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Vol. 43, No. 42 Oct. 17-23, 2013queenstribune.com

INSIDE: Hospitals, Biz Leaders

Discuss ACA Problems Plague

Marketplaces First Weeks Borough Plans Breast

Cancer Awareness Events Pages 17-33

Hospitals, Biz Leaders

ACA

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS Problems Plague

Marketplaces First Weeks Borough Plans Breast

Cancer Awareness Events

INSIDE: Hospitals, Biz Leaders

Discuss ACA Problems Plague

QUESTIONS QUESTIONS && ANSWERS ANSWERS& ANSWERS&& ANSWERS& ANSWERS

AFFORDABLECARE ACT

Page 2 Tribune Oct. 17-23, 2013 www.queenstribune.com

www.queenstribune.com Oct. 17-23, 2013 Tribune Page 3

Queens DeaDline

PHOTO BY IRA COHEN

Former Pres. Carter Comes To Queens

Former President Jimmy Carter works on a home in st. albans with other Habitat for Humanity volunteers.

By Luis GrondaStaff Wrtier

The first court hearing to decide the Queens GOP Party leadership was heard in court earlier this week.

The two sides have gone to court after a dispute over a Sept 27. reorga-nizational meeting, which saw Repub-lican Leader Phil Ragusa retain the position over former U.S. Rep. Bob Turner.

The vote has been challenged over concerns about how the meeting was run, including the vote being held on a weekday afternoon, which allegedly prevented some members from at-tending the meeting.

According to Robert Hornak, the partys executive director, although nothing of note happened at the first court hearing, the sides will reconvene on Nov. 7 to discuss more specific le-gal actions the Turner side is taking to overthrow Ragusa. Hornak was not present at the hearing.

He added that the opposition is

allegedly hoping to have some proxy votes counted that were submitted after the deadline set for the vote in addition to their complaint about the time of the meeting.

It seems to me theyre throwing stuff against the wall and hoping it sticks, Hornak said, adding he has no doubt the court will find the meeting was organized in the proper manner and Ragusa will be declared the win-ner.

Last week, Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) accused Ragusas side of stifling support for Turner at the Sept. 27 meeting. Others countered that Ulrich and his associates were bullying the opposition and disrupt-ing the meeting.

Ulrich declined to comment on the court case. Tom Ognibene, a former councilman and lawyer who is repre-senting Turner in the case, could not be reached for comment as of press time.

Reach Luis Gronda at (718) 357-7400, Ext. 127, lgronda@queenstri-bune.com, or @luisgronda.

By Luis GrondaStaff Wrtier

City Council Candidate Lew Si-mon has been released from the hos-pital after undergoing a heart proce-dure last week.

Simon was admitted to the hospital last Thurs-day after experiencing heart problems. He had to undergo an angioplasty, which requires inserting a stent into his heart to re-move partial blockages of the artery.

Lew is truly grateful for all the kind words and encouragement he has received from so many people in recent days. Hes looking forward to getting back out on the campaign trail as soon as its medically advis-able, Doug Forand, Simons cam-

paign spokesman, said in a statement announcing the candidates heart procedure.

After a short time in the hospital following the surgery, Simon was re-leased on Tuesday and has partially

resumed campaigning. Forand said Simon is

still recovering from the surgery and will campaign as much as doctors allow him to. This includes mak-ing some public appear-ances and being in contact with supporters.

Forand said there is no firm timetable for when Simon will fully return to campaign trail but they expect him to be return full-time in about one week.

Reach Luis Gronda at (718) 357-7400, Ext. 127, lgronda@queenstri-bune.com, or @luisgronda.

Queens GOP Leadership Debate Heads To Court

Simon Released From Hospital After Heart Surgery

By naTaLia KoZiKoWsKaStaff Writer

Last Friday, former President Jim-my Carter, his wife Rosalynn Carter and the nonprofit Habitat for Human-ity visited St. Albans to help renovate a one-family home for a Queens family who may not have been able to afford it otherwise.

As part of a week-long October celebration, which is part of the 30th Annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project, Carter, his wife and more than 1,000 volunteers have been renovating five single-family homes in Queens, as well as 10 homes in Staten Island that were damaged by Super-storm Sandy.

In addition to the renovations in New York City, an estimated 3,000 volunteers will also join the Carters to help build and repair more than 80 homes in five locations across the United States.

Since 1984, President Carter has been the face of Habitat for Human-ity, inspiring thousands of volunteers to give a week of their time each year to help build homes and raise aware-ness of the important role that decent, affordable housing plays in breaking the cycle of poverty.

[The Carters] are an inspiring couple, said Neil Hetherington, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City. To have the President and Mrs. Carter come to Queens, and then to Staten Island to show their love for

New York City and affordable housing in general, is moving. Its inspired a whole lot of volun-teers across the United States to come out and build.

In general, it is the hard-working families who simply need a break they need the op-portunity that Habitat could af-ford to them, he added.

For more than two hours, 89-year-old Carter and his 86-year-old wife joined 25 Habitat for Humanity volunteers to work on the St. Albans home, building a deck at the rear of the house that sits on 112th Road.

In total, Habitat for Humanity purchased 38 one and-two-bedroom

homes in the Borough from the New York City Housing Authority. Many of the homes, including the five that will be renovated in Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Laurelton) district, have been vacant and unlivable for quite some time.

NYCHA boarded up these houses because they could not afford to oper-ate them and so Habitat came in and

said, we would love to make a trans-formative difference, Hetherington said. Its a beautiful neighborhood, but there was this boarded up house that had vermin, animals living in it the neighbors werent thrilled, so we came in and decided to renovate it. Lets bring hope to where theres de-spair.

They are going to be working on a couple of homes in my district that were eyesores for over a decade, Rich-ards told the Tribune last week. The neighborhood has been crying about these sites. We were pushing NYCHA to do something about these proper-ties so we were very overjoyed when Habitat came in.

Habitat for Humanity is putting an emphasis on helping local fami-lies who rent apartments into the homes which will range any-where from $200,000 to $300,000 and rather then a typical mort-gage, Habitat will offer loans that require only a one percent down payment with a 30-year interest rate at two percent.

A qualified family must earn between 50 percent and 80 per-cent of the neighborhoods me-dian income and put in between 200 and 400 hours of volunteer

time also referred to as sweat eq-uity.

For more information about the project visit http://habitatnyc.org. To learn how you can volunteer, contact Councilman Donovan Richards dis-trict office at (718) 527-4402.

Reach Natalia Kozikowska at (718) 357-7400 Ext. 123 or nkozikowska@queenspress.com or @nkozikowska.

Reports of fraud can be made by calling the HRA Fraud Hotline at 212-274-5030. All conversations are kept confidential.

Do not lie at all about anything on your application.

When you lie to receive public benefits, you are committing fraud. You are also stealing from poor New Yorkers.

Remember:

Do not allow someone else to use your food stamp card in exchange for cash.

You can be arrested and prosecuted if you intentionally fail to disclose your earned and unearned income.

Do not sell your Medicaid prescription drugs for cash.

Its a seriouscrime

Page 4 Tribune Oct. 17-23, 2013 www.queenstribune.com

Photo by tRIShA SAKhUJA

By Trisha sakhujaStaff Writer

The son of Italian immigrants and union workers, Aurelio Tony Arca-bascio, vying for the Queens Borough President seat on the Republican line, visited the Queens Tribune to sit down with the editorial board on Oct. 14.

Some of the topics discussed in-cluded his top priorities, immigration, education, the Stop and Frisk policy, technology, the Willets Point develop-ment project and Community Board members.

A life-long lover of Queens, Arca-bascio said he has experience in the technology sector and business for the last 33 years.

After college, Arcabascio played a year of minor league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and worked at General Electric. Later, he owned Crimson Technologies for 13 years. Currently, he is a Team Lead Project Manager for North Shore Long Island Jewish-Health System in the IT/infra-structure perspective.

He ran against State Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) in 2012 because he said Democrats shouldnt be the only one running and once in a while, they should be opposed.

At the time, he garnered 15 percent of the vote.

As Queens Borough President,

Republican BP Candidate Talks About Queens

his priorities will be better education, healthcare, overall better quality of life, beautification efforts, redevelop-ing empty warehouses to create urban enterprise zones and creating a small business satellite office in the Borough, so employers do not have to travel to the Manhattan to process their paperwork.

The quicker we get them up and running, the quicker we start collect-ing taxes, Arcabascio said.

Arcabascio said he wants to give incentives to business owners, like one year tax cuts.

My job for the 2.3 million people is to lean on the pockets of the peo-ple, Arcabascio said. I am a peoples candidate.

Arcabascio said his priority on day one is to assess the real state of Queens, so he can define the resourc-es or get rid of the ones the Borough Presidents office does not need.

In terms of appointing a Deputy Borough President, he said he wants someone who is knowledgeable of politics and has legislative experience. Arcabascio said he has spoken to two Democrats about the position.

When the Arcabascio family of five first moved to Astoria, Arcabascio said his parents had to borrow money to come to this country. His father was a laborer and his mother was a seam-stress.

Arcabascio said he understands as-similating to a new culture is difficult, especially because of the language bar-rier.

We cant accommodate everyone, but we have to be sensitive to the lan-guage barrier, he said. If I have any major impact as Queens Borough President, its for us to be more toler-ant and accepting.

When it comes to spreading the word about his campaign, Arcabascio said he does not have scripted routines when he goes to events. In terms of his social media campaign, he said he

posts on Twitter and Facebook him-self.

You cant say something that will make everybody happy, but the im-portant thing is, whatever you say, they believe you and its the truth, he said.

Arcabascio said he does not agree with Democratic candidate Melinda Katzs proposal to build a tech center in Long Island City because it is too close to the waterfront and the rent for the luxury high-towers is too high for young adults to afford. Instead, he said he wants to renovate buildings in Maspeth, so it too can grow like the other parts of Western Queens.

On the topic of Stop and Frisk, he said the police are doing their jobs to prevent crimes, but sometimes we have bad cops making bad stops. He said even though he is not a public safety expert, but having some knowl-edge of criminal justice, more cops need to walk their beats to understand their communities better, instead of riding in patrol cars.

Arcabascio promised to revamp the Queens Borough President web-site and upgrade Borough Hall.

On a final note, he said he would like the Worlds Fair to come back to Queens.

Reach Trisha Sakhuja at (718) 357-7400, Ext. 128, tsakhuja@queenstri-bune.com, or @Tsakhuja13.

Republican Borough Presi-dent candidate Tony Arcabas-cio is challenging Democratic candidate Melinda Katz in the General Election.

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