Tony Avella

Tony Avella is a member of the New York City Council from the borough of Queens. He represents the 19th Council District, which includes the neighborhoods of College Point, Whitestone, Bayside, Little Neck and Douglaston. A Democrat, he was first elected in 2001.

Mr. Avella is best known for introducing legislation which would require all businesses in New York City to post some portion of their signs in English. According to Mr. Avella, many businesses in his district in northeast Queens do not post signs in English. In 2004, a task force concluded that five percent of all businesses in a busy commercial portion of northeast Queens posted signs that did not have any English. Mr. Avella said that he would continue to support passage of his legislation.

In response to a recent attack in his district (Douglaston) on 4 Asian men by two white males (one with a pending criminal case on charges of assaulting an elderly man with a claw hammer), in which racial slurs were used by the white males, Mr. Avella blamed Asian developers for increasing the tension in his district. The Councilman then proceeded to blame Asians for excluding themselves from the community by having commercial signs which did not have any English on them. He also made reference to a bill which he introduced in 2004 calling for all signs to have English translation on them of "equal size and proportion". It was not known why the Councilman decided to blame the Asian community for the attack.