Community Board told to approve Jamaica Plan rezoning project?

At a public hearing last week, an allegation that members of Community Board 12 (CB 12) have been directed to approve the 368-block Jamaica Plan rezoning project brought the meeting to a standstill, underscoring the divisive nature of the project.
On Wednesday, March 29 Eugenia Rudmann, Co-Chairperson of the CB 12 Ad Hoc Committee, departed from her presentation of the committee’s alternative recommendations to the Department of City Planning project to address her concerns before about 150 people packed into the Robert Ross Johnson Family Life Center in St. Albans.
CB 12 Chairperson Gloria Black formed the Ad Hoc Committee more than a year ago to study the city’s ambitious redevelopment project. She charged it to report its findings and make a recommendation to the full board.
“For me to stand here tonight is very difficult because I know—I’ve been told that the vote is already a done deal. People have gotten the word how they are supposed to vote,” Rudmann said, prompting gasps and chatter from board members and onlookers.
“You are desecrating us again,” Black interrupted. “You have been told that it’s a done deal and that we have been told how to vote—I don’t think so, I would have known.”
“Let the woman speak, let the woman speak!” a male board member called out in reference to Rudmann.
Black disputed Rudmann’s suggestion that a decision had already been made and voiced incredulity that one local newspaper report characterized the recent unanimous vote against the Jamaica Plan by Community Board 8 (CB 8), as having been done in support of her board’s position.
Sixteen of the blocks affected by the Jamaica Plan are in CB 8.
“We had not even discussed anything; where did that that come from?” Black asked.
CB 12 is scheduled to vote on the plan on Wednesday, April 11.
Rudmann said later in a telephone interview that she broached the subject during the hearing because three board members allegedly notified her that they had received phone calls as recently as Wednesday morning and had been told to approve the Jamaica Plan.
“I think it is disrespectful,” Rudmann said. “It is against everything I stand for to ask someone to take a position before the information has been digested. It seems to me that you’re not giving yourself the respect due you as a citizen with a form of government that allows you to participate.”
“It is totally inappropriate of anyone to try and influence the vote,” she said.
During the hearing Rudmann reported the Ad Hoc Committee’s recommendation that the Community Board disapprove the Jamaica Plan in its current form.
Instead, she asked that the board conduct and approve a separate vote for the committee’s so-called Alternate Plan which it believed would better protect community interests than the original plan.
Among its 23 areas of major concern with the Jamaica Plan, the Ad Hoc Committee offered an alternative zoning plan; increased provisions for affordable and low-income housing and employment; and addressed infrastructure inadequacies in education, health care, transportation, waste transfer, parking, water delivery, sewers and utilities.
In a telephone interview following the hearing, Black indicated concern that some revisions to the plan indicated by the Ad Hoc Committee had been influenced by CB 8 and were not germane to downtown Jamaica.
“This area is totally different than Jamaica Estates [in CB 8],” she said. “We have to take into consideration what we need, not what CB 8 needs.”
Rudmann said she was surprised at the newspaper’s characterization of the CB 8 vote as in support of CB 12 opposition to the plan.
“I had no knowledge of that at all,” she said.
Black said members of CB 12 continued to evaluate the plan and would do so until the vote is held.
“We would take [the Ad Hoc Committee] recommendation if 49 people feel this is not where we want to go,” Black said of the Jamaica Plan.
“The board makes that decision.”
Community Board 12 is scheduled to vote on the Jamaica Plan during a meeting on Wednesday, April 11 from 7 to 10 p.m. The meeting will take place at Thomasina’s Catering Hall, located at 205-35 Linden Boulevard in St. Albans. The public is encouraged to attend.