Town Hall Meeting Covers Wide Range Of Issues

As City Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr., (l.,) and United Community Civic Association President Rose Marie Poveromo (r.) looked on and other panelists listened, Assemblymember Michael Gianaris took questions as part of the Town Hall sponsored by the association and the Assemblymember. Though it was not exactly a colonial New England setting, representatives of more than a dozen city agencies and numerous federal, state and local elected officials met with a sizable crowd of citizens at the Riklis Theater of the Museum of the Moving Image in an old fashioned town hall meeting in Astoria last week.

“We’ve brought you, we hope, people from our federal, state and city government to answer your questions,” Assemblymember Michael Gianaris said.

Gianaris and the United Community Civic Association (UCCA) were the sponsors for the evening, moderated by UCCA President Rose Marie Poveromo. Judging by the sheer number of questions asked during the three-hour long meeting, it was a success.

The first question was asked by Tony Barsamian, publisher of the Queens Gazette, which was also a co-sponsor of the event,.

“Recently, Peter Belegrinos jumped bail,” Barsamian said, referring to the man charged with attempting to rape a 9-year old girl in Astoria Park last summer. “He did actually sexually molest her,” Barsamian said. Noting the law, as is, “can’t do it all”, Barsamian asked, “What can be done?”

State Senator George Onorato and Borough President Helen Marshall listened to a speaker at the meeting. “We’re working very hard to extend and strengthen Megan’s Law,” said Gianaris. Under that proposal, the most violent sexual offenders will remain in a state public registry that will track their whereabouts for life.

In addition, Gianaris said, laws are also being strengthened to make sure convicted sex offenders are kept in jail for a longer time. Under Jessica’s Law, named for a 9-year-old girl from Florida who was taken from her bed, raped and killed last year by a convicted sex offender living 150 yards away, anyone convicted of molesting a child would face a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life.

“This case is an outright travesty of justice,” said City Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr., referring to the attempted rape in Astoria Park. “The D.A.’s office asked that [Belegrinos] be remanded [without bail], but a bail of $50,000 was set by the judge. “We said he’s going to flee, and he did,” Vallone Jr. said. He added that police have an idea of where Belegrinos has gone, although he could not elaborate.

Assemblymember Michael Gianaris (standing) welcomed panelists, including state Senator George Onorato, Borough President Helen Marshall, Connie Moran of the city Department of Transportation and John Young, director of the Queens Borough Planning Office, to the Town Hall he sponsored with the United Community Civic Association. Echoing Gianaris, Vallone Jr. said, “The only way to protect our kids is to make sure that anyone who commits a felony assault against a child gets 25 to life and a mandatory life sentence on a second offense.”

On the subject of the placement of cell antenna towers, a representative from the Astoria Neighborhood Coalition asked, “Who is running the city, our elected public officials, or big business?”

A spokesperson for the Department of Buildings (DOB) said legislation by Vallone Jr. now allows the DOB to list the placement of all cell antenna towers on its Web site. “We are in favor of sensible plans,” he said.

Councilmember Eric Goia said, “You can never rely on a cell phone company or big business to speak for you, I hope there’s nothing wrong with these cell towers because if there is, we’re in trouble,”

Congressmember Anthony Weiner announced he has secured $1.4 million in federal funding for street and road infrastructure surveys to find problems in Gianaris’ district “before they happen”. Last year, there were several water main breaks in his district, including a severe break in the area of upper Ditmars Boulevard.

Weiner questioned continuing the war in Iraq. “Sooner or later, we have to say that if the people of Iraq want to have a civil war, we have to say, ‘You know what? we’ll watch from the sidelines’.” Of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, “We should always be thinking of them. Let’s keep them in our prayers—that they should come home quickly and safely.”

Weiner also criticized the Medicare Part D prescription plan, saying, “After months and months, we finally created a plan that got just about everything wrong. It’s an utter mess.”

Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, responding to an inquiry about $100 million in Port Authority funding for neighborhoods impacted by LaGuardia and JFK airports said, “Nothing has been decided yet.”

Marshall, along with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is one of four people who will decide how the money, $20 million a year for five years, will be spent.

“I want to do something about [noise abatement] windows for ordinary people,” she said. Speaking for the P.A., Warren Kroeppel, general manager at LaGuardia Airport, said he would support Borough President Marshall.

A question concerning the imposition of a death penalty for parents convicted of killing a child through abuse was addressed by state Senator George Onorato.

Noting the U.S. Supreme Court has recently declared the New York death penalty law unconstitutional, Onorato said no prisoner was ever executed while it was in effect. “If you think it’s a deterrent, it’s really not,” he said, explaining he would rather see lifetime sentences without parole.

Questions about the timing of traffic signals on Northern Boulevard, conditions in public parks, alternative enforcement ideas for hookah bars, lobbyist gifts, graffiti, a larger Mount Sinai Hospital, power plants, train noise at P.S. 85, MTA handicap accessibility, term limits, sanitation on Steinway Street, eminent domain, the zoning code, live poultry markets, civilian police complaints, evacuation plans for frail and elderly in a major disaster, the Steinway Street Bridge, heat and hot water complaints, school overcrowding, and the method of communication between the Police Department and local schools on sex offenders all came up during the course of the meeting.

The town meeting has its origins with the first settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony when weekly assembles of qualified voters in the community would convene to attend to public business. The town meeting is often cited as the purest form of direct democracy because every citizen has the right to speak.

In 1774, after the Boston Tea Party, the British imposed new laws, called the Intolerable Acts, banning all unauthorized town meetings, among other restrictions. These acts were a major factor contributing to the start of the American Revolution. Town meetings have declined in number today because it is believed they can function well only in small rural towns and are not suited to the needs of modern cities.

Assemblymember Gianaris is undaunted. “I take very seriously bringing government here to the neighborhood,” he said.