By Ivan Pereira
A group of Queens elected officials took to the streets of Long Island City Friday to protest the mayor’s proposal on cutting more than a dozen firehouses in the city to close the budget gap.
Members of both the City Council and state Legislature rallied with more than 100 firefighters, community activists and western Queens residents outside Hook and Ladder Co. 116 at 37-20 29th St., which lost Engine Co. 216 in 2003 due to similar budget woes.
State Sen. Jose Peralta (D-Jackson Heights) said that if the firehouse was one of the stations put on the chopping block, then thousands of Queens and Roosevelt Island residents would be put at serious risk.
“Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday,” he said.
Councilman Jimmy van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) organized the rally and was joined by fellow Council members Elizabeth Crowley (D-Middle Village) and Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), state Assembly members Cathy Nolan (D-Ridgewood), Michael DenDekker (D-Jackson Heights) and Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) and Peralta. The leaders said Mayor Michael Bloomberg was putting the budget’s priorities in the wrong places.
Crowley, who led another march from Engine Co. 293 at 89-40 87th St. in Woodhaven Monday morning to rally outside Engine Co. 294, at 101-02 Jamaica Ave. in Richmond Hill, said if the city could provide more funding to the NYPD, it could do the same for the FDNY. She noted that one of the first responders to the scene of the botched Times Square bombing was a firefighter and with the city in the crosshairs of terrorism, the chairwoman of the Council’s Fire and Criminal Justice Committee said they could not be taken for granted.
“I certainly don’t feel secure with 20 fire companies closing in this city,” she said during Friday’s rally. “Fires don’t care about budgets. Fires kill people.”
City Comptroller John Liu, who also attended the Friday rally, said the mayor could find other areas in the budget to make the cuts. Although closing the firehouses would save the city $2 million, there could be more done to close the $1.3 billion budget gap, according to the comptroller.
Liu said the city is spending more than $152 million on outside corporations for various projects without contracts.
“Where are the budget priorities?” he asked.
A representative from the mayor’s office disagreed with Liu’s stance. The city had to make cuts to several agencies and services in order to deal with the tighter budget and the city Fire Department was not being singled out, according to Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna
“These are not easy decisions, but they have to be made,” he said. “We’d love to have a firehouse on every corner of the city, but unfortunately that is not a reality.”
Reach reporter Ivan Pereira by e-mail at ipereira@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4546.
