Kew Gardens Jail Meeting Will Again Be Held Behind Closed Doors

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — A select group of stakeholders will meet again Tuesday to discuss plans for a new jail in Kew Gardens, nearly three weeks after reporters were barred from a similar meeting.

Members of the Queens "neighborhood advisory committee" will meet behind closed doors once more with representatives of the mayor's office and the jail's design firm, Perkins Eastman, on March 19 at 6:30 p.m. at the Kew Gardens Community Center.

The mayor's office has barred reporters from attending the advisory meetings by arguing the meetings aren't open to the general public. But local community associations, such as the Community Preservation Committee, have regularly invited people who don't sit on the advisory board to attend the meetings, attendees told Patch. Members of the public have attended the advisory meetings as recently as Jan. 30, meeting minutes by Perkins Eastman show.

On Feb. 28, a representative from the mayor's office barred reporters from Patch and the Queens Chronicle from attending another advisory committee meeting discussing the jail, which would house 1,510 beds across 1.9 million square feet. A QNS.com reporter was able to attend and published a story on what happened in the meeting.

"They aren't public meetings," Eric Phillips, a spokesperson for the mayor, wrote on Twitter on March 1. "The general public isn't invited en masse."

The decision propelled the closed-door policy into the spotlight. Two weeks later, de Blasio pledged to host more open meetings on the jails.

"There is still a place in this world for private conversation when people are trying to work through sensitive matters," de Blasio said during a press conference. "But we should always err on the side of the inclusion, particularly when the law indicates obviously."

"So we’re gonna fix that situation and make sure there are meetings in communities where media have the access to hear how the dialogue goes," de Blasio added.

A spokesman from the mayor's office defended the decision to bar reporters and the general public in an interview last week with Patch, arguing that community meetings about a project typically happen during the city's land use review process — not before, as is the case with the neighborhood advisory committee meetings.

The spokesman declined to say who made the decision to bar press from the advisory meetings and declined to answer a question regarding whether the mayor's office asked the advisory committee members whether they wanted the meetings to be open or closed to reporters.

"A lot of people are making it seem like we're not transparent," the spokesman said by phone. "That is just not factually correct. We are going beyond what is required of us."

The mayor's office will host open meetings once the city begins its land use review, known as ULURP, the spokesman added. The City Planning Commission must decide by March 25 whether to green light the jail plan and allow it to advance to the formal review process.

"We’re going to have broader community meetings that are open to members of the media, especially when the ULURP process begins," the spokesperson wrote in an email.

"Neighborhood Advisory Committee meetings are purely advisory and don’t have a formal government role, nor do they vote on any aspect of the plan. Their purpose is to gain valuable initial feedback before having broader community meetings that will be open press."

In August 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to build four new jails throughout the city to replace the notoriously inhumane detention facilities on Rikers Island and reduce the city's jail population from 9,400 to 5,000 by the year 2027.

The mayor's office also launched a series of "Neighborhood Advisory Committees" to gather community input on each of the new jails.

"The administration and its partners are also beginning a comprehensive engagement strategy that will go beyond what is required as part of public review of these discretionary actions," the mayor's office said in a statement in August.

"At the core of the city’s strategy will be neighborhood advisory bodies with local elected and neighborhood leaders to provide feedback on design, program, neighborhood integration and tackle a range of quality of life concerns within the neighborhoods where these sites will be located."

Queens Borough President Melinda Katz and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. have urged the mayor's office to restart the process for the four new jails. They said the mayor's office has failed to collaborate with the local communities that would house them.

"We are deeply disturbed by the lack of meaningful local engagement on the borough-based jails project to date," Katz and Diaz Jr. wrote in a letter dated March 8. "The process of developing the borough-based jails system must start anew."

A spokesman for the mayor's office responded: "We won’t delay our mission to close Rikers."