Council Member Brooks-Powers asks about flooding and fast track in Southeast Queens
She notes Community District 13 will no longer come before council, asks how fast track will consider flood-prone communities, what say the community will have, and how surrounding neighborhoods' absorbed housing will be accounted for.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Chair Sherman, for, as my colleagues have said, your openness and willingness to communicate with this body.
I've had the opportunity to talk to you in advance of the recent announcement as well as
our more recent Zoom meeting, but I wanted to ask some questions on record just to have them here in a public space.
So starting in January, housing applications in Queens,
Community District 13 will no longer come before this council.
Rosedale, Lawton, and Springfield Gardens are some of the lowest-lying parts of the city, surrounded by wetlands.
And residents are routinely faced with the threat of flooding.
How will the fast track review consider these needs in a flood prone community?
And I know I mentioned this when we last spoke, but I just wanted to have it on the record in terms of response.
And what if it is found that the construction taken place creates additional flooding to neighboring homes?
What say will the community at that point have?
And then also the fast track list is drawn on community district lines.
And Southeast Queens, as I often say, is made up of communities across multiple districts.
And together we built a significant amount of affordable housing.
housing when DCP plans city led actions in the 13th community district will it account for what the surrounding neighborhoods have already absorbed
even though it may fall in another community district so for example community district 14 did a significant amount but it it is a budding community district 13 and on the other side is community board 12
which just did the Jamaica
down up zoning in downtown Jamaica.
And so with all of that taken into place, it will just create an overwhelming increase in population in a community that has infrastructure resiliency issues and challenges.
So
recognizing that the environmental review plan won't be the environmental review plan that we are accustomed to and that council members won't have as much of a say in terms of shaping it based on our local knowledge of the community.
That's what the concern is.
So obviously I'm not opposed to development, but it has to be responsible in communities like this that have other underlying
issues that could impact what that looks like in terms of the health and well-being of the community.