When Diane Gounardes Words Don’t Mean Anything…
People in Bay Ridge love Diane Gounardes.
As a member of Community Board 10, she voted in favor of the Committee recommendations for certain bike lanes in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights (and they refused other lanes due to safety issues or other concerns). Yet, her vote didn’t mean anything to her son, Senator Andrew Gounardes.
The day after the Community Board met, Gounardes sent this undated letter to Keith Bray to override the decisions made by our Community Board. Gounardes was unwilling to ask Community Board 10 to reconvene and he thought an override was necessary to appease bike enthusiasts.
Strangely for the past few months, Gounardes has been delayed in discussing bills because he said he was “reading” the bill and I believed him. Gounardes didn’t wait for Community Board 10’s notes from the meeting (which was dated June 20th.) It was URGENT that he contact Keith Bray while he was in Albany.
On June 18th, while Andrew Gounardes was in Albany and had nothing better to do, he rushed out a letter to Keith Bray. Keith Bray responded in TWO DAYS that Councilman Branan’s and Senator Gounardes override was good and he would follow through with that they wanted, rather than Community Board 10’s recommendations. Have we seen the Department of Transportation respond to anything in two days?
Not one local paper reported that Andrew Gounardes thought his mother’s vote meant nothing. Yet, a special interest group outside of our community knew about the results earlier than our community.
Brannan, Gounardes and Frontus’ letter crippled our Community Board. Why would residents waste their time serving on a Community Board when the politicians will override their vote with a letter? None of the polls are experts on street safety or urban planning, so why are they overriding the community board which has ruled on this for safety reasons.
Yesterday, Gounardes spent the day making graphics and videos to pat himself on the back for legislation he passed months ago, so that Brad Lander could compliment him AGAIN. He ran for office on the idea that he was going to fix the train and make safer streets. Nothing has changed in Bay Ridge – the train is still broke and we haven’t seen any change on the streets. Why is he patting himself on the back?
Like his predecessor, Gounardes doesn’t want to hear from residents. While sometimes he answers his friends tweets on Twitter, he and his staff mostly ignore residents request for help. I wrote and was ignored, as were many of you who left comments here.
We know Gounardes staff had access to his Twitter account because during the election, they were sending out information to back up what he said during a forum. It’s nothing different than what we saw from Marty Golden’s team and like Marty, Andrew is like “call my office,” even when everyone can see the hundreds of unanswered messages on social media.
Hugs,
marlene
Topics: Bay Ridge | 1 Comment »
June 25th, 2019 at 6:53 pm
If I did that to my mom she would beat my ass.
If we call them do you think they will leave the board alone?