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Q&A
Council Member Brewer inquires about community board planning
1:12:04
ยท
146 sec
Council Member Gale A. Brewer asks Commissioner Leah Goodridge about the potential for community boards to engage in local planning, referencing past successful initiatives. Goodridge responds positively, emphasizing the importance of community board input in the city planning process.
- Brewer suggests revisiting the practice of community boards conducting their own planning, citing a successful example from Community Board 4.
- Goodridge confirms the helpfulness of such input, explaining how community board recommendations often flag important local issues for commissioners.
- The commissioner highlights the value of community board insights in providing detailed local context that may not be immediately apparent to city planners.
Gale A. Brewer
1:12:04
Thank you very much.
1:12:04
I certainly agree with everything that you said.
1:12:07
One question I would have about, as the chair said, about the, EULRP plan would be years ago I've been around for a long time, and the one ninety seven a plan used to work.
1:12:16
Community boards would do their own planning.
1:12:18
Community board four did an excellent one.
1:12:21
They went to every single lot in board four and determined what should happen there.
1:12:27
Again, getting people city planning and everyone else to listen to that plan is a problem.
1:12:32
But it would seem to me that one suggestion we we should go back to that and have the community boards with enough staff be able to do some planning on their own.
1:12:41
Would that be something that you would think would be helpful to you as a commissioner?
Leah Goodridge
1:12:45
It would be very helpful.
1:12:47
One of the things I just to provide some insight as a commissioner, we get so many proposals that oftentimes the thing that red flags commissioners to say, oh, this is a proposal that you know this is a bit different is when we see a community board has voted no.
1:13:07
So you know we have the borough president's recommendations but sometimes a community board has voted no, the borough president has voted yes, and so we say well what's going on here?
1:13:16
Or sometimes both have voted no, and so we take a look and we say what's going on here?
1:13:22
So the community board informs a lot of commissioners because sometimes you know even as a native New Yorker we might we might not have the opportunity to go into every single neighborhood to see what's happening, so they're also describing oftentimes in their assessment, you know, for example, I I have been to Bay Ridge quite a bit but I haven't been in a number of years and we've had proposals where community boards will explain there's a real parking situation and so if we don't if you have this big apartment building, let me describe the fact that we already it can take an hour to move with three blocks because it's so congested.
1:14:05
So just having that visual as a commissioner for me and someone from the community from the community board, those can be helpful.
1:14:13
So I can attest to the fact that I rely a lot on community boards to inform specific neighborhoods and what's happening in ways that maybe an individual commissioner might not have gone to the neighborhood in a bit, and for many other commissioners, it is incredibly helpful and insightful.