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Q&A
Discussion on streamlining franchise/consent processes and alternatives to ULURP for climate projects
0:23:05
·
3 min
Commissioner Leila Bozorg questions Tiya Gordon about the specific barriers in the franchise and revocable consent processes, with Gordon highlighting the need for simplification for smaller companies and a scalable approach for citywide deployment.
Bozorg then asks Elijah Hutchinson about potential ULURP reforms; Hutchinson notes that ULURP often focuses public debate on narrow technical aspects of larger projects, potentially leading to suboptimal designs or community dissatisfaction, suggesting alternative engagement methods might be better for complex climate infrastructure.
- Gordon seeks simplified franchise processes allowing smaller companies to compete and a mass, repeatable revocable consent process for citywide networks.
- Hutchinson explains ULURP can hinder comprehensive community discussion on large projects like coastal resilience by focusing on limited technical actions.
- He suggests current community engagement methods might be sufficient alternatives to ULURP for gathering input on project design.
- The East Side Coastal Resilience project is cited as an example where ULURP focused on minor aspects (easement acquisition) rather than the overall project impact.
Leila Bozorg
0:23:05
Hi.
0:23:05
Thank you.
0:23:06
Just for clarity, so you're the two parts of the charter or two processes that you've called out is the the franchise authorization and then the revocable consent process.
0:23:17
Is it, with both of those, I know I'm I'm looking forward to reading more detail on your testimony, but is it that these need to be simplified for smaller, you know, companies like yours, or is it about the speed?
0:23:32
And what is it that is the actual barrier
Elijah Hutchinson
0:23:34
to,
Leila Bozorg
0:23:35
the work?
Tiya Gordon
0:23:39
Thank you.
0:23:39
So for the franchise approach, we're looking for a way for the city to utilize a city owned asset to provide a public service.
0:23:49
And right now, for example, we wanna make sure that the look sorry.
0:23:58
The the franchises are simplified so that smaller companies can compete to obtain such an opportunity.
0:24:07
I'm sorry.
0:24:08
I'm just gonna find some more detail for us here.
0:24:11
And then for revocable consent, the approach would be for it to be a mass approach as opposed to a one off, so that would be more easily repeatable across the regions that we needed to deploy in the five boroughs.
Leila Bozorg
0:24:28
Okay.
0:24:28
That's very helpful.
0:24:29
Thanks.
0:24:30
And, Elijah, just curious from your experience in the city on these types of projects you've called out, which are all really great examples of things that really slow down progress that needs to be made that we're behind the curve on.
0:24:44
Is some of your thinking about pulling these things out of ULURP or having just an alternative process within ULURP?
0:24:50
Have you have has your office given thought to that?
Elijah Hutchinson
0:24:52
Yeah.
0:24:53
ULURP itself can be incredibly dissatisfying to the community when we go to them on on on a coastal infrastructure projects.
0:25:02
And it's because I'll give, you know, it's because we will go to the community and say, we're changing the elevation of a street, and that's the only thing as part of the broader coastal resilience project that is actually subject to EULRP.
0:25:19
And so the the public conversation gets set up to comment on specific actions that are very limited in scope to the broader project design, and that in itself creates two problems.
0:25:30
One, you could be designing projects that are suboptimal to avoid ULURP to deliver coastal infrastructure projects, or we have extensive public other engagement processes that exist where we are socializing neighborhood plans, we are going out for communities to get their feedback and collect input on what's happening.
0:25:52
Is that sufficient to inform the project design at the community level versus ULURP?
0:25:59
I don't know, but I can say that people are satisfied with the ULURP process as the means of having conversations about what these coastal infrastructure projects means to communities.
0:26:09
And that's included with, like, East Side coastal resilience, for example.
0:26:12
Lots of contention, lots of conversations, but it wasn't about the trees.
0:26:17
It wasn't about whatever that we went through EULRP.
0:26:19
It was about site acquisition for an easement with ConEd.
0:26:24
And so those things can be it's not the right process, and I think we can do better.