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Council Member Paladino discusses Parks Department budget, project timelines, and Flushing Airport development
1:53:38
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4 min
Council Member Vickie Paladino addresses the Parks Department, expressing frustration with budget allocation, project timelines, and staffing issues. She proposes breaking down the budget into 51 districts for more efficient fund allocation and discusses concerns about the Flushing Airport development project.
- Suggests allocating parks budget specifically for each borough to fund projects with clear timelines
- Expresses concern over long project timelines (7-9 years) and their impact on constituents
- Requests focus on the Flushing Airport development, citing environmental concerns and the need for Parks Department involvement
Vickie Paladino
1:53:38
Good afternoon.
1:53:39
Oh, am I on?
1:53:40
I'm on.
1:53:41
Okay.
1:53:41
Good.
1:53:42
Good afternoon.
1:53:43
Thank you very, much.
1:53:45
I wanna say, of course, to you guys, I know how hard you work.
1:53:48
And we're circling back now like people have said repeatedly throughout this meeting.
1:53:54
The frustration, the weight, the understaffing, the budget that we keep giving you for capital projects.
1:54:03
Not that we're going to see it come to fruition, sadly.
1:54:07
That those are the realities of what we are up against right now.
1:54:11
And, I've discussed many times, and since this is a budget hearing, it seems like this might be the best time to bring it up.
1:54:17
Again, I really would love to see if parks could break this down into, 51 different, districts, whereas the money that's allotted is allotted specifically for a borough in a very realistic manner.
1:54:35
Whereas we could then fund projects that we can see a beginning, a middle, and an end.
1:54:42
Because at this rate, we are giving you, you know, in my office alone, close to here's 11, here's eight, that's 19, and another close to a million for miscellaneous.
1:54:56
So that's an awful lot of money to come out of one council member's office as well as cooperation from, the speaker and so on.
1:55:05
But the frustration that you are going through is certainly one that I could feel for you because there's nothing worse than taking telling a constituent.
1:55:14
And, you know, your auto emails hurt when a constituent hears seven to nine years.
1:55:20
You know, seven to nine years is a is a is a ridiculously long time.
1:55:24
And the city and its whole overall topographical hasn't really changed all that much.
1:55:32
We've still had these parks because a great many of these parks are, you know, a hundred years old, 50 years old, 80 years old.
1:55:39
These are realities.
1:55:41
And our street line, you know, tree line streets have become something of the past to make way for bicycles and bike lanes and all this other unrealistic stuff.
1:55:52
So the dream of tree line streets are kinda going to the wayside.
1:55:56
I do wanna say that, I have several things which I'm gonna talk to you about offline, you know, not today.
1:56:04
But I do want you to put some focus on Flushing Airport if you could.
1:56:09
Mhmm.
1:56:09
It's coming to my district.
1:56:11
And, EDC is taking bids, and this is extremely serious situation.
1:56:19
It is a wetlands.
1:56:21
I'm extremely disturbed by what they wanna do, EDC, to make way of for 80 acres of what once was a functioning small airport.
1:56:33
Mhmm.
1:56:34
And they wanna use 27 acres of that to build on.
1:56:38
Now we did the 20 Sixth, Avenue breakthrough to connect the two roads.
1:56:45
EDC had to go down a 20 feet to get to stable so they could build this road.
1:56:51
It's beautiful.
1:56:52
Absolutely beautiful.
1:56:53
We know how beautiful APEC is.
1:56:56
Mhmm.
1:56:56
So what I wanna try to do is work with parks.
1:56:59
I don't know what your limits are concerning this particular project.
1:57:03
Okay.
1:57:04
But if you would, talk to me about it or we could get together and discuss this because needless to say, this is in the billions of dollars.
Constance Lesold
1:57:12
Mhmm.
1:57:13
Mhmm.
Vickie Paladino
1:57:13
And I very much want I was in touch with APEC.
1:57:16
I very much wanna work together because if this should happen, they've tried three times to make this work.
1:57:22
It's a flooded area.
1:57:24
It's not feasible for building.
Constance Lesold
1:57:26
Mhmm.
Vickie Paladino
1:57:26
So I'd like to see what your intake is, you know, what you feel about it.
1:57:31
Yeah.
1:57:31
And I'd like to work together with Parks so that we could make this as something that could be absolutely stunning.
1:57:39
Yeah.
1:57:39
And it well, like I said, we're not in the millions with an m.
1:57:42
We're in the b with in billions with a b.
1:57:44
Okay.
1:57:45
So I'll talk to you about this other stuff offline.
1:57:47
It got late.
1:57:48
I gotta go back to Queens.
1:57:49
But thank you all very, very much.
Susan Donoghue
1:57:52
Thank you.
1:57:52
Thank you, council member.
1:57:53
We appreciate the support.
1:57:54
And we do work closely with EDC on a number of different projects.
1:57:58
So we can absolutely talk about that.
Vickie Paladino
1:58:00
Wanted it on your radar.
1:58:01
Yeah.
1:58:01
The bids are due.
1:58:03
What's today?
1:58:03
The twentieth?
Susan Donoghue
1:58:04
Yeah.
Vickie Paladino
1:58:05
Bids are due today is the final
Susan Donoghue
1:58:06
Wow.
1:58:07
Okay.
Vickie Paladino
1:58:07
We'll talk.
1:58:08
Okay?
1:58:08
Thank you.
1:58:09
Thank you.