Hello!
The question below has been posed to various CORD members REPEATEDLY! this week by several people in the media. It's a good one. And we have spent some time thinking about an aswer to it. read on and you will find it!
CORD

Here is the question:

"Can you give me a comment from CORD about City Planning's announcement that they're not letting CG move to the front of the line in terms of downzoning?"

Here is our answer:

Given the incredible rate of development in Brooklyn over the last several years, it is difficult for us to understand how City Planning can still be so understaffed and overwhelmed.

Doesn't someone in the City Planning Commission have the responsibility of tracking the number of job applications submitted, on a regular basis, in order to do such projections?

Wasn't this development "boom" an absolutely forseeable event?

Didn't anyone think that accelerating the approval process by the Department of Buildings might have just this effect?

Isn't the very essence of the CPC centered around the word, "Planning"?

Did they perhaps think or hope that we, regular community residents would not notice or care?

Saying that Carroll Gardens is asking to push others aside, so that we may be first, seems a deliberately manipulative way of taking the heat off where it belongs.

The real questions are:
---why is there such a long line in the first place?
---who does the line serve?
---why is there no mention of an effort to shorten the line by adding extra help to move it along?

Carroll Gardens recognizes the need and sympathizes with the frustrations of each and every other neighborhood looking for relief through rezoning.

We are not looking to shove anyone out of the way. We want to see more "windows" open up to service those of us waiting on line.

CORD