; Whereas Guillermo Linares became the first Dominican elected to public office in New York City in 1991, and also served on President Bill Clinton’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans; Whereas Adriano Espaillat is the first Dominican immigrant to be elected to the New York State Assembly in 1996, and the first formerly undocumented person elected to the United States Congress in 2016, representing New York’s 13th Congressional District which is predominantly Dominican American; Whereas Rolando Acosta was elected as the first Dominican-American New York State Supreme Court Justice in New York County in 2002; Whereas Judge Faviola Soto, who was born and raised in Hamilton Heights, was appointed as the first Dominican judge in New York in 1993, and was the first Hispanic to sit on the New York State Court of Claims in 2006; and Whereas the Dominican Studies Institute of the City University of New York is working on a National Register of Historic Places application for submission to the National Park Service that would create a noncontiguous cultural heritage district within sections of Washington Heights and Inwood to document, acknowledge, and honor the contributions of the Dominican community and ensure that the Dominican cultural legacy to the neighborhoods does not fade from memory, but rather remains an integral component of their ongoing rich and dynamic history: Now, therefore, be it