By Bob Harris
Predicting what Queens will be like is like predicting what new inventions and technologies will exist in the next 30 to 80 years. If one remembers that 30 years ago we did not have computers or fares or pocket telephones or heart transplants, then one must understand that we will be involved with lifestyles and discoveries that do not exist today.
From what I read and see I realize that giant new projects will grow in Queens. Queens West will be a huge complex of apartment towers, office buildings, hotels and promenades along the East River. Queens Hospital Center will be a modern hospital complex. A new Shea Stadium should, like the two other projects, affect the surrounding communities, invigorating and modernizing them. Yet the local small communities will survive.
A huge Technodome sports complex, which will be built in Rockaway, providing jobs and a transportation infrastructure, should revitalize the moribund Rockaways, where the largest plot of land on the East Coast has languished for the past 30 years. This plan has been the idea of Borough President Claire Shulman and I hope she gets it started before her term of office ends.
There will be modern transportation network on the waterways and some type of monorail, hopefully efficient and quiet, with frequent stops, for the communities they pass through. This system should be compatible with transportation networks throughout the whole metropolitan area.
The schools will be modernized, have smaller classes, modern communication technology and be integrated with the communities. Society will realize the importance of an educated citizenry and spend the money necessary to keep the schools repaired and supplied with paper and some cheap efficient coping system for the teachers so they will not have to spend their own money.
The Buildings Department and the Housing Preservation and Development Department will operate efficiently so building violations and zoning illegalities will be promptly removed, retaining enough open space, grass and trees to provide a good quality of life.
The community planning boards and police precinct community councils will have the power to order the remediation of violations and will have their recommendations acted upon promptly by city agencies. Voting and communication by television or some new home communications system will mean that the needs and wants of the individual citizens will be handled quickly and efficiently. A federal revamping of the immigration system will mean a more managed immigration system so the capacity of our city agencies to serve people will not be overwhelmed, as it is now.
We should have more leisure time to enjoy the revitalized parks in Queens, which will smell cleaner and be asthma-free because the airplanes and automobiles in Queens will stop polluting our air. Better lives for ourselves and our families will be the result.
GOOD AND BAD NEWS OF THE WEEK: Washington's official act of the millennium was approving a $1.75 trillion budget. It was 50 days late and wiped out the spending caps imposed in 1997. At least Congress is keeping its promise to pay down our huge federal debt and the interest we pay. It looks like the people in Washington actually listened to us. Wow!
However, there is bad news. Congress did take funds from the Social Security surplus. Pork is still available in Washington for Congress to grease districts. Why do we have to spend $83,000 to study aggression among Eastern Bluebirds? Why spend $99,873 to study the social behavior of the prairie vole, a rodent? Hopefully we will force Congress to spend money more wisely in the next millennium! Hopefully!
