Chair Brooks-Powers Questions DOT on Sidewalk Cafe Review Process

Hi, Commissioner.

Good to see you.

Great to see you.

Um, I'm gonna start with the application process issues, um, just picking up on some of what Chair Menon had mentioned and what we heard from some of the businesses earlier.

Can you walk through DOT's approval process for applicants that submitted a license and revocable consent application?

Specifically, what does the preliminary review from DOT include and how long does it take?

So I'll walk you through for both the sidewalks and the roadways because there are separate processes as set up in the legislation.

Um, the preliminary review process, we receive the application, including the site plan photographs, supporting documents.

We review to make sure we have everything that we need.

We review the site plan to make sure that it is complete and accurate and includes the information that we need to submit it to the community board for proper review.

Um so we look at the site plan itself, we look at the photographs that are submitted, we go onto cyclomedia or street view to get a sense of the lay of the land.

Um, and if there are issues with the site plan, then we work with the applicant to um improve the site plan and get it into good shape.

I think one thing we found early on is that we would send comments back and ask the restaurants to sort of update their site plan themselves and come back to us, and we realized that that was not efficient at all, and so that's when we started up these Zoom meetings, so we could just do everything online to the extent we could and basically redraw it ourselves.

Um, but so that's the the preliminary review process.

Um then we submit the applications to the community board.

The uh this is for sidewalk to the community board, the borough president, and the affected city council member.

The community boards have 40 days to decide whether or not they're gonna hold a public hearing or send comments back to us.

Um, depending on how things go with the community board, we may be required to hold a public hearing at ZOT.

Um so then we either approve the application, approve it with a modification, or deny.

Um, if we approve or approve with modification, then we send it here to the city council.

The council has 45 days to decide whether or not to call the application to a vote.

If it makes it through the city council successfully, then we notify the applicant that it's been approved and we reach out to them to execute the revocable consent agreement, um, send us insurance and then the annual fee, then it comes back to us, we execute, it goes to Mox, and then it goes, it's entered into FMS and goes to the comptroller.

For the roadway cafes, um it starts off the same way with the application submission, the preliminary review.