Kyle Ems (remote) on Resolution 519 and Cedar Bridge Management
Ems raises concerns about Resolution 519, the largest tax exemption ever awarded for preservation housing, costing $359 million to Cedar Bridge Management. He argues the owner should not receive such exemptions and raises concerns about payments to individuals who provided material support to terrorist organizations.
Next is Kyle Ems.
You may begin.
Sweet.
Hello.
I intended to begin by praising Chair Sanchez's involvement with the MBD Community Housing Project last year and how her speech while giving her vote showed how much she really cares about the project.
I believe passion and attention are critical for affordable housing projects to succeed.
Then I wanted to contrast that with a different project to highlight the catastrophe of Resolution 519,
which was passed this June and is the largest tax exemption ever awarded in the history of New York City for preserving affordable housing.
In preparation for today,
I analyzed 472 preservation exemptions awarded since 2015, and Resolution 519 has huge red flags.
Res 519 is an agreement with Cedar Bridge Management, and the cost to the city is $359 million, which is over $100 million more than the next most expensive preservation exemption.
And despite being the largest exemption ever, it seemingly has gone completely under the radar.
I'm yet to find a council member who supported it beyond a general support for affordable housing.
And I believe in order to receive tax exemptions for preservation valued at $1,000,
over a third of a billion dollars, the owner and property manager of the project should be required to meet one standard.
The owner and property manager should not have ever paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to anyone who at any point is found to have provided
material support to a terrorist organization, and particularly so if the person
who provided support to a terrorist organization exclusively worked for the owner and the owner's close partners and did no business with any unrelated parties.
And so the owner and manager of Res 519 fails that standard.
I have $40,000 worth of checks.
Time expired.
Thank you.
The following are Zoom pre-registered, but not currently present.
This is the last opportunity.
So that is Leila Law-Gisiko.
Tian Li Chang, Linda Nguyen, Jacob Schneider, and Michael Jordan.
Okay.
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