawEnforcement