[Weekly Rant] Community Boards get more bite but also get the newspaper
The role of the Community Board has the topic of the week at the Blogter. In general, we here feel that Community Boards are the closest form of government for citizens and should get a lot more respect and attention than they currently receive. If you look at Brooklyn, the Community Boards have been vocal about concerns over the “gold rush” that is occurring there, but their voices often fall of deaf ears. The problem has always been that there was no real bite to their bark, but that may change if a new law is passed by the City Council.
197-a plans are a method for communities to formally establish development guides for city agencies that address the needs of the community. Creating a 197-a plan often requires a lengthy process of endorsements that has resulted in only ten plans being adopted since 1992 (when the law was enabled). Even when plans are passed, they cannot be enforced properly. An example was Columbia’s expansion being passed by City Council even though it directly violates the neighborhood’s 197-a. The new legislation that is being lobbied by The Community-Based Planning Task Force intends on changing the planning process to a bottom to top process.
However, the Bloomberg administration has created a road bump for seeing the effectiveness of bottom to top planning. A few months ago the city told Community Boards that they would be getting a $5,000 budget cuts. However, that was not the case, instead the city is now nearly tripling their budget cut to $16,000, or 8%, for Community Boards as part of its effort to tighten it’s belt. The problem with this is that the Community Board’s annual budget has always been $200,000 even during the good times. Cutting their budget is going to reduce the effectiveness of local government because Community Boards will now have to choose between operation costs and hiring experts for projects like 197-a plans.
Print media has also been raising concerns about the power of Community Boards. The New York Sun ran an article that questions the power Community Boards have by being able to reject liquor licenses to restaurants, even going far enough to insinuate that board members may be abusing their power for their own agendas.
What the Blogter is seeing is a struggle over the the philosophy of top to bottom vs. bottom to top governing in the works. The system we’ve seen, by example of the Atlantic Yards project, has been a series of city and developer decisions without any real input from the community. Now that is being threatened by recent legislature changes, so those benefiting from the current system are being threatened. Their answer to this is to weaken Community Boards even more, closing one door of citizens to get involved with their government.
If the budget changes are enacted, it is of the up-most importance that the local communities find volunteers to assist the boards so that we do not lose this opportunity to have real input into our neighborhoods futures. It is also the responsibility for Community Boards to also listen to its communities and adopt new ways of communicating and operating that reduces their spending.
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