Congressman Gregory W. Meeks Amendment to H.R. 2055 (St. Albans Veterans Campus) Passes on House Floor

The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2012 passed in the House of Representatives today. Included in the bill was Congressman Meeks amendment to stop the Enhanced Use Lease Process (EUL) for the St. Albans VA in the Sixth Congressional District of New York.

“The passing of this legislation with the inclusion of my bipartisan amendment is a big win for veterans in my district and veterans across Metropolitan New York. This amendment precludes the leasing of any government land at the St. Albans Veterans campus to a private developer. By having the amendment included in this bill it will prevent the fabric of my community from being destroyed by the creation of high-density residential and retail developments. This amendment brings home the point that this EUL does not meet the needs of veterans and therefore should be stopped immediately,” stated Congressman Meeks.

In addition to the hiring of a private developer for veteran owned land, this EUL process also does not plan for the inclusion of construction of a full service hospital based on a study conducted in 2004 that supposedly showed the decline of veterans in my district, but didn’t take into account the returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their needs. Veterans in the vicinity have adamantly expressed the need for a full service hospital, but the VA has chosen to ignore their wishes.

Congressman Meeks added, “The nearly 400,000 veterans in the vicinity of my district deserve to have their medical needs met with the inclusion of a full service hospital. To not take into account their needs is a disservice to our brave men and women in uniform.”

This bill will now go to the Senate for their consideration the matter and then, upon its passing, will go to the President for signature.

Congressman Gregory W. Meeks Introduces St. Albans Veterans Care Act - Action Needed NOW..!

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Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (NY-6) introduced H.R. 1799, The St. Albans Veterans Care Act, to stop the Enhanced Use Lease Process (EUL) for the St. Albans VA in the Sixth Congressional District of New York on May 6, 2011. Additionally, Congressman Meeks will be offering an amendment to H.R. 2005, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012.

This bill addresses the concerns of the current EUL process that has been designed by the Department of Veterans Affairs for the St. Albans VA in the Sixth Congressional District. This process is one that is highly unfavorable to veterans due to the VA’s hiring of a private developer to develop on federal property, a proposal veterans in both communities are strongly against.

The CARES (Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services) process began in May 2005, followed by the Enhanced Use Lease (EUL) process in 2006, and release of the RFP in 2007 for the St. Albans Campus. Under the VA’s EUL, the present St. Albans facility would be modernized with funds gained by leasing 25 acres of the property for private development.

Additionally, this bill also addresses the VA’s plan for not including the construction of a full service hospital, which veterans in the vicinity have adamantly expressed the need for. By not including a full service hospital, veterans from Queens and Long Island will have to travel more than an hour to the nearest full service veteran’s hospital. This decision by the VA was based on a study conducted in 2004 that did not take into account returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their needs.

“Veterans in my district and across Metropolitan New York, many of whom are currently returning from brave service in Iraq and Afghanistan, deserve a full service Veterans Affairs hospital to support their medical needs. The redevelopment plan promulgated by the Department of Veterans Affairs sadly neglects the views of these courageous men and women, instead leasing government property for private development. Therefore, in representing their views, I introduced this bill to immediately stop the EUL process and prevent the destruction to the fabric of my community that a private developer would cause,” stated Congressman Meeks.

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ACTION NEEDED NOW..!

 

We need your help today!!  The legislation to terminate the EUL(privatization) for St. Albans VA will be voted on the floor of Congress this Monday.  We need everyone to call the Representatives listed below on Monday 13th and urge them to sign on to the Bill and vote in support of this legislation.

We are asking you to call the following N.Y.S. Representative's offices(these representatives had not signed on to this bill when it was put before them.). Please let the House Representative know that:

The New York State Veterans Community is requesting your support of HR Bill 1799 which will be presented for a vote on Monday June 13^th 2011.  Please vote YES to this very important piece of legislation.

Representative           District#                      Washington#
Rep Nan Hayworth      (845) 206-4600           (202) 225-5441
Rep Paul Tonko            (518) 843-3400            (202) 225-5076
Rep Maurice Hinchey  (607) 273-1388            (202) 225-6335
Rep Chris Gibson         (518) 610-8133             (202) 225-5614
Rep Bill Owens            (315) 782-3150            (202) 225-4611
Rep Richard Hanna      (315) 252-6700           (202) 225-3665
Ann Marie Buerkle      (585) 336-7291           (202) 225-3701
Kathy Hochul               (716) 634-2324           (202) 225-5265
Brian Higgins               (716) 852-3501           (202) 225-3306
Louise Slaughter         (716) 853-5813           (202) 225-3615
Tom Reed                    (585) 218-0040          (202) 225-3161
 
There is strength in numbers- let us come together as a community and get this bill passed!!!!

Longtime Community Board 12 Head Adjoa Gzifa Gets the Boot by Clare Trapasso - NY Daily News

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The controversial head of a southeast Queens community board has been tossed from her post by a local councilman.

Adjoa Gzifa, 64, of Jamaica, speculated that City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) decided to end her 16-year run on Community Board 12 due to disagreements on various board issues.

Comrie declined to comment on why she was booted. "I'm not airing that in the paper," he said.

Gzifa, who served as the chairwoman of the board for three years, made headlines when she refused to support renaming a Jamaica street after slain police officer John Scarangella. The board shot down the renaming, which the Council then overrode.

She was also one of only two board members who voted against renaming a swath of Liverpool St. after Sean Bell, a bridegroom killed in a hail of police bullets.

"It stinks," Gzifa said of not being reappointed to the board. "I believe I served my community well. The fact that [Comrie and I] can't agree to disagree is disturbing to me."

Gzifa was quick to point out that she was reelected as chairwoman by her peers in December.

She found out about Comrie's decision on April 8, she said, a day after Community Board 12 District Manager Yvonne Reddick was involved in a car accident. Reddick is recuperating from non-life threatening injuries at Jamaica Hospital.

Jacqueline Boyce, the interim chair, said Gzifa will be missed.

"I'm saddened by the fact that she was not reassigned to the community board," Boyce said. "She proved to be a good leader and a good organizer."

But Gzifa had her detractors.

Valerie Bell, 55, the mother of Sean Bell, said the board could benefit from more sympathetic leadership.

"I know you can't name a street after everyone who's done something in the community," she said. "But it's time to have a heart for these things."

Board members are volunteers who can influence local projects and city budgets. Half of the Queens members are appointed by Council members, while the others are picked by the Borough President.

Gzifa, who is the director of the Workforce Education Center at LaGuardia Community College, said she doesn't plan to fight Comrie's decision.

"Just because I'm not on the board doesn't mean I'm going to shut up," she said. "I'm going to continue to speak out against everything that's ill in our community."

Addisleigh Park, Historic Black Neighborhood in Queens, Gains Landmark Status by Alice Speri - NYTimes.com

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Welcome to the landmark district: a house at 178th Place and Linden Boulevard in Addisleigh Park, Queens.

The predominantly African-American neighborhood of Addisleigh Park, an enclave of brick and stucco house in southeast Queens and the former home of luminaries like Jackie Robinson, W.E.B. Du Bois and Ella Fitzgerald, is now a historic district, New York City’s 102nd.

The vote Tuesday by the Landmarks Preservation Commission protects a triangular swath containing 426 buildings, many of them Tudor and Colonial Revival homes, roughly bounded by Linden Boulevard, Dunkirk Street and 112th Avenue.

The area, part of the St. Albans neighborhood and developed between the 1910s and 1930s, was built as an exclusively white community, and restrictive covenants prohibited the sale of any of its properties to blacks.

In the 1940s, two lawsuits were filed against homeowners by their neighbors, who accused them of having sold their houses to African-Americans. In a 1947 case, a judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs but noted that several African-Americans already lived in the neighborhood, including the singer and actress Lena Horne and the jazz musician Count Basie.

Map of Addisleigh Park Historic District

In 1948, though, the United States Supreme Court held that racially restrictive covenantsviolated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and more and more blacks moved to the neighborhood.

In 1952, the magazine Our World called Addisleigh Park home to the “richest and most gifted” African-Americans in New York.

The jazz great Fats Waller, one of the first African-Americans in Addisleigh Park, lived there until his death in 1943. Other notable residents have included the jazz musicians John Coltrane and Milt Hinton, the Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella and the boxer Joe Louis.

Addisleigh Park’s history “illuminates African-Americans’ struggle for and achievement of the basic civil right of home ownership,” read the proposal to protect the site as a historic district.

Today, the neighborhood, now about 90 percent African-American, with an average household income of around $80,000, remains a distinct and relatively upscale pocket of residential Southeast Queens. Its asymmetrical houses with steeply pitched gables and wooden porches are sited back from the street and separated by spacious, well-landscaped lawns.

St. Albans VA Hospital - Save this VA Hospital from Demolition - Watch the Video and Sign the Petition..!

QUEENS AND NASSAU COUNTY VETERANS NEED A LOCAL VA HOSPITAL

Please help save St Albans VA Hospital in Queens, NY for our Vets. Sign Petition...

"Protect Saint Albans" is a coalition of individuals/organizations who have joined forces to stop the development of non-veterans housing on the VA's St. Albans Primary and Extended Care Campus (St. Albans VA Campus). Recently, much of St. Albans was successfully "downzoned" in a larger St. Albans - Hollis rezoning effort led by New York City's Department of City Planning. (Click here for a link to the rezoning document.) That downzoning effort was undertaken to discourage population growth in two neighborhoods whose infrastructure -- schools, parks, utilities, transportation, and otherwise -- is already overburdened. Supporting the development of non-veterans housing on the VA's St. Albans campus would only work against the gains made by the neighborhood's recent downzoning. Our Mission The mission of "Protect Saint Albans", is to stop the development of non-veterans housing on the VA's St. Albans campus. "Protect Saint Albans" would prefer that any acreage deemed not necessary to meet the ongoing needs of veterans, be permanently converted back to park land. Prior to construction of The Naval Hospital in 1950, the grounds were occupied by the St. Albans Golf Club and Community Center.

While attending the Queens Civic Congress at the Al Oerter Sports Center, Addisleigh Park Civic Association President Renee Hill spoke passionately about this important issue for veterans and the community at large. 

She and her group, the United Coalition for Veterans and Community RIghts (UCVCR) are planning to continue their hard-fought fight for the veterans at the St. Albans facility and we hope anyone who can help will do so.

Click on image to enlarge...

Sign the Petition to save St. Albans VA Hospital from private developers...Click here..!

The demolition of our St. Albans VA Hospital is NOT a done deal. We Can STOP this EUL process NOW. Call your Congressional representative NOW regarding this Private Developer grabbing VA land through the VA's EUL program.

Private Development of St. Albans Angers Queens Veterans - Say They Were Left Out of Decision by Nicholas Hirshon - NY Daily News

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A developer selected to build a high-tech veterans center in Queens revealed plans on Friday to place new medical facilities next to housing and green space, riling veterans groups whose demands they say were disregarded.

The Daily News learned the plans of developer St. Albans Village LLC - run by a prominent local pastor - after five years of rumors about the fate of the site at 179th St. and Linden Blvd.

Veterans groups had called for a hospice and a women's shelter. They also wanted the entire plot to remain veterans property, instead of allowing a private group develop 25 of 55 acres.

The Rev. Edwin Reed, pastor of Morris Brown AME Church in South Ozone Park, said he will listen to the veterans' concerns. But he said his group will stick with the federal government's original call for a 221-bed facility.

"I'm really ticked off," said Pat Toro, president of the Queens chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America. "They didn't pay attention to any of the things we wanted."

Reed previously served as a minister at Greater Allen AME Cathedral. Its pastor, the Rev. Floyd Flake, was embroiled in controversy this year over ethical problems relating to his group's winning bid to run an Aqueduct racino.

Reed insisted Flake is not involved in the St. Albans plans.

"I am not one to placate people by listening," Reed said. "I like to solve problems if there are real problems. But I also have to make sure we do well by serving the Veterans Administration and the veterans themselves and the community."

Reed added his group will undertake a "feasibility study" to determine whether retail stores or a grocery store would be appropriate for the site.

"There will be many things that will be discussed and analyzed," Reed said.

Critics slammed the secretiveness surrounding the plans.

"Nobody's told us squat," said John Rowan, national president of the Vietnam Veterans of America. "Now all of a sudden they've got a developer after this thing has been languishing for years."

Rowan also questioned the timing of the announcement on a Friday, figuring they wanted to bury the story at the end of the weekly news cycle.

"It's the typical time that government hides stuff they don't want to get covered," Rowan contended.

Former Home of Babe Ruth in Queens Seeks Landmark Protection by Nicholas Hirshon - NY Daily News

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A Queens house rumored to have been the home of Yankees icon Babe Ruth in his retirement may be spared the fate of the House that Ruth Built in the Bronx.

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission is checking whether the Yankees slugger lived at a house in the ritzy St. Albans enclave of Addisleigh Park - and mulling whether the city should protect the Colonial Revival home as part of an historic district.

City researchers are combing buildings, finance and tax records to see if reports linking Ruth to 114-07 175th St. are true, said commission spokeswoman Lisi de Bourbon.

"We will nail down for certain through primary sources whether he lived there," she said.

Ruth's grandson, Tom Stevens, 55, of Las Vegas, said he always knew Ruth lived in a Riverside Drive apartment in Manhattan, but he never heard of his famous grandfather residing in Queens.

Ron Marzlock, the vice president of the Central Queens Historical Association, said he found newspaper articles reporting Ruth rented space in the Queens home in the early 1940s to be near his favorite golf course.

"He wasn't going to take the train back and forth and back and forth to Manhattan, so in the months of June, July, August, he stayed in the [Queens] house," Marzlock said.

The three-story brick home was built in 1929 with dormer windows, a portico and Corinthian columns - and those posh elements all remain, according to the Historic Districts Council.

Simeon Bankoff, the council's executive director, said the home keys into a lost period in Queens history.

"Here's this major celebrity who decided to live near the golf course, and you look at the neighborhood now and it's very charming, but you don't think of it as a suburban resort," Bankoff said.

Many historians think the city should preserve the neighborhood even if Ruth never set foot there.

"They should landmark based on the architecture of the houses themselves," said Jim Driscoll, president of the Queens Historical Society.