For over three decades, the role of borough president has been a mostly ceremonial one — more a landing spot for politicians term-limited out of other offices than a position with real authority. They spend their days making advisory recommendations on land-use applications and appointing community board members, not writing laws and casting decisive votes.
But come November, that could change.
A commission appointed by Mayor Eric Adams to revise the city’s charter has proposed a ballot question that would bestow borough presidents with much more authority over land-use decisions. If the measure passes, it would place them on a three-member “appeals board” with the power to overrule the City Council if it rejects or modifies a project at the end of the city’s monthslong land use review process. Boards would comprise the president of the affected borough, the mayor and the Council’s speaker. It would take just two of the board’s three votes to reverse a decision.
Charter Revision Commission Executive Director Alec Schierenbeck said borough presidents would bring important perspectives to the panel, especially when it comes to housing decisions.
“They are democratically accountable officials who occupy a useful middle point between hyperlocal and citywide perspectives,” Schierenbeck said. “Restoring them to a bigger place in the land use process could have a lot of benefits.”
But the proposal is certain to face some opposition if it makes the ballot.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who formed her own charter revision commission late last year, opposes the measure and has challenged notions that the Council obstructs housing.
Council spokesperson Julia Agoos said its members have approved several sweeping rezoning plans since the start of 2022 that could lead to the creation of 120,000 new homes.
In December, Speaker Adams said the mayor was attempting to “politically weaponize mayoral charter commissions as vehicles to undermine New Yorkers’ democratic rights and representation.”
It’s a responsibility that I would take very seriously.
The appeals board concept is one of five ballot proposals issued this week by the charter revision commission, including ways to fast-track some new development projects to address the city’s affordable housing shortage and to change city election years. The 13-member commission will hold a final vote on whether to add the recommendations to the ballot later this month. If New York City voters approve the measures, the city will amend its governing document, known as its charter.
The proposed appeals board is specifically intended to break a tradition known as “member deference,” where the full Council aligns its vote on a project based on the opinion of the local member who represents the development location. The custom essentially gives a lone councilmember the power to kill a proposed housing project, the commission noted in a report published Tuesday.
“As a consequence, worthy projects that could help address the city’s housing crisis or revitalize neighborhoods are rejected, downsized, or never even proposed,” they wrote.
The report specifically cites three proposed housing projects that developers opted to withdraw after local Councilmember Kalman Yeger opposed them, including a 231-unit apartment planned for Coney Island Avenue in Midwood.
If the appeals board is enacted, it would mark a significant shift in city governance, recalling days of yore when borough presidents had real clout over major decisions, said George Arzt, a veteran political consultant who worked as a reporter and later a spokesperson for Mayor Ed Koch.
“The borough presidents, since 1989, are looking for something to do,” Arzt said. “There really isn’t much power that they have.”
Before that year, the five borough presidents held formidable positions on the city’s mighty Board of Estimate alongside the mayor, the comptroller and the president of the City Council. The board ran the city, making final decisions on land-use plans and the city budget.
That was until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. The decision led to a municipal restructuring that started in 1990 and resulted in the city’s current form of governance, where an expanded, 51-member City Council casts a binding vote on land use decisions that the mayor can then approve or veto.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso
Jordi-Lakeem Foster
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the city’s current borough presidents already support the appeals board proposal.
“It’s a responsibility that I would take very seriously,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso told Gothamist.
Reynoso, a former councilmember, criticized the way individual lawmakers can hold up projects.
“We’re in a housing crisis and I want to do everything I can to get us out of this crisis,” he said. “The goal here by the commission is to ensure that we can take a citywide or boroughwide approach to a citywide crisis when it comes to housing development.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said in a written statement: “New York City is in the midst of an unprecedented housing shortage, so we need to ensure our city government has all the tools it needs to address it.”
But the arrangement could create a situation where developers hoping to win approval for a project ignore the concerns of the city councilmember or local community and instead concentrate on winning approval from the borough president and the mayor.
Manhattan urban planner George Janes, who consults for local community members, said the new arrangement could create a “pathway around the councilmember.”
Reynoso, however, said he would not side with a developer who bypassed the community.
The latest charter revision recommendations have reignited an ongoing dispute between the mayor and the City Council.
Adrienne Adams – whose own role would also be further empowered by the measure – said she questions the authority of the commission itself. The Speaker and the Council have battled with the mayor over charter revision efforts twice in the past two years, ever since the mayor formed a commission to block measures proposed by the Council.
The Council formed a second charter revision commission late last year.
As proof that the proposed appeals board isn’t needed, Agoos, the council spokesperson, pointed to the mayor’s recent intervention to block a housing plan at the site of the Elizabeth Street Garden that was approved by the Council.
“This shows the Mayor’s Charter Revision Commission to be the height of hypocrisy and a sham for ignoring the role mayoral administrations play in obstructing new housing for New Yorkers,” Speaker Adams said in a written statement last week. “The Mayor is not only overturning a housing approval by the Council from six years ago, but also denying homes to older adults, as he fails to address our housing crisis with this decision.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
