Aaron Short has an insightful post recapping last week’s candidate forum for the 33rd Council District (and handicapping the state of the race today).
Aaron also helpfully links to all the other press coverage on the debate. I wasn’t there, but reading those press accounts (including Aaron’s in the Courier), one would think that Doug Biviano went stark raving bonkers. Reading between the lines, it sounds more like an outsider candidate from the Kucinich wing of the Democratic party called out three of his competitors for being too much on the inside of local party politics. Since one of those competitors is a local Democratic district leader, another is a former chief of staff to the incumbent council member and the third is the former (?) chief of staff to the incumbent Democratic county leader, it’s pretty clear that Biviano was playing the cards he was dealt – he would have looked pretty stupid trying to pass himself off as the consummate insider.
And seriously – why are there no debates in the 34th Council race?
The Broadway Triangle Community Coalition has taken the PowerPoint for its Pratt plan (which I linked to before) and set it to music.
I still think the plan itself (and the one or two plans BTCC had before that) suffers from a fatal flaw – its just too damn big. I know in the end they backed away from specific numbers, but if you run the numbers implied in their presentations, BTCC is looking to go significantly higher (double or more) than the density of the neighboring public housing projects. They would exceed the density of the waterfront sites in the 2005 zoning by a fair margin. For all the “comprehensive planning” embodied in this plan, there is no practical accounting for how the neighborhood infrastructure will handle this number of people. Nor is there any accounting for how all this new housing – most of it affordable, yes – will impact displacement outside the Triangle.
Tall buildings are fine, but massively oversized buildings that further strain an already overtaxed infrastructure are not.
What a lot of people forget is that this is a land-use review process. For all its flaws on the process side (and it was a very flawed process), the City’s plan – as land-use policy – is basically good (it could be better, and CB1 made recommendations to make it so). In fact, the zoning – what CB1 voted to approve – is at the high end of the density the Board has been willing to support in recent actions. But it is within reason, and it includes a minimum of 34% affordable housing (49% if you believe the City’s numbers, but those rely on developer-incentivized affordable housing, which is iffy, at best).
Meanwhile, I still say the courts (or the city council) are the proper place to address the process (and apportionment) questions.
UPDATE: I almost forgot – there is a hearing at the Borough President’s office on the Broadway Triangle rezoning tomorrow evening. Details here.
I came back from a week’s vacation to learn that Mary, who has kept the corner of Bedford and Grand clean for as long as I can remember, died on July 24. She was a beloved fixture on the block, and as the photo to the left shows, will be missed.
A collection is being taken at La Villita bakery to pay for Mary’s burial.
