Community Corner

🌊$2.3 Mil Grant For Udalls Cove+ Pay Food Delivery Workers $23 An Hour

The quickest way to get caught up on the most important things happening this weekend in Queens.

Emma Radu Fighera's profile picture
Emma Radu Fighera, Patch Contributing WriterVerified Patch Staff BadgeVerified User Badge
(Patch Media)

Good morning, Queens! 🐸

  • 🌊 Udalls Cove, which sits between Little Neck, Queens and Great Neck, will be restored with a record $136 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
  • 💰 Los Deliveristas Unidos, a coalition of NYC food delivery workers, are demanding better pay and working conditions for the hard work they do.
  • 🧧 Flushing Councilwoman Sandra Ung introduced a resolution in support of the Lunar New Year Day Act (H.R. 6525), which designates Lunar New Year as a federal holiday.

But first, your local weather:

⛅️ Partly sunny. High: 55 Low: 35.

Here are the top stories today in Queens:

1. Udalls Cove, which sits between Little Neck, Queens and Great Neck, will be restored with a record $136 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Cove, one of a handful left on Nassau County's North Shore, is at risk of 800 feet of shoreline erosion due to coastal storms, which the agency said could affect a "critical roadway." Through the grant, made in partnership with National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the NOAA will restore the Cove's salt marsh area, using "bioengineering stabilization techniques," the NOAA announcement explained. Additonally, the environmental nonprofit Save the Sound was awarded $2,380,400 to "create a living shoreline" at Udalls Cove, using oyster castles — blocks made from concrete and oyster shells, which can jumpstart a living reef where there isn't one. Oyster castles have been used before at Alley Pond Park in Queens.

Patch

2. William Medina, a delivery worker in Queens, is one of more than 60,000 app-based food delivery workers in New York who banded together in the summer of 2020 as Los Deliveristas Unidos. Now, Medina and his colleagues, are demanding better pay and working conditions for the work they do, as delivery workers are part of a booming industry, but are not covered by minimum wage laws and basic employee protections such as workers' compensation insurance. As a result of Los Deliveristas' efforts, food delivery apps, such as Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, and others, may soon be be required to pay an average hourly rate of at least $23.82, not including tips, to delivery workers by 2025. This comes as the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection moves to regulate pay practices in the largest food delivery market in the country.

The New York Times

3. In the City Council on Wednesday, Flushing Councilwoman Sandra Ung introduced a resolution in support of the Lunar New Year Day Act (H.R. 6525), which designates Lunar New Year as a federal holiday. The act was introduced in the House of Representatives by Congresswoman Grace Meng. Lunar New Year, also called Chinese New Year, dates back more than 4,000 years, and will next occur on January 22, 2023. It is the most important celebration of the year for people across Asia, and in all other places where large Asian communities exist, including NYC where Asians make up 15% of the population. "Designating the day a federal holiday would not only allow those who celebrate to spend time with family and friends, it would also be an important recognition of the growing importance of the Asian community in the United States, especially in light of the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes," Ung said. "I hope my colleagues in the City Council will join me in support of Congresswoman Meng's bill to designate this important day a federal holiday."

Queens Courier

4. Queens native Chris Alexander is the executive director of the Office of Cannabis Management, and the architect of the new March 2021 law that helped to create a legal weed market. Alexander was one of Governor Kathy Hochul's first appointments when she took office, and she, unlike Cuomo, sought to fast-track the implementation of the law, perhaps seeing the issue as a way to secure her election chances. She chose Alexander — an alum of the CUNY School of Law, the Drug Policy Alliance, and a private-sector marijuana start-up — to head the OCM agency. At the time when Alexander first became involved in the marijuana sector, legalizing weed was somewhat of a fringe issue that very few politicians were willing to take up. This, of course, has now changed. "In the war on drugs," says Damian Fagon, who serves as OCM's chief equity officer, "obviously weed won." Alexander sees equity as the centerpiece of the legalization program, meaning that 51 percent of the potential businesses must be owned by a "justice involved" person — defined as someone who had a marijuana conviction themselves or is the child, spouse, or sibling of someone who had a marijuana conviction in New York. This, and other, regulations comes from observing the flawed and discriminatory ways legalization has happened in other states.

New York Magazine

5. According to a suit filed Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court, Svetlana Nektalova, of Forest Hills, Queens, has been accused of stealing nearly 5,000 cemetery deeds from the Bukharian Jewish community after a domestic dispute with her husband, who was a longtime administrator for the graveyard deeds. Nektalova's refusal to turn over the deeds to plots at Jewish cemeteries throughout the New York metropolitan area — plots at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, and at Beth Moses and New Montefiore cemeteries, both in West Babylon, Long Island — has prevented the prompt and proper religious burial for deceased members of the community.

AM New York Metro

🗞 Hungry for more news? 🍽 Snack on these headlines:

  • City Officials Celebrate New Gotham Point Development, Senior Housing in Long Island City CityLand (CityLand)
  • Queens neighborhood on edge amid drastic rise in robberies: 'Never felt so unsafe' (New York Post )
  • Queens Artists Can Apply To Install Their Art In Flushing Park (Patch)
  • Could New York City Buses Have Free Fares for All? (THE CITY)

From our sponsor:

Are you a Queens resident looking for an investment alternative to the stock market? Consider fine art. Masterworks is the award-winning platform helping 575,000+ invest in works by the same world-renowned artists that are coveted by ultra-wealthy collectors and major museums alike (think Picasso, Basquiat, and Banksy.) Masterworks splits these multi-million dollar works into shares, so you can invest without breaking the bank.

Contemporary art has outpaced the stock market by a whopping 131% over the last 26 years. Seven of Masterworks' eight sold paintings gave their investors a +17.8% net returns*.

Best of all, as a trusted partner, Queens Patch readers can skip their waitlist to join.

See important Reg A disclosures.

🗓 To Do Today in Queens:

  • Step To Sweat (11 a.m.)
  • Adult Open Bdaminton (12 p.m.)
  • Exhibition - Living with The Walking Dead (2 p.m.)
  • Chanukah & Christmas Concert with Irene Failenbogen (3 p.m.)
  • Al Oerter Afterschool (3 p.m.)
  • Musiquita in Sunnyside (3:45 p.m.)
  • Karaoke at True Colors (5 p.m.)
  • The New York Winter Lantern Festival – Illuminate the Farm (5 p.m.)
  • Barrell Bourbon Tasting & Class (6:30 p.m.)

🗣 Queens Chatter:

  • 💬 Chatting with the young leaders of tomorrow: "Our Civics in the Classroom is back with another lesson, this time at Veritas Academy in Flushing led by Deputy Borough President Ebony Young. Always a thrill to chat with the leaders of tomorrow about how our city works and how they plan to make it a stronger, fairer place in the future." (Queens Borough President Donovan Richards via Facebook)
  • 🎉 Congrats to the Business Persons of the Year Awards honorees: "Congratulations to all of our Business Persons of the Year Awards honorees and thank you so much to everyone who attended and made this wonderful event possible! #queenschamberofcommerce #queenschamber #queenschamberevents" (Queens Chamber of Commerce via Facebook)
  • 🦎 Dinosaurs once roared their way into Queens: "We're roar-ing in with dinosaur at the World's Fair for this week's #WorldsFairWednesday! 🦖 Back in 1930, Sinclair Oil Corporation made dinosaurs the center of their marketing campaign. Their dinosaur mascots loosely related to their product, oil, which was created back when dinosaurs roamed the planet. For the 64-65 Fair, Sinclair sponsored "Dinoland." This outdoor exhibit had nine life-size, fiberglass dinosaurs, including their signature Brontosaurus at 70 feet long. To get the dinosaurs to the Fair, Sinclair put them on a barge that rode 125 miles down the Hudson River and around Manhattan. Thousands came to greet the dinosaur's arrival in Queens, an event complete with fire boats spraying giant streams of water. By the end of the Fair, over 10 million people visited Dinoland. Many of them paid to make their own plastic toy dinosaur with the Mold-a-rama. It was the most popular souvenir at the Fair!" (Queens Museum via Facebook)
  • 🌲 Sign up for another wreathmaking workshop: "Another Wreathmaking Workshop weekend is fast approaching, and there is still space available in this Adult Ed series! Last weekend's participants crafted their way into the holiday spirit with bows and boughs galore. Sign up at https://queensfarm.org/wreathmaking-workshop/" (Queens Farm via Twitter)

More from our sponsors — thanks for supporting local news!

Events:

Announcements:

Other classifieds:

Now you're in the loop and ready to head out the door on this Thursday. I'll be in your inbox next week with a new update!

— Emma Radu Fighera

About me: Emma Radu Fighera is a reporter born and raised in Queens, New York. She studied Literature and Studio Art at Hamilton College, where she helped run the only daily publication on campus, The Daily Bull newsletter. This past spring she earned her M.S. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Have a news tip or suggestion for an upcoming Queens Daily? Contact me at queens@patch.com

Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

More from Queens