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Q&A
Council Member Restler questions OTI on current community engagement practices
1:54:38
·
3 min
Council Member Restler engages in a detailed questioning of Brett Sikoff from OTI about the extent of their community engagement for 5G tower installations. The discussion reveals disagreements about what constitutes adequate engagement.
- Sikoff defends OTI's practices, mentioning notifications to council members, community boards, and borough presidents
- Restler argues that these notifications are insufficient, especially without direct communication to affected property owners
- The council member expresses frustration with OTI's approach, comparing it unfavorably to other city agencies' engagement processes
Lincoln Restler
1:54:38
Emailed the community board, you emailed my office, and that was the extent of your community engagement.
1:54:41
Two one off emails, and no other communication, and no other and no conversations transpired whatsoever about this sighting.
1:54:47
Is that correct?
Brett Sikoff
1:54:48
So there's notifications that are sent to every council member in whose district
Lincoln Restler
1:54:52
the sorry.
Brett Sikoff
1:54:53
This was
Lincoln Restler
1:54:53
a yes or no question.
1:54:54
The extent of the community engagement that you all did for this siting, as an example, just picking this site as an example, was one email to me and one email to the community board, no other communication, no other conversation, no other community engagement whatsoever.
1:55:07
Yes or no?
1:55:08
No.
1:55:09
Okay, what else did you do?
Brett Sikoff
1:55:10
There was also a letter that's sent out to the borough president, and I'm not sure if there's a bid in that area, but it was sent out to the borough president's office, all with an effort to Okay.
Lincoln Restler
1:55:20
So you sent three emails to us, me, the borough president, the community board, and that was the extent of the community engagement about the installation of a 30 plus foot tower directly in front of somebody's property.
1:55:33
That inherently means that my job is to raise the alarm, sound and flag concerns and impose, right, and make noise about every potential sighting so that people in my community are aware and organized.
1:55:46
I don't want to make your life impossible, but if you're not going to talk to the property owners, the people that are most impacted by a sighting, then I'm going to have to pursue legislation to impose a much more meaningful community engagement I've worked on citing human service facilities and sightings of all kinds of different facilities, infrastructure.
1:56:06
Some of it's welcome, some of it's not welcomed when I've worked in the office of the mayor.
1:56:10
And never have I encountered a process that is so completely inconsiderate and lacking as what you all do.
1:56:18
Citi Bike.
1:56:19
Citi Bike, which is a private opera privately operated entity.
1:56:23
DOT talks to every single property owner whenever they're putting a dock into a potential site.
1:56:28
Sometimes they listen to what the private property owner's concerns are, sometimes they but they talk to them.
1:56:33
Why do you not think OTI needs to talk to the property owners that are directly impacted?
1:56:37
Why is that not your job?
Brett Sikoff
1:56:38
We've had extensive engagement with property owners, with with concerned residents at community board meetings, myself, my colleagues, the the franchisee have attended countless council member, countless community board meetings, meetings with individual members to talk about specific sites.
Lincoln Restler
1:56:54
The community board or the council member sounds an alarm and makes a lot of noise and gets everybody worked up and opposed.
1:57:00
So instead of you taking the responsibility to constructively thoughtfully have conversation and engage the stakeholders who are directly impacted, you're saying it's up to the council member to scream and shout and cause issues, or it won't happen at all.
Brett Sikoff
1:57:13
Well, in in those cases I described, it wasn't a case of anyone screaming and shouting.
1:57:17
It was we send a letter, they communicate, they disseminate it to their their constituents, they say, hey, we'd like to have more, you know, we have questions.
1:57:24
Who can we talk to?
1:57:25
They call us up, say, can you come to a community board meeting?
1:57:27
And we sit there for hours on weeknights
Lincoln Restler
1:57:29
Yeah.
Brett Sikoff
1:57:29
Addressing questions and been in
Lincoln Restler
1:57:31
community board meetings.
1:57:32
I I've been I've served on community boards.
1:57:34
I attend every single community board meeting that in the council district I represent every single month.
1:57:38
I know what community boards are like.
1:57:39
But what I don't what I don't understand, like genuinely don't understand, is how a city agency could be so completely inconsiderate and completely lacking in take doing any meaningful community engagement around a process unless you're absolutely forced to.
1:57:54
That is a failure.