City Of Yes time again

That process is running through Queens this week, as my office will be hosting a public hearing on City of Yes for Housing Opportunity on Thursday at 10am at Borough Hall — all are welcome to come testify.

You can also testify via Zoom by clicking here: https://t.co/UQaGWeFruj https://t.co/ehfQ1BvSF7

— Queens Borough President Donovan Richards (@QnsBPRichards) August 5, 2024

QBP Donnie Richards (and all the yimby moles in his staff) decided to have his City of Yes public hearing at 10 a.m. when most of his constituents who are homeonwers like him will be at work. But you can make it on zoom via this link. Hope it gets lit up like the last one with NYC Planing Dirty Dan Garodnick. Maybe Don will allow clapping at this one.

U.S. Congress comes to the "Safest Big City" to hear true crime stories

Prez FDNY Union: "Lives in danger" from the road sheds

 Dear Neighbor and Allied Groups,

Below, please watch the video of Andrew Ansboro, President of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, powerful statement on the road bed dining sheds. He clearly states "lives in danger".  You can read his statement here.

Tomorrow will be Mayor Adams' and City Council's first step to making Open Restaurant permanent. The torpedoing of this legislation is nothing shocking. The Hospitality Alliance and Open Plans New York have been lobbying hard for this to happen. But, tomorrow will be one of the only chances for the public to push back.

Please take to time to provide testimony tomorrow on Zoom or via written testimony (by Thurs 11:59 PM). The how-to-do-this is laid out below. Or, click here.    If the text amendment passes, our streets will forever be altered, and our quality of life upended. This is not hyperbolic. Department of Transportation will be granted enormous amounts of power and latitude to dictate the future of our streets. City Council is not only ceding our lands to one business sector and landlords but diminishing their checks and balances over DOT. The amendments (and there are quite a few scheduled) on the table tomorrow will allow DOT full rule-making authority with very little oversight. 

**Sign up anyway just in case (as opposed to Open Restaurant amendment)  with a backup plan to submit written testimony by the deadline (or do both). Tomorrow will be a long day of testimony. Over 100 people have registered so far, but we fear it is mostly Hospitality and Open Plans NY members and supporters. So help stack the deck our way!

Check this out too:

Today's Good Read (comment sections are pile-on from real estate, hospitality, and bike fanatics)
Potential for Permanent Crisis as Protests Continue over Open Restaurants

Mayor Adams literally broke bread with Andrew Rigie of the Hospitality Alliance on Sunday along with the two City Council co-chairs ahead of tomorrow's hearing.

Onward and thank you!

 

HOW TO TESTIFY OR SUBMIT WRITTEN TESTIMONY

Public testimony will begin immediately following the testimony of any invited experts and will be limited to two minutes per person to allow as many people as possible to present their views.

Members of the public can sign up to testify via Zoom Web or phone at least 24 hours in advance of the hearing. Translators are available, see sign-up ASAP. Please check your SPAM for a confirmation email.  *SKIP THE UPLOAD TESTIMONY QUESTION PORTAL OPEN NOW!

The hearing will be webcast live at https://council.nyc.gov/livestream. (See Virtual Room 1.) Submit written testimony to the Council by uploading it to https://council.nyc.gov/testify or by emailing it directly to testimony@council.nyc.gov. Deadline is 72 hours after the hearing has been adjourned. CLICK the arrow for the CHEAT SHEET that includes how to log-in and attend links, abstract of the legislation, and food for thought. https://bit.ly/cheat-sheet-textamendment-hearing

 

 

Caption Adams At An Italian Open Restaurant

 

Tell NYC Council how you feel about the shanties and your former parking spaces.

Assembly holding hearing on ADUs tomorrow

We're about to get royally f*cked.

Community members rip the City Council a new one

We've come to the end of our coverage of the disastrous Planning Together hearing from 2/23. Now, the public has a chance to speak. Reps of Community Boards, neighborhood organizations and a planning expert weigh in, and they don't hold back. There are allegations of chicanery and racism and it's oh, so enjoyable. A lot of people out there are paying attention, and that's a good thing.

How to Talk Out Both Sides of Your Mouth, by Adrienne Adams

If you made it to the end of the video posted yesterday, you witnessed Adrienne Adams do a song and dance over how great Planning Together is and how much more input community boards will supposedly get in the land use process should the bill be passed into law. The video above is bookmarked to where she adamantly asserts this. Then at the end of the hearing, after community board representatives and constituents trashed the bill, her demeanor did a 180.

"Somebody said you didn't hear from your elected officials. We wanted the narrative to go around. So that was very intentional."
That is simply the biggest bunch of malarkey EVER. Elected officials don't withhold information from their constituents in order to further the conversation, they do it to squelch opposition. You were given marching orders to keep mum.

"We wanted to make sure that this legislation was scrutinized from A to Z."
You wanted to slip this bill past the goalie so you didn't bother to notify the public or community boards that it was taking place and they had to find out from a leaked email to council members.

"If we don't have the voice of the people behind this as you all noticed, if you look at who is sponsoring this legislation and I believe it's only one person from Queens on this bill, there's a reason for that as well."
Well, finally a bit of truth!

Adrienne Adams wants to be the next Speaker of the City Council, so she is trying to be a good foot soldier for county and for REBNY. But her constituents are not stupid, so she has to try to play both sides. And guess what? With Ruben Wills back in the picture, she now has to raise money for re-election, nevermind worry about the speaker's race. Calling Marisa Lago "duplicitous" while talking out both sides of your mouth? Hey pot, the kettle's calling.

CoJo in a tizzy over perceived bill "misinterpretation"

By this point during the Planning Together hearing, Corey Johnson had grown very frustrated at how cool, calm and collected Marisa Lago was under fire. You can tell because he jumps in the middle of her answering Adrienne Adams' question and goes on a diatribe. Not once, but twice!

If this bill was so great, it wouldn't be misinterpreted.

It's a bit paternalistic for carpetbagging white men like Corey (Massachusetts) and Brad Lander (Missouri) to be informing everyone else that they know exactly what's in their best interest and it involves a bill they simply must pass in their waning days in the Council while they are campaigning for higher office.

Check out Adams' attitude toward the end as well. Tomorrow, we'll delve further into her unenviable predicament. It involves a tweeding dilemma.

Alpha-male Brad Lander loses his shit during Planning Together hearing

Brad Lander's toxic masculinity was on full display at the Planning Together City Council hearing yesterday as he ranted and raved and laced into City Planning Director Marisa Lago for tesifying against the bill and giving answers to questions that he didn't like.

You will notice that he uses imagery of "the frog in the boiling pot" 8 times and mentions the "toxic land use process" 5 times. This is very well rehearsed phony outrage.

"All that charter revision did was a 30-day email in advance of a planning process..."
As compared to the City Council not notifying anyone prior to the hearing you are participating in?

"There's no way that communities are going to show up with their hands raised and say 'We'd like to do our fair share, let's engage in planning.'"
That's exactly what was done during the Bloomberg years using the current rezoning process - until Bill de Blasio imposed his will and cut the community out of the picture.

"If you're just going to sit here and criticize this proposal..."
Well yeah, it's YOUR legislation that the hearing is about, so everyone is going to testify about its merits.

"I don't get to ask anymore questions, but you can still go ahead and continue."
Then as she is answering, he interrupts and asks more questions.

So we have an overbearing white guy who wants to be Comptroller berating a very polite and professional and distinguished senior Hispanic female. Bad optics, Brad. And here we thought people from the Midwest were respectful. How about instead of running for Comptroller, you go back to St. Louis and mess with their land use?

Lander is so heated and stupid he doesn't even (or refuses to) see the irony while he repeatedly talks about toxic land use process when the zoning he's so desperate to get for his real estate overlords is the superfund site in Gowanus.-JQ LLC

Watch Planning Together hearing right here

Popcorn, please!

Team CoJo scrambling to pass his bad development plan

You may recall the post here where Paul Graziano analyzed NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson's "Planning Together" legislation to change the NYC Charter to favor developers and remove community input. This past Monday, Graziano went head to head with Annie Levers, Assistant Deputy Director, New York City Council Office of Strategic Initiatives, at Community Board 8's Land Use Committee. You can watch the debate yourself. It's worth the time invested so you can clearly see what is going on:

The legislation was then voted on and unanimously rejected. Last night, the full board met and it was again unanimously rejected.

Earlier in the day, a rather long-winded and inappropriate email was sent out to Council Members to refute the information presented, which will no doubt result in a deluge of Community Board rejections. (Click to enlarge each segment)

The final insult came when Council Members - but not Community Boards - received word of an official public hearing on the legislation that was hastily scheduled for February 23rd.

So folks, you better get off your keysters and sign the petition in the sidebar and provide testimony at this "public" hearing (that they don't want you to know about), and make it clear to your City Council representatives that they are to vote no on this bill.

Homeless shelter in Glendale has residents and advocates at loggerheads

 

 Queens Eagle

Two days after four homeless men were brutally beaten and killed on the streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown, hundreds of central Queens residents packed a high school auditorium in Middle Village to condemn a planned homeless men’s shelter — and to demonize the New Yorkers who would live there. 

There are legitimate critiques of large-scale homeless shelters and the multi-million dollar city contracts awarded to shelter providers as the city contends with a record-high homeless population and a widening income inequality chasm.

But complex issues and possible solutions went unexamined Monday night at Christ the King High School — in part because speakers who attempted to address them were immediately booed and cursed at. The public hearing was the latest phase in the saga over a proposed 200-bed men’s shelter that the city plans to build inside a vacant warehouse at 78-16 Cooper Ave. in Glendale.

At the beginning of the event, hecklers interrupted a moment of silence for the four men killed while sleeping on the sidewalk early Saturday morning. 

From there, the dialogue devolved into discriminatory denunciations of people, particularly men, who experience homelessness. Roughly 60,000 people, including 21,694 children, slept in a New York City municipal shelter on Oct. 6, according to the Department of Homeless Services’ most recent daily census.

”These homeless men are ‘tranks, lobos and zipheads’ … They’re drug addicts and sexual offenders,” said one woman who quoted a line from “Back to the Future.” “Put them in a separate area away from society. They should be locked away forever and out of sight permanently.”

Another woman went even further.

“I hope someone is going to burn the place down,” she shouted into the microphone.

Mike Papa of the anti-shelter group Glendale Middle Village Coalition criticized the nonprofit organization Westhab, which will receive a lucrative city contract to operate the shelter on Cooper Avenue. He then turned his attention to shelter residents, implying that they are criminals. 

“Homelessness is their business and thanks to Mayor de Blasio, the Department of Correction will supply all the customers that companies like Westhab want,” said Papa, garnering applause from the crowd.

Moments later, the same attendees screamed at a Crystal Wolfe, a local resident who runs a nonprofit providing food for the homeless, when she said that “homelessness is a complex issue that is the result of problems that have been ignored for decades.”

Tousif Ahsan, a member of the Ridgewood Tenants Union, also attempted to speak “in support of our homeless neighbors.”

“Get the [expletive] outta here,” one man screamed. Most of Ahsan’s speech was inaudible amid the jeers.

District 30 Councilmember Robert Holden, whose 2017 victory over incumbent Elizabeth Crowley was driven by anti-shelter sentiment, did not condemn his constituents’ commentary. Instead, he stoked their anger.

City Council members expressing (feigning?) ambivalence about borough tower jails

NY Daily News

City Council members griped Thursday that they’re flying blind as they consider Mayor de Blasio’s plan to replace Rikers Island — which besides costing $8.7 billion would also mark a big change in the city’s approach to criminal justice.

De Blasio administration officials are offering too little information about when and how inmates would be moved from Rikers to the four new jails, in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, said City Councilman Keith Powers (D-Manhattan), who leads the council’s Criminal Justice Committee.

“There are communities here obviously concerned about what the plans are in their district," Powers said before more than 300 people at the first City Council hearing on de Blasio’s plan.

“I think it’s a little unfair for us not to have information about what phasing will be like and what the plan will look like .... We’re here at a land use hearing to talk about this and we don’t have clarity on which of these districts will get the facilities in what order.”

“I think it’s a little unfair for us not to have information about what phasing will be like and what the plan will look like,” said Powers.

Another council member wondered why the plan’s estimated $8.7 billion cost was staying level even though de Blasio administration officials have lowered the new jails’ estimated population from 6,000 to 4,000.

“Now that the population has been reduced to 4,000, what is the updated estimated cost of construction? Is there any particular reason why that figure remains the same (now) that the population has decreased?" asked Council member Adrienne Adams (D-Brooklyn), chair of the Landmarks, Public Sitting, and Maritime Uses subcommittee

 Jamie Torres-Springer, first deputy commissioner of city Department of Design and Construction, had no answer to Adams’ question. “The estimate that informed that budget is based on the place that we’re at,” TorresSpringer said, explaining that the official design has not yet been conceptualized.

As with the tower jails building process, city council is also taking a design-build approach to voting on it.

City Council will hold hearing for four borough tower jails on the first day of school

Queens Eagle

Advocates and opponents of the city’s plan to close Rikers Island and build four new jails will pack City Hall for the council’s public hearing on the proposal Sept. 5. That’s also the first day of public school for hundreds of thousands of New York City students, and stakeholders say the hearing date could pose a big obstacle to community engagement.

The hearing will take place during a scheduled meeting of the Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses. A City Council spokesperson told the Eagle that it is expected to be the only hearing on the topic. 

“Since the issue of closing Rikers and opening ‘borough-based’ jails is one of the most controversial issues of our time, I’m expecting a very crowded hearing, a very passionate hearing,” said Councilmember Adrienne Adams, the subcommittee’s chair.

“Most importantly, the people who are impacted one way or the other by the city’s jails need to be heard,” Adams continued. “I still believe the communities should have a voice in the decision.”

Some community members and activists say setting the hearing for the first day of school is the latest maneuver to reduce community input in a process that opponents have criticized for lacking transparency.

“Why would you push the calendar for that week with that schedule?” said Justin Pollock, a resident of Boerum Hill who lives near the site of the proposed 395-foot facility in Brooklyn. “It adds to the disrespect that this process has had for the general public.”

No New Jails organizer Kei Williams, a jail plan opponent, said the “monumental decision” before the council necessitates multiple public hearings on dates that are more convenient than the hectic first day of school. 

The council hearing will also take place just two days after the City Planning Commission casts its binding vote on the plan Sept. 3, the deadline established by the city’s Universal Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP. If the CPC votes against the land-use application, it would not proceed to the council, but that is considered unlikely. 

The city’s plan calls for building a new 1,150-bed jail in every borough except Staten Island by 2026, and depends on the city’s ability to reduce the jail population to 4,000 detainees from a current total of roughly 6,500. 

The CPC can make modifications to the plan, such as permitting smaller facilities with fewer beds. That means the version that reaches the council could differ from the plan put forth by the city. But the final decisions rest with the council, meaning any changes made to the proposal by CPC could be reversed in the final stage of the land use process.

Williams said the tight time frame could make it difficult to evaluate the impact of any new changes.

“The one public hearing is scheduled … before the public will have had a chance to digest the Planning Commission's vote or comment on further changes to this ever-evolving plan that the City Council will not vote on until October,” Williams said.

Supporters of the city jail plan say community members will find a way to have their voices heard, even if the hearing date seems inconvenient. 

The only way for communities in the targeted areas for these jails can attend is to keep their kids home with a boycott of the first day of school, then show up to this hearing and disrupt this stupid plan.

3 City Council hearings on Amazon

From Metro:

The New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson still has a lot of questions about what exactly will happen when Amazon HQ2 comes to Queens, and in a search for answers, the Council will host three hearings about the closed-door deal that lured the tech giant here.

At the New York City Council Amazon hearings, council members will question city officials and Amazon executives about the negotiations made in the bid for HQ2.

Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, Economic Development Corp. President James Patchett and Amazon executives have been invited to the hearings, Corey’s office told the Wall Street Journal.

There will be three hearings in total, with the first oversight hearing scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 12 at City Hall. That hearing will be through the Economic Development Committee to look at the specific Amazon HQ2 in Queens site and how the deal between the company and the city played out.

City doesn't really care what Blissville (or anyone) thinks

Future Blissville shelter "unlike" others - it's sure to be worse

From LIC Post:

A public meeting will take place in the coming days for the community to discuss the new homeless shelter on Van Dam Street that will occupy the current site of the Fairfield Inn by Marriott.

The meeting will be held on March 15 at St. Raphael’s Church, located at 35-20 Greenpoint Ave., from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The event, organized by the Department of Homeless Services, will deal with the permanent homeless shelter for adult families at 52-34 Van Dam St. expected to open this month.

The location will provide shelter for up to 154 homeless families, and is unlike the nearby temporary shelters at the City View Inn and Best Western that have opened up in recent months.

The Van Dam center, according to the DHS, will be a “high-quality transitional housing facility”, and will offer multiple services to help shelter residents, including health and mental health services, employment counseling, and housing placement assistance.

HA HA HA HA!!!

Ask the people of Greenpoint how this "Home/Life Services" treats their neighborhood and monitors the "activities" of the homeless there. Same promises, shitty result:

Officials Blast New Homeless Shelter Being 'Smuggled' Into Greenpoint

Greenpointers: Clay St. homeless shelter attracting unsavory activity

Troubled Shelter Has To Clean Up Act or Lose Contract, City Says

CB7 takes lengthy holiday vacation

It’s December, and all Queens community boards will hold regular meetings/hearings – all of them, that is, except for Community Board 7. CB7 is skipping the required December meeting & hearing, for at least the third consecutive year.

CB7’s November 2017 meeting agenda states: “The next Community Board Regular Meeting & Public Hearing is scheduled for Monday, Jan. 8, 2018.”

New York City Charter § 2800(h) specifies the regular meetings that all community boards are required to hold:

“Except during the months of July and August, each community board shall meet at least once each month within the community district and conduct at least one public hearing each month. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a community board shall be required to meet for purposes of reviewing the scope or design of a capital project located within such community board's district when such scope or design is presented to the community board. Such review shall be completed within thirty days after receipt of such scope or design. Each board shall give adequate public notice of its meetings and hearings and shall make such meetings and hearings available for broadcasting and cablecasting. At each public meeting, the board shall set aside time to hear from the public. The borough president shall provide each board with a meeting place if requested by the board.”

A monthly meeting/hearing is required each month “except during the months of July and August” – and this requirement holds, even if a particular community board has no rezoning or other application to evaluate during December, because among the purposes of meeting are to “set aside time to hear from the public.”

Online information posted by Queens community boards, and telephone calls to boards that haven’t posted online information, confirm that every Queens community board – other than CB7 – will hold meetings/hearings during December 2017, fulfilling their legal obligations under the City Charter:

CB1: December 20
CB2: December 7
CB3: December 21
CB4: December 19
CB5: December 13
CB6: December 13
CB7: NO DECEMBER MEETING
CB8: December 13
CB9: December 12
CB10: December 7
CB11: December 4
CB12: December 13
CB13: December 11
CB14: December 12

And this has apparently gone on for multiple years, not just this year. Online collections of CB7 meeting agendas and minutes contain none for December 2015 or December 2016, indicating that CB7 held no December meetings/hearings during those years, in addition to 2017. Each community board receives a budget of City taxpayer funds, and in exchange for those funds, each must perform certain services – including meeting during December with time set aside to hear from the public. The City Charter specifies a minimum of 10 regular meetings/hearings annually. By failing to meet each December, CB7 is holding only 9 out of the 10 required meetings/hearings – 90 percent of what the City Charter requires. The City Comptroller should be concerned about a lone community board that accepts its entire share of City taxpayer funds (and even requests more), but purposefully skips December meetings and thus routinely delivers only 90 percent of what the City Charter requires.

How has this been allowed and who authorized it?

Melinda?

Both sides heard at Queens hearing on monuments

From PIX11:

The future of New York City’s controversial monuments was the topic of conversation Friday at Queens Borough Hall where for the first time, New Yorkers had a chance to give their two cents.

As many as 800 pieces of art across the five boroughs including a statue of Christopher Columbus in Midtown, are at the center of the debate.

Nearly two dozen residents testified before Mayor de Blasio’s advisory commission on city art, monuments and markers.

From residents who warned that erasing history would be dangerous, to others who called Columbus a “terrorist” — the opinions ran the gamut.

Outside all the talk of history, the turnout for the public testimony was noticeably low with members of the media outnumbering residents.

The midday hearing drew ire from some but the Mayor’s office insists holding a hearing like this in the middle of the day on a weekday, is standard procedure.

Sidewalk shed bill has a hearing

From Crains:

Because it's much costlier to fix a façade than to maintain a shed that devours sidewalk space, blocks sunlight and hurts businesses, and no deadline to remove it, sheds have spread across the city. There are now 8,843—about 200 miles worth—and they pop up any time a building is built or repaired, as Crain's documented in a cover story last year.

Late last year City Councilman Ben Kallos sponsored a bill to stop the scourge and last week a hearing was finally held to discuss it.

His bill would compel landlords to remove sheds—which Kallos called "the house guest that never leaves"—if no work is done on the building for seven days, with exceptions for weather and other issues.

While officials from the de Blasio administration and real estate community agreed at the hearing that sheds are ugly, they insisted Kallos' bill could jeopardize public safety by forcing sheds to come down sooner than they should.