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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2020 | The Jewish Home
A Borough President For All TJH Speaks with Joann Ariola, Candidate for Queens Borough President BY SUSAN SCHWAMM
Joann, you’re running for Queens Borough President, a position vacated by Melinda Katz when she won the Queens District Attorney race. I know that you’ve been involved with politics for a while. Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m a Queens resident. I’m a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. I currently work in the healthcare industry, and I’m the Queens chairperson for the Republican Party. I’ve had a 30-year career in working for elected officials. I’ve worked for two city council members from both parties – Noach Dear and Al Stabile from Howard Beach. I worked for Giuliani, for and with, and I worked for Mayor Bloomberg. I’m the president of my civic association. I sit on Community Board 10. I’m involved in various civics throughout the borough. I love Queens. I think it’s the best place in the world to
live because it’s the perfect combination of urban and suburban living. You’ve worked with many politicians. Any lesson s that you’ve learned from these politicians? What I learned early on in politics was that you have to remain a public servant. If you become a government bureaucrat, you’re no longer serving the community that elected you. And that’s what I try to do. Even in my job in the private sector, I work for a large hospital network. I do all their government and community outreaches. It really is, in a way, serving the community. The politicians I’ve worked for also taught me that if there isn’t public safety and law and order, you cannot have anything. One of the biggest divides between the people in our city right now are the ones who want safe streets and the people who
want anarchy. My opponent, Donovan Richards, made it clear which side he’s on. That’s part and parcel of why I’m in this race – I know what good government is. I know what good public servants are. I’ve worked for them and with them. What I’m seeing happening now is the complete destruction of our way of life, our public safety, our quality of life, and our schools. Everything is deteriorating. I honestly don’t want my grandchildren to have to move. I want them to be able to stay here. I don’t want them to leave because it’s too dangerous or too expensive to stay here. Unless we make a change, then they will be forced to move. We cannot put Donovan Richards in a position as the borough president because his voting record and the policies that he implemented as a city councilman – such as the closing of Rikers Island, the homeless shelters within communities,
not really serving all of the people in the communities that he serves – tell me that he was part of the problem and not the solution. I don’t have any confidence that he will become the solution if he became borough president. Can you tell us what defines the role of the borough president? The borough president is an advocate for the borough. A borough president can advocate for the borough on the state-level and can also introduce legislation with city council members on a city council level. There’s so much power within the borough presidency that people don’t recognize because nothing happens in the borough without an okay from the borough president’s office, especially when it comes to land use and zoning. I think that’s been abused over the last few years in that some communities have gotten lower-income housing or affordable housing
but that not all communities have benefited from it. That’s something that I want to look into when I become borough president. As the borough president, I will advocate for the NYPD to receive funding back. The NYPD should never have been defunded. With the NYPD being defunded and Rikers Island being systematically empty, with Hotel de Blasios popping up in our communities, shelters, halfway houses, community prisons…. Donovan Richards won’t be opposing that but I will. I’m going to say no to that because I want to stay in Queens. I want my kids to live here and my grandchildren to be able to live here. But more than that, I’m a public servant. I have always been an advocate. I’m not looking at my next position like Donovan Richards is, wanting to become the borough president because he’s termed out of being a city council member.
