By Ayala Ben-Yehuda and Cynthia Koons
A mayoral spokesman criticized a rally planned for Saturday by Councilman Tony Avella (D-Bayside) to protest the delay in opening the College Point ballfields, saying Avella was using the issue for political gain.
“Multiple city agencies have done a great job cleaning up Councilman Avella’s mess,” said Chris Coffey, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “We are sorry he feels the need to manipulate the residents of College Point.”
Avella was the president of the College Point Sports Association when the contractor hired to renovate the fields dumped illegal construction waste on the 22-acre site. Since the waste was discovered in 1997, the fields have been shut while the city tested, cleaned up and renovated them.
A rally with civic and sports leagues was scheduled for Saturday at noon in front of the yet-to-be-completed ballfields at 26th Avenue and 130th Street. The rally was intended to protest the time it has taken for the city to reopen the fields, a process that has been shuttled between various city agencies.
“We are on schedule for a spring opening as expected and want nothing more than those fields to be open as soon as possible,” Coffey said.
Avella said the dumping at the College Point ballfields only occurred during the first of the seven years it has taken to rebuild the park.
“It wasn’t ‘the mess,’ it was something a contractor did illegally,” Avella said. “The city was supposed to be monitoring that, so where was the city?”
Avella said Bloomberg’s attack on him was “an excuse to cover up incompetence.”
The mayor and Avella, who is forming a committee to explore his own mayoral run in 2005, both accused each other of political mud-slinging on the ballfields issue.
“We think it’s sad that Councilman Avella is playing politics with our kids,” Coffey said.
“Let’s stop that sort of nonsense. That’s sort of childish for the mayor to be acting (that way),” Avella said of the mayor’s comments. “Why don’t we just build a park and get it done?”
The city filed a $16.5 million lawsuit in October against the College Point Sports Association and its former contractor to cover the costs of the clean-up and renovations on the fields. The suit was filed about a month before Avella’s re-election date and shortly before Bloomberg endorsed Avella’s challenger, Republican Phil Ragusa, on the steps of City Hall.
Coffey said “the one has nothing to do with the other.”
Reach reporter Ayala Ben-Yehuda by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 146.
