The West Harlem Local Development Corporation, a group of neighborhood representatives who have been negotiating a community benefits agreement with Columbia as part of the University's Manhattanville expansion project, postponed its vote on whether to accept Columbia's community benefits agreement.
The vote, originally scheduled for Tuesday night, will take place on Friday.
At around $150 million, the benefits agreement has been developed over the past several years, and designates Columbia funding for affordable housing, building a public school, and finance other local programs. Drafted along with LDC members, the agreement has not been made public, and its release has been long anticipated.
On Monday evening, the executive committee of West Harlem's Community Board 9 voted unanimously for its two delegates on the local development corporation to turn down the community benefits agreement. The LDC has 20 members, and a supermajority of 13 favorable votes is required to for the agreement to pass.
Deliberations took place in a closed corporation session while members of the local activist group Coalition to Preserve Community and Columbia’s Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification—organizations that have vocally protested the University’s expansion process—waited outside a conference room on the seventh floor of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development building on Old Broadway and 133rd Street.
The members-only discussion followed a 15-minute period in which members of the public—mainly from the two activist groups—were allowed to briefly voice their positions on the benefits agreement.
While a 15-minute public session is standard for the corporation's meetings, the board was initially reluctant to allow it for what members termed a “special” session.
LDC President Julio Batista said the main reason the public could not be allowed into the room was that the LDC “did not get any clearance from them [HPD] to have anyone but board members come up.”
But when activists entered the room anyway, they were allowed to stay for the 15 minutes before being told to wait in the hallway while the vote took place. About half an hour later, corporation members emerged, and Batista announced that the vote had been “tabled” until Friday. He added that he would try to obtain permission from the HPD for the public to attend.
“This vote affects us. We have a right to be here,” Coalition to Preserve Community member Tom Kappner said.
Accountability was of key concern throughout the meeting, as CPC members speculated that the reason the deliberations were closed was to prevent opponents of the benefits agreement from knowing which corporation members voted to approve or reject it.
“This is part of a cumulative process. At every stage, the community has been involved,” Nellie Bailey, president of the Harlem Tenants Council, said of the vote, adding, “You guys have always talked about accountability and transparency.”
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