Morano on Intro 320 - Staten Island flag
Morano presents his bill to codify the Staten Island flag, noting only Brooklyn and the Bronx have official flags in law. He says the flag celebrates borough identity and makes Staten Island feel part of the city, and introduces designer Amal Micah as Staten Island's Betsy Ross.
Thank you very much, Chair, for the opportunity to speak.
And as much as I would love to stay and devour every minute of today's testimony, I am chairing a meeting that began 10 minutes ago.
So I'm going to run next door and then hopefully come back if this meeting goes on a bit.
I appreciate the chair's generous introduction.
And I also appreciate the.
open-mindedness with which you're approaching all the pieces of legislation today.
And I certainly concur that there is not a human being alive that has attended more community board meetings than Gail Brewer.
I do want to say a bit about Intro 320, which is my bill,
which is sponsored by the entirety of the city council delegation from Staten Island and a good portion of the chunk of the city council as a whole, which would give Staten Island an official flag.
Currently, while every borough has at least an unofficial flag, there are only two boroughs that have official flags codified in the law.
Those are Brooklyn and the Bronx.
The Staten Island flag, which has been our unofficial flag since 2019, and we're really honored to have the director of visual design from Staten Island Borough President's Office, Amal Micah, here
to speak about how this flag was created, some of the incredible imagery, some of the symbolism, some of the history behind the flag.
When I've been talking about this bill for over a year, the resounding complaint against it, really the only one against it, is don't you have anything else better to do?
And by the way, that's a complaint from everybody about anything.
But the answer really is no.
And I'll tell you why.
This bill is so meaningful to Staten Island and to me.
one swoop, namely adopting and giving us a flag, this city council has the ability to do two things.
One, celebrate, recognize borough identity, and two, makes Staten Island feel like we're actually a part of this city.
And I can tell you, both of those things from time to time are in short supply.
And we'll get into why, and I'm eager to hear Amal Micah, Staten Island's Betsy Ross, in his testimony a bit later.