Fire Commissioner Howard Safir moved ahead with his plan to eliminate 15,000 fire alarm boxes from street corners throughout the City...members of the Cedar Grove Homeowners Association proposed fencing themselves in to prevent crime….

More than 800 Queens residents piled into the auditorium of P.S. 17 in Long Island City to participate in a Town Hall meeting hosted by Mayor Rudy Giuliani….

City budget cuts kept youth counselors throughout the borough on their toes in January – scurrying for ways to keep programs funded, and after-school and weekend activities available….

Mayor Giuliani proposed changing community board lines so parts of Flushing near Queens College got moved from Community Board 7 to Community Board 8….

A simple tribute to one of Queens’ best-loved politicos turned into a muddy brouhaha, when over 100 angry residents of Fresh Meadows turned up to protest community board approval of renaming 188th Street to “Saul Weprin Boulevard.” Residents were reacting to a “mysterious” flyer distributed the night before the meeting, warning that a change in the name from “street” to “boulevard” would adversely affect the neighborhood….

The idea of pay toilets for Queens was flushed again.... Schools Chancellor Ramon Cortines was signed up by the Board of Ed to serve the City’s children for another two years….  

Thirty-two borough scholars were named semi-finalist in the prestigious Westinghouse Science Competition in 1995.

Queens detectives, working around the clock, arrested two suspects charged in the bloody massacre of a College Point family on Jan. 7. Six people – including teenagers who were having a sleep over — were stabbed, shot and tortured in what police believe was a drug-related “hit.” One surviving teen, whose throat had been slashed and who had been left for dead, made her way to a neighbors door and was rushed the hospital. It wasn’t until she was strong enough to write a note that police knew where she had been and went back to find the other victims. Two suspects were in custody within three days after the slayings. One man remained at large….

Forest Park turned 100…Queens students put the borough at the top of the list in January – the list of outstanding “future” scientists, that is. Thirty-two borough scholars were named semi-finalists in the nationally acclaimed Westinghouse Talent Search – giving Queens more winners than anyone else….

Shoppers mourned the impending loss of another department store – A&S would soon hit the dust, joining a host of “favorite” but defunct department stores….

Police discovered nuclear materials in a Woodside garage…The Mitchell-Linden Civic Association and the Bowne Park Civic Association made noise after they claimed that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) broke a promise to them and allowed planes from LaGuardia to fly over their homes….Dr. Allen Lee Sessoms is appointed president of Queens College….

The Tribune reported that Levco Properties in Astoria – an industrial property right near the studio where “Sesame Street” is taped – was one of nine toxic sites in Queens….

The body of a well-liked Queens gynecologist was found in the trunk of her car parked on a Bronx street. Detectives quizzed the doc’s oldest son, eyeing her offspring in the doctor’s slaying….  

State Senator Serphin Maltese drew kudos – and raised a few eyebrows – in February by proposing “paddling” for graffiti vandals caught in the act….

A Trib feature took a look at department stores of the past, and examined the future of retailing in Queens….

The plight of the homeless took center stage in a February Trib feature . . . Feisty Mary Cummins resigned from School Board 24 after 18 years on the panel….

Flushing Meadows Phil introduced Corona Kate to Queensites at the annual Groundhog outing on Feb. 2. The couple will cohabitate to reproduce some furry forecasters of winter’s end. Phil and Kate saw their shadows, and predicted more winter weather (unlike their “fellow” forecasters)….

A pair of vagabond dolphins appeared in Flushing Bay in February. City cops and Coast Guard emergency crews, dubbed the “Flipper Flotilla,” led the mama dolphin and her calf to safer seas…A duck named Corona found a friend for life, and a home in the country in February. Police Emergency Service cops Lieutenant Robert Sobecienski and Police Officer William Thomson rescued the stray duck from Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, after she became stuck in the frozen water.…

A Tribune exclusive exposed that in a time of budget crisis, the City was still about to spend $186,000 for art installation in a Douglaston Parkway Sanitation garage….

York College President Josephine Davis resigned, following a flurry of charges of mismanagement and financial improprieties at the college….

The Parks Department put out a Request for Proposals to turn the deserted boathouse on Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park into a “white tablecloth, sit-down restaurant.…”

The City Health Department closed down the Earle Theatre in Jackson Heights, a porn theatre that the City said allowed unsafe sexual practices and numerous health code violations….

After years of deadlocking, the City promised to add traffic lights to Queens Boulevard, a street that has been dubbed the “Boulevard of Death” for being dangerous to pedestrians….

The issue of school redistricting was voided…Trib reporter Shonna Keogan exposed the “overexposed” nature of two Queens cops, a male and a female, who posed naked for magazines….

It took a month for governor George Pataki to convince opponents that Ridgewood resident George Marlin was the right man to head the Port Authority….

Borough officials cried “foul” to Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s plan to ax funding for municipal hospitals in the borough….

Fort Totten in Bayside was decommissioned as an Army base, but unknown levels of dangerous chemicals were found in the waters of Little Bay next to it, causing a wave of civic anger. It was believed that the chemicals leaked into the water from a broken drain in one of the Army’s buildings….

A Tribune feature alerted Queens residents about a series of sexual assaults in the borough – all connected to one man with a penchant for cheap motels and Automated Teller Machines….