The New York-Connecticut Sustainable Communities Consortium will host the seventh in a series of town hall meetings on February 15th in Mount Vernon, New York to seek public input for a three-year effort to improve jobs, housing, transportation and the environment. The meeting will focus on the needs and priorities of connecting the lower Hudson Valley cities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon and New Rochelle.
The Town Hall will feature Hon. Ernest D. Davis, Mayor of Mount Vernon, Hon. Noam Bramson,
Mayor of New Rochelle, and the Hon. Michael Spano, Mayor of Yonkers (invited) who will speak to issues of land use and transportation in southern Westchester County, along with local and regional planning experts.
The meeting is open to the public.
The meeting also will look at how the consortium is working to expand job and housing opportunities; ways that these southern Westchester County cities – together with a wide range of public, private and local community partners – are participating in this effort; how to obtain preferred status for federal grant applications; and opportunities to get involved in planning for the region.
The New York-Connecticut Sustainable Communities Consortium, a partnership between the federal government and 17 cities, counties and organizations in New York and Connecticut, represents an unprecedented bi-state collaboration of cities, counties and regional planning organizations. This initiative, funded with a $3.5 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant, will integrate housing, economic development, transportation and environmental planning. The goal of the consortium is to reposition the New York-Connecticut region to fully harness its innovation capabilities in a competitive global environment, build on its strong foundation of energy efficiency, and become as equitable as it is efficient. Its primary focus is to leverage the most extensive and robust transit system in the nation by developing livable communities with mixed-income housing and employment at key nodes in the MTA Metro-North Railroad and MTA Long Island Rail Road network.
“The current economic conditions make it imperative that we work together as a region to build our communities with a common-sense approach based on smart economic-development strategies that takes advantage of our density and access to public transportation” said Mount Vernon Mayor Ernest D. Davis. “The futures of our cities are inextricably linked, and we need to work collaboratively to develop communities where residents can live, shop and work.”
“An integrated, regional approach to planning will provide current and future residents with new job opportunities, expanded housing and commuting options, and a stronger economic base,” said New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson. “We can accomplish more by working together than we can on our own, and this forum will illustrate the positive potential of a cooperative relationship among communities.”
“Lower Westchester is the gateway to our great state and by redeveloping our transportation corridors, we are investing in the economic and social growth of our cities,” said Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano. “Cooperating with Mt. Vernon and New Rochelle is essential, as all three cities share a progressive approach to development.”
“To foster economic growth and job creation, we need to build around the region’s transit network,” said Christopher Jones, vice president of research for Regional Plan Association. “Communities in Westchester have enormous potential to capitalize on their Metro-North access to create housing and employment options.”
“Transportation linkages are key to economic growth and sustainability,” said Gerry Bogacz, Planning Director for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. “The Southern Westchester Regional Travel Corridor provides several significant east-west linkages for the region, and it is important that we find ways to improve access and transportation options across it to help strengthen existing communities and grow business. The consortium is looking at ways to further increase accessibility to transportation and job centers, and it is important that we hear from stakeholders what they want to see for their communities.”
Consortium members include the cities of New York, New Haven, Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford, Yonkers, White Plains, New Rochelle, and Mount Vernon; Nassau and Suffolk counties; the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council; South Western Regional Metropolitan Planning Organization; Greater Bridgeport/Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization; South Central Regional Council of Governments; the Long Island Regional Planning Council; and Regional Plan Association.
When: Wednesday, February 15, 6 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: Mt. Vernon City Hall Council Chamber, One Roosevelt Square, Mount Vernon, NY 10550
What: Town Hall Meeting: Southern Westchester East-West Travel Corridor
For more information visit www.sustainablenyct.org or www.facebook.com/sustainablenyct
Don’t get too excited, the meeting was yesterday.
Don’t get too excited, the meeting was yesterday.
Town Hall Meeting
I find it strange that the mayor would participate in a town hall meeting when he will not agree to a town hall meeting in his own city. This meeting was not posted on his website or the city hall website. I guess he did not want the New Rochelle citizens to attend. This is one big joke at the taxpayers expense. Hopefully he will be getting the exposure he needs to move on in his political career.
We Had a Sustainable Meeting in Suffolk, NY
We had one of their presentations in Suffolk County, Long Island, just recently and here’s what I took away: Create low cost, high density housing with sewer districts (extremely expensive), built next to railroad stations to limit the use of automobiles. This is accomplished by planners deciding where development rights should be forfieted by property owners. In those properties, the high density developers must purchase the right to build from the targeted property owners who agree to forever give up their development rights.
This type of growth, high density around the railroad was termed by the panel as sustainable. One of the features of the sustainability was the need for increased regulation to guard against global warming and sea level rise, neither of which seem to be happening. In fact, the government Met Office of Great Britian just released new information that the world’s temperature has actually declined for the past 15 years.
As far as I can tell, this is an effort to phase out the single family home and the use of individual transportation – the development of a city where there was once a suburb, sacrificing homeowner freedom in the process.