Manhattan Borough President Adds Affordable Housing Focus to Community Board Appointment Process
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine (photo: William Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit)
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine is opening up the annual application process for community boards on Thursday with a new question on the application, asking would-be members about their priorities around housing development in the borough as part of an effort to encourage pro-housing voices in local matters.
New York City’s 59 community boards, 12 of which are in Manhattan, are its most local form of government, playing an advisory role in everything from land use and zoning issues to traffic management and quality of life concerns like trash management. Each board has up to 50 members who serve staggered two-year terms, with 25 members appointed or reappointed every year by the borough president.
Though the work of community boards occurs in the background of New York’s hectic political arena, they tend to occupy outsize real estate when it comes to housing issues. Whether it involves individual developments or large-scale rezonings, community board members are often the loudest voices in the debate as they seek to represent other local residents and advocate for the needs of their neighborhoods. While community board votes are advisory, they are a formal part of the city’s land use review process, ULURP, and they influence decisions made by City Council members, other elected officials, developers, and others. But community boards, especially in wealthier areas, are often known for being unrepresentative of their larger constituencies and, in many cases, opposing new housing development.
With the city experiencing an ongoing and deepening housing crisis, Levine is changing the community board application to ensure that proponents of affordable housing development are well represented in community boards.
“We consider our lack of affordable housing in Manhattan to be a full blown crisis and it's an area where our community boards have real influence,” Levine said in a phone interview. “And we want to add this question because this really is going to be top of the agenda for every board in the next year.”
The new question will ask applicants what they consider important, and to what degree, when evaluating a housing development proposal: the number of residential units, the number of affordable units, open space and community facilities, neighborhood context, and the impact on existing infrastructure and/or schools. Respondents will be able to rank each of those on a scale of five from “not at all important” to “very important.”
“We want to understand people's perspective.” Levine said. “These are nuanced and complicated issues. We formulated the question in a way to draw people out, to show their priorities on what we see as an extremely important topic for all the communities of Manhattan.”
Manhattan, like the rest of the city, is experiencing an acute shortage of affordable housing, as development has failed to keep pace with the city’s growing population. According to the New York Housing Conference’s housing tracker, between 2010 and 2020, only 52,500 units of housing were permitted in the borough as its population increased by 108,378. The city’s annual Housing and Vacancy Survey for 2021 also found that Manhattan had the highest median monthly rent of the boroughs, at $1,898. The lack of affordable housing hits particularly hard for low-income families – overall, roughly 53% of city residents were rent-burdened last year, and 32% were severely rent burdened.
Faced with those dire numbers, Mayor Eric Adams has promised sweeping changes to housing policy and zoning regulations to address the housing crisis. During his winning 2021 campaign he repeatedly pledged to upzone wealthier neighborhoods in Manhattan, in part to bring more affordable housing to high-resource areas of the city.
Levine said he wants to change the narrative on housing development from one focused on hyperlocal projects to a larger borough-wide scope. “We want to make sure that there's a pro-housing perspective represented on boards,” he said. “That doesn't mean we exclude people. We want a diversity of opinion. But we definitely want to strengthen the pro-housing perspective. That doesn't have to exclude neighborhood preservation. Those can be compatible.”
Levine’s predecessor, Gale Brewer, who is now a City Council member for the second time, insisted for years on collecting and reporting more data on community boards than was required by the city charter. Besides demographic information, Manhattan community board applications ask prospective members about their professional background, the type of housing they occupy, whether they have children in school, whether they are immigrants, their participation in local community efforts, and the skills they will bring to the board.
Last year, at Levine’s insistence, the application was updated to add a question about car ownership, a particularly salient issue for Manhattanites given ongoing debates over use of public space in the most mass transit-rich borough, and as the city and state prepare to implement a congestion pricing program south of 61st street.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
City Council Pushes State on Climate Plan, Allocation of Environmental Bond Act Funds
Council Members Lincoln Restler, center, & Jim Gennaro (photo: John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)
The New York City Council is calling on Governor Kathy Hochul, the State Legislature, and other environmental leaders to strongly consider New York City as they plan and implement the next phases of the state’s sweeping climate agenda.
In a resolution adopted Wednesday the Council is urging the state to allocate New York City its "fair share" of funding from the $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act voters approved last month — going as far as to say the city should receive a proportion of bond act spending equal to its share of the state's tax base. A second resolution calls on the state Climate Action Council to draft, and Hochul to implement, a roadmap to help the state meet its ambitious climate goals while addressing a host of considerations, including the city's own environmental targets.
"Unfortunately when it comes to the equitable allocation of funds to New York City's environment and environmental justice communities, the state has been far less than fair to New York City in the past. From the 1996 environmental bond act to the present," said Council Member James Gennaro, who chairs the Council's Committee on Environmental Protection and sponsored the bond act resolution, at a committee hearing ahead of the full-body vote.
"As a former DEC deputy commissioner for New York City sustainability and resiliency from 2014 to 2020, I saw firsthand how New York City got short-changed with regard to critical environmental funding," he said. "That's why I resigned that job to run for Council again. Well I'm back and I intend to advocate for fair share of environmental funding for the city, hence this resolution on the bond act."
The Environmental Bond Act authorizes the state comptroller to issue up to $4.2 billion in general obligation debt for projects related to climate change, flood mitigation, clean water infrastructure, and land conservation. More than a third of the total spending must go to communities that have borne the brunt of environmental impacts, which are predominantly poor constituencies of color that experience higher rates of pollution, among other ills.
The bond act, passed by Hochul and the Legislature to put before voters, is seen as an important step in the state's efforts to adapt to climate change and also achieve carbon emission targets enshrined in the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). The governor and the State Legislature will begin selecting the projects to be funded by the bonding during the budget process next year, though there are a number of requirements included in the act. The money will likely be allocated over years or even decades (a small amount of funds are still being spent from a smaller environmental bond act from 1996, the last such bond act in New York).
According to a spokesperson for Hochul, the governor has convened an inter-agency workgroup to identify funding needs across the state.
"The Administration looks forward to sharing more details shortly and advancing this once-in-a-generation opportunity to safeguard clean drinking water and modernize our infrastructure," the spokesperson wrote in an email to Gotham Gazette in response to the resolutions. "Governor Hochul also recognizes all of the hard and diligent work of the Climate Action Council and looks forward to reviewing the Final Scoping Plan. Once the Scoping Plan is delivered to the Governor, the administration will review and engage with all relevant parties as we continue to work towards our CLCPA goals."
In January, Hochul will release an Executive Budget and State of the State agenda that will shape a great deal of state government activity in 2023.
Gennaro's resolution, which the City Council approved along with several pieces of legislation and commission appointments Wednesday, calls on Hochul to allocate to the city funding raised through bonding "in a manner that is commensurate with the city's contribution to statewide tax revenue."
New York City accounts for close to 43% of the state population and makes up 62% of its tax base, according to the resolution. As the tax revenue generated in the city will be paying off the bulk of the debt service on the bonds, the city should receive the bulk of its spending, Gennaro argued.
"New York City residents are going to pay back most of this $4.2 billion," Gennaro told Gotham Gazette ahead of the hearing vote on the resolutions, which prefaced full Council passage. "We should get something that comes close to fair share."
But New York isn't just the single-largest tax base. It is also home to some of the worst polluters and climate-related public health issues, and its long shorelines make it particularly vulnerable to extreme weather.
"There's only so much you can put in a resolution. You can't write a book on all kinds of history or whatever," Gennaro said of the decision to tie the bond spending to tax revenue in the resolution.
Hochul and the Legislature have broad leeway to spend within four categories: $1.5 billion for climate change mitigation; $1.1 billion for flood risk mitigation; $650 million for water infrastructure; and $650 million for land conservation.
In particular, the climate-change spending, which includes projects like methane reduction and renewable energy and efficiency upgrades, will help the state reach CLCPA goals. Those include reducing carbon emissions by 40% of 1990 levels by the end of the decade and by 85% by 2050. The CLCPA targeted 70% of electricity to be generated by renewable sources by 2030 and 100% by 2040. A total of 40% of spending under CLCPA must go to underserved communities.
The second Council resolution adopted Wednesday calls on the Climate Action Council – a body established through the CLCPA to guide the state's carbon-neutrality efforts – to release a final Scoping Plan that aligns with the city's 2019 Climate Mobilization Act, which set emissions goals for large buildings, one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
"I'm really excited for us to achieve those ambitious [CLCPA] goals but we're waiting for the specifics," said Council Member Lincoln Restler, who sponsored the resolution, at the committee hearing Wednesday.
"Our resolution provides some very clear direction for what our expectations are of the Climate Action Council for how we can boldly reduce our carbon emissions," he said.
At the center of the city's Climate Mobilization Act is Local Law 97, which limits emissions from large buildings, and Local Laws 92 and 94, which require solar and green roofs on new buildings. The resolution passed Wednesday calls for the Scoping Plan to include recommendations for mass building electrification, energy efficiency upgrades, and retrofitting. The recommendations should support the full electrification of all new buildings starting in 2024, the resolution states.
Through the resolution, the Council also calls for "equitable access" to geothermal heat pumps, a moratorium on new and repowered fossil fuel plants, and investments in offshore wind and solar power, battery storage and transmission line upgrades.
The Climate Action Council – which is made up of representatives from numerous state agencies, public authorities, labor unions, and advocacy groups, and co-chaired by the heads of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) (both gubernatorial appointees) – will have its last meeting of the year on December 19, when it is expected to vote on the final scoping plan, according to DEC spokesperson Haley Viccaro. The plan is due January 1.
"The Climate Action Council has been working hard over the last two years to finalize a Scoping Plan that will act as New York’s roadmap to meet our aggressive climate targets and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, while transitioning our economy to one that embraces renewable energy, and ensuring that all communities benefit equitably as part of a just transition," Viccaro wrote in an email to Gotham Gazette in response to the City Council resolution. The plan is "focused on promoting equity and climate justice, ensuring that the state’s climate investments reach communities that have long borne the brunt of pollution for decades," she said.
During her tenure as governor since August 2021, Hochul has announced many clean energy projects that are part of the pathway to meet the CLCPA mandates and will be featured in the Climate Action Council’s final plan. But members of the Council have also been wrestling with many other key issues, including building electrification requirements, funding mechanisms, and others.
[READ: New York City Electeds, Advocates Outline Priorities for State Climate Action Council]
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
City Council Passes Bill Codifying Public Service Corps Program
Council Member Ung, with Speaker Adams (photo: Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit)
The New York City Council on Wednesday passed a bill that would codify the city’s Public Service Corps program, which offers undergraduate and graduate students paid internships at city agencies to introduce them to careers in civil service. The bill, and accompanying legislation, are aimed at recruiting more diverse young people into the city’s workforce.
Intro. 698, sponsored by City Council Member Sandra Ung, a Queens Democrat, would establish into law the Public Service Corps Program, which was first launched in 1966 and is administered by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), which hires and trains city employees. The program offers paid work-study internships and academic internships to qualifying students from both public and private universities. The bill also requires DCAS to try to recruit students from diverse backgrounds for a wide range of city agencies and submit an annual report on the program.
The bill was approved Wednesday by the Council’s Committee on Governmental Operations, which Ung chairs, before heading to a vote by the full City Council that afternoon, where it also passed.
“We should be making every effort we can to recruit the best and brightest students across the five boroughs to work for the City of New York, and that begins by giving them the opportunity to experience working in city government through internships at a broad range of city agencies,” Council Member Ung said in a statement to Gotham Gazette. “My bill to codify the Public Service Corps within the Department of Citywide Administrative Services will allow us to review the city’s recruitment efforts and the effectiveness of the program, including ensuring that we are attracting students from a diverse range of backgrounds. Through the Public Service Corps, we can identify and develop the people that will become the future leaders of this city.”
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has indicated support for the bill. “For more than 50 years, we have successfully managed our own Public Service Corps, and we are committed to working with the City Council to fine tune this bill and introduce a new generation of New Yorkers to careers in civil service,” said Barbara Dannenberg, DCAS’ Deputy Commissioner for Human Capital, at an October 26 hearing on the bill.
According to Dannenberg, roughly two dozen city agencies are currently participating in the program and over the last five years nearly 3,400 interns at various stages of school have worked at agencies through the program. The city’s largest partner in the program is the CUNY system, she said, though she did not provide numbers. When asked, she could not provide exact numbers on demographics of the program but she said interns are majority female, over 60%, and majority non-white, over 70%.
“They may be freshmen, they may be sophomores, they may be folks who are not really sure where they want to be in their career so the city provides these opportunities for them to get this work experience and hopefully it's a wonderfully positive experience that they will want to come to work for the city once they’ve completed their schooling,” she said.
Though thousands of students have received internships through the program, participation plummeted in the 2020-2021 school year, with only about 34 interns availing themselves of the program, Ung noted at that hearing. Dannenberg acknowledged that the dropoff was largely caused by the pandemic and participation has slowly increased, with 89 interns working at agencies in recent months. “[W]e definitely saw a downturn in the number of students who were interested in this program due to the pandemic. I definitely think that that was the largest factor,” she said.
Ung’s bill comes at a time when the city faces a vacancy crisis at city agencies that has hampered many crucial services. With the city workforce down roughly 19,000 full-time employees since 2020, Adams has faced questions about personnel management. The first-year mayor had budgeted for an additional 25,000 employees this fiscal year, an unrealistic number, and has told agencies to eliminate about 4,700 budgeted vacant civilian positions. While Adams has said the move is about right-sizing hiring and carefully managing the city budget, he has yet to announce promised measures to improve city employee retention and recruitment.
“The goal of this bill is to create a pipeline of students from a variety of backgrounds that are ready and able to fill civil service positions upon the completion of their degree,” Ung said at the hearing. “I’m hopeful that this bill…will help fill the many agency job vacancies with a diverse pool of well-qualified employees that may not have traditionally considered civil service careers.”
The Public Service Corps program isn’t the only channel for youth to enter into city government internships, jobs, and civil service careers. DCAS also runs the Urban Fellows Program, a nine-month fellowship where college seniors and recent graduates work in mayoral offices and agencies to learn about and help implement public policy. Additionally, the Department of Youth and Community Development administers the Summer Youth Employment Program, providing youth between the ages of 14 and 24 summer jobs. Under Mayor Adams and the City Council, the program was expanded to 90,000 slots this year, the largest it has ever been.
Along with Ung’s legislation, the Council’s Committee on Civil Service and Labor passed a separate bill on Wednesday, sponsored by Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs that committee, to create a civil service ambassador program. Through the program, the city would conduct education and outreach initiatives on joining the civil service and taking civil service exams.
And, on a separate issue at the Government Operations hearing, the committee then full Council passed another bill sponsored by Ung which will simplify ballot instructions for ranked-choice voting elections and improve the layout of ranked choice ballots.
Note: this article has been updated to reflect that all three bills mentioned were passed by the City Council shortly after this article was first published.
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
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