CM Canasio Q&A: Mangin on community board engagement and neighborhood character

And you talked a lot about community voices and it being paramount.

We know from the process that the community board is one of those pillars.

I am a former community board member for many years, also served as the chair of land use in my community board, a community board.

11 in Manhattan.

And I have been witness to many community public hearings on land use items having zero attendees.

Maybe two people might come out and speak at a public hearing at a community board.

Do you see that as a

approval of a project or lack of engagement of community.

How do you take, how do you see it when you have very little engagement at community board public hearings and how do you plan on

using that in your decision-making process?

Thank you for that question.

It's a very good question.

And back to the conversation I had with the chair around trying to make these institutions like the BSA more open, more transparent, more accessible.

It's absolutely true, as you know from your time on a computing board, that many applications don't rise to the notice of a broader public.

But when they do, you want to make sure that institutions like the BSA or like the community board or like the city planning commission

are there so that people who aren't frequent flyers can understand what's going on and know how to participate.

But I'm asking if you see that if you're receiving an application and the community board report says no testimony from public, how do you view that as, do you,

What actions would you take in that particular moment to say, is this check off community engagement, local voices were heard?

Is there further conversation needs to happen with the community board?

Like, what does that trigger for you?

I mean, in situations like that, I think that the board would rely on the community board to, you know, their representatives of the community.

For many applications, you'll have a lot of public voice, people coming to testify, things that can be reflected in the record.

In other situations, as we've all seen, that doesn't happen.

And in that instance, I would hope that the community board would provide their opinion on it so that the BSA could take that into consideration.

Yeah.

Okay.

In terms of the BSA, so many of the discretionary approvals that the BSA is empowered to grant, which permit developments that are contrary to zoning requirements,

require a finding that the proposal will not adversely affect the neighborhood character of an area.

What does neighborhood character mean to you?

Thank you for the question.

Yeah, neighborhood character is an absolutely essential finding for the BSA's role within the overall structure of New York City land use.

The neighborhood character finding is there.

Because if an application raises issues of neighborhood character, it could potentially affect neighborhood character, then the BSA can't.

really touch it.

They do not have that level of planning discretion.

If something could affect neighborhood character, then it has to go to the CPC and most likely city council as well.

You know, council having the most discretion, CPC having in between more than the BSA but less than council, and BSA being very restricted.

When it comes to what neighborhood character means, you know, the most obvious is built context of a given neighborhood.

In certain instances, it can extend beyond that to zoned context, transit access, things like that as well.

So you propose buildings that are out of scale with that immediate context as something that would adversely affect neighborhood.

Yeah, I mean, if...

If the BSA were to approve an application that colorably affects neighborhood character, then that's a significant legal risk.

They don't have the authority to do that.