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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Sebastian Hallum Clark, Member of Manhattan Community Board 8, on ULURP and election reform
3:17:08
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147 sec
Sebastian Hallum Clark, a member of Manhattan Community Board 8 (speaking personally), advocates for streamlining the ULURP review process and election reforms.
For housing, he suggests combining community board and borough president review stages and giving more weight to citywide/borough-wide elected officials over individual council members to overcome member deference, aiming to build more homes faster. For elections, he supports moving municipal elections to even years and replacing party primaries with a single open ranked-choice general election to combat voter fatigue from frequent elections and make every vote count in a single consequential election.
- Advocates for streamlining the ULURP process by combining review stages (community board and borough president) and reducing individual council member deference.
- Supports moving municipal elections to even-numbered years to address voter fatigue and low turnout.
- Proposes replacing party primaries with a single open ranked-choice general election.
Sebastian Hallum Clark
3:17:08
Hi.
3:17:08
Good evening.
3:17:09
My name's Sebastian, and I live here on the Upper East Side.
3:17:13
I'm a member of Manhattan Community Board eight, but tonight I'm speaking just on my own behalf and not as a representative of the board.
3:17:22
Tonight, I'd like to build on what we've been hearing about housing and democracy.
3:17:27
On housing, I think we need to streamline the EULIP review process so we can build more homes and make housing cheaper.
3:17:36
On streamlined reviews, currently, we know that so many of the housing developments have to be separately reviewed by a community board, a borough president, the planning commission, the city council, and then the mayor.
3:17:50
And we know this is super slow and expensive.
3:17:53
But every day that we could shave off those reviews is a day closer we can get to solving our housing emergency.
3:18:01
And so to build more homes, we need to fast track as many housing projects as we can, create one stop zoning administrative reviews, and compress that ULUEP review process as much as possible.
3:18:15
I'd suggest we combine the community board and borough president review stages and give more weight to the citywide and borough wide elected officials over the views of individual city council members as a way to try to overcome those member deference concerns.
3:18:32
So let's streamline the reviews to build more homes and make housing cheaper.
3:18:37
On elections, I know we all want a robust democratic process where every New Yorker's voice can be heard.
3:18:44
The problem is the high frequency of elections means that we get voter fatigue and low turnout.
3:18:51
I've counted, and New Yorkers have been summoned to the polls, at least in my area, 10 times in the past four years, which is just way too much voting.
3:19:01
To fix this, I fully support their proposals to move the municipal elections to even years and then to replace party primaries with a single open ranked choice general election.
3:19:14
Then with a single consequential trip to the polls every four years, every New Yorker can have their say about who runs our city.
3:19:23
So with this charter revision, let's try to streamline our elections and make every vote count.
3:19:28
And on housing, let's streamline the process to build more homes and make housing cheaper.
3:19:34
Thank you.