Hat’s off to State Senator Joe Addabbo, who, again, seems to be able to ‘get it’ as he helped champion a bill to make the implementation on school class sizes to wait until the 2030 school year. The mandate requires class sizes to be 23 for Elementary Schools and 25 in High Schools. This delays an earlier mandate to lower class sizes by 2028. He is a centrist legislator who is on the Senate Education Committee. “This law strikes a balance between maintaining our commitment to smaller class sizes and recognizing the logistical and financial realities involved in achieving that goal,” he said
Cruzin for Assembly
Richmond Hill to Ridgewood
Ruben Cruz stopped by our Woodside office to speak to our Pol Position staff this week. He is a rare Republican candidate in Queens and is running for the Assembly seat that goes from Richmond Hill to Ridgewood. Not rare in that he was emphatic, but that he was not supported by the Queens GOP. We actually get more right-leaners who come into our office for a political chat who are not endorsed or supported by the county party than those who are. Why is that? A political party is supposed #1 organize and #2, get people elected. It’s not rocket science. Oh, we digress… Jennifer Rajkumar had that Assembly seat for three 2-year terms without a serious opponent for her last two elections. She was beaten by DSA upstart David Orkin last month in the democratic primary. The district is 75% democrat and the Ridgewood part of that district is noted for notching the largest percentage of Mamdani votes in the entire city. Cruz, a member of Community Board #9, is known for masterminding a pet pantry during the pandemic and the Richmond Hill father of two is focused on protecting homeowners. We have “…a high rate of deed theft and seniors need to know that they feel safe.” He seems to be pretty well grounded. The district is known for having one of the lowest voter turnouts in the city, which leaves us to think that Cruz has a puncher’s chance. Our editors promised a profile for our readers in the weeks to come.
Ya gotta disclose ….
We published a short piece last week on how one of the staffers at Maspeth’s councilman Wong’s office is a bit ‘jammed up’ because the council office had apparently put it out publicly that they initiated proposing alternative sites for a battery storage facility planned across the street from a school in Middle Village. A proposed property… and one of the alternative sites was in Maspeth and apparently owned by a family member of the staffer. Most could have looked at the staffer as a hero if the site were indeed used, because it was in an industrial area, far away from homes or schools. The thing is that it should have been disclosed that one of the sites proposed was owned by the family of a staffer. That’s it. It got a bit of back-and-forth on ‘X’ this week and apparently Wong held firm on the idea that the office did not propose those sites to 9-Dot, but it was the landlord of his office and/or another real estate agent. Moving the site would have been a win-win for Wong, but ya gotta et people know. It’s called ‘disclosing.’ Reasonable people can see how it could have been missed, but voters have a mistrust of politicians and staffers, so you guys have to start to check all the boxes. Don’t double down on the ends. If the deal went through and the site were changed to a site owned by the staffer, the same people who supported the move would have freaked out.
