Tomorrow is sworn in the new City Council, though in practice it will remain very much the old City Council, with only four new members. That means there are also only a handful of departures, and we hope that among them is, finally, the outmoded principle of a local member veto when it comes to contentious rezoning votes.
Among the departed is Bronx Council member Marjorie Velázquez, who ultimately did not exercise this veto when it came up in her district, costing her politically. The charge that she had allowed gentrifiers in with her vote in favor of the Bruckner Blvd. rezoning was arguably determinative in her loss to GOP challenger Kristy Marmorato.
While we obviously disagree with her constituents’ decision to punish her for (rather begrudgingly) signing off on a very modest proposal for new housing — a real cutting off your nose to spite your face move in a city where acute housing shortages, not housing construction, have powered soaring rents and gentrification — the anger was partly a consequence of resting the entirety of the project’s survival on her shoulders.
There’s another Council member who left the body at least in some part as a result of her stand on a rezoning, except this time it was a vote the other way. Harlem Council member Kristin Richardson Jordan, after only two years in office, exited under the cloud of her staunch opposition to the rezoning of a stretch of 145th St. that has ended up as a truck depot. Dissatisfied even after winning significant concessions on affordability, Richardson Jordan torpedoed the 1,000-unit One45 housing project and was rightly and roundly flamed for it.
In neither case should the final decision have essentially fallen to a single member of a 51-person body, even when it’s their own district at issue. No one can deny that the local legislator has a unique perspective on the needs of a given district, but it’s also true that this closeness to the ground and the particular political dynamics at play locally can blinker them to what’s necessary for the broader city.
Essentially every city legislator will tell you that housing is an emergency in this city and it’s a practically existential imperative to build more, yet few are willing to relinquish the bit of power that comes with the local veto. If they’re really serious about this commitment, and they should be, we need to pick up the pace of rezonings and approvals, building up the density all around the city. That includes areas that believe they’re somehow exempt from this need due to “neighborhood character” or whatever other NIMBY term du jour.
It’s also not just about housing. The city’s job recovery has lagged behind the rest of the country. Among the most effective ideas for reversing this trend and improving the city’s economy is to target the tech, life sciences and green energy sectors for growth. That means developing what are sometimes specialized facilities, for example the Upper East Side site of the New York Blood Center building. That project could only come to fruition over the objections of local Council member Ben Kallos. Let that be a precedent as the city moves forward without the unnecessary local veto.
New York Daily News Editorial Board
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