Minority Leader Carr Q&A: Mangin on CBAs as poison pills and City of Yes environmental review

Going back to community benefit agreements, I know we've talked about it a lot at this hearing.

In one of the articles that was referenced, the new exclusionary zoning, you put forward this idea that there are efforts to prevent particular developments to often go hand in hand with a variety of proposals, and then you go on to include the exaction of community benefits agreements to any development that does occur,

which seems to suggest that you see the pursuit of CBAs as not a genuine goal of stakeholders, but rather an attempt to create a poison pill for a particular development.

Can you expand upon that and what you meant by that?

Oh, thank you for the question.

I actually don't think that I meant it in that way, that you suggested.

And so you talked about– I don't question.

I would never question the earnestness of council members or members of the community trying to negotiate a broader set of community benefits around a particular application.

That was not my intention.

Okay.

Because community benefits have been particularly important things for the council.

to negotiate on behalf, including the addition of more affordable housing units in some projects.

So you'd agree that CBAs on the whole have been a positive thing?

I mean, absolutely.

Like I say in the paper, they have their uses, and I've personally been involved in some of the negotiations around, you know, City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, around individual neighborhood rezonings.

Even around individual projects that require mitigations under environmental review.

I put that in the same bucket as well, and I think it's good and basic planning.

So when a council member comes to you with a matter that may come before the BSA for a project to be finessed in some detail that could be

beneficial to a neighbor who may be getting an impact that didn't exist before, those are the sorts of things that you think should be taken into consideration when the BSA makes its determination?

Yeah, thank you, Leader.

Within, again, the legal boundaries that pertain to any particular application, something like that should definitely be considered, yes.

You talked about environmental review just a second ago.

You know, there was an environmental review that was done as part of the city of Yes,

and there was a determination that there would be no significant negative impacts, despite the fact that many neighborhoods already lack basic water and sewage and utility infrastructure, little access to public transportation, there's overcrowded schools, there's traffic, there's pollution, all sorts of other things, flooding.

Do you agree with the finding of the EIS that was done into those?

Under those zoning applications?

Thank you.

For City of Yes for Housing Opportunity?

Yes.

It identified a range of impacts, that EIS.

And yet we were asked to certify that there was no negative declaration when we had those.

It identified impacts.

Identifying impacts for a project does not definitively mean it can't be approved.

And then, you know, I would point back to the negotiations that secured $5 billion of capital investment and other community benefits in conjunction with the new housing.

Those are all benefits that the administration of the day resisted.

Council drove a hard bargain.

Again, I'm grateful for that.

And to your credit, the city is in your debt.