Debi Rose gets ready to serve community in a new role
By Tevah Platt
November 18, 2009, 3:30PM
NORTH SHORES -- A new pair of low-heeled business shoes sits at
home in her closet, ready for the day she takes office.
A leather-bound notebook for constituent complaints and a supply
of her preferred Uni-ball Vision Elite pens, however, have already
been put to use.
Debi Rose will leave her job at the College of Staten Island to
become the North Shore’s representative in the City Council, a
transition that will be finalized on Jan. 1 but that is already under
way.
Ms. Rose was elected in November to become the North Shore’s
next councilwoman and the borough’s first African-American voted
into public office.
For 20 years, she has served as director of CSI’s Liberty
Partnership Program, seeing some 250 at-risk high school students
per year through counseling, job training, and test preparations.
“That’s the part of this that is bittersweet,” said Ms. Rose at CSI on
Monday, calling Liberty Partnerships her “first love.” “I’m going to
miss my kids.”
Advance photo/Jan Somma
-Hammel
‘SO MUCH TO BE DONE’
The job in front of her, says Ms. Rose, is awesome in the old and new sense of the term.
“There’s so much that needs to be done,” she said. “I’m the person who now has the responsibility to see
[the programs I campaigned on] come to fruition.”
Among her priorities are the reactivating the North Shore Railroad, finding tenants for the Staten Island
Ferry Terminal, and building an education complex for grades K-to-14 at the former Stapleton home port,
where high school seats and opportunities for vocational training are in high demand.
Ms. Rose already has informed City Council Speaker Christine Quinn that she will serve any and all of the
land use, education, transportation, health, and general welfare committees — an ambitious undertaking she
said would help her be a “vigilant watchdog” and put Staten Island’s needs on the city agenda.
The official-to-be has also made preliminary phone calls to her future colleagues, bonding with other
freshmen electeds and forging partnerships with Staten Island’s other councilmembers, Vincent Ignizio (R-
South Shore) and James Oddo (R-Mid-Island).
PROJECTS IN PIPELINE
Once sworn in, Ms. Rose plans to sit down early on with agency heads and commissioners, mapping out the
status of all North Shore projects in the pipeline.
“My job is to find ways to get these projects moved through,” said Ms. Rose. “What’s been missing is
oversight. I want to use some of my ‘mommy skills’ to nudge and nag until things get done.”
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