Deputy Speaker Williams Q&A: Mangin on reconciling council role with charter changes

Yes.

Okay, and then in your opening statement, which, thank you, you did note that the council was instrumental and is instrumental in helping to build housing.

But for me, and, you know, I know...

quite a few of my other colleagues that were here last year during the Charter Review Commission felt like

our commitment to building housing wasn't really appreciated and or received because many of the proposals that we had tried to

get amended in the final questions, none of them were actually taken up.

So how do you sort of reconcile, you know, your openness statement that the council is so instrumental and important in housing, but then also on the back end, sort of be a part of an effort to strip away.

Council powers as it pertains to land use matters.

Thank you for the question, Deputy Speaker.

Council has and should have a central role in land use decisions, land use and planning decisions in the city, and they, of course, still do.

If I could provide some perspective on what the Charter Revision Commissioners were trying to do, in my view, and what the voters approved, it was essentially to maintain

the Council's role as it has existed since 1989 with a few

relatively minor adjustments to address types of applications or types of housing that ULERP was demonstrably bad at, given the three or four decades.

of experience with it.

And that included relatively modest increases in zoning.

You know, one of the things that I did personally do on the Charter Vision Commission, I looked at the last 10 years of rezonings, and there were zero rezonings for 30% or less increase in housing.

And, you know, as we all know, many communities get concerned when there are big changes to zoning.

And these are types of changes that may not raise those same issues with communities while also enabling, you know, for growth and change over time.

So I think the commissioners saw that as an issue.

Like, you can't do small changes.

You've got to do big things that create anxieties.

Or, you know, parts of the city that saw virtually zero affordable housing production over the last couple decades.

So ULERP was not good for that, was not working for that.

So while maintaining council's role and ULERP as it has existed since 1989,

making relatively minor adjustments to enable certain types of affordable housing or more modest actions that had not been possible since then.

So in my view, I believe that council absolutely retains its central role in housing and planning and land use.

In the city with a couple minor adjustments in order to make projects happen that could not happen under the previous system.