Paul Bass Photos
Unhappy campers: Yale’s Hammer, Zucker observe vote.
Alder Sarah Eidelson enforces time limit.
Version 1: City alders voted Monday night to bring common sense to an antiquated zoning code that had shut the public out of decisions determining the city’s future.
Version 2: City alders shut out the public Monday night by advancing a thinly disguised attack on Yale without letting Yale, city planning officials or the public weigh in for more than three minutes.
Those were two versions offered about a public hearing and then a vote that took place at City Hall during a meeting of the Board of Alders Legislation Committee.
The committee voted unanimously to amend the city’s zoning code to require that any building plans of a university or a college (read: Yale or, very occasionally, Albertus Magnus College) receive a special exception. Right now Yale can build in 12 separate residential and business and commercial zones of the city “as of right,” meaning it doesn’t need to ask the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) for permission first. This amendment would change that. Every Yale (and Albertus) project in any residential or business zone would require the ZBA to approve a special exception.
Now the amendment heads to the full Board of Alders for expected final approval.
East Rock Alder Jessica Holmes presented the proposed amendment as chair of the Legislation Committee. It was a stripped-down version of an earlier draft that would have overhauled the city’s zoning rules in a way that critics, including the writer of this City Plan Department staff memo, described as illegal.
The new version introduced Monday night, Holmes argued, simply brings New Haven in line with cities like Providence and Hartford in requiring that the public gets to weigh in, through hearings and an approval process, on university expansion. And Yale has been by far New Haven’s busiest builder, constructing over 1 million square feet of new uses, such as dorms and health centers and police stations, in the past 15 years. But unlike, say, barber shops or restaurants, it has usually been able to do that without undergoing an extensive public review.
“There’s only so much developable land in the city,” Holmes said. And “the public deserves to testify … and ask questions … just like with a restaurant.”
City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg pleaded with the committee to hold off on voting Monday night. She said she and other members of the government and the public learned about the official new wording of the amendment only at the hearing. They had no time to analyze and review it, she argued. The alders should have publicized the new proposal before the hearing so the public could have reviewed it and prepared testimony for the hearing.
Also, Gilvarg noted that the City Plan Commission at its last meeting had recommended that the alders’ committee withdraw the whole proposal, start over, and send the new version back for a new advisory opinion.
“We are not being allowed due or fair process,” complained Yale attorney Joseph Hammer, who like other speakers was allowed three minutes at the hearing to address the committee before it voted. After Yale Alder Sarah Eidelson held up a sign with a big zero to indicate that Hammer’s time had expired, he ended up spending about another three minutes arguing with committee members about how he should be able to offer more testimony beyond the three minutes. He lost that argument.
The Latest Chapter
Holmes presenting the new version of the amendment.
On one level, the heated debate Monday night was about process, about the fine points of how a proposal should become law, about who should get to review it, how, and what constitutes a “new” proposal.
On another level, it was the latest power struggle to play out in the Alder Chambers between New Haven’s most powerful private institution, Yale, and a Board of Alders whose majority of members either belongs to or works for Yale’s UNITE HERE union locals or were elected with their support. The majority has been in place since the 2011 elections.
The debate over the merits of creating a new zoning category for university uses, or over who gets to speak up when about a legislative proposal, reflected a larger difference of opinion in the room and in the community at large: Whether subjecting Yale’s plans in New Haven to greater public review is a means of holding the university accountable to the public, or of holding it hostage to a union’s agenda.
That broader debate also centers on how to define democracy on a local level. Is a “labor” agenda a narrow special interest (a local union’s bid for a contract, say, or to win a first contract for a new sister union local representing Yale’s graduate student teachers) that unfairly comes to dominate other public interest making? Or can a “labor” agenda, crafted with community groups, represent a broader agenda that affects the wages and working conditions and neighborhood control of everyday New Haveners by challenging corporate power — by allowing working people’s representatives to play a part in government decision-making that powerful special-interest institutions like Yale already play as well?
Monday night, both sides claimed the “democracy” mantle.
What’s “New”?
Former Downtown Alder Abby Roth, who’s running for her old seat, urging the committee to give the public more time to weigh in.
After the vote, Yale’s point person for New Haven affairs, Associate Vice-President Lauren Zucker, argued that the alders rushed to approve, without receiving real public input, a proposal that they billed as injecting greater public input into government decisions. She also argued that Yale undergoes extensive review of all projects under current zoning rules, so there’s no demonstrated need to change the code.
“This had the least amount of public engagement. This legislation never even went to community management teams” for review, Zucker argued. “The first we all saw it was tonight.”
“I am trying to comment on something I haven’t seen until now,” complained Win Davis of the Town Green Special Servics District. “This seems like a rushed job. I don’t see why something as serious as the zoning code would be rushed.”
Holmes responded that the public had plenty of time to see the proposal — because the alders hadn’t changed any of the wording of the original earlier proposal. All they did was strike almost all of the language and preserve, word for word, one sentence: “The text of Section 12(b)1(g) shall be renumbered as a new Section 12(b)2(f), and the Use Table of this Zoning Code shall be updated such that university and college uses shall only be approved by Special Exception.” The public has already seen that sentence. (Click here for an earlier story about the farther-reaching elements of the original proposal that for now are off the table, and the arguments on both sides.)
Yale attorney Hammer argued that the act of excising almost all of the original proposal and leaving that one sentence behind substantially changed it, making it a new proposal. He argued that the proposal now unfairly “singled out” universities like Yale. And that in any case, the new proposal needs a fresh new review by the City Plan Commission, which the commission itself has advised.
“It’s important not to create a class of one with Yale University,” agreed Anstress Farwell of the Urban Design League, in her three-minute testimony before the committee.
Holmes responded that the alders already received a City Plan Commission opinion on the full proposal (which was to withdraw it and start over), so there was no need to return for another. She also noted that proposed zoning changes — such as a recently approval overhaul of rules for mixed-use projects in business zones, a major shift in how New Haven operates — don’t usually go before community management teams.
Furthermore, Holmes argued, the proposal doesn’t single out Yale. Not only is Albertus affected, but state universities would be affected if they decided to build on private land rather than on the public land they now occupy.
Board attorney Keith Ainsworth.
Holmes also introduced a local zoning attorney newly hired by the alders to advise them on this proposal, named Keith Ainsworth. Ainsworth testified that because the alders didn’t add any new language to their original proposal, but rather eliminated parts of it, they met the public posting requirements and didn’t need to start over.
After hearing hours of testimony, the committee unanimously voted to follow his advice and send the matter to the full board for final approval.
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison argued that the zoning change merely codifies a process that already takes place when Yale officials like Zucker and Community Affairs Associate Karen King consult with the public on building projects.
Morrison, at left: Nothing new in this document.
“Yale is so against this [proposal]. However, this is what Yale does all the time,” Morrison remarked. “Every time Yale wants to build something, move something, I always get a call from Lauren and Karen. They always come to management team meetings. This just makes it formal.”
“We all want to be good neighbors,” Morrison said. “Yale’s Office of Community Affairs has tried to be a good neighbor. To put it on paper, what is the problem?”
Morrison said the city needs to codify this process “just in case we don’t have a Karen or a Lauren,” but rather a less inclusive set of Yale officials, to deal with in the future.
Zucker was asked whether Yale will file a lawsuit to challenge the zoning change if the full Board of Alders approves it. She said she couldn’t comment yet: “I still need to read it.”
How does this proposal effect the Growth of other 'Non-Profits' like YNH Hospital, and if it doesn't, might that be the Achille's Heel that makes this proposal patently illegal....?
looking for answers....