Chair Sherman responds on North Shore and available tools

I'll start and then I'll turn to my colleagues.

So thank you, Councilmember, and thank you for your leadership and really thinking through planning opportunities and growth opportunities along the North Shore of Staten Island.

I know that our Staten Island office met with your team just this week, and we are excited to learn more about the planning effort that you have underway.

And I know EDC is a critical partner.

on the North Shore.

And so to the extent that there are zoning tools or other tools that we can use to help realize the community vision, we stand ready to partner with you.

And I know that those conversations have started.

I'm new here as well, too, and look forward to digging more into the vision that you all have for the North Shore.

Your district is the one district in St.

Donald that is actually not in the affordable housing fast track.

But there are tools such as eLERP, right, that are certainly available to your district, which expedite land use review.

There are projects in your district just based on the density, which may...

Qualify for the seeker exemption as well that would allow us to move projects a little bit more quickly but also still go through a robust land review land use review so there are tools available

that particularly came about in the last election that will allow us to potentially speed up work or projects that are in the pipeline and so we're happy to sit down and just have a little bit more of assessment of what's already even in the pipeline and in the North Shore and get a little bit more

into the vision that you and the community are developing there.

I appreciate that.

Thank you for the clarity, and we'll definitely be calling you on that, and that would be great.

Thank you.