Mayor Mamdani’s controversial nominee to lead a city zoning board was approved by the City Council on Thursday, after the body had previously indicated it might not approve his pick.
The wonky and little-known Board of Standards and Appeals became the latest point of tension between the mayor and the Council after Mamdani nominated John Mangin to lead the board in June. The Council resisted, raising concerns about Mangin’s previous role on a Charter Revision Commission hotly contested by the Council and a reference he made to “homeowner cartels” in a 2014 paper. One of the commission’s key focal points was what some argued was the outsized role played by individual council members.
In the end, though,the Council approved Mangin, who is currently the director of the Department of City Planning’s housing division, by a 40-6 vote, with four abstentions.
“I think we had a great hearing where members who had concerns were able to ask the questions, get answers back, and so I am voting in favor,” Speaker Julie Menin said at a press conference ahead of the vote.
Deputy Speaker Nantasha Williams ha been one of the more outspoken members against Mangin, calling him “hostile” to the Council at a hearing last week. But on Thursday, she said her concerns had been assuaged by Mangin’s testimony before the Council, where he commended the Council and pledged to make the zoning process more communicative and transparent.
“Listen, I’m not going to agree with him on everything,” Williams said. “But I do believe his track record and how he answered the questions… I do think he did a decent job at sort of understanding the nuance.”
The Charter Revision Commission that Mangin had a leading role in last year advanced measures to the voters’ ballots aimed at speeding up housing production, including the one that gave the BSA more authority to approve housing projects. The Council argued those proposals took away power from the Council on land use decisions and overall reduced neighborhood input.
As part of the campaign to get Mangin in the seat, the nominee met with 41 councilmembers, including Menin and Williams, and Mamdani called up councilmembers, according to City Hall.
“John Mangin will be a visionary and dedicated chair of the Board of Standards and Appeals as we take on our city’s housing crisis,” the mayor said in a statement. “I’m proud to have nominated him, grateful for the broad support his nomination received from stakeholders across the city and thankful to the City Council for confirming him today. I look forward to working with John and the entire board to put new tools to work delivering affordable housing faster and building a city where working New Yorkers can afford to live.”
The BSA is an independent city agency that deals with individual zoning, land use and building code disputes. After voters approved proposals put forward by the Charter Revision Commission last year, it also is able to fast-track affordable housing projects by skipping the typically-required length zoning process.
“This vote by the City Council puts a proven housing expert in charge of a board that New Yorkers themselves decided should play a big role in solving our housing crisis,” Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York, said in a statement.