The purpose of these comments is to follow up on the testimony that my staff provided at the Commission’s first Brooklyn hearing on March 5, and to respond to the Preliminary Staff Report released in April.
At the March 5 hearing, you heard about our proposal to strengthen community boards, the most local form of democracy that we have in New York City. For our community boards to be accountable to their constituents, they must be able to function well. However, due to years of chronic underfunding and lack of support from City agencies, our city’s 59 community boards struggle to carry out their Charter-mandated duties.
To briefly review, my proposal outlines three recommendations:
- Increase community board office budgets for staffing and OTPS, tied to a percentage of the funding for Borough Presidents’ offices as outlined in the Charter. This would ensure that all boards can have at least three full-time, professional, union support staff, as well as money for updated technology, office supplies, and other needs.
- Create an independent Community Board Central Office, loosely based on the model of City Council’s Central Staff, to support boards in numerous areas, including land use and planning, communications and technology, real estate matters, human resources, procurement, legal support, and training.
- Change the community board member appointment date from April 1 to August 1 and require new applicants to have attended at least one board meeting prior to applying.
I want to thank the Commission’s staff for considering our proposal in their preliminary report. They agreed that the responsibilities outlined in the Charter for supporting community boards are a “statutory hodgepodge,” with various (and sometimes overlapping) roles outlined for agencies, Borough Presidents, the Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI), the Civic Engagement Commission (CEC), and of course the boards themselves.
I agree with the staff report that the CEC, as created in the 2018 Charter revision, is arguably meant to serve at least some of the functions we would assign to a Community Board Central Office. However, as noted, the CEC sits in the Mayor’s Office and is therefore subject to political whims. Since its creation, it has never been adequately funded. As a result, they have not been able to execute the vision laid out by the 2018 Charter Revision Commission.
That is why I am proposing that this Commission clean up the Charter’s confusing language surrounding community board support and assign that role to an independent agency. The Community Board Central Office, or CBCO as my staff and I call it, would consolidate community board support, rather than having that responsibility spread between multiple agencies and multiple Borough Presidents’ offices. And because it would be independent, it would not be subject to political whims, directives, or budget cuts. Were an update to the Charter to remove the CEC’s responsibility to community boards, they would still be tasked with important initiatives such as citywide participatory budgeting, language access for voters, and the Taskforce for Racial Inclusion and Equity (TRIE).
Your staff’s report suggested housing more of these responsibilities in the Borough Presidents’ offices. However, I would counter that our proposal is more fiscally responsible – rather than hiring five different human resources professionals, for example, the CBCO could have fewer positions serving all the boards. And unlike in our office, they would be dedicated full time to meeting the boards’ needs. The CBCO would also provide the boards with consistent resources across time and across geographies. Rather than having staff and directives change on them every four to eight years, each board would have equitable, enduring access to these resources.
As for us underspending our budgets (as pointed out in the report), I can’t speak for the other BPs, but I can tell you that since day one, I’ve been staffing up my office, so if I underspent my budget, you can rest assured I was working on spending it as quickly as possible to hire people in much-needed roles to support my own office’s capacity.
Additionally, the Commission’s staff had questions about how community boards spent a $42,500 infusion they received in FY2020, and why the boards’ budgets should not be subject to the usual agency appropriations process. The 2020 enhancement was only a one-time allocation, so boards were not able to spend it on long-term expense needs such as staffing. In fact, later in FY2020, Mayor de Blasio asked community boards to lay off staff due to pandemic budget shortfalls, even though the boards were serving their communities as a first point of contact during that difficult time. An independent budget tied to that of the Borough Presidents will ensure the boards’ long-term viability.
Finally, to address questions raised both in the report and in the previous hearing, according to lawyers with whom we consulted, two of three of these proposals—tying community boards’ budgets to a percentage of the Charter-mandated allocation for Borough Presidents’ offices and creating the CBCO—would in fact require Charter change. The third proposal, regarding changing the member appointment date and requiring applicants to attend at least one meeting, could be accomplished through local law, and I have been working with Council Member Restler on that legislation. However, there is no reason that proposal could not also be included in a Charter revision.
In conclusion, I want to thank you again for considering my platform to support community boards and encourage you to revisit it as you finalize your proposed ballot measures. I can’t think of anything that would strengthen our local democracy more than supporting our most local government actors. I’m attaching a copy of the platform with this testimony for your review.
