Eastern/Southeast Queens News

Resorts World Casino in South Ozone Park, the largest taxpayer in New York State, is closing on $3 billion paid to Albany since it opened eight years ago.

To mark the occasion, the casino this week initiated a “Good Neighbor Network,” aimed at helping civics and arts groups in Queens raise their public profiles and raise money.

The Queens Historical Society is getting into the holiday spirit the best way it knows how — by organizing the 32nd annual Holly Tour to visit historic landmarks scattered throughout Flushing.

Previously known as the Holiday Historic House Tour but renamed for branding purposes, the Holly Tour will take place on Sunday, Dec. 8 from 1 to 5 p.m and will visit six buildings left from different eras in Queens history.

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There hasn’t been a random mass shooting in New York City since 2017, when a disgruntled family physician who’d been dismissed two years earlier opened fire inside Bronx Lebanon Hospital.

One doctor was killed and five other nurses and doctors were wounded, along with one patient.

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“Unacceptable” is what Mayor de Blasio is calling the case of a homeless shelter resident arrested last month in the alleged sex abuse of a 3-year-old Woodhaven boy.

Confronted by a member of Community Board 9 at the mayor’s town hall last week in Jamaica, de Blasio heard for the first time about Luis Olivo, the 63-year-old homeless man living at the recently opened 101st Avenue shelter in Ozone Park, charged with assaulting a child in a laundromat last month.

The Queens Chronicle’s 25th Annual Toy Drive — designed to provide both fun things and necessities to youngsters living in area homeless shelters — is now underway.

As always, we’re hoping that you can find it in your heart to contribute new, unwrapped items that will brighten the holidays of children and their families who find themselves in need this season. It’s important that we collect gifts that are appropriate for everyone from infants to preschoolers to school-age children and young adults.

District 28, which includes schools in Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Rego Park and Jamaica, is one of the districts that will receive funding as part of a $2 million school diversity grant program to develop their own community-driven school diversity and integration plans.

The School Diversity Advisory Group, consisting of students, educators, parents, advocates and researchers, made dozens of recommendations, with the Department of Education planning to adopt 62 of the 67. The integration plan, which the city announced in June would include District 28, is drawing mixed reactions.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

The clock is running on Gov. Cuomo’s ultimatum to National Grid to end its moratorium on new gas customers by Tuesday or he will start proceedings to yank its license to operate in Queens and Brooklyn and on Long Island.

Community theater fixture and Queens Chronicle freelancer Mark Lord on Nov. 17 celebrated the release of his new book, ”The Theater and I” at the Secret Theatre in Long Island City.

The book, inspired by online questions to and conversations with Lord’s Facebook friends, chronicles how live theater first captivated him as a child, and led him to create award-winning student plays as a New York City teacher and to become a writer, director, actor and composer in community theater.