Queens Borough President Candidates Say They'll Revamp The Role

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — The six candidates for Queens borough president want to convince voters that the largely ceremonial position can be more than just a figurehead.

At a candidate forum in Forest Hills on Saturday, moderated by reporters from Patch and the Queens Courier, the candidates made their case for how they would be a proactive borough president in a role that is typically more reactive.

"Too often we are waiting for the administration to come to us," City Council Member Donovan Richards said.

In response to a question on Queens Borough President Melinda Katz's record, former City Council Member Elizabeth Crowley was more blunt: "I don't think the borough president was bold enough in her vision for Queens," she said.

The six candidates who have announced campaigns — Richards, Crowley, City Council Members Jimmy Van Bramer and Costa Constantinides, New York Assembly Member Alicia Hyndman and retired NYPD sergeant Anthony Miranda — are running in a special election to finish out the rest of Katz's term, which ends Dec. 31, 2021.

Katz will vacate the borough presidency in January to become Queens' next district attorney. Though the exact date of the special election hasn't been announced, it is expected to happen early next year.

The borough president serves as an influential gatekeeper on major land-use issues, such as the plan to replace the jails on Rikers Island with new detention centers, and appoints the community board members who vote on rezoning proposals. Though the borough president's written opinions are only advisory, past borough presidents managed to leverage that opportunity and get significant sway over city decisions.

Borough presidents also play a key role in steering city funds to their borough and oversee a multimillion-dollar budget of their own, which they use to support community organizations.

Speaking at the Saturday forum, which attracted roughly 150 attendees, the candidates all said that Queens is not getting its "fair share," in Crowley's words, of the city's budget and called for more funding for local priorities.

Constantinides, who represents western Queens in the City Council, said he would expand STEM-focused educational opportunities in Queens schools as well as technical training programs in green energy fields, remarking that Queens is experiencing a "climate emergency."

Hyndman, who represents parts of southeast Queens in the state Assembly, emphasized supporting art and music education in addition to STEM programs and called for hiring more school counselors to support homeless students.

While Richards proposed a searchable database to make the borough president's budget more transparent, Van Bramer suggested enacting participatory budgeting like what is done in the City Council, where he currently represents western Queens: "It's much more important to listen to communities," he said.

All but one of the candidates, Miranda, the retired NYPD sergeant, pledged to diversify the borough's 14 community boards, which have been criticized as not representative of their neighborhoods.