Community Corner

🚕Major Taxi Medallion Relief Program + Queens Get $100,000 In Trees

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

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(Patch Media)

Good morning, Queens! ⭐️

  • 🚕 The city's Taxi Medallion Relief Program began last Monday, and has erased more than $200 million of debt from the backs of thousands of taxi drivers.
  • 🌳 Queens Borough President Donovan Richards needs some landscaping advice.
  • 🚊Is Queens getting a light rail?

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Here are the top stories today in Queens:

1. The city's Taxi Medallion Relief Program began last Monday, Sept. 19, and since then taxi medallion owners have been flocking to the Dutch Kills headquarters of the New York Taxi Alliance to file paperwork that will relieve them from crushing debt. Since the medallion market crashed in 2014, a wave of drivers, mostly immigrants and people of color, tragically began taking their lives across Queens after finding themselves in trapped in horrific systems of debt. Currently, the average taxi medallion-owning driver is in $500,000 of debt, and is often locked into predatory lending agreements. The new program restructures the medallion loans so they are backed by the city in case of default.

Queens Courier


2. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards needs some landscaping advice. Richards' office is investing $100,000 in trees to be planted around Queens, and is enlisting the help of borough residents for input on where to plant them. The entire borough of Queens is lacking in trees, but this is especially true in College Point, Flushing, and parts of southeast Queens, areas dubbed "hot zones" by experts. "They haven't been invested in and they need to be, specifically for climate resiliency and specifically for beautification," said Katherine Brezler, the strategic advisor for Richards. "We cannot be amiss to not mention how much drainage issues we have here in Queens and how thirsty trees can be." While preference will be given to the hot zones first, the president's office is calling on community members to suggest locations for the new trees, most of which will be planted in the spring of 2023.

CBS New York ; Patch


3. Transit officials have deemed light rail train cars to be a promising way to bring Gov. Hochul's proposed Interborough Express plan to fruition. Hochul aims to bring passenger service to a 14-mile stretch of freight tracks that run from Bay Ridge to Jackson Heights, and thus forge a new transit connection between Queens and Brooklyn. Exactly how the city plans to connect these two boroughs — whether by conventional communter trail, bus, or light rail — is still in question.The Metropolitan Transit Authority will announce their final decision for the line in the next six weeks, after a federally-mandated environmental review. The other promising option discussed for the line is a bus rapid transit system with specialized buses and specialized guideways.

Mass Transit Magazine


4. A group of anti-LGBTQ+ protestors interrupted a block party celebrating Queens' LGBTQ+ community in Jackson Heights on Saturday. Jackson Heights has long been home to one of the city's strongest LGBTQ+ communities, and has hosted the Queens Pride Parade for three decades. The event, called The Autumn Outfest, hosted over two dozen neighborhood organizations, and shared resources with people in the neighborhood. Then, around mid-day, a group of about a dozen protestors began picketing the block party, holding signs that said, "stop grooming kids for sex," and chanting, "leave our kids alone." At several points, the protestors stood face-to-face with elected officials in attendance, who included Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and State Senator Jessica Ramos.

Queens Daily Eagle


5. An 33-year-old woman, Elizabeth Gomes, who was randomly attacked in a Queens subway station on Sept. 20, has accused Mayor Adams of breaking promises. "The mayor said we would have much more cops in the subway, and the cops specifically would be patrolling the subways because that's where the worst of the crimes we are having. Especially at places like Howard Beach station," the victim told the New York Post on Tuesday. "There was no one. Why no protection there?" The suspect, 41-year-old Waheed Foster, has a lengthy criminal history — he beat his grandmother to death in 1995 when he was 14, stabbed his sister with a screwdriver 6 years after that, and stabbed a woman in the cheek and shoulder in 2010. Moments before the attack Foster was muttering incoherently about "Satan."

New York Post ; FOX 5 New York


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

  • Four innocent bystanders, including two teens, shot at Ozone Park playground (New York Daily News)
  • Federal Highway Administration to install more electric vehicle charging stations, some in Queens (Commercial Observer)
  • Two new exhibitions set to premiere at Queens College's Godwin-Ternbach Museum (Queens Courier)
  • Bureau of Labor Law recoups unpaid wages for workers regardless of immigration status (Comptroller Brad Lander)
  • Man with 90 prior arrests sentenced for anti-gay Queens slashing (New York Daily News)

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Now you're in the loop and ready to start this Wednesday off right. I'll see you back in your inbox tomorrow morning with a new update!

— Emma Radu Fighera

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