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RT05182017

18 MAY 18, 2017 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM CB 5 district manager makes 'Hall of Fame' BY ANTHONY GIUDICE [email protected] @A_GIUDICEREPORT For nearly three decades, Gary Giordano has served the neighborhoods of Community Board 5 (CB 5) — Ridgewood, Glendale, Maspeth and Middle Village — as district manager, helping to better the communities through numerous projects and initiatives. Now he will be honored for his service by being inducted in the Christ the King (CTK) High School Hall of Fame. On Saturday, May 20, at 7 p.m., at the Catholic high school located at 68-02 Metropolitan Ave., Giordano will join fi ve others as they are forever enshrined at Christ the King for embodying the ideals, principles and mission of the school. Giordano’s love and dedication to the community run deeper than just an appointed position on the community board. He grew up in the neighborhoods he now serves, moving to Maspeth when he was 2 years old. He attended Our Lady of Hope in Middle Village, served as an altar boy, and played basketball and baseball for the school. When it came time to go to high school, Giordano attended St. Francis Preparatory — at the behest of his father — when it was located in Brooklyn, but if it was up to him, he would have went to Christ the King. “My father wanted me to go to Prep,” Giordano said. “I would have liked to go to Christ the King. I could walk there, I could walk home. It was nearby. But when you’re in the eighth grade, you don’t haggle with your father over too many things.” When Giordano reached his 20s, he moved into his own apartment in Ridgewood. Giordano’s time in Ridgewood helped shape his world view and spur him into community activism. “I was living in Ridgewood on Woodward Avenue when all those fi res were occurring in Bushwick,” he said. “It was scary, for lack of a better term, because numerous times a week you would hear those fi re engines not that many blocks away, you smell the smoke from the buildings. So that kind of woke me up. Living in Ridgewood just gave me a whole broader view of life and the world, and I would credit that as much, or more, than anything for me getting involved to the degree that I did in the neighborhood.” Giordano quickly joined the former Onderdonk Civic Organization and started working with them in 1979. He then was appointed to Community Board 5 as a member on Jan. 1, 1981, and was soon the chair of the Youth Services Committee, and by the end of 1983, he also served as the chair of the board’s Health Committee. At the same time he was asked to be the treasure for the Greater Ridgewood Youth Council (GRYC). His main focus during that time had been to clean up the rampant drug sales and use at the Grover Cleveland High School Athletic Field. In order to do that, he helped create the Grover Cleveland Athletic Fields Association. In 1985, Giordano became executive director of the GRYC. In his new position Giordano continued helping the youth of the neighborhood by establishing an aft er-school tutoring program for nearly 250 students who were not reading at grade level. Then in 1989, Giordano applied for and was selected to become the district manager of CB 5. As district manager, Giordano focused on cleaning up the illegal dumping in the neighborhoods. Accompanying Giordano in the 2017 Hall of Fame class are former Vice Chairman of the CTK Board of Trustees Thomas V. Ognibene (posthumously); alumna Sharon Manning Beverly, class of 1972; alumna Maureen Murphy Blaine, class of 1967; alumnus Charles D’Ambra (posthumously), class of 1994 and former faculty member Kathleen Travers Norman (posthumously). “It is a great honor,” Giordano said of being inducted into the CTK Hall of Fame. “As somebody who grew up Christian, to be honored by a school called Christ the King, that’s a big deal to me. I am the district manager of a very good community board, a very good local legislature where a lot of them have been wonder, dedicated volunteer people and they’re a big part of the reason why these neighborhoods have gotten so much better.” File photo/QNS Christ the King High School is inducting Community Board 5 district manager Gary Giordano (standing at podium) into their hall of fame this weekend. Learn more about the Ridgewood Reservoir at community workshops BY ANTHONY GIUDICE [email protected] @A_GIUDICEREPORT If you’re interested in learning more about the Ridgewood Reservoir and the potential future of the site, NYC H2O, a nonprofi t organization that educates people about NYC’s waterways and ecology, is hosting two community listening sessions in Glendale and Brooklyn later this month. On Tuesday, May 23, at P.S. 68 located at 59-09 St Felix Ave. in Glendale at 7 p.m., and on Thursday, June 1, at the YMCA located at 570 Jamaica Ave. in Brooklyn at 7 p.m., participants will gather to talk about one of Ridgewood’s natural resources. In April, the reservoir was reclassifi ed from a Class C “High Hazard” to Class A “Low Hazard” dam aft er the New York City Parks Department completed a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) application. “The new classifi cation for the walls of the reservoir should help to protect it from redevelopment or construction that does not respect its unique ecology,” said Matt Malina, director of NYC H2O. And while we agree that surrounding neighborhoods can always use additional athletic fi elds, we believe other locations are more appropriate and respect this currently underappreciated unique natural area — a real treasure for both boroughs and the whole city.” At the meetings, Malina will lead discussions on topics related to the reservoir including not only the reclassification of the site, but also what that means for the reservoir, a potential wetland delineation and Critical Environmental Area designation by the Parks Department and DEC, and the status of the reservoir’s application to be listed on the NY State and National Historic Registers. The groups will also touch on some of the challenges the Ridgewood Reservoir and its visitors face such as pedestrian walkway access and safety, providing a bus stop at the site, the illegal use of ATV on the reservoir’s pathways, as well as natural dangers to the reservoir like invasive species of plants. NYC H2O conducted a survey to fi nd out what people would like to see at the Ridgewood Reservoir, and out of the 333 who responded, a majority wanted to bring a nature center to the site. To RSVP for one of the community listening sessions, visit www.nych2o. org. Photo courtesy of NYC H2O Photo caption: Join NYC H2O at a pair of community listening sessions about the Ridgewood Reservoir.


RT05182017
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