Ex-Vice President of JPCA – “Bob’s a bully!”

In a recent Queens Ledger article, Tiffany Elliott the former Vice President of the Juniper Park Civic Association calls Bob Holden a “bully”. Ms. Elliot who worked very closely with Holden discovered, “If you don't agree with him, you're automatically his enemy. That's not the way life works, there has to be give and take. "You have to be with him 100 percent or he'll want to destroy you."

Of course Ms. Elliott’s statements do not come as a surprise to the residents of Middle Village and Maspeth. We have known that Bob is a bully, a cry baby, a vindictive individual and a shameful person who will use despicable tactics to silence those who rightfully disagree with him.

Please see below an excerpt from the Queens Ledger article by Phil Guie


Is Civic Starting Off On the Wrong "Note?"

However, even if CB5 were to give St. Saviour's Church its highest priority
in the upcoming budget, any partnership between the Juniper Park Civic and City
Hall is now jeopardized by what the mayor's office calls a cheap political
stunt and threat against a mayoral staff member.

In a letter sent to the civic's president, Bob Holden, from the Office of the
Mayor's Community Affairs Unit two weeks ago, Nazli Parvizi, the new
commissioner of CAU, expressed that she could not make any commitment to meet with the civic based on the group's "track record of treating your partners without
any level of respect."

The letter expressed her displeasure over the recent Juniper Park
Civic-organized rally wherein an attendee held up a poster showing a hangman's noose
"reserved for" Matt Gorton, a former employee of the agency.

"Whether or not the poster was officially sanctioned by the Juniper Park
Civic Association," Parvizi wrote, "your allowing it at your rally was at best a
failure of leadership and at worst an endorsement of threatening or violent
tactics." At another point in the letter, the city official wrote she did not
"appreciate seeing what could be perceived as a death [threat] against one of [her]
staff splashed across the front page of the paper."

"And neither did anyone else at City Hall," she added.
Parvizi called for a sign of good faith by way of a public apology to Gorton,
as well as the mayor and a deputy mayor, both of whom were featured on the
poster.

In a September 17th letter obtained by this newspaper, JPCA executive board
member Robert Doocey, fired back at the commissioner and accused her letter as
an attack on the "First Amendment."

"What we never do is request permission from any level of government or any
public servants to exercise our rights," wrote Doocey.
Doocey's communication states that the letter sent by the mayor's office to
the civic is being taken as a threat against unpaid volunteers, who have a
right to protest. The five-page letter, of which Doocey sent copies to ten people,
said no apology is forthcoming.

Regardless of the organization's relationship with the Mayor's Office, the
Juniper Park Civic has a reputation for aggressively antagonizing groups and
individuals they disagree with, at their civic meetings, in the local press and
their own quarterly newsletter. Recent examples include both NYCDog, a group
advocating for more dog runs in city parks, as well as Parks Commissioner Adrian
Benepe.

And the debate over the fate of St. Saviour's was just one of several issues
that soured the civic's relationship with their former Man of the Year,
Councilman Dennis Gallagher.

"I worked with him very closely, and Bob Holden was very good at what he
does," said Tiffany Elliott, the former vice president of the Juniper Park Civic
Association, "but he's a bully. If you don't agree with him, you're
automatically his enemy.

"That's not the way life works, there has to be give and take," added
Elliott, who moved to Massapequa from Queens three years ago. "You have to be with
him 100 percent or he'll want to destroy you."

Editor's note: This paper offered to publish Mr. Doocey's letter to
Commissioner Parvizi in its entirety. Mr. Doocey refused.