Eric Conner, one of our co-founders, published an op-ed in the Jersey City Times regarding the recent veto of the bird-safe glass ordinance. You can read the original version here:
Last week, Mayor Fulop vetoed Ordinance 25-123, which was passed by the Jersey City Council to implement bird-safe design standards in all rehabilitations (including renovations), new constructions, and additions. This means nearly all surfaces with windows would need to include glass or other design solutions that come at a markup to standard glass. Citing increased costs to housing construction, Mayor Fulop was right to veto the ordinance. Despite some controversy, his decision was the environmentally sound argument despite some advocates’ attempts to paint it as callous. As I explain in this op-ed, the council should not overturn his veto.
There is no dispute that window collisions cause around a billion bird deaths each year in the United States. They are the second second leading cause of bird deaths following predation by domestic and feral domestic cats, which results in up to four billion deaths each year nationwide. Advocates for this ordinance are no doubt well intentioned and want to save birds. Clearly they are savvy enough to understand that tacking on extra costs to developers is politically more palatable than rounding up and euthanizing feral cats. But, at the same time, their ordinance is environmentally counterproductive and creates two new problems where it tries to solve one.
The first problem is that our cities are relatively safe for birds and good places for conservation-minded individuals to live. I, myself, am an Eagle Scout and consider myself a life-long conservationist. I am committed to environmental protection and habitat restoration, which is why getting policy right matters to me. It is also one of the many reasons why I have made Jersey City my home for nearly 13 years.
Most collision-related bird deaths do not take place in our largest, densest cities but in the vast suburban sprawl where human civilization slowly untangles into greenspace and fragmented wildlife habitat. Proximity to habitat favorable to bird wildlife increases the risk of window collisions [1]. Despite all the brick and concrete and glass, cities like New York and Jersey City are some of the most environmentally friendly places to live in the country. We see fewer carbon emissions per capita than the surrounding suburbs. We take fewer trips by car. Our homes use less energy. We are more likely to bike or walk to work. And even New York’s maze of tall, glass-clad buildings results in only 230,000 bird deaths a year according to a 2012 study, which was conducted by the city before it implemented its own bird glass ordinance. New York, home to 2.4% of the country’s population and smack-dab in the middle of the major Atlantic Coast migratory route, is responsible for a mere 0.023% of collision-related bird deaths. We do not know exact numbers for Jersey City because we have not commissioned any study that accurately identifies the extent of the issue here, which brings me to the second problem.
Regulations, no matter how well intentioned, have a cost associated with them. In many cases, the costs of regulation are outweighed by the benefits: the Clean Air Act is a good example. Advocates claim the costs of their measures are trifling – a mere 0.38% of a budget. This estimate is inaccurate. Dario and I reached out to an architectural glass provider and a window glass cost estimator (both based in New Jersey) as well as a real estate finance professionals and affordable housing builders to collect estimates based on their experience with similar ordinances in New York City. Bird-safe glass costs, on the low end, 50% more than standard glass and up to 200% more on the high end for premium products.
Overall impacts on costs of new development due to this ordinance are likely 1% to 5% higher, as highlighted by the Jersey City Times in earlier reporting. In large projects, such as this recently started $200-million project with 90 affordable units, those added costs can easily tally up to an additional $2 million to $4.2 million, depending on the material used. For the Bayfront project alone, which is being developed with generous PILOTs from the city, taxpayers could be on the hook for tens of millions of additional dollars as its 8,000 units (35% affordable) are built out with bird-safe materials. While a 5% estimate could be on the high end, the burden is on advocates to pin down more precise cost estimates so that the city can make an informed decision knowing the impacts of the ordinance.
Higher costs of development mean two things: first, it means fewer buildings get built here in Jersey City until rents or prices rise to justify the expense; and second, it means more things get built elsewhere, most likely resulting in more sprawl in suburban America.
The tension between rising demand for housing coupled with limited supply in cities will eventually result in more housing built elsewhere where there are fewer conservation-minded advocates to block or restrict new housing development. And it is there, in the suburbs, among the detached residences and low-rise buildings that the vast majority of birds die in collisions with windows. According to 23 studies on bird strikes, 56% and 44% of bird-collision deaths were against low-rise and single-family residences with fewer than 1% of deaths involving high rises. The same study noted that “per-building mortality rates at individual residences were higher in rural than urban areas” and for residences with bird feeders. It turns out, proximity to wildlife habitat is deadlier despite specific high-rise and low-rise buildings in urban areas having relatively high median death rates associated with their windows.
During the past mayoral campaign, we heard a lot of rhetoric about making greedy developers pay. I agree developers are “greedy.” Their greed means they pass on new added costs to renters as much as possible. Greedy developers aren’t going to pay this cost; you are. They are going to charge you higher rents to make up for the higher costs of development. And much of those high costs of development are the results of decades’ worth of slow accretions to Jersey City’s municipal code – one well-intentioned ordinance on setbacks here, an impact fee there, another regulating materials used in construction, and each of those 1% or 5% increases in development costs add up, eventually making projects twice as expensive as they would be otherwise. And the more expensive it is to develop here means it takes longer for things to get built (if they get built at all because developers will not build if costs exceed benefits). Not even older builds are spared as renovations to smaller buildings and private homes are also covered by this ordinance.
We also have to consider that nothing happens in isolation. Developers, elsewhere in the country and state, will respond to high demands for housing by happily clear-cutting more forests, plowing under fields, and slapping more single-family residential homes or low-rise buildings surrounded by parking lots in suburbs that abut formerly pristine wildlife habitat in places where regulations are less strict.
Since it is unknown how many bird strikes and deaths occur in Jersey City each year, we must study when and where those deaths occur. I suspect the answer is in the thousands. I also suspect it is largely concentrated along the Hudson River and the southern section of downtown by Liberty State Park with pockets of collisions occurring near the wetlands west of the city as well. Unfortunately, I cannot say for certain because we have not studied the issue. Before passing a citywide ordinance that applies to every single new building, we should take steps to target our response and reduce bird deaths where and when they occur.
Following that, we should consider adopting an ordinance similar to Toronto’s bird-safe ordinance, whose guidelines are reproduced below and are much more targeted than the ordinance Mayor Fulop just vetoed:
Toronto’s guidelines apply to: a) all industrial, commercial, and institutional development, b) residential development ≥4 stories, and c) low-rise residential development near natural areas. 85% or more of all exterior glazing, and all hazardous features, must be bird friendly up to 12 m (approximately 40 ft) above grade.
There is no doubt that bird-safe glass helps prevent collisions by up to 95%. But a targeted approach rather than a blanket ordinance has the advantages of getting the majority of the benefits at lower cost.
And, after conducting a study to identify the deadliest buildings, we should go further than the bird advocates recommended, and take steps to correct the deadliest spots similar to how New York’s Javits Center and Chicago’s McCormick Place retrofitted their deadly windows. If necessary, the city should offer PILOT agreements to directly help high-risk buildings off-set the costs of any required retrofit.
In the meantime, I encourage advocates to turn their attention to Trenton and lobby legislators to pass a statewide ordinance to update building codes in more rural and suburban counties with a population density under 5,000 people per square mile to help offset the biggest risk to birds in places where they are most likely to occur, which will help make development comparatively more attractive in New Jersey’s most populous and environmentally-friendly cities.
One response to “The City Council Must Rethink the Bird Glass Ordinance that Mayor Fulop Vetoed”
[…] Perhaps JC Birds is willing to mislead the public about the costs of their proposals because they would actually prefer it if high prices slowed our city’s growth, out of a misguided sense that cities are less environmentally friendly than suburbs. Maybe they do genuinely believe that only greedy developers or wealthy New York transplants will bear these costs. We have previously shown why both beliefs are misguided [Better Blocks NJ]. […]