By Dustin Brown
Less than two months after the city’s budget was passed with significant cuts to absorb a multibillion-dollar deficit, Community Board 5 started the process all over again last week by soliciting input on local funding priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.
Providing educational opportunities for area youth and putting more cops on the streets were recurring themes in the annual capital and expense budget hearing held Aug. 14 at the start of the community board’s monthly meeting at the Greater Ridgewood Youth Council in Glendale.
“The community boards are really like the beginning of the budget process,” said Gary Giordano, the longtime district manager of Community Board 5, which covers the neighborhoods of Glendale, Ridgewood, Maspeth and Middle Village. “We’re submitting our recommendations for 2004 eight months before that fiscal year begins.”
The hearing marked the start of a lengthy process of reviewing budget items and setting priorities for fiscal year 2004, which begins next July. The community board will approve its recommendations at its October meeting before submitting them to the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget as well as to Borough President Helen Marshall and members of City Council, all of whom have a say in the allocation of city funds.
All of the testimony during the brief hearing came from members of the community board with one exception: Helen Black spoke on behalf of the Middle Village Youth Center, which opened in 1999 and is staffed with certified teachers paid by the Board of Ed to teach GED preparation classes, language and math tutorials and other programs.
Funding for the program would “help save (students) from a lifetime of limited opportunities without a high school education,” she said in her prepared testimony.
Board member Robert Cermeli, who also serves on School Board 24, called attention to the massive growth in student population the school district has experienced in recent years, making it one of the most crowded in the city. Although a number of new schools and additional wings are expected to open in September, he stressed the need to continue adding classrooms to accommodate the more than 40,000 pupils.
“With that growth, we have to have the responsibility to build accordingly,” he said.
Walter Sanchez, the chairman of the board’s Land Use Committee, said a proposed $12 million community recreation center in Elmhurst that the YMCA hopes to build on a lot now owned by Keyspan should go “very close to the top of our budget priority list.” The center is located within the boundaries of Community Board 4 but would likely serve many residents of CB 5, especially those in Maspeth.
Of the total cost, $8 million would come from the YMCA, while $2 million has to be provided by legislators and another $2 million would be raised locally, Sanchez said.
Board Vice Chairman Robert Holden, who is also the president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, repeated his now familiar call to add more officers to the ranks of the 104th Precinct, which is based in Ridgewood. He also said funding is necessary to upgrade the precinct’s facilities and equipment.
“If you go into the 104, it’s like stepping back into the 1930s,” he said.
Giordano said in an interview following the hearing that augmenting the number of officers in the precinct is the community’s top priority.
“I think we’re getting to the point where the staffing level for the patrol officers in our precinct is getting dangerous,” Giordano said.
Whereas 204 police officers were assigned to the 104th Precinct in 1995, “now we’re down to under 40,” Giordano said. “That’s a huge decrease.”
Transportation concerns were also cited by board members, most notably the need to resurface Fresh Pond Road and Forest Avenue — where “the surface undulates like the surface of the sea,” as Peggy O’Kane put it — and rebuild the Long Island Rail Road bridge across Metropolitan Avenue and Fresh Pond.
Giordano said the board has historically been successful at soliciting funds for capital budget items, which are major improvements to parks, roadways or other facilities that can cost millions of dollars.
But expense budget requests, which deal with ongoing costs such as paying police officers or maintaining parks, have met varying fates, he said. Although the board has failed to get more officers assigned to the local precinct, it has had success with requests to fund youth programs and preserve sanitation crews that clean up illegal dumping sites.
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
