Sept. 16, 2020 By Michael Dorgan Restaurants will soon be able to add a 10 percent service charge to the tab. The City Council voted Wednesday to approve legislation that would temporarily permit restaurants to add a “COVID-19 Recovery Charge” to customer checks. The legislation is expected to be signed by the mayor – which… Read more »
Sept. 16, 2020 By Allie Griffin The city will ramp up its sanitation efforts to keep streets trash-free after having cut the Department of Sanitation’s budget by $106 million. Residents have been complaining of overflowing trash bins since the Sanitation budget took a hit and the department’s commissioner Kathryn Garcia even resigned over the cuts…. Read more »
Sept. 16, 2020 By Michael Dorgan Mayor Bill de Blasio and his entire office staff will take one week of unpaid leave in order to help tackle the city’s fiscal crisis amid the coronavirus shutdown. The mayor said that the mandatory furloughs – which will affect nearly 500 employees – will save the city nearly… Read more »
Sept. 16, 2020 By Michael Dorgan A white woman threw a glass bottle at a black jogger in Woodside last month and then shouted a racial slur at her, police said. The police released video footage of the incident today that shows a white woman hurling a bottle at a 37-year-old black woman while she… Read more »
Sept. 15, 2020 By Christian Murray A Queens legislator will be introducing a bill before the city council Wednesday that calls for the decriminalization of jaywalking. Council Member Costa Constantinides, who is sponsoring the bill, said that black and Latinx New Yorkers are the ones most ticketed for jaywalking and the bill aims to end… Read more »
Sept. 15, 2020 By Allie Griffin New York City launches a special multi-agency team to address COVID-19 cases at city schools, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday. De Blasio unveiled the “DOE COVID Response Situation Room” that brings together the Department of Education, the Department of Health and the Test & Trace Corps to create… Read more »
Sep. 14, 2020 By Michael Dorgan Two men have been indicted and charged for killing a 20-year-old Jackson Heights man in Corona in June. Joshua Petillo, 23, and Kevin Guerra, 21, allegedly chased Dante Santillan down a street on June 30 before Petillo fatally shot him in the back, according to the Queens District Attorneys… Read more »
Sept. 14, 2020 By Allie Griffin The public review process of the contentious Flushing waterfront rezoning project will resume Wednesday after it was postponed several months due to the pandemic. The City Planning Commission will host a virtual meeting on the Special Flushing Waterfront District project (SFWD) on Wednesday at 10 a.m. A consortium of… Read more »
Sep. 14, 2020 By Michael Dorgan A 38-year-old man was shot multiple times near Roosevelt Avenue in Elmhurst early Monday morning. The man was shot in the back, arm and leg by a male suspect in his 30s outside 86-10 Roosevelt Ave. just before 4 a.m., police said. The incident stemmed from a dispute the… Read more »
Sept. 14, 2020 By Christian Murray A vandal smashed more than a dozen windows on a subway car on the 7 line in Queens Friday night. MTA police found 18 broken windows at around 11:40 p.m. as the subway car pulled into the 61st Street-Woodside station. More than 500 windows have been smashed since May,… Read more »