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Q&A
Former Council Member Velasquez discusses balancing community input and housing needs in charter reform
0:35:40
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162 sec
Chair Richard R. Buery Jr. asks former Council Member Marjorie Velasquez for specific charter reform ideas to balance genuine community input with the urgent need for housing, aiming to prevent the kind of negative experiences she endured.
Velasquez suggests focusing on community boards, advocating for reviews of their effectiveness and demographic representation, increased accessibility and education for residents about the boards' role, and ensuring they serve as tools for broad community engagement rather than weapons for a vocal minority.
- Velasquez recommends evaluating community board effectiveness, particularly regarding demographic representation and accessibility.
- Enhancing education and awareness about community boards is crucial for broader participation.
- Efforts should be made to ensure community boards genuinely reflect and engage the entire community, not just select groups.
Richard R. Buery Jr.
0:35:40
Thank you both for incredibly powerful testimony.
0:35:45
And a question for you, Council Member Velasquez.
0:35:50
And first of all, again, thank you for your bravery and your leadership.
0:35:54
In some ways, I think both of you are describing a central challenge that is coming up, the need to balance the ability of communities to have some say in the direction and development of the community, particularly in a city where not every community has historically been given voice over the direction of their community, and balancing that against the need to unleash the power and potential that comes from having a supply that is adequate to meet the need of our city, particularly those who are too often excluded from the economic mainstream.
0:36:27
And I'm curious, particularly from your seat, how you would rebalance those issues in the charter.
0:36:34
Are there particular recommendations that you would make that would prevent the experience that you went through, but that would also allow local communities to have appropriate voice in how development happened in their neighborhoods?
Marjorie Velasquez
0:36:54
I've given it a lot of thought.
0:36:56
Right?
0:36:57
Certainly, the power is going back to the community board and having those open conversations.
0:37:04
And, unfortunately, community boards changing the different pieces in within the community boards has been historically a situation.
0:37:13
Now with the term limits in community boards, you do have access.
0:37:17
So I'd say one recommendation is reviewing that and seeing the effectiveness of that.
0:37:22
Do the community boards actively represent the demographics of the community it represents?
0:37:28
It's one of them in working with the local borough presidents and the council members to see how diverse that is, and are we really including all the different voices when we're talking about those community groups.
0:37:39
And making community boards more accessible to the local communities, understanding, educating, and education and awareness of that is the first step, because we have tools.
0:37:50
And, unfortunately, folks have, used these tools that should be engaging with the community as weapons and as weapons of deficiveness, fear mongering.
0:38:00
And so taking that power away and actually going back into the community and telling them and reminding them of their full power, especially those that have just been left out of the equation because of not being aware of it and certainly not having time to participate.
0:38:15
So meeting folks where they're at, and I think we should really delve into that a little bit better.
Richard R. Buery Jr.
0:38:21
Thank you.