In a document that appeared quietly in a corner of the official New Rochelle website sometime in the past few days, the city has dismissed most of the concerns raised by residents about its downtown development plan at a heated and emotional hearing in April.

At the hearing before the City Council on April 14, which was legally required to receive community input on a proposed revision of the city’s development plan, dozens of community members criticized the plan’s failure to mandate the hiring of local union members, expand access to affordable housing, and address growing concerns about the quality of life in the city’s downtown area.  Community members also highlighted elements of the plan’s structure, which they said limit public involvement and favor the interests of developers over those of the city’s residents.

Most of these concerns are flatly dismissed in the city’s responses with language such as “beyond the scope” of the current process or “not contemplated in the proposed action.”

Development Commissioner Adam Salgado told New RoAR News in May that the city would prepare written responses to the concerns raised by the community and that those responses would be reviewed and discussed by the City Council and posted on the city’s website sometime in June, as required by state law.  The city does not appear to have announced publicly that the review was completed.

But on June 5, during a routine review of the agenda for the upcoming June 9 City Council meeting, New RoAR News discovered that the document had been attached to the agenda as a “meeting file” and was scheduled for discussion by the council as the 24th item on its agenda.  The document does not appear to be posted elsewhere on the city’s website.

The 152-page document contains item-by-item responses to hundreds of concerns expressed to the Council in writing or at the public hearing.  It was prepared by four named consulting firms, presumably at taxpayer expense.  

The city staff has recommended that the Council accept the final report. It is unclear when the Council intends to vote on this document and whether the public will have an opportunity to provide further comment before a vote is taken.  A “Citizens To Be Heard” session is scheduled for Tuesday evening, June 9, at 7 pm at City Hall, but a vote could conceivably be taken during the routine Council meeting preceding the public comment session.

It will take time to conduct a thorough analysis and response to this long and complicated document.  But its tone is easily recognized by its responses to a few key issues:

• Regarding enforceable standards for employing union labor (Response 17-80): “The use of union labor is not an environmental impact and is outside the scope of SEQR review… In 2017, the City adopted the ‘Economic Opportunity and Nondiscrimination Policy’, included in Chapter 31 of the City Code… Developers are encouraged to use ‘best efforts’ to reach the goals described in the policy.”
• Regarding affordable housing (Response 8a-4): “The Proposed Action does not involve changes to affordable housing requirements, protection policies for displacement, local hiring or union jobs requirements, or implementation of Community Space & Educational Youth Programs.”
• Regarding tax breaks provided to developers by the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) (Response 15-7): “The Proposed Action does not involve any changes related to IDA policies and procedures.”
• Regarding the Economic Opportunity and Non-Discrimination Policy (Response 8b-2): “Changes to the Economic Opportunity and Non-Discrimination Policy (EONDP) are not contemplated in the Proposed Action.”
• Regarding the overall vision of the city’s development plan (Response 17-14): “The original 2015 DOZ vision remains largely unchanged.”

This document leaves several important questions unanswered.  If this process is not the correct place to address the community’s clear dissatisfaction with the city’s development process, where should these concerns be taken?  Will the City Council provide political leadership and consider changes to the city code that could address these issues?  And in an environment where developers openly provide large campaign contributions for the city’s elected leaders, who do these leaders actually serve?