Confusion, anger over Koo remarks
Posted on February 23, 2012 by Joe Anuta in City Council, City Offices, District 20
City Councilman Peter Koo upset some in the audience of a recent 109th Precinct Community Council meeting when he told the room to stop complaining that downtown Flushing is dirty, according to several audience members.
City Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing) is in hot water with some of his constituents over remarks made at a recent meeting, about downtown Flushing, but a community leader said some in the audience may have misunderstood what he was saying.
Koo was speaking to a perennially packed room during the 109th Precinct Community Council’s monthly meeting Feb. 8, when he said, according to audience members, that residents should stop complaining that downtown Flushing is dirty.
He also said that 99 percent of the signs in Flushing contain English, according to audience members.
His comments were enough to prompt several calls and a letter to the editor of TimesLedger Newspapers.
Wanda Beck, president of the Bowne Park Civic Association and past president of the 109th Precinct Community Council, was also at the meeting and was upset at the councilman’s comments.
“It was unacceptable for a politician to say that in front of a group of people. He has not been truthful about the way he feels,” said Beck, who has known Koo before he became a politician. “I feel, bad day or not, as a politician and as a public servant he should have buttoned his lip.”
But Chrissy Voskerichian, president of the council, said she did not take Koo’s word in a negative way.
“I think some people took it as, ‘You shouldn’t complain.’ But I think he was saying that complaining is not enough,” she said. “I actually think he was being very positive.”
She said Koo was commenting on the room full of people who were going beyond complaining and coming out to the precinct meeting to show they care.
And as far as the English sign comment goes, according to a spokesman for Koo, the councilman is the co-sponsor of the Council bill that would eventually require all signs to be in English in addition to any foreign language. Koo took lots of heat from the Asian community for supporting the bill, the spokesman said.
One man who introduced himself as John Scandalios voiced his displeasure with Koo’s remarks during the public comment period of the meeting after the councilman had left.
“I can’t believe, for the life of me, that an elected official would go to a community meeting and tell them to stop complaining,” he said in an interview with TimesLedger Newspapers.
Scandalios said he was at the meeting as a concerned citizen. But he also happens to be running for Koo’s seat in the upcoming 2013 elections for the Council.
The Flushing resident owns a comic book store in Bayside called Crazy Scondo’s. He is a former engineer who is calling himself the $999 candidate because he said it should not cost more than $1,000 to run for office.
Scandalios insisted he did not criticize Koo for political gains.
“I’m voicing my complaint as a citizen who wrote a letter to his office,” Scandalios said.
Koo, who recently switched to the Democratic Party after being elected as a Republican, has admitted in the past that public speaking is not his forte.
At the Queens Village GOP Club’s Abraham Lincoln dinner last year, he demurred that he was not a smooth-talking politician when he got up to praise a colleague.
Still, Beck and other in the community want Koo to make up for the comments.
“I was very, very surprised because I admired Peter Koo,” she said. “I still feel very confident that he can somehow redeem himself.”
I know no one more caring and generous to his community than Peter Koo; and this has been the case since long before he entered politics. The man even donates his City salary to community nonprofit organizations.
I sat close to the banter described in this article, and believe the Councilman was expressing his displeasure with generalized complaints not expressed for the purpose of reaching a solution. His door has always been open to those wanting to constructively address Flushing’s problems.
Athens Archbishop Christodoulos said we deserved 9/11 (ISBN 960-252-007-8). On the Thursday before Easter Greeks chant pogrom inciting Beatitudes against “godslaying lawless Jews”in Greek, but change it to “Assemby of Jews” in English. They removed American Archbishop Iakovos because he was too American and Jerusalem Patriarch Irineos because he was too friendly with Israelis. Old witches who used to work at diners until they dropped now slip “Elder Protocols” and other terror claptrap in the pews. When I was growing up priests, would bathe, shave, wear pants – Robed, bearded, stovetopped priest is terror sympathist by definition. Greece was only euronation not to vote for 1947 Israel creation. In such time of war, we should insist that any public assembly of more than ten mandatorily be only in English! These heathen necromantic iconolaters have the nerve to ban Psalm 150 organs? If the Greek government did an Enron with its own books, and Greeks Trojan Horse their Greek taxes, what makes you think they pay the IRS? They go to Greece annually to tend their undisclosed accounts on soviet Cyprus. Notice the soviet spy money laundered Metsos disappeared with Cyprus complicity? Did Illinois Giannoulias, Florida’s Crist, California’s Angelides and New York’s Gianaris apply Greek budgeting techniques like Sarbanes Oxen? Greek Ponzi fourfold Eurodefecit boasts Trojan Horse Perfidy, Klephth Brigandage. Upset that industrious Albanians invaded their lazy, gungrabbing, babykilling homeland, the soviet-churched Greeks vindictively hire, house and promote illegals. As quakes render their homes disposable, Greeks are oblivious to the very concept of maintenance. Instead of blaming environmetalists for fires and socialists for deficits, jealousy driven soviet faith seeks scapegoats. Olympia Snowjob supports Obamacare and abortion because of her gangreen patriarch (Is Orthodox Christianity progressive? Michelle Boorstein Washington Post 11-4-09 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew spoke about the spiritual imperative for nonviolence, universal health care and reducing consumption to help the environment.) Ancient Greeks reduced consumption to help the environment through infanticide and sodomy. Palamite Zealotes massacred Thessalonian aristocracy in preparation for Cantacuzene usurpation via hesychast hyperventilatory hallucination. This soviet socialism motivated Anatolian farmers to embrace Turks in the 1400s to avoid redistributative taxation and then for liberated mainlanders to migrate to Smyrna in the 1800s.