Brooklyn community stops tweeding effort

Interesting mini-scandal involving a Brooklyn Community Board, as reported by Brooklyn Daily:

Locals showed up in droves with nostrils flaring two weeks ago protesting the board’s request urging the city to look at changing the age-old zoning of Marine Park and Mill Island to allow developers to put up larger buildings. Marine Parkers were up in arms over the submission, charging the neighborhood can’t handle an influx of people or construction and is already combatting zone-busting developers on several blocks.

This paper first reported the explosive item in the CB18 budget request earlier this month in a story that Turano denounced with the Trumpian epithet of “fake news,” despite being unable to cite any factual errors. Turano insisted there was no reason for people to get so upset since there was no concrete upzoning plan yet— it was merely a request she had actually been floating for years, she said.

“It’s been in the budget for several years,” said Turano.

Indeed, CB18 slipped the item into the budget — “Study land use and zoning to better match current use or future neighborhood needs,” specifically the areas of Mill Island and Marine Park — for the first time in December 2015, and then every year since, according to city records.

The request also lists three local supporters alongside — Councilman Alan Maisel (D–Marine Park), who represents the vast majority of the two neighborhoods, Councilman Jumaane Williams (D–Flatbush), who represents a sliver of the community, and the Marine Park Civic Association.

But both Maisel and the civic group’s president Bob Tracey said they were never consulted about it. In fact, neither of them had any idea the rezoning request even existed, let alone that they were listed as supporters.