As someone who cares about functional city governance, I urge you to vote NO on Ballot Question 5, which includes a process where the Borough President and Community Boards receive a developer’s project proposal before it is submitted to the Department of City Planning (DCP) and enters official public review.
Development applications are currently placed in front of the Community Boards and put to a non-binding advisory vote. This process has left many community members feeling that there is little room for negotiation. Commissioner James Vacca, for example, has argued that a process is needed to protect Community Boards from being steamrolled by DCP and City Planning Commission (CPC).
On the other side of the issue, DCP commissioner Marisa Lago notes that every project, no matter if DCP or the public supports it, can enter Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) if the application meets the necessary criteria. Adding a formal pre-ULURP, she warns, would not have the desired effect of changing the outcome of an application approval, and community review of a potentially unfinished, inaccurate, or illegal proposal would not be productive.
While sympathetic to feelings of inevitability, I agree that a formal pre-ULURP process is unnecessary and harmful. Simply because the CPC often approves applications does not mean they will pass through the City Council, where that power usually rests with the local council member. The CPC has no planners on it and does not exist to do the bidding of the DCP. If the DCP allows an application to enter ULURP, that does not mean they are putting their stamp of approval on it, and the decision is up to Community Boards, the CPC, and most importantly, the local council member. The Council usually defers to the member representing the location of the project, who is not likely to support the project if constituents and the Community Board oppose it.
New York City faces a severe housing shortage, and involving Community Boards earlier would simply drag out the process and worsen the situation. It would also give even more power to the already influential Community Boards that do not necessarily represent their neighborhoods or the best interests of the city overall. A pre-ULURP process would not engage those who are not already involved, but instead place even more power to vocal Community Board members to block or severely water down projects before others can even learn about the full scope of the project. Better engagement will not happen by making the process more complicated. Community Boards and vocal development opponents will be able to navigate this new system, and would essentially be alerted before anyone else. If the project entered ULURP similar to how it started despite concerns, those same people would still feel they were not listened to, and the conflict would only have been made worse, not solved.
The strict timeframe for ULURP helps projects move forward in a reasonable manner, rather than leaving every project in limbo for years. Adding additional time at the front end of the process would not produce any additional benefits that cannot be achieved through informal methods or within the allowed timeframe. ULURP, in its current state, has high hurdles for housing production, with a low threshold for stopping growth, and a pre-ULURP process would exacerbate these problems. Additionally, a longer process would be more expensive and more confusing, which could actually suppress engagement.
There is time for negotiations and public engagement once the application enters ULURP, where improvements can and should be made. However, the passage of this charter amendment will not improve the process.
This is an edited version of a paper submitted for the Land Use Law course. It is adapted from a summary and analysis of a Charter Revision Commission meeting and expert panel that occurred in the spring of 2019. The Commission eventually proposed five amendments that are now on the ballot, including the one discussed in this paper.