Locals Against City's Jail Plan Want More City Council Hearings

NEW YORK, NY — A coalition of neighborhood groups wants more public hearings to air their grievances with the city's plan to close Rikers Island jail facilities and replace them with smaller, borough-based facilities to reduce the number of inmates, they wrote in a letter to City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.

The sweeping plan aimed to reduce the jail population to at least 4,000 — down from about 11,000 in 2014 and about 7,300 in July — has drawn the ire of groups opposed to the construction plan for newly built jails in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

The de Blasio administration's project is winding through the city's review process called Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, with a binding vote in City Council to come after the City Planning Commission OK'd the plan this month.

But the groups say public hearings held so far are not enough.

"The minimum number of public forums that are legally mandated under this bundled 4 sites in one ULURP process is not enough," the groups wrote to Johnson. "New Yorkers need more opportunities to discuss their concerns and vet this $8.7+ billion jails plan."

The citywide hearing held at a City Council committee meeting earlier this month was the first day of school, with hundreds waiting hours to speak at City Hall. The groups called for additional hearings at other committees in the Council, such as health, criminal justice and public safety, according to the letter, first reported by the New York Daily News.

A spokesperson for Johnson said, "The Council is reviewing online testimony, holding meetings with stakeholders and reviewing testimony from hearing."

"We have received a lot of feedback from the public, and are reviewing that feedback carefully," the representative said, noting the Council had participated in other stakeholder meetings, as community board, borough president and City Planning hearings, and has received further written testimony that it is reviewing.

Nancy Kong, whose group Neighbors United Below Canal signed the letter, told Patch in an email, "While each borough and community organization have different concerns, we remain united on the position that this has been a flawed and deceptive process."

If locals could tell each council member about their concerns, they would vote no, Kong said, despite an unspoken rule called "member deference" where pols defer to the local member. "This is not a democratic process," Kong said, noting all the community boards voted against it.

The letter was signed by Boroughs United, Chinatown Core Block Association, Community Preservation Coalition, Fair Jails Brooklyn, Human Scale, Kew Gardens Civic Association, Lin Sing Association, Neighbors United Below Canal, Park Row Alliance, Walker Street Block Association, Queens Residents United.