NYC Puts Out Questionaire About Environmental Review
The City has a new questionaire about the Environmental Review process and how it could possibly be changed.
Here’s the questionaire and the explanation from the website:
This questionnaire is part of the City’s ongoing commitment to improve the environmental review process without compromising environmental protection standards or public participation. Our goal is to optimize the City’s management and organizational efficiency in conducting environmental review under existing rules and technical policies, and to ensure that the process takes all relevant parties’ needs and concerns into account in a meaningful and timely manner.
We are looking for input from all users of the environmental review process–including applicants, developers, community members and groups, consulting firms, agencies, community boards, and elected officials–on your experience with the City’s management of the environmental review process. Parties who have participated in environmental review are encouraged to submit their opinions, views and recommendations about how City agencies can better manage the environmental review process.
The focus of this questionnaire is on the City’s management and organizational efficiency in conducting environmental reviews. This includes areas such as prioritization of projects and allocation of agency resources, inter-agency coordination of environmental review, the timely and efficient performance of technical analyses, and communication between the lead agency and applicants, as well as between agencies and the public. Responses should address these specific issues rather than focusing on legislative policy, legal standards, analysis methodologies and standards, or other planning processes such as ULURP. It is not the purpose of this questionnaire to solicit commentary on changing New York State’s environmental quality statute or regulations (SEQRA) or the City’s compliance with these regulations (CEQR).