Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
TESTIMONY
Testimony by Antonio Reynoso, Brooklyn Borough President on mandating comprehensive planning
0:58:40
·
5 min
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso advocates for mandating citywide comprehensive planning in the charter, criticizing past opposition from the Department of City Planning. He argues such planning, linked to capital budgets and needs assessments, would bring transparency, address inequities, facilitate easier development, and separate infrastructure debates from housing approvals.
- Reynoso praises the current commission's potential and urges courage for bold change.
- He believes comprehensive planning addresses quality of life issues beyond housing (healthcare, transit, jobs, environment, equity).
- A charter mandate for a 10-year plan is needed, though specifics can be worked out later.
- He stresses this is not a stalling tactic and development should continue during planning.
- Comprehensive planning can help end the 'YIMBY NIMBY doom loop'.
Antonio Reynoso
0:58:40
First, I just wanna say the testimony by DCP here is a breath of fresh air.
0:58:46
It's, the first time that I felt like the department of city planning actually wants to plan.
0:58:53
I just feel in its history, and this is it's gonna seem like a slight, and it might be.
0:58:57
I'm perfectly fine with that.
0:58:58
In its history, the department of city planning zones, it does not plan, and we fought.
0:59:04
This is the second time I'm sitting in front of a charter revision commission talking about comprehensive planning.
0:59:10
The number one opponents to comprehensive planning, my last goal was the Department of City Planning.
0:59:17
They spent a lot of time and resources advocating to not do comprehensive planning.
0:59:21
And just think about that.
0:59:22
A planning division in the largest, greatest city in all of the world was the number one culprit to the demise of a charter revision opportunity to do comprehensive planning.
0:59:34
So to hear what Howard was saying to me was amazing and unbelievable, and I'm looking forward to working with DCP to make it the place where planners wanna go because they have an opportunity to do something amazing.
0:59:48
And I have to say that because I'm deeply frustrated that we're here, what is five or six years later, having the same conversation and not having the courage to be leaders in that time and hoping that we can be leaders now.
1:00:04
And I wanna say this the last commission was something that I didn't think was of value to the city of New York.
1:00:11
Didn't think it had any real purpose.
1:00:13
Not this one.
1:00:14
This is just looking at you all.
1:00:17
My experience with you all.
1:00:18
This is real.
1:00:19
You guys are are real high highly intelligent people that know more about this stuff than most of the people that are gonna speak to you.
1:00:28
And I'm looking forward to you having the courage to do something that is difficult, but actually get something done.
1:00:37
Because what we've lost in New York is the courage to be great.
1:00:42
Like, the fear holds us back from doing amazing things, and that's not who New York ever was.
1:00:48
We build amazing bridges.
1:00:50
We set the trend.
1:00:52
Now we're now we're scared to do difficult things because of the backlash, I guess, on social media or whatever it is.
1:00:58
But we should have the the courage to do it.
1:01:00
So now I'm gonna read my parts of my statement that I think are valuable.
1:01:03
I don't wanna go back to the board of estimates even though that would be greatly beneficial to me.
1:01:07
But, the fact that we're even having these conversations, that's exactly what we should be doing.
1:01:13
So thank you so much for having me here.
1:01:16
As you know, I'm the president of the greatest borough in the state of New York, which is Brooklyn, and I'm happy to have you all here at the best borough, talking about one of my favorite issues, which is housing and land use.
1:01:26
You all know I was a big supporter of the city Of Yes, for housing opportunity because I believe deeply that every neighborhood in the city needs to do its part to solve our housing price our housing crisis.
1:01:37
And right now, even with the city of Yes, that is not happening.
1:01:40
My biggest criticism was that the city of Yes didn't go far enough.
1:01:44
So now I'm here to ask you to take the next step, which is citywide comprehensive planning.
1:01:50
I'm going to go to the bottom, and I hope we can get into a bit of a conversation.
1:01:54
But, while housing growth is the most critical part of this, the speaker's fair housing framework is an example of a good start.
1:02:02
I wanna be clear that comprehensive planning goes beyond housing to take a comprehensive look at how decisions influence quality of life.
1:02:09
For example, the comprehensive plan for Brooklyn examines the relationships between land use and access to housing, health care, and transportation options, jobs, community service services, accessibility, and healthy and resilient environment.
1:02:21
In each of these areas, we see stark contrast neighborhood by neighborhood in metrics such as life expectancy, school performance, access to parks and open space, the reach of transportation options, the safety of our streets, the air quality, and the prevalence of health health challenges such as diabetes, asthma, maternal mortality, and morbidity.
1:02:41
We're all frustrated by how fault line use has become in New York City.
1:02:45
We think we need to think beyond ULURP as being one of the only mechanisms for communities to engage in planning development conversations.
1:02:52
That starts with a comprehensive citywide needs assessment that captures the real needs for facing communities.
1:02:57
We need to understand that our vision for a well planned city requires and then follow-up follow that up with ten year capital plan to prioritize our investments in response to communities' priorities with a focus on addressing long standing needs in underserved neighborhoods and preparing for climate change.
1:03:13
This transparent, inclusive vision for how land use decisions are made will actually make it easier for development to happen.
1:03:20
This commission can start by adding a mandate to the New York City charter to create a comprehensive plan every ten years.
1:03:26
We can work out the mechanisms in conversation with the next administration and the city council, but for now, we need to man a mandate to move this idea forward.
1:03:34
We are one of the only major cities that doesn't have a comprehensive plan to guide growth and development.
1:03:38
And when voters learn that, they will be excited for us to catch up with the rest of the world.
1:03:42
Finally, I wanna be clear that I have no intention of asking for development to stop while they we create this plan.
1:03:48
This is not a stalling tack tactic.
1:03:50
It is an opportunity for an improved process that would help us end the Yimbi Nimbi doom loop and actually deliver for New Yorkers.
1:03:58
Thank you so much.