Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing) secured funding to bring NYPD ARGUS surveillance cameras to strategic locations in his district. These cameras will help the NYPD investigate crimes, monitor key locations and enhance public safety in the community.

“One of my top priorities is to help ensure the highest level of public safety for residents,” Koo said in a statement. “Therefore, I allocated resources to purchase the latest technology and surveillance equipment to assist the NYPD in protecting our community.”

Seven months have passed since the fateful night Taysha Dominguez lost her husband, Dante, in a hit-and-run accident at the corner of 41st Avenue and Union Street in Flushing, with the driver of the vehicle still on the lam.

“To flee the scene? That’s heartless,” Dominguez said as she choked back tears, adding the loss combined with the lack of closure fueled by the driver’s disappearance has torn her family apart.

Elected officials, members of the public and Queens Library employees gathered Tuesday on the steps of the Flushing Library to decry a $29.6 million fiscal buzzsaw in the mayor’s proposed budget looming over the institution.

The gathering starts what has become something of an annual cut-then-rescue ritual inspired every year by Mayor Bloomberg’s budget. Inevitably, hizzoner puts out dollar figures that cause lawmakers to use terms like “unacceptable” and “draconian.”

About 12 years ago Five Omar Mualimmak — who says his unique numerical name is the subject of a whole other article — was arrested on drug trafficking, possession of an illegal weapon, money laundering and tax evasion charges and sent to Rikers Island. Those charges were changed and dropped and then a few reissued, Mualimmak, 38, said, keeping him in the system for 11 years.

Once he was put in prison, a fight landed the Bronx man in solitary confinement.

Lawmakers, city officials and Queens activists cut the ribbon for a new comfort station at the Rachel Carson Playground located in the Kissena Corridor Park on Colden Street between Juniper and Geranium Avenues, in Flushing.

The $1 million comfort station was funded by the City Council. It features sustainable design techniques to make the building energy efficient and environmentally friendly.

Borough President Helen Marshall hinted at her looming recommendations regarding the United States Tennis Association’s planned expansion within Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which now includes the possibility of replacing the 0.68 acre of parkland the nonprofit plans to use.

After facing six community boards, the plan sat with a split vote, with three in favor and three opposed. A procedural snafu may have saved the tennis nonprofit’s plan from a fourth no vote at the local level.

The complaints about Muni-Meters, many of which were installed across Queens at the end of last year, continue to trickle into the Queens Chronicle office. Some come via letters to the editor, including one this week, and some via conversation —since the one directly in front of the newspaper’s office hasn’t worked since the week it was installed.

For the first couple months it didn’t work at all, as indicated by a blinking red light greeting drivers. Then two weeks ago a worker opened it up and got it to accept credit and debit cards. But it still will not take coins, to the chagrin of many drivers.

The power of the local press was on full display in the tight 2009 City Council race between Democratic nominee Kevin Kim and Republican Dan Halloran.

Halloran did not allow Multi-Media’s role in the race to go unnoticed. In September 2009, the Tribune ran a story originally headlined “Democratic Victor vs. Pagan Lord” that detailed Halloran’s unconventional religious practices.

Flushing lawmakers have again called upon the city to make the Asian Lunar New Year a school holiday, citing a high absence rate that counts on students’ records.

Congresswoman Grace Meng, state Sen. Toby Stavisky, Assemblyman Ron Kim and Councilman Peter Koo, all Flushing democrats, were joined by Chinatown state Sen. Dan Squadron (D-Manhattan) to ask the absences during the annual celebration not be counted.

The NYC Districting Commission released its third draft of new City Council lines on Tuesday, after months of controversy in the decennial process for redrawing district lines. The new maps make some big changes both to the old lines and to earlier drafts.

Maps were due to be approved by now, but controversy over the December lines in Brooklyn and Manhattan forced Council Speaker Christine Quinn to ask the commision to go back to the drawing board for a third draft.

While any hope for No. 7 train service during Flushing’s Lunar New Year festivities is lost, elected officials and members of the business community are already fighting for more service in 2014.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Flushing leaders have been at odds over the 7 line’s truncated service as it undergoes signal upgrades in the Steinway tunnel. The piecemeal work has been ongoing during the winter months, when the MTA says demand is lower than during the U.S. Open and baseball’s peak from spring through the fall.

Flushing lawmakers are asking the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to spare them any future fighting over service disruptions to the No. 7 train during the Lunar New Year. But they don’t like what they’re hearing.

Business owners, elected officials and organizers of Flushing’s annual Lunar New Year extravaganza are upset the MTA plans to truncate No. 7 train service during the event, despite numerous pleas to let the train run its full route at least during the weekends of Feb. 10 and 16.

The Rev. Charles Norris of Jamaica gave an understated assessment of the testimony offered as the city’s Districting Commission returned to Queens on Monday night.

“It seems everyone here has the same problem,” he observed dryly.

Police arrested the woman who allegedly pushed a Hindu man to his death off the No. 7 train platform in Sunnyside last Thursday.

On Saturday, a Brooklyn man called 911 when he recognized Erika Menendez, 31, as the woman in the released video footage of a suspect fleeing the incident, police said. Officers arrived and took her to the 112 Precinct where she confessed to the murder.

Residents along the No. 7 line from Long Island City to Flushing are miffed about the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s plans to suspend portions of the train’s service for 13 consecutive weekends.

Here’s the plan: the train will close from 11:45 p.m. on Fridays until 5 a.m. Mondays from Queensboro Plaza to Times Square. The closures started last Friday and will go until March 25.

A man was pushed to his death at a Sunnyside 7 Train stop on Thursday night, New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said.

For many Queens residents, 2012 will be forever married to Superstorm Sandy and the havoc she wrought. For good or ill, North Queens was spared the brunt of the storm.

A sizeable number of downed trees and power outages hit the area, but most counted their luck. Compared to the borough’s southern edge, Sandy was forgiving to Flushing and its satellite neighborhoods.

Plans to transform a derelict building on 40th Road in Flushing into a mixed-use development featuring community and commercial space are being met with open arms by Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing).

The city’s Economic Development Corporation announced the selection of Success 88 LLC as the developer for the project at 135-15 40 Road.

When Grace Meng is sworn into Congress in January, she will become New York’s first Asian-American politician on Capitol Hill.

Meng’s political rise — from representing Flushing in the state Assembly all the way to Washington, D.C. as a member of Congress — is the latest example of an emerging Asian-American political base spawned in Queens during the last decade.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority plans to cut service along portions of the No. 7 line during Flushing’s annual Lunar New Year celebration, leaving local businesses and elected officials promising to fight for full service the weekends of Feb. 10 and 16.

The MTA plans to shut down the 7 during selected weekends for ongoing signal upgrades along the line’s Steinway tunnel, only running the train from Main Street to Queensboro Plaza from 12:01 a.m. on Saturday to 5 a.m. on Monday.

There is some unfinished business at Flushing’s Quaker Meeting House.

The concrete base of a misplaced utility pole buried on the house’s property stands as the sole remnant of flawed construction work next to the house.

This country is no place for a dog killer — that’s the view of City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), who has started a letter-writing campaign to get just such an individual deported.

“He tossed his dog out of a window, so now we should toss him out of the country,” Vallone said.

A proposed meditation garden in Flushing’s Kissena Corridor Park has stalled as a group advocating its creation is slowly pushing to meet funding demands.

The Kissena Corridor Park Conservancy held an annual fundraising breakfast on Saturday at the Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel to raise money for the garden with Comptroller and former councilman John Liu making an appearance. But the conservancy is falling well short of the $1 million needed to bring the garden to fruition.