Council unable to override Mayor’s veto. The proposed sites of three marine waste transfer stations were approved after the City Council failed to get sufficient votes to override Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto.
The Department of Sanitation had sought separate site selection approvals through ULURP applications to construct four new marine transfer stations. The four transfer stations were a component of Mayor Bloomberg’s 20-year Solid Waste Management Plan, which at the time of the applications was still pending approval before the City Council.
The proposed sites are located at East 91st Street in Manhattan, Shore Parkway and Hamilton Avenue in Brooklyn and College Point in Queens. 2 CityLand 52 (May 15, 2005). Of the four proposed sites, the Queens transfer station faced the least amount of opposition. In fact, after obtaining approval by the Planning Commission on April 13, 2005 and support from the residents near the site, the City Council did not request to vote on the application and, therefore, it was deemed approved after the Commission’s approval.
At the June 8, 2005 vote by the Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses on the remaining marine transfer stations, three Council members opposed the location of the proposed sites, but the remaining members approved. At the Land Use Committee hearing that same day, however, Council Members Leroy G. Comrie, Jr. and Albert Vann proposed that the Committee disapprove all three applications and the Committee voted 13 to 9 to disapprove.
The full Council voted later that day by 29 to 19 to disapprove the East 91st Street Station and Shore Parkway Station, and by a vote of 30 to 18 to disapprove the Hamilton Avenue Station. Within five days of the Council’s vote, Mayor Bloomberg vetoed the Council’s action. At the next stated Council meeting, Speaker Gifford Miller called off a veto override vote because he was two votes short of the 34 votes required.
The Mayor’s veto stood and the three marine transfer stations were deemed approved. For the full ULURP process, see 2 CityLand 52 (May 15, 2005).
Council: South/West Brooklyn Transfer Stations (June 8, 2005); Hamilton Avenue Transfer Station (June 8, 2005); East 91st Transfer Station (June 8, 2005); CPC: North Shore Transfer Station (C 050174 PSQ) (April 13, 2005); CPC: South/West Brooklyn Transfer Stations (C 050175 PSK) (April 13, 2005); CPC: Hamilton Avenue Transfer Station (C 050176 PSK) (April 13, 2005); CPC: East 91st Transfer Station (C 050173 PSM) (April 13, 2005). CITYADMIN
CITYLAND Comment: A study by the Independent Budget Office estimated that the Mayor’s Solid Waste Management Plan would require a capital investment of over $400 million and that, in the short term, the plan would add $100 million per year to the cost of disposing city waste. In the long term, however, the study found that if the plan meets its goal of holding the export fees down, savings to the City could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.