Halloran Leads in Council for Constituent Services: City Tracking System

Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Whitestone, said his staff has resolved more than 1,100 complaints from district residents during his first 10 months, ranking his office first in the city.

The councilman, whose district covers Douglaston, Little Neck and Bayside, hosted a town hall at Bayside High School last month during which he told residents that numbers from the Center for Statistical Training and Consulting (CSTAT) showed that his office had solved more constituent problems than any other City Council member's staff this year.

He said his district, which is among the most affluent in Queens, is often overlooked by city agencies.

"The district pays the third highest small business taxes in the city and the largest median income taxes, but it is disproportionately served when it comes to funding, resources and attention," Halloran said.

A spokesman for the councilman said CSTAT statistics showed that Halloran and his staff had helped more than 1,100 residents work out issues since he took office in January. Problems included everything from removing trees off the streets following a massive storm that struck Queens in mid-September to assisting a constituent who was not able to access money in a bank account.

Representatives from a number of city agencies attended Halloran's meeting, including the city's departments of Parks, Sanitation, Buildings, Finance and Transportation as well as the city's Community Affairs Unit and the 111th Precinct.

Janice Melnick, northeast Queens administrator for the Parks Department, told the crowd of more than 50 people at the town hall that the agency had finished cleaning most of the district's streets that were ravaged by a Sept. 16 tornado.

"This cleanup effort was massive," she said. "Queens bore the brunt as usual, but we had an unprecedented number of cleanup workers."

A total of 2,296 trees toppled across the city, while more than 1,600 pieces of debris were removed following the storm, she said.

Anthony Illiano, a spokesman for the city's Department of Buildings, said residents living within the confines of Community Board 11 call in more complaints than in any other community board citywide.

He said 50 percent of the city's illegal conversions are in Queens.

At the meeting, Halloran vowed to introduce more legislation that would reform city agencies or call for more transparency in their operations.

He has already proposed seven bills to regulate the Department of Transportation. One piece of legislation would require that signs on businesses in the district are primarily written in English, while another bill would allow for contractors to be prosecuted if they attempt to drum up business by falsely filing a complaint that a home has been illegally converted.