Josephine Beckmann of Brooklyn CB10 testifies on infrastructure and displacement

Yes, it's on.

Thank you so much, Chair Riley.

My name is Joseph.

I am the district manager of Community Board 10 in encompassing the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Diker Heights, and Fort Hamilton.

We really appreciate the opportunity to be here today and really grateful to the New York City Council and under your leadership to hold this hearing and give us the ability to comment.

There are significant concerns that we have as one of the 12 fast-track communities.

The change is an incredible shift in power and resting the Department of City Planning to have final say and review.

We have enjoyed a good working relationship with our local city council members.

We have four that represent the district and have worked very closely with Councilmember Kayla Santos-Sorso on a neighborhood plan.

Each community district is unique in density, square miles, buildable space, and CB10 has a total of 14,909 rent-stabilized units.

We are very concerned about displacement through future rezonings without proper planning.

Recent interaction with developers during ULERP really highlighted Councilman Carr's concern about pro forma review, essentially developers feeling that we're no longer part of the process.

Community district 10 should not be evaluated solely on one housing production metric without accounting for the realities of our existing built environment.

infrastructure, utility, and sewer load, school seat deficits, and transportation.

CB10 has a tremendous school seat deficit, still about 4,000, while we've already constructed five new schools.

Our sewer infrastructure is also antiquated.

We are one district that has one of the 14 wastewater treatment plants, which covers five community districts and a conveyance system that is old.

We recently had funding, maybe not recently, seven years awaiting for new sewers in the district that was already adopted.

And we're just hoping that the city council continues to work with the boards and really understand the new role of the city planning commission in this process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Josephine Rochelle.