CM Morano questions Garodnick on member deference and local knowledge

I do.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Citizen Garadnik.

It's been a while since you've had that title.

It's great to hear from you.

And I think your perspective is particularly valuable here because you've sat on both sides of this.

You served in this body representing a district dealing with land use issues and then obviously your role at city planning, which you alluded to.

Let me...

Ask you to put your council member hat back on for a minute because you know I've never been shy about asking your advice about how to be a good council member.

One of the concerns that I have about John Mangan is in his intelligence or his knowledge of land use or his integrity, which you cited.

Those are pretty obvious.

It's a philosophy that seems skeptical at times of how much influence

local communities and their elected representatives should have over development.

When you were sitting where we're sitting, did you ever think that member deference and neighborhood opposition served a legitimate purpose?

And are there cases where you think a local council member actually does know something about his or her district a bit more than the planners downtown?

I love that question.

Thank you, Councilmember.

It's good to see you.

The short answer is yes, of course, Councilmembers know their communities the best, and they advocate for their communities, and they want to make sure that they're delivering the right outcome for their communities.

It is equally true that New York City is facing a historic housing crisis with a 1.4% vacancy rate in housing, something that is as low as it has been since 1968.

And we need to find some citywide solutions and find ways to deal with this, which is why the City Council deserves so much credit for having taken big steps in the last few years to advance citywide housing initiatives.

But you're really asking me to put my council member hat on.

The short answer is yes, local council members have a significant role, need to make sure that the voices of their communities are heard.

And that needs to be balanced with the citywide needs for the crisis that we're in, the moment that we're in.

And I believe to the nominee who is before you, he gets it.

He understands that.

You know he's a booster of housing supply.

That's not a secret.

He understands that we need to actually turn the ship around in New York City.

In order to reduce costs, make sure that tenants have rights in New York, to reduce pressures of gentrification, displacement, really take the burdens off of some of the neighborhoods that really have struggled for a very long time

with doing the work for most of the rest of the city, which has not seen much housing.

He understands all of that, but importantly at the BSA, he also knows how to follow the law.

He knows how to look at the facts, the circumstances, the very specific findings that will be present before him.

And he, I heard him say earlier in this hearing a number of times that he will have an open door to members of the council to hear them out.

And I believe that if I were in your shoes, I would look at a candidate like that and I would say, hey, BSA has a very narrow, very legal focus.

They have the ability to evaluate very specific opportunities in a very narrow scope.

This is a guy who understands the law.

He understands the boundaries of what he can and cannot do.

And he also understands the council.

I know he understands the council because I worked with him for four years directly.

We talked about the city council.

You might not be surprised to know a lot.

And I made sure that, you know, we were working together to find ways to respect city council prerogatives, to respect the city council, to make sure we were hearing, understanding, and delivering in those areas where we could.

So I think you have a great candidate, and I would view him that way if I were sitting in your seat today, Councilman.

In that time,

You got that ringside seat for that kind of work.

Have you ever seen Mr.

Mangin take seriously a community's objection to development and conclude, you know what, they're right, this shouldn't be built or this proposal needs to be scaled back?

You know, John was not necessarily in every conversation that I had about housing proposals or specific development sites throughout the city.

He was the one who was thinking about bigger, broader housing policies for the agency.

But when he was brought in to talk about specific issues or needs or concerns, the issues of community, community interests and needs were always there.

He always took them seriously.

And we all worked together to try to find ways in which we could address the issues that actually could be addressed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now I'm moving back to in-person panelists.

I'm going to call up Brad Greenberg and Ariel Hirsch.