Q&A
Council member raises concerns about community engagement in zoning proposal
2:31:50
·
3 min
Council Member Lynn C. Schulman expresses concerns about the lack of community engagement in developing the zoning proposal, particularly regarding direct communication with homeowners and residents in affected neighborhoods. She emphasizes the importance of listening to constituents and working directly with them, citing a quote from Deputy Mayor Mira Joshi about learning from past urban planning mistakes.
- Schulman requests information on staff outreach efforts to neighborhoods
- She highlights that constituents claim they first heard about the proposal through civic groups or community boards
- Chair Garodnick acknowledges the importance of community engagement but does not directly address the specific concerns raised
Lynn C. Schulman
2:31:50
Hi, chair, Greg Nick.
2:31:51
Hello.
2:31:52
Commissioner Carry on.
2:31:55
So one thing that I wanna say is that I echo what Chair's Chair Riley, speaker Adams, CHES Alamanca said, about affordable housing, and we are facing an affordability crisis.
2:32:12
I don't think anybody disagrees with any of that.
2:32:16
That said, so we had so the text So what we're trying to change is the text amendments that were made in the 19 the early 19 sixties of zoning.
2:32:26
And so and that's very important to do.
2:32:29
The the concern I have is that we're doing this 1, not every neighborhood is the same.
2:32:36
Second is that I want to go back to chair Riley's questions about the community engagement, not on the community board side.
2:32:46
So I'm going to put that aside for a minute, but going into have like, has anybody from the staff or yourself, Chia Gorodnik, going into the neighborhoods that we're talking about and actually talking to the homeowners, talking to people.
2:33:02
I know you said you had to go back and check that.
2:33:04
We wanna get a list of that.
2:33:06
For the committee.
2:33:07
I'm a sub I'm a member of the sub committee.
2:33:10
So I would like to know that.
2:33:12
My constituents tell me that the first they heard about it was when it became when it came in front of either a civic group or a a community board, and so that's not the entire basis of my constituency.
2:33:26
So and I also wanna say that in planning this, you know, because the devil is in the details and by the way, I wanna I wanna tell you that I realized how much work went into this and how many years and everything else.
2:33:42
But we're also talking to you from the basis of my constituents, and I know we need to I know there are a lot of things that we need to do.
2:33:49
So I also want to say that not only am I a proponent of affordable housing, but I actually brought in the 1st affordable, deeply affordable housing development in my district district 29 in Queens when I got elected.
2:34:03
So and that was very important to me.
2:34:05
But that said, you know, I'm gonna quote, so deputy mayor Mira Joshi had an op ed a few days ago about the Quest Bank's expressway because as we know, Robert Moses, when he was in his heyday, everybody thought, It was a panacea, and he did a he did a lot of good things, but there were a lot of consequences to it.
2:34:25
When we changed this text amendment, this is gonna be a text amendment that's gonna go for another 50, maybe a 100 years.
2:34:31
It's gonna be a long time before it gets changed.
2:34:34
So we have to do it right.
2:34:35
And her quote in the in the op ed is that our work starts with the pivotal step.
2:34:42
He, meaning Robert Moses, Novotov, which is listening to the constituents and working directly with them.
2:34:48
So that's something that I think is very important, and I think that has been a little bit lacking.
2:34:55
And I also so I have some questions.
