Bronx Activists Regret
Missed Chances In PlaNYC

Veteran community activists and environmentalists gave PlaNYC a cool reception last week when representatives of several of the city departments involved in the landmark sustainability program visited the Bronx to promote Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan.

While many supported congestion pricing in principle, the assembled group – including community board members, clean water advocates, local elected officials and members of the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality and of Sustainable South Bronx – questioned its financial projections and implementation. Proposed earlier this year as part of the wide-reaching Plan, congestion pricing would reduce auto traffic in the most clogged parts of Manhattan by charging money to drive there, raising questions about ripple effects for residents of other areas.
        
More fundamentally, the forum revealed skepticism about the overall PlaNYC initiative and frustration with what some called the Bloomberg administration's heavy-handed approach. Speakers voiced concern that PlaNYC was formulated and will be implemented without sufficient input from grassroots urban environmentalists who know what works. Others said the current sustainability goals are too modest and that PlaNYC is more public relations than policy.

"I got the feeling and perception that the program was done and was being brought to us," said Dee Azell, chairwoman of Community Board 4, which covers the Highbridge, Concourse Village and Mount Eden neighborhoods south of the Cross Bronx Expressway. "We were concerned about some of the things we didn't see. We didn't see anything about health. If we are going to have a million more people here by 2030, will we need new hospitals in this area? Had we been involved with input early on we would have brought that as a concern," Azell said.

Angela Sung, who represented the mayor's office at the forum, said the city conducted aggressive community outreach as it formulated PlaNYC during the winter of 2006. The city met with more than 100 advocacy organizations, held town hall meetings in each borough and received 3,000 comments on its website, said Sung, a top staffer to Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding Dan Doctoroff, who is responsible for promoting the plan.

Regardless of those efforts, attendees argued that PlaNYC is being implemented in all the worst ways: top-down, anti-democratic, City Hall-centric.

"You don't have to skim the surface much to see some real collaboration and change happening in New York and other cities. That's why this is really frustrating, because it feels like the door has been closed and they aren't interested in new ideas," said Miquela Craytor, deputy director of Sustainable South Bronx, an urban environmental justice group that unsuccessfully pushed the architects of PlaNYC to include the creation of "green-collar" jobs – those within or promoting environmentally sustainable industry – as a central tenet of the initiative.

"They are saying, 'we just want to get this plan done and then we'll think about other ideas.' Well, then you just want to tell me what you are doing. You are really not interested in what I say," Craytor added.

Kathryn Garcia, chief of staff at the city Department of Environmental Protection, told the forum she was glad to hear people embrace sustainability so enthusiastically, but said PlaNYC could not address every environmental concern – at least not all at once.