The City of New Rochelle hosted a community input forum for West End residents which is a required part of the process in preparing and submitting a Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy in order to qualify for Community Development Block Grants under a federal program administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The meeting was held the evening of Friday, December 3rd at the Columbus Elementary School on Washington Avenue in the City’s West End. The meeting was coordinated by Eleanor Sharpe, Director of Planning and Jeremy Schulman, Economic Development Manager for the City of New Rochelle. Sharpe and Schulman report to Michael Freimuth, the City’s Commission of Development.
On hand was Mayor Noam Bramson, City Council Members Richard St. Paul and Lou Trangucci and former School Board Member Martin Sanchez. An estimated 30 people attended the meeting.
The Mayor made some opening remarks where he talked about the City updating its’ comprehensive plan which he described as an effort to define “what we are as a community and what we want to be”. The Mayor explained that the plan was primarily about physical characteristics of the City such as land use, buildings, and zoning but include additional topics. The Mayor framed the meeting as the second of three (a previous meeting was held on a Saturday afternoon in November at the Casa Calabria on Union Avenue) and stated that the goal was to make sure there is lots of public input.
Sharpe and Schulman told the residents that the West End was eligible for “CBGB Funds form HUD” as a “Target Area” eligible for federal funding through HUD and that the context of the meeting was as a follow up to background work already done by City which includes a 2006 concept plan for streetscape improvements and a more recent traffic study.
CDBG refers to Community Development Block Grants
The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program enables local governments to undertake a wide range of activities intended to create suitable living environments, provide decent affordable housing and create economic opportunities, primarily for persons of low and moderate income. Under the Recovery Act, recipients shall give priority to projects that can award contracts based on bids within 120 days of the grant agreement.
A designation as a HUD CDBG Target Area required meeting certain federal criteria.
City of New Rochelle: Community Development Block Grant
Community Development Programs
Community Development actions work to improve the quality-of-life of residents through the planning and development of municipal infrastructure and public amenities. It includes the administration of community and economic development programs with a public participation component such as transit-oriented redevelopment, corridor studies, and building and property re-use as well as grant and program management related to various projects such as streetscape improvements, and historic and cultural resource preservation.
Federally-funded public service programs administered by City departments and local non-profits such as the Community Development Block Grant Program provide needed services to the City’s lower-income residents in an effort to create a suitable living environment throughout the community.
For more information on the programs offered by Community Development, please call (914) 654-2185.
The meeting time and room selected for the meeting was sub-optimal on a number of levels. A City meeting on a Friday night is likely to conflict with pre-existing plans including those going out of town over the weekend, socializing or otherwise tired from a long work week. It also excludes some religiously observant residents more so because the meeting was held on the Sabbath during the middle of Hanukah. The room itself was configured so that people entering the meeting inevitably walked in front of the projection screen, blocking the view for everyone else, stepping in front of the speaker and otherwise disruption the meeting. A classroom with a tiled floor and metal desk chairs meant a great deal of noise as people got seated (most attendees were late for the meeting). Finally, about 15 minutes into the meeting an HVAC unit kicked on creating a great deal of noise that made it difficult for those in the back to hear people speaking in the front. The HVAC unit made the recording of the meeting very difficult as will become clear in videos 2,3 and 4 where it was necessary to run the digital video through noise reduction software.
In the future, the City might consider an auditorium with better acoustics and fixed seating. Even better, the City might consider requesting that residents RSVP for the meeting while allowing anyone to show up with the caveat that those who RSVP will have a reserved seat. For a group this size, an ideal solution would have been to have a roundtable forum so participants could face the coordinator and each other and better follow the discussion. Combining the two ideas, have a roundtable set up where those RSVP get a seat at the table and those who show up announced sit in chairs around the edge of the room so as to reward those who RSVP without precluding those who don’t from participating and observing.
The quality of the last three videos is negatively impacted by the HVAC background noise. Those who spoke loudly and clearly can be heard but those who were soft-spoken are often unintelligible. The use of headphones is strongly recommended.
West End Community Meeting – Federal Community Development Block Grants – 1
West End Community Meeting – Federal Community Development Block Grants – 2
West End Community Meeting – Federal Community Development Block Grants – 3
West End Community Meeting – Federal Community Development Block Grants – 4