AGENCY TESTIMONY
Raju Mann's testimony for City Planning Commission nomination
0:31:17
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170 sec
Raju Mann, nominee for the City Planning Commission, presents his background and outlines his priorities if confirmed. He emphasizes his experience in public and nonprofit sectors, understanding of zoning and planning processes, and desire to address New York City's challenges through thoughtful planning and consensus-building.
- Highlights three main areas of focus: connecting zoning with capital planning, encouraging fortunate neighborhoods to contribute more, and making the land use process trust-building
- Expresses commitment to addressing housing affordability and fair housing
- Acknowledges the need for balancing citywide challenges with building consensus among various stakeholders
Raju Mann
0:31:17
Great.
0:31:18
Thank you, Mister Sherman.
0:31:20
So it's a real pleasure to be back here.
0:31:22
It's great to see so many colleagues and friends.
0:31:26
At the days.
0:31:27
So I appreciate our busy juniors for you all, so I'm gonna keep this relatively brief and just offer a few words about what I hope to bring to the city planning commission.
0:31:34
So I've spent most of my career working in the public or nonprofit sectors.
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I worked at the Department of City Planning, served on a community board in Manhattan, work in the nonprofit advocacy world and spend 8 years here at the council, and I'm the president's CEO of the Better Park City Authority.
0:31:49
So I've spent a lot of time over the course of my career sorting through regulatory details and policy questions that are at the heart of much of planning and zoning work.
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I've also had a chance to work closely with many of the actors in the Euler process and understand how they approach problems from the agency end to the community end to developers, to elect officials.
0:32:09
I hope that my understanding of these technical issues and an understanding of the actors in the process will help the CPC balance the challenges in New York City faces with the real work of building consensus around those questions.
0:32:22
I appreciate change will not come as quickly as any of us would like to many of the challenges New York City faces.
0:32:28
But if I'm fortunate enough to be approved by the council, I wanna highlight a few areas of initial focus at the city planning commission.
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Number 1, I hope to help connect zoning and development policy, particularly at the neighborhood scale with thoughtful capital planning.
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So we're addressing multiple needs and challenges simultaneously.
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Especially in the context of large area wide planning work and rezoning.
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We must think thoughtfully about how to use public subsidy dollars or invest in public space or schools or sewer capacity, particularly in an area of climate change.
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Number 2, I hope to encourage many of the most fortunate neighborhoods in the city to do more than their part to help address the challenges we confront as a city.
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I applaud the speaker and the council here in particular for its work on fair housing.
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And I hope to be a helpful advocate in that regard at the City Planning Commission.
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Number 3, I also hope to do what I can to try to make sure the language process Should I start over again or keep going?
0:33:21
Okay.
0:33:21
Number 3, I also hope to do what I can to make sure the land use process is a trust building 1.
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At the end of the day, the CPC and the council need to make very hard decisions about the future of New York City.
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But it's important along the way we do whatever we can to respond to concerns, to build and grow trust along the process and work together whenever and wherever we possibly can.
0:33:44
I think building trust institutions and processes is genuinely a collective effort, but I'm eager to do my part if I'm lucky enough to be confirmed to the City Plan Commission.
0:33:54
So I'll just wrap up here.
0:33:55
I just wanna wanna thank the president, for president Levine and his team for their confidence in me.
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I wanna thank all of you for your time.
0:34:02
Excited about the opportunity to continue to serve the city, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.