REMARKS
Council Member Joann Ariola speaks against proposed zoning text amendments
2:50:54
·
3 min
Council Member Joann Ariola expresses strong opposition to the proposed zoning text amendments in their current form.
- Believes there is still room for further negotiation on what could work for the city
- Represents 5 community boards, 2 of which voted yes with conditions that were not met
- Concerned that the plan takes away ULURP and City Council approval, leaving too many open ends
- Believes the changes could lead to troublesome home businesses and negatively impact quality of life in residential areas
- Wants to see incentives for people to utilize existing empty commercial storefronts instead
Joann Ariola
2:50:54
So since you're hearing and you've been to community boards, I don't think that the train has left the station.
2:51:00
I think that we have room to further negotiate what could work.
2:51:04
For this city, and we're gonna push hard to make sure that that happens.
2:51:07
I represent 5 community boards, 2 of it which voted yes with conditions.
2:51:13
Thinking that if those conditions were not met, they would have been a no.
2:51:17
So I think that there's a bit of a discrepancy in your count.
2:51:21
We don't know what are our president's conditions were and where they met.
2:51:26
So I think that that's something that council member Lee brought to the table, which was You need to go back out.
2:51:31
You need to go back out and talk about what we spoke about at this hearing and what you spoke about with the community boards, what those conditions were, what the the the bureau president wanted to implement and how many of those conditions were implemented.
2:51:46
You cannot just keep and continue just as my colleague, Countsmer Pelzino, said, just forcing it upon us.
2:51:54
So that is part of my largest statement, which is after watching the PowerPoint and listening to the answers to the questions for the proposals today, I am even more confident that I'm unequivocally against the plan as it stands.
2:52:11
The plan as it stands now takes away Ulerp and counsel approval.
2:52:17
And that simply leaves too many open ends for me to support it.
2:52:22
It leaves the door wide open for home businesses to become troublesome at best.
2:52:28
We have regulations like you learn and council approval in place for a reason.
2:52:33
We cannot just reverse this.
2:52:35
There's a reason that we sit here and we're elected.
2:52:38
It's to oversee what happens in the communities.
2:52:41
We cannot see our residential areas transformed into commercial strips.
2:52:47
We have commercial strips.
2:52:48
As council member Paladino noted, we have a lot of empty storefronts.
2:52:52
Let's incentivize people to utilize those.
2:52:56
Additionally, allowing commercial properties to be above residential properties is just going to completely devolve the equality of life.
2:53:08
I don't care what kind of, whether it's a day care center or it's just just any type of business is gonna be extra movement.
2:53:16
There's gonna be extra waste.
2:53:17
There's gonna be extra influx of people in and out.
2:53:21
And then when you talk to talk about corner stores in a residential community that are legal, well, cannabis stores are legal now.
2:53:30
So now will we have corner stores that are cannabis stores or selling selling alcohol or selling cigarettes?
2:53:37
This is not the people who bought in residential communities like 19, like 23, like mine, like many of the the, like, like, council member, Schulman's District 29, and the rest of us sitting here.
2:53:50
They bought homes in the suburbs because they wanted to move the away from the hustle bustle of businesses and commercial life yet have access.
2:54:00
So this is not something they bought into.
2:54:03
It's something that every civic association in my district voted against and my commuter boys voted against either in totality or with conditions.
2:54:12
So because of that, I absolutely have to stand firm with them unless this this particular project and proposal changes vastly.
2:54:23
Thank you.