Bd 1 Cabinet Hears Of 114 Civ-OP Anti-Graffiti Campaign
BY THOMAS COGAN

Delis cited Pollock's testimony against Oliver Siandre, the graffiti vandal who went by the tag of Kiko, who was recently convicted on a property damage charge and sent to jail. Pollock said he logged the times Kiko had tagged sites the Civ-OP was maintaining and was thus able to establish evidence against him that he spoke about at the trial.

Several groups visited January's Community Board 1 cabinet meeting, including the Queens General Assembly, the Small Business Administration and Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. The meeting, held at its usual site, the commissary of Kaufman Astoria Studios and chaired by George Delis, Board 1 district manager, also heard the latest on reconstruction of the Steinway Street Bridge and the Department of City Planning Dutch Kills rezoning study.

Before all those persons spoke, Jim Pollock of the 114th Police Precinct Civilian Observation Patrol (Civ-OP) described its members' dedication to cleaning graffiti-stained buildings in Astoria. He said group members spend two nights per week on the ongoing project, which consists of cleaning and maintaining sites, having first secured the approval of any concerned owners. Should graffiti be removed from a site and graffiti vandals promptly tag it again, the new tag is removed as quickly as possible. At present, the Civ-OP maintains 125 sites it has cleaned. Winter work is necessarily limited because the PowrWash unit used to remove painted graffiti from brick and stucco walls cannot be run in cold weather, and even the recent mild temperatures qualify as cold weather. Pollock also pointed out that the Civ-OP also does vehicle identification number (VIN) etching on automobiles in the Costco parking lot on Vernon Boulevard on occasion. Delis cited Pollock's testimony against Oliver Siandre, the graffiti vandal who went by the tag of Kiko, who was recently convicted on a property damage charge and sent to jail. Pollock said he logged the times Kiko had tagged sites the Civ-OP was maintaining and was thus able to establish evidence against him that he spoke about at the trial.

Dan Ross of the city Department of Transportation announced the news about the Steinway Street Bridge project. While the announcement was exactly the same as last month's, it was a necessary reminder that during the last weekend of January and the first weekend of February, demolition of the outside lanes of the Steinway Street Bridge will necessitate closing first one, then the other half of the Grand Central Parkway, with consequent slowdown of parkway traffic. Ross said that traffic on the bridge would remain two-way at all times. He added that there would be extended timing on stoplights in the interest of traffic control. "Until we develop anti-gravity demolition techniques, this will have to do," he concluded.

Speaking for the Queens General Assembly was Susan Tanenbaum, who began by explaining that the assembly is the creation of Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and inevitably bears the title, "Marshall Plan". It is meant to bring together civic leaders, long-time residents and recent immigrants so each can learn more about the others' culture, discuss common living issues and make reports to their respective neighborhoods. Tanenbaum, community and cultural coordinator for the borough president, said the QGA has a permanent advisory committee of 14 and an unspecified number of delegates. At the start of each term, the borough president appoints two delegates from each of the 14 community planning districts in Queens. One of each pair of delegates is a community board member, the other a representative of a religious, cultural or civic group. These delegates serve for some 15 months, participating in monthly dialogues and informational meetings and attending cultural events. They prepare final presentations of their terms, which are broadcast on Queens Public Television. Retiring delegates are encouraged to become alumni and mentors to the new group of delegates. Tanenbaum said the assembly intends to create a speakers' bureau that would serve as a resource in local neighborhoods, and also produce educational materials to help replicate its work.

The Small Business Administration's Man-li Kuo Lin, a business development specialist from the New York district, is currently making the rounds of Queens community boards, informing her audiences of the possibilities of loans for business development or guaranteeing bonds for contracts. The SBA is not a lender of money but guarantor of loans. She has folders full of explanatory literature and hands out several at each meeting, as she did at the Board 1 cabinet meeting. Joy Chen of the Department of City Planning spoke briefly about the Dutch Kills zoning review, which she hoped the department would be able to release this winter to get the approval process going. Dutch Kills is the section of Long Island City bounded generally by Queens Plaza North, 36th Avenue and 21st and 31st Streets. The new zoning study, the first in more than 45 years, attempts to redefine the status of Dutch Kills as a mixed-use district of light industry and residences. Chen said she would have a full presentation of the study at the March meeting of the Dutch Kills Civic Association.

The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer is a two-day weekend event that for the past four years has had its event headquarters, the Wellness Village, in Randall's Island Park. A construction project makes it impossible to stage the event there in 2007. Three young women representing the Avon Products Foundation were at the meeting to announce the plan to stage the 2007 walk, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, October 6 and 7, in Astoria Park, across the East River from Randall's Island. The three women, Liz Arguelles, Brie O'Malley and Melissa Hillenbrenner, described the walk as an outdoor fundraising event involving 3,500 walkers who will traverse a 39.3-mile route during the weekend. Each will be committed to raise a certain amount of money; the foundation hopes to attain a total of $9.5 million from the event. The Wellness Village that Avon hopes to establish in Astoria Park would be for the overnight care and feeding of the walkers and would consist of a dining tent, service tents, mobile kitchens, sleeping tents, vehicle parking and showers. The women stressed that Avon expends great effort to leave the Wellness Village site as neat as or neater than it was before the village was set up. It should be stressed that the plan for a Wellness Village in Astoria Park has yet to be approved by the Department of Parks and Recreation, though Avon is working on getting such approval.