Organizer in race for Long Island City council seat wants to flip NYC's land use process

photo courtesy of Jesse Laymon

By David Brand

A veteran political strategist and progressive organizer has entered the crowded field for a Western Queens council seat, with the goals of advancing racial justice, addressing the climate crisis and completely overhauling the city’s land use process.

Jesse Laymon is vying to replace term-limited Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer in District 26, which includes Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside and a piece of Astoria. Laymon, the director of policy and advocacy at the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, has worked as an organizer and administrator for fair elections and good government causes for more than a decade.

He said he is now eager to have a hand in shaping land use decisions in Western Queens and the rest of New York City.

For Democratic candidates in District 26, the would-be home of a major Amazon campus, rejecting large-scale housing and commercial developments has become a baseline platform. Van Bramer and the many candidates vying to replace him opposed the Amazon deal and ensuing development proposals that they say lacked sufficient community influence and did not include truly affordable housing.

But Laymon doesn’t just oppose one-off megaprojects and rezonings, he wants to build a movement to one day eliminate the city’s Universal Land Use Review Procedure altogether. The process, known as ULURP, typically begins when developers deliver a proposal for the City Council to vote on after some advisory input from the affected community board, borough president and city planning commission. 

“We need to end the ULURP process,” Laymon said.  “It’s a broken model of development in New York. It’s always the developers leading the way for what is under consideration, what plots, what is going to be built there.”

Laymon instead proposes flipping the dynamic. He wants a centralized planning process to determine what sort of projects the city needs before presenting those proposals to developers to execute, similar to how municipal governments issue requests for proposal to build projects like new schools.

“What do we need, what is of civic importance? New supportive housing, new schools, new public housing,” he said. “We need to build these things, but we defer so much to private developers. Even when it comes to public land, we defer as though they’re the only ones that have a say.”

That sort of transformative proposal is a long shot.

In the meantime, Laymon said he would not strictly adhere to the Council tradition of member deference when it comes to land use issues. As a matter custom, the rest of the Council typically votes in lockstep with councilmember representing the affected district.

“I understand local members saying, ‘This is good for my neighborhood or not,’ but I’d rather have professional urban planners doing boroughwide or citywide planning,” he said. “But it depends on what the implications of the project would be.”

“I want to be somebody who works well with my colleagues,” he continued. “But I don’t want to make a blanket commitment.”

Laymon said he was motivated to run for office because current leaders have not sufficiently addressed the issues of institutional racism, public health disparities and justice system inequities laid bare by the COVID crisis and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“This year has been so terrible for our state, our city and our country,” he said. “It has moved me to want to be part of the solution and help to transform city government and do a better job building a healthy and equitable city.”

He said he would have voted against the most recent budget, which cut money for key social and civic services while largely preserving NYPD funding.

“I think we need to defund the NYPD. I think it has grown far too big and far too powerful,” he said.

He said he considers himself a “police and prison abolitionist” but understands the majority of New Yorkers do not share that perspective.

“I am working with people who are not there and moving toward alternatives,” Laymon said. “We can start by defunding parts of the NYPD that are counterproductive.” 

He specifically proposed eliminating the narcotics squad and the vice squad.

He opposes the city’s plan to build new jails, though he supports the effort to close Rikers Island. He said eliminating cash bail and bolstering alternatives to incarceration will drive the jail population low enough so that defendants can be housed in existing facilities in Brooklyn and Manhattan — though he wants to renovate those sites as well. 

All of his policy proposals are informed by two overarching goals, he said: Racial justice and addressing the climate crisis are “the two things I think over the next several years that our city has to focus on,” he said.

He advocates for more bike lanes and busways in the district as well as the closure of carbon-emitting power plants, like a fossil fuel-burning “peaker plant” in Astoria. 

“Now is the moment we must confront the climate crisis at a local level,” he said. “We need to be using every tool in our municipal toolbox to transform our economy into one that is sustainable and decarbonize quite rapidly.”

Laymon, who grew up in New York City, is one of at least 11 Democratic candidates who have filed to run for the open District 26 seat in 2021.

Business consultant Tavo Bortoli, former Council staffer Lorenzo Brea, former Bronx prosecutor Julia Forman, entrepreneur Ben Guttmann former, Community Board 2 chair Denise Keehan-Smith, CUNY professor Heajin Kim, political adviser Sultan Maruf, community leader Brent O'Leary, Community Board 2 member Bianca Ozeri and digital strategist Julie Won have each filed. Air Force veteran Marvin Jeffcoat is running on the Repubican side.

Giselle Burgess, who founded a Girl Scout troop for homeless New Yorkers, announced her candidacy in December 2019. Van Bramer’s Chief of Staff Matthew Wallace is also expected to run in District 26. 

Laymon filed with the Board of Elections after a July campaign finance filing deadline, but said he has raised more than $10,000.

O’Leary has raised the most money, at $25,480.