How will the next mayor use federal aid in the wake of Hurricane Sandy to create jobs and give needed support to poorer communities?

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio minces no words when asked why he is running for mayor and why he feels he is the best choice for the Democratic nomination.

“I am fundamentally dissatisfied with things in the city,” he said last week at a meeting with the editorial board of the Queens Chronicle.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency released its preliminary flood maps Monday which include much of coastal Queens that was flooded in Hurricane Sandy.

The new maps, the first change in New York City’s flood zones in 30 years, put nearly all of the Rockaway Peninsula, Broad Channel and Howard Beach into high-risk areas that will force residents to purchase flood insurance and follow new guidelines for home construction.

The long-awaited rezoning of Ozone Park is in motion.

More than 500 blocks of southern Queens, including almost all of Ozone Park and parts of Richmond Hill, South Ozone Park and Woodhaven, will be rezoned this year in what is likely to be the last major zoning project of the Bloomberg administration, and one of the largest.

They came from across the borough on Tuesday afternoon to show their patriotism and win a chance to sing at the upcoming US Open Tennis Tournament at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

The United States Tennis Association, the national governing body for tennis in this country and the primary promoter of the sport at every level, held its seventh annual US Open casting call for children hoping to perform at the 2013 event.

If Gov. Cuomo’s latest casino proposal comes to pass, Resorts World Casino New York City may never have table games, but potential casinos just over the border on Long Island may.

Under a bill proposed by the governor last week, downstate will be shut out of casinos with table games for five years to allow three casinos to be built upstate. Then, Long Island and the Lower Hudson Valley will be open for full gaming facilities, but still not New York City.

“Gravity of the Sculpture: Part II” will remain on display at The Dorsky Gallery, 11-03 45 Ave., Long Island City, through July 3. Call (718) 937-6317, email david@dorsky.org or visit dorsky.org.

A test train here crosses the newly restored Broad Channel railroad bridge prior to the restoration of the A subway line between mainland Queens and the Rockaway Peninsula, which took place on May 30.

Back in October, Hurricane Sandy damaged the bridge so badly, it had to be rebuilt almost from scratch.

The Richmond Hill South Civic Association’s most recent meeting, held at the United Methodist Church on 112 St. on May 30, included the reinstallation of its entire executive board and a special tribute honoring a local community leader, but the star attraction of the evening was unquestionably Margaret Finnerty, who was celebrating the 20th anniversary of her first installation as president, as a seemingly never-ending procession of local elected officials stopped by to sing her praises.

“It’s never about herself. It’s always about others,” said Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park), on hand to dismiss the outgoing board, to whom he added, “Don’t give up fighting for this neighborhood. Without you, it just wouldn’t happen.”

According to the charges filed by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, the immigrant, Kuldip Ramkhellawan, met Maraj at her South Richmond Hill office on Aug. 20, and Maraj represented to him that she was an immigration attorney. It is alleged that during the meeting, Ramkhellawan gave the defendant $2,000 in cash, two passport photos of himself and his genuine Trinidadian passport in exchange for helping him obtain a legitimate Social Security card and a legitimate permanent resident card or “green card.”

Maraj then allegedly met Ramkhellawan in Queens on Aug. 23, and brought him to 1 Police Plaza in Manhattan, where Ramkhellawan had his fingerprints taken at the NYPD’s Public Inquiry Office, which processes applicants for Certificates of Conduct (formerly known as a Good Conduct Certificate), which are criminal history searches within the environs of New York City, indicating whether an applicant has a criminal history.

A Far Rockaway man has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2012 death of a Jamaica man who had testified against him in a criminal case.

Shytique Kelly, 22, of Arverne, admitted in Queens Supreme Court on Monday that he fired a gun at a group of three men at the intersection of 110th Avenue and 160th Street in Jamaica on the evening of May 27, 2012, according to a statement issued by the office of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Real estate broker Francine Hamill says she was born to serve the people of Broad Channel, and after a series of setbacks, including most recently Hurricane Sandy, she is ready to continue her work.

After the storm struck last October, Hamill was completely wiped out. When she returned to her office at 814 Cross Bay Blvd., there was a car lodged against the storefront window. She had put all the office equipment on higher ground, but the office was submerged nonetheless. All the contents of her business were destroyed with the exception of one wooden cross that Hamill, a devout Christian, had placed in the window the preceding day. The cross was intact, and she felt it was significant of her faith.

The NYPD is seeking the public’s assistance in locating the man wanted for murder in the May 18 shooting of 14-year-old D’aja Robinson on a city bus.

Kevin McClinton, 21, is described as a black male, 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes.

When an EF5 tornado tore through the town of Moore, Okla. on May 20, the news was dominated with pictures of shellshocked storm survivors wandering around their devastated neighborhoods looking for family, friends and neighbors and trying to make sense of the life-changing event that just occurred.

It was an eerily familiar picture to Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (D-Rockaway Park), who, along with the vast majority of his constituents, had their lives thrown upside down by Hurricane Sandy seven months ago.

Gov. Cuomo wants New Yorkers to be able to play traditional roulette, craps and baccarat — just not in the city.

Under the governor’s proposed plan should New York voters approve a referendum scheduled for this November to legalize full gaming, including tables games, casinos with those games would be limited only to upstate for the first five years.

The closed portion of the long-abandoned Rockaway Beach train line got some TLC last week in effort to showcase a proposal to transform the abandoned tracks into a park called the QueensWay.

“The cleanup was done in conjunction with Parks,” Andrea Crawford of Friends of QueensWay, a group pushing to make the park a reality. “The rail that runs across Forest Park is loaded with debris and junk so we got in there and cleaned some of it up.”

“Gravity of the Sculpture: Part II” will remain on display at The Dorsky Gallery, 11-03 45 Ave., Long Island City, through July 3. Call (718) 937-6317, email david@dorsky.org or visit dorsky.org.

“Gravity of the Sculpture: Part II” will remain on display at The Dorsky Gallery, 11-03 45 Ave., Long Island City, through July 3. Call (718) 937-6317, email david@dorsky.org or visit dorsky.org.

Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (D-Rockaway Park) visited tornado-ravaged Oklahoma on Wednesday to share his experiences in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and help out victims who seven months ago sent help to Queens.

Goldfeder, whose own home was damaged in Sandy, as was more than 85 percent of his district, contacted Oklahoma State Rep. Paul Wesselhoft, who represents the city of Moore, Okla. in their state Legislature and offered to visit.

There’s a 20-foot sycamore tree on the curb in front of Carla Errico’s house on 90th Street in Howard Beach and Errico says it needs to go.

Most of the tree is bare. A few leaves are growing on a branch in the middle of the tree.

Gov. Cuomo announced last week that A train subway service will be restored to the Rockaways on May 30, just over seven months after Hurricane Sandy destroyed tracks across Jamaica Bay and seriously damaged two stations.

“Superstorm Sandy devastated the entire MTA network like no other storm, but the MTA did a remarkable job of restoring service following the storm and at the end of this month, the A line to the Rockaways will be up and running,” Cuomo said in a statement issued Thursday morning.

With all the disasters — natural and otherwise — wreaking havoc across the country as of late, as well as the ongoing state of the economy, two presentations at this month’s Community Board 13 meeting on Monday night took on added significance.

Representing the city’s Department of the Aging, Darnley Jones said areas around the borough are still trying to recuperate from the effects of Hurricane Sandy, particularly in the Rockaways, where he estimated it will take another five years to fully recover.