TESTIMONY
Rabbi Garth Marchant from the Queens Jewish Community Council on Addressing Airplane Pollution and the Difficulty of Securing Local Minority Contracts
1:48:58
·
3 min
Rabbi Garth Marchant raises concerns about airplane pollution and the exclusion of local minority businesses from contracts.
- Marchant details the noise and environmental pollution from low-flying airplanes over residential areas, impacting wildlife.
- He shares his experiences of witnessing birds affected by pollution dying near his home, emphasizing the issue's severity.
- Marchant discusses efforts to secure contracts for local minority businesses, highlighting systemic failures to respond or include these businesses.
- He references the success in Newark where minority contracts were secured through mayoral intervention, suggesting a model for local action.
- Marchant calls for investigations into consultancy contracts and the effectiveness of minority contractor programs, citing specific reports and examples.
Garth Marchant
1:48:58
Yeah.
1:48:59
I'm Rabbi Garth Maheshant.
1:49:01
I belong to the Queen's Jewish community council and serve several synagogues in Queens in Southeast Queens.
1:49:09
And as my task, I took it upon myself to get include the community in the contracts.
1:49:15
Now, I live We used to live in Rosedale, and I moved into your further year district in Faroequa.
1:49:22
But I lived right here in the edge of Rosedale.
1:49:26
And I wanna tell you, at night, the airplanes come 10 feet over our house.
1:49:33
Boomerally, you think there's gonna be a crash.
1:49:36
Right?
1:49:36
And you could see everybody in the airplane.
1:49:38
That's how low it comes down.
1:49:40
Noise, after noise.
1:49:42
And then the airplanes dump the foil right into or into the into the place right around us, and you see the birds with the frugal in there, sometimes they walk, they come in front of a house, and they die right there.
1:49:57
That's not safe, and nobody's talking about that.
1:50:00
Right?
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And throughout the community.
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Now number number 2 is that we I got together a lot of the businesses.
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Not just black Latino businesses, Asian businesses to get contracts.
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Now one response to any one of them.
1:50:16
Not one.
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It's a front.
1:50:19
They don't respond.
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And I'm telling you the reason why the porta potty is not addressing you.
1:50:25
Is because it's controlled by the governor of the state of New Jersey.
1:50:30
Now, let me tell you what the city council and the mayor of Newark did.
1:50:33
They just built a new terminal at Newark Airport.
1:50:38
The mayor Barrack force the governor to give minority contracts.
1:50:44
You know how many minority contracts they got at that one airport, 90.
1:50:49
From the community because they had an agreement and the mayor because it's the same agreement like what you had here, the lease agreement.
1:50:56
The mayor was saying, we're not gonna have this lease or unless you give our people contracts.
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And that one small development was made for 2,000,000,000,000,000, 90 minority contracts.
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Here, we got none.
1:51:12
They all they're doing is that they're giving contracts to consultants, but as far as contracts to do sheet rocking, contracts to do roofing, not one, and I have bought 20 qualified contractors to the table.
1:51:30
And every time you send the information to them, They give you no answer.
1:51:35
No answer, and they can't get nothing back to get a contract.
1:51:39
And they tell you, oh, we got minority contractors.
1:51:42
Know the minority contractors are consultants.
1:51:46
Not people from the community, consultants, and I need you for you to check with the DA report from Manhattan DA Braggs where he arrested several people with the WNBA programs as a front check me report out.
1:52:02
And I need for you to check with the city council of mayor Baracca in New Jersey and how they did it to get 90 contracts, and we're not getting any.