The Public Hearing on the GreeNR “Sustained Development” Plan put forward by Mayor Noam Bramson was well attended but largely political theater with the usual stacked deck where the majority of the initial speakers were the people who worked on the plan and came forward to pronounce their support for their own plan. There was a good deal of cheerleading from North Enders. Noticeably missing was David Kooris or any other speakers from the RPA or ICLEI; Kooris, a Connecticut resident was the person selected by the Mayor to present the GreeNR plan to the City Council 3 weeks ago. who gave the presentation to the board.
Deborah Newborn (above), the “sustainability” consultant hired by the City of New Rochelle as a prerequisite set down by ICLEI in order to be considered for ICLEI’s Pilot Program and whose job description specifically mentions working with ICLEI and who spent the past 18 months since her hire working with various ICLEI partners and representatives on the New Rochelle Sustainability Advisory Board made it a point to assure the audience that ICLEI had no role in developing the New Rochelle GreeNR plan. Her remarks were followed by other members of the New Rochelle Sustainability Advisory Board, a number of whom do not live in New Rochelle but who have strong opinions on what is best for New Rochelle.
There was much insistence from supporters that all of the initiatives in the plan would have a positive ROI and most echoed the Mayor’s claim on WVOX that there were no “costs” in the plan. One teenager proclaimed that the plan was “good business” as she would surely know given her experience running businesses. A 5th grader from Ward School also supported the plan as did a group of youngsters from Trinity School along with their teacher. Joyce Kent, the head of the science department at New Rochelle High School and currently the focus of a State investigation into cheating on State Regents Exams in her department, spoke in favor of the plan.
For my part I used my three minutes to ask “what’s the rush” and called on the council to resist the Mayor’s desire to vote in June on a plan only just released 3 weeks ago. I reiterated my call that hard copies of the plan be distributed to those without internet access (predominantly the elderly and minority and lower-income residents) and that the document be translated into Spanish for the bulk of the 7,500 non-English speakers in New Rochelle (not to mention the many bi-lingual residents who would prefer to read a complex document in their native tongue).
Afterwards, there was a Citizen to be Heard session on the downtown parking issue. I used that time to say that I could not square the Green R plan for the equivalent of 6 additional Avalon size towers in downtown, the claims that more towers in downtown would reduce carbon emissions and the council’s decision to change parking policy to deal with all the cars in downtown coming from Avalon 1 and 2. I asked the Mayor whether he seriously expected someone affluent enough to live in Avalon 2 was going to walk over to the ShopRite carrying a bunch of GreeNR tote bags then schelp back home carrying cans and bottles under each arm. I stated my view that living in Westchester requires a car and so more density in downtown would necessarily mean more cars. The plan calls for 2,500 new households in New Rochelle, all in and around the train station, with 5,000 new residents which, based on Avalon 1 and 2 will mean somewhere between 2,500 and 5,000 more vehicles in New Rochelle, 95% of them concentrated within a 10 block radius around the train station. The Mayor offered no explanation as to how adding thousands and thousands of cars to New Rochelle was going to reduce carbon emissions or how concentrating those vehicle in a small portion of the City would support the clean air goals in the plan.
The meeting went on for hours and I cannot possibly hope to do it justice so, if you were there or watched on TV, please add your observations in the comments or write your own post.