Speaker Quinn visits North Shore Towers

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn addressed North Shore Towers residents during a visit to the Floral Park co-op on Tuesday, July 31 and was joined by Councilmember David Weprin.
Quinn, the first female to hold the City Speaker position, was elected to the office about 19 months ago. Upon being elected, she said she had four main ideas of how she wanted to conduct her work. They were to be a “five-borough speaker,” to have the Council be more relevant in the lives of New Yorkers, to have the Council be “an incubator for big ideas” and to focus on progress.
“We have an obligation to get the job done to do everything we can to try to make your lives easier and fighting for the sake of fighting or petty politics doesn’t get the problem solved,” Quinn said. “We’ve been really committed and we’ll continue to be committed to that idea of not engaging in partisanship and really focusing on progress.”
With these points in mind, Quinn said that she feels the City Council has been able to accomplish a great deal. One example that she gave was improving the budget process, which included having some items base lined into it.
Quinn spoke about getting funds so that the police department could get personally-fitted, state-of-the-art bullet proof vests and so that more could be spent on full-day pre-kindergarten. She also said that a new “safe housing law” has been passed, describing it as “a historic overhaul of how we do code enforcement.”
Following her speech, Quinn opened the floor up to residents to ask questions about their areas of concerns. One issue that was raised was Intro 119, a piece of legislation introduced by Councilmember Hiram Monserrate that would require co-ops to give someone a written reason for why they were rejected. Quinn said that, although the goal of preventing discrimination is a good one, the bill had unintended consequences that could hurt co-ops, such as opening it up to potential litigation.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure 119 does not pass and I think it’s highly unlikely that it even gets a hearing,” said Quinn, who represents the co-op Penn South in Manhattan.
Other issues discussed included the proposed Arabic school, environmentally conscious buildings and congestion pricing.