Q&A
Balancing community feedback with city-wide objectives in land use decisions
0:39:13
·
122 sec
Keith Powers asks Raju Mann about the criteria for determining when an application is not ready to move forward based on community feedback. Mann discusses the challenge of balancing community input with broader city objectives.
- Emphasizes the importance of considering equity, environmental improvement, and economic growth in decision-making
- Highlights the need for consistency in applying values across projects to avoid ad hoc decision-making
- Stresses the goal of incorporating community feedback to improve projects while staying anchored to overarching city objectives
Keith Powers
0:39:13
And and what are what are instances where you might gear that type of feedback and say, this application is not ready to be moved forward.
0:39:22
Like, there's gonna be lot there's always gonna be lots of folks who show up some of these big hearings to say yes or no.
0:39:29
We hate this.
0:39:30
We love this, and you're gonna have to, like, put those into into an equation and figure out these you know, if you actually think about that component of it, the community feedback.
0:39:40
So how do you what what are the what are the What what is the conditions by which one might find themselves to say, this is not the committee.
0:39:49
It's not.
0:39:49
We've not a gender trust with the community.
0:39:51
We have not.
0:39:52
Built like a like a foundation here.
Raju Mann
0:39:55
Yeah.
0:39:55
I mean, again, I think it's, you know, these are really hard conversations and and sort of the nature of democracy, right, to figure out how we make these decisions together.
0:40:05
And that's an imperfect process.
0:40:07
I think I'd say there's 2 things.
0:40:09
That's it.
0:40:09
One is there's values that I think, you know, I have that obviously informed the work around equity and ensuring that we have an environment that's better than the one that we inherited and obviously supporting economic growth.
0:40:25
And I think within that context of those values, really understanding what are the pieces of feedback we can absorb from community stakeholders to hopefully advance one of those 3 objectives.
0:40:36
And but at the end of the day, the values do need to be somewhat consistent across projects because otherwise, it becomes an ad hoc exercise.
0:40:43
So within the context of those values, I think I feel like the goal of the commission and the goal of the council partially is to really find the pieces of feedback that make these projects better that make these proposals better.
0:40:54
Number 1, to make sure people understand they're being heard.
0:40:56
Number 2, to make the projects and proposals better.
0:40:58
But that all needs to be anchored with some value America.
0:41:01
What we're trying to do is the city.
0:41:03
And at least for me, those kind of three pieces, the kind of building more equitable city, building a city that's better prepared for the future in environmental context and building one that's more prosperous are the 3 ones that I would highlight.
