Verizon FIOS System Nears PSC Ratification
BY THOMAS COGAN

The last Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce luncheon before the summer break was the occasion for an address from William Martin, director of external affairs in Queens for Verizon. Martin told the gathering at Dazies Restaurant on Queens Boulevard that Verizon's fiber optic system, or FIOS, television service is on the verge of ratification by the Public Service Commission. The telephone, television and the Internet will eventually be combined- but, he warned, it will take several years and involve a lot of digging up streets, something everyone has become familiar with, though never fond of. All five boroughs are to come into the system simultaneously, Martin said, but in contrast it will be a townby town procedure on Long Island. He described his talk as informational. Verizon, he said, simply wants to compete fairly with Time Warner and other rivals. There was also an announcement from the police about the Fourth of July fireworks display on the East River, a continuation of the debate over bicycle lanes in Woodside/Sunnyside and Long Island City and at last, the announcement that Sunnyside Community Services has been allowed to occupy its new quarters downstairs on 39th Street.

Once Verizon was New York Telephone, subsidiary of the Bell system; then NYNEX, then Bell Atlantic, finally Verizon, a notable enterprise that Martin said he hopes nobody is any longer calling "the phone company" (a phrase that, for those able to remember, brings to mind party lines, the Spirit of Communication and operators who said "Number pleeyuz"), since it is involved in many media ventures now. FIOS, he said, is largely going to supersede the digital subscriber line, or DSL, successor to the dial-up modems of a few years ago. Martin spoke not only of Verizon's commercial ventures but also of its policy of recognizing employees who volunteer their services to organizations that have 501(c)3 non-profit, taxexempt status. Under certain conditions, he said, those employee-volunteers can gain funds from Verizon for their particular nonprofits.

Police Officer Juan Toro of the 108th Precinct announced to the luncheon audience that on Friday, July 4 there would be little or no parking allowed in the Hunters Point area of Long Island City, a fact that should have an impact on all the surrounding area. On that day, he said, 40,000 people are expected to crowd along the Queens and Brooklyn banks of the East River to view the Macy's fireworks display. Toro said that crowd control was tough enough in past years, when a mere 20,000 showed up, but the growing popularity of the show and the fact that it occurs this year at the beginning of the weekend are bound to swell crowd size enormously.

Al Volpe, Woodside resident and Community Board 2 member, attended the luncheon to express his objection to the placement of bicycle lanes on Skillman and 43rd Avenues, as he had at the Board 2 meeting the previous week. The lanes, he said, were "put in by New York City; the community board was not consulted". This is to say that the Department of Transportation decided where the bicycle lanes would be laid out and presented their layout as an accomplished fact. He made a motion at the community board meeting to recommend a different route, largely along 39th Avenue and at no point along Skillman. The motion succeeded with all but two of the voters, both of whom favored the DOT route as part of a larger scheme in the borough. Another luncheon attendee, Angus Grieve-Smith, a computer analyst who has a Web site, http://saferskillman.org, was surprised to hear of the board's vote and didn't agree with it. Though no lengthy debate ensued, this issue may have life even after the summer.

After the summer is the time when the new home of Sunnyside Community Services will get its official opening on 39th Street, downstairs from the old place, but in fact, as Executive Director Judy Zangwill told the luncheon guests, it was finally occupied this month after nearly two years of delay involving persistent plumbing problems and other difficulties that kept a certificate of occupancy just out of reach. Big smiles and a ribbon cutting are expected in September.