The mayor’s plan to reduce the number of special parking permits issued to city agencies makes sense if only those permits that have traditionally been granted as plums and favors are axed, but sometimes this parking right is not merely a convenience or a gift, but produces dividends to the taxpayers in terms of worker productivity.
Our public school teachers are dedicated professionals who are glad to go the extra mile, often unpaid, for their students, but they balk at walking that extra mile, due to street parking restrictions, from their car to their classroom each day.
They should be given special permits for privileged parking, not as a perk, but strictly as a practical measure to serve the public interest. The permit should be valid only during actual work hours and at the site where they are on up-to-date record as being employed. Enforcement will guard against abuse.
A teacher’s workout should be defined in terms of strides made in building skills, confidence, and character, not in time logged from curb to chalkboard.
Ron Isaac
Fresh Meadows
Tourist center needs tourist hours
Now that the Redbird subway car tourist center outside Borough Hall is finally open to the public, it is likely to remain as forgotten as the naked hero statue on the other side of our county seat. Being open only between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on weekdays is a joke.
It would be preferable to have the visitor center open on weekends and holidays rather than during a weekday lunch break. The visitor center would be better off opening during the summer rather than wasting heat, electricity, and taxpayer money on a random cold February weekday.
Unless our Borough President is targeting lawyers and clerks from the nearby courthouse, her attempt to attract tourists appears to be a token effort. If her efforts were serious, she would be more outspoken on preserving the New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Saint Saviour’s Church in Maspeth, and other neglected architectural landmarks. She would be promoting Queens destinations at our airports, hotels, and schools. She would lobby companies such as City Sights and Gray Line to extend their bus lines into our borough.
Unfortunately, there is no sense of history or community pride. Most Queens residents find themselves priced out of the U.S. Open. We find our museums to be under-staffed and inaccessible on weekends; we find our favorite restaurants closing in favor of more drug store and coffee chains and we find historic houses being demolished in favor of cinder brick boxes.
When our relatives come to visit - most of us end up taking them to see Manhattan. There is so much to see in Queens, but we do not know about it. How sad. Even sadder is the fact that our culture and history are disappearing in the midst of our own apathy.
Sergey Kadinsky
Forest Hills
Be a vegan for ‘Martin’
January 15 marks the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Democratic presidential candidates are using the occasion to debate his role in this country’s landmark civil rights legislation. I find it more interesting to ponder whether his ideals extended beyond African-Americans to all victims of oppression and injustice, including animals.
Dr. King’s wife Coretta and son Dexter became vegans, rejecting all products of animal suffering, including meat, dairy, eggs, leather, and fur. Their opposition to violence extended to the violence perpetrated against billions of innocent, sentient animals in America’s factory farms and slaughterhouses. Their passion for justice extended to the most oppressed living beings on the planet - animals bred, abused, and killed for food.
Morgan Mosher
Bayside
Teacher exodus
As a teacher starting my 9th year in the public school system, it is very upsetting to read in my union newspaper that 4,303 teachers left the system during the 2005-06 year. Moreover, that nearly 14 percent of teachers hired this school year have left as of November 2007. None of these resignations was retirement related, according to the UFT paper.
Since 2001, the number of teachers leaving has steadily increased, with the total number of teachers leaving the system at nearly 18,000. It is obvious that something is radically very wrong with the way that teachers are being treated in the city public school system.
The news media and the public should be told the truth - it is obvious that we teachers are not being treated with the professional dignity and respect to which we are entitled. As more teachers leave the system for reasons other than retirement, our children are the ones who will be affected the most. The children are the ones who will lose the most because of this teacher exodus.
John Amato
Fresh Meadows
Reign in Federal debt
“Congress may deliver funding for Queens” (Victor G. Mimoni - December 27) is not necessarily good news. Under President Bush and the former GOP-controlled Congress - Federal long-term debt increased by over $3 trillion dollars, growing from less than $6 trillion dollars to over $9 trillion dollars.
This represents the greatest growth of long-term debt under any six-year period. We have also seen the largest increase in the numbers and dollars spent on pork barrel projects known as member items. Many have been hidden under numerous “Emergency Spending” bills.
They number in the tens of thousands at a total cost of several hundred billion dollars. Democrats now in control of Congress are no different as they continue the same time-honored practice of programming their own billions of dollars in member item pork barrel spending. A majority of the 9,000 earmarks worth over $10 billion dollars were authored by Democrats.
Both President Bush and Congress (both Republicans and Democrats) continue their addiction to spending like drunken sailors, regardless of the cost to taxpayers. At least drunken sailors spend their own money. These feckless legislators are leaving the next generation a debt of over nine trillion dollars, which could very well bankrupt us.
Larry Penner
Great Neck
Letters To The Editor
Email us your letters to editorial@ queenscourier.com for publication in The Queens Courier or send them to The Queens Courier, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361, attention: Editorial Department. Please include name and contact information.
