QUESTION
How can the Department of City Planning better reach immigrant-owned small businesses and non-English speaking communities to inform them about proposed zoning changes?
2:16:21
·
118 sec
Council Member Lee expresses concern that many immigrant-owned businesses and non-English speaking residents in her district are unaware of the proposed zoning changes.
- Lee's district is 45% Asian American, with many speaking languages like Punjabi, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean
- Many of these constituents, especially business owners, are not engaged and have no idea about the zoning proposals
- Director Garodnick agrees outreach to these communities can be improved and welcomes suggestions on how to better reach people not in their traditional channels
- The Department of City Planning has held multi-language town halls to try to meet people where they are
Linda Lee
2:16:21
And then finally, I just wanted to end by saying that I understand that you guys are going to the community boards and the civics and all of those, but I've been talking to a lot of my immigrant owned small businesses in my district who have language needs and specific other needs, and they have no idea that this is going on.
2:16:37
And this is and and a lot of the residents, I will say, So my concern is I don't know if we're actually reaching as many people, and I I am glad that you're listing all the meetings with the community boards and such.
2:16:48
Right?
2:16:49
But but also there's a huge swath of our communities that are not being reached right now.
2:16:54
And and so we're trying to do our part as council members to do that.
2:16:57
To let them know, hey.
2:16:58
This is something you need to pay attention to.
2:17:00
This is coming up.
2:17:02
But but I have to say most of my communities, which I have 45% Asian Americans in my district.
2:17:08
Half of that are South Asian, which speak Punjabi, Hindi, you know, Urdu, multiple languages.
2:17:13
And then Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and a lot of them are business owners in my district.
2:17:19
And so I'm just concerned that the ones that are not engaged, which is the vast majority I would say are the ones that we also need to be reaching because they have no idea what is happening.
Dan Garodnick
2:17:29
I think that's a great point.
2:17:30
Thank you for that.
2:17:31
Good news is I think they will be very happy with these changes, the small business owners who have limitations today in zoning, which impede their ability to make changes or to be able to reoccupy a vacant storefront.
2:17:45
We think that these are business friendly changes and I think that they will be happy.
2:17:48
That said, You are correct.
2:17:50
We want to do everything.
2:17:52
Everything that we possibly can to reach people who are not traditionally part of the channels that we operate under.
2:18:00
That's why we did so many town hall meetings with multiple languages involved as part of this proposal alone.
2:18:08
We wanna try to meet people where they are, but we certainly welcome any thoughts that you have on how to on how for us to do that better.
2:18:15
We do wanna do that as well as we possibly can.
Linda Lee
2:18:17
Okay.
2:18:18
Thank you.