Opinion: Public hearings — minus the public — on roadway cafe applications

BY LESLIE CLARK | There are two tests of whether a public hearing is a truly effective way for citizens to engage with their government: The public knows where and when to attend that hearing and the public knows what is being discussed at that hearing.

The New York City Department of Transportation has failed both of those tests in its hearings on roadway dining sheds — and violated the New York City Charter to boot.

When the City Council passed a law last August making outdoor dining permanent and D.O.T. created rules making public hearings on roadway sheds mandatory, both of those governmental bodies promised that outdoor dining was entering a new phase where rules would be strictly applied and the public would be invited to participate.

But dig deeper into the details of those rules — or attend one of those public hearings — and abandon any hope that D.O.T. is going to listen to the people who live near the noisy, ramshackle and often filthy sheds.

First, the public must find the notice of that hearing. The rules say that these can be found in the City Record — located online here. Have a look. Could you actually find news of upcoming hearings at this site? They don’t make it easy, but it is possible if you happen to know that these hearings are held only on Thursdays, and that the public notice is posted just five days in advance. So try looking on a Friday for the next Thursday’s hearing. (On the other hand, D.O.T. informs the restaurateur applicant in plenty of time — 15 days in advance.)

Second, D.O.T. picks a local newspaper for a second notice. But which newspaper is that? It’s usually the digital edition of amNew York, but it could be elsewhere. They posted notice of the July 18 hearing here. That was the July 12 amNew York digital edition, Page 14. Now it’s up to you to find the notice for the next public hearing. Pro tip: Don’t expect the digital search bar to work.

Third, let’s say you have found the date of the hearing and the Zoom link to “attend.” So, what exactly are you commenting on? Where can you read the application for the shed — or rather “roadway cafe” as they have been redubbed — in advance? And that is the biggest problem of all. You can’t.

I’ve attended a number of these hearings. So, I can tell you that the first thing the D.O.T. hearing officer says is: “This hearing is being held in accordance with New York City Charter Section 371.” But that’s not altogether true. Among its many points, Section 371 says that the public notice must indicate “. . . the place where copies of the proposed agreement may be obtained by all those interested therein.”

Here’s what a D.O.T. public notice actually looks like:

There’s no indication of where “copies of the proposed agreement may be obtained by all those interested therein.” Instead, if you do find the hearing and you do show up, this (below) is what you will see when your local roadway cafe comes up — as likely as not, a hand-scrawled diagram:

This is just one page of a 10-page application. But this one page is all that you will see — and it is immediately followed by the D.O.T. rep’s instruction that you have three minutes to comment. With just this drawing, could you comment intelligently on a roadway cafe that may well impact your neighborhood for at least the next four years? Of course not. That’s because you aren’t seeing the critical pages where the applicant is supposed to indicate the location (width and other uses of the street), the required clearances (distance from a bus stop, fire hydrant, residential doorway, etc.) or the material requirements (flooring, vertical screenings, overhead coverings, etc.).

So, it’s no wonder that no one showed up for the June 6 “public hearing” on seven roadway cafe applications, or that just five people showed up at the June 27 “public hearing” on 10 roadway cafe applications, or that just one person showed up at the July 18 “public hearing” on six roadway applications.

That’s six people for a couple dozen applications — with hundreds more known to be in the very slow D.O.T. pipeline. And keep in mind that Congressmember Grace Meng of Queens got a $2 million grant from the federal Small Business Administration to help restaurants build 60 roadway cafes in her district. Will Meng’s Queens constituents be told exactly how their and your tax dollars are being spent on their streets — before their “public hearings”?

There is still time to fix this failure. Both D.O.T. and Dining Out NYC (the city’s outdoor dining program, which D.O.T. administers) have expansive Web sites where they can easily post both the public notices of the hearings and the full applications — so that citizens can attend these hearings and know what is being talked about. That is assuming that D.O.T. is truly interested in real public engagement.

Take a minute to let your councilmember know that you want D.O.T. to abide by the City Charter and restore public participation to its public hearings. You can find your councilmember here.

Clark is a member, CUEUP (Coalition United for Equitable Urban Policy) Facilitation Team.