CM Banks round 2: Mangin on evolution of views and BSA transparency vision

Thank you for the question.

I fully expect that applicants, potential applicants, will come to the BSA and say, I want to do this.

the BSA fast track, look at my affordable housing development.

It's a 10-story building in a two-family district.

What could be better than all this affordable housing?

And if in the opinion of the board and the staff, it would not be able to meet a neighborhood character finding, then we would inform that applicant before they start the process.

And so that's an instance where, sure, you might have a planning rationale for that project in that particular location, but if it wouldn't be able to meet the neighborhood character finding, then we will send it on its way.

We'll send them over to DCP.

Looking back across that record, is there any significant positions you've taken on housing development or community control that you now believe you got wrong?

I would have to think about that and get back to you, Council Member.

Come back.

Nothing springs to mind at this moment.

Okay.

And can you kind of explain, like, what experience taught you, you know, your experiences that John Madgen, who wrote the Exclusionary Zoning,

article at that time, what are the things you think you didn't understand that's different now?

Well, I didn't have as extensive on the ground experience

with council, with neighborhoods around the city that I did at the time that I wrote that article.

My first job out of law school, which was prior to writing that article, was with neighborhood groups across the city, and I got to form a number of relationships with many of those groups in all five boroughs.

But of course, I've learned an immense amount about how land use decision-making processes work, and in particular, you know, the politics behind them, the way

that applications can get to yes that I didn't know at that time.

So I agree that the article wasn't about New York, but it didn't have the sort of textured understanding of a lot of these on the ground issues that 12 years at City Planning has helped me to get.

Thank you for that.

When it comes to your vision for the BSA, you said your goal is to make the BSA more open, transparent, and understandable.

What specifically would you change?

When it comes to public notice, hearing times, application materials, online records, community outreach, language access, or something else.

How should this council measure whether you succeed or successful?

Again, I would be very keen to make a website that's more accessible to a broader range of potential participants in the process.

I would want to make hearings more inviting by more clearly flag posting what's happening.

At a given meeting and what the different applications are about.

I'm a lawyer, and so I'm keenly aware of how alienating some of that legal language can be.

And so, again, dating back to some of my earliest work in land use and use.

I've got my little guidebooks here where I tried to break down really complicated things like what is ULERP, what is zoning, what is affordable housing at like an eighth grade level.

So it was really tough sometimes to take the technical legal language governing zoning or ULERP and

put it in a way that, you know, folks who don't have that background could understand.

And so it's been a commitment of mine throughout the process, and I would look forward to doing that at BSA as well.