"Everything you see today, we've gathered that community input and we put on paper. We want to make downtown come alive again. We have such a beautiful waterfront. This should be part of it."
During a virtual town hall meeting on Monday, several city officials, including Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and council members from the Queens delegation, explained to more than 100 attendees that the proposals would effectively remove community voices from decisions about new development and housing projects. "They're a false choice," the council speaker said of the proposals. "These proposals are going to weaken our ability to ensure true affordable housing and neighborhoods."
We have to live with it forever, so I felt like maybe we should give input on what we like and do not like. Maybe the wolf will pull off her head and it will actually be grandma. That's not going to happen, but I like to grab onto some optimism.
Removing the Council from these processes would undermine accountability, silence local voices, and ultimately lead to worse outcomes for the very communities we all seek to serve.
They [postponed] it because they recognize they don't have the support... a few more weeks is not enough time to meaningfully alter a plan that insists on misunderstanding the opportunity in front of us.
"Just Stop Oil protesters would get jail time for causing this kind of chaos. Objections by local people have been brushed aside, their concerns dismissed as culture war bigotry."