All takes are my own and not the views of Manhattan Community Board 5.
This post, and the next two, will be different from my usual posts. I want to give you the blow-by-blow of last year on CB5 in more of a narrative form. So it’s going to be more like storytime, with my reflections and takeaways. Think of this 3-chapter series as a behind-the scenes look between the headlines. Because headlines are written to be dramatic– but what about the details in between? And what characterizes the steady state after the headlines die down? I’m going to be sharing the events from my perspective– others on my community board lived through the same moments and likely have very different interpretations.
Here’s three examples of headlines about my community board in 2024. Pretty juicy, right?
An Introduction to CB5 and How I Got Here
I've been on Manhattan Community Board 5 (CB5) since May 2023. CB5’s tagline is “The Heart of Manhattan” because it truly is. The district stretches from 14th St to 59th St, but doesn’t touch the Hudson or the East River– it’s the middle of the island. It includes critical infrastructure like Grand Central Station and Penn Station. It includes iconic destinations like the Empire State Building and the Flatiron Building. New Yorkers give Midtown shit for being too touristy and too corporate, but it’s my favorite place on earth.
I applied to serve on my community board in 2023 for a couple of reasons. This city has given me so much, and I want to give back. The first year that I lived in NYC, I mostly consumed. I went to Broadway shows, took weekly runs along the west side highway, rode the ferry to Astoria for fun. I was (and am still) endlessly inspired by New York’s people, its history, its infrastructure. I want to do more than consume – I want to contribute. To help make our city even better: more affordable, accessible, and inclusive. So I got involved volunteering with Open New York, a pro-housing advocacy group (see my post on why volunteering with an advocacy group is the best ROI on your time). Through advocating with Open New York, I learned more about NYC’s process for building and rezoning, including the role that community boards play. I put in an application to join my community board.
I was appointed to CB5 in May 2023 by Borough President Mark Levine to serve a 2-year term. (Curious about the application process? See my breakdown here). Serving on CB5 is a volunteer role– I’m not paid. Since I’m not elected and not paid, it makes sense that I don’t have much authority. Community board members are not decisionmakers– we just give recommendations based on our experience living and working in the neighborhood.
Right place, right time: shaping NYC’s future through City of Yes
The timing of my term on the board couldn’t have been better, since it aligned with a landmark city policy.
In 2023, the Department of City Planning started rolling out policy proposals called City of Yes– 3 policies total that all modernized zoning in order to meet New York City’s current needs– the most ambitious citywide rezoning since 1961. Zoning is about what gets built and how– City of Yes would not only change what the city would look like, but who could afford to live here. And all rezonings go to community boards first, so I got the chance to weigh in.🙋♀️
The most important City of Yes policy– the third one about housing– didn’t come up for discussion till summer of 2024. But as of January 2024, it was not looking like CB5 would recommend approval.🫤 CB5 had just rejected the second City of Yes proposal– the one about zoning to support small businesses – due to concerns about quality of life issues like potential noise. Even though CB5 had identified housing affordability as our #1 issue, there was no guarantee that we’d be for building more housing. That uncertainty made it even more significant for me, as someone who cares about housing issues, to be a part of the conversation leading up to summer 2024.
“City of Yes? I hate that name, we should say ‘no’ more often.”
When I joined CB5 in 2023, there were a lot of new members that started around the same time as me. Community boards are meant to be made up of 50 neighbors, and 11 new ones started in 2023. So around a fifth of the board was just getting up to speed.
I remember CB5 leadership repeatedly said, “We’re not a NIMBY board.” They were claiming to be different than other community boards, since community boards are known for blocking change.
I disagreed with CB5 leadership on that one– I would have said that our board was pretty NIMBY. We rejected every legal cannabis store because we were trying to impose stricter guidelines than the state cannabis authority. We rejected changes for small businesses due to concerns about potential noise. We rejected this skybridge because it didn’t look like the buildings around it. One person on my committee even said, “City of Yes? I hate that name, we should say ‘no’ more often.” It wasn’t everyone on CB5, and it wasn’t every issue, but from my perspective, our general consensus and culture leaned more toward “no” than “yes”.
When I joined, I noticed there were a couple other members that tended to vote more pro-change, like me. In my group of 11 newbies, there were a few. But we were a significant minority.
CB5’s long-serving leadership
In addition to the newbies, there was also a good contingent of folks who had been serving on the board for a long time. Some of them for over 20 years. Now NYC community boards have term limits, so this kind of thing won’t be possible going forward. New Yorkers voted in 2018 to institute term limits for community boards: max four consecutive two-year terms. The law also included a phase-in so that there wasn’t a mass exodus.
In Jan 2024, a good chunk of CB5’s leadership– the folks who led the board and committees– were really close colleagues and friends. They’d served together for a long time. Here’s a chart that shows CB5 member tenure as of Jan 2024. You can see there were lots of new people, and also others that had served for decades.
Iron Fist, Orderly Meetings
CB5’s Chair, let’s call her Nikki, had been on the community board for over three decades with 15 years as Chair. That’s right, 30 years. She’d served on CB5 for longer than some other members had been alive. If you’ve been reading my stuff, you know that Chair is the most important role. The other leadership roles are not even close.
The first time I met Nikki was at my “new member orientation” in 2023. She was wearing at least 15 bracelets. On one arm. Rumor was that she lived in Jersey most of the time.
Nikki had been on CB5 since 1993 and she told us it wasn’t always this orderly. She alluded to the time before she was Chair, the long meetings and lack of structure. Nikki’s leadership brought an end to the chaos. She conducted efficient meetings and demanded unanimous agreement among members.
One city staff member once remarked, “Nikki rules CB5 with an iron fist.” The staff member was saying that when her colleagues were splitting up their community board presentations, they fought over who would get to come to CB5– because CB5 has the shortest meetings. And that’s due to Nikki’s leadership– CB5 was known for being a well-oiled machine, no chaos or dissent. And that’s weird for a community board.
Community boards are, by design, a ragtag group of opinionated volunteers that happen to live in the same neighborhood. Our role is to solicit more opinions from more neighbors and then weigh in on policy proposals. And that’s a hard thing to do in an orderly way, since with 50 characters in the room and neighbors calling in with all kinds of complaints, you’re never going to get to a proposal that will please everyone. Community board meetings are known for dragging late into the night, going around in circles discussing policy proposals, and getting bogged down by disagreement. But not CB5.
The Downside of the Iron Fist: Stifling Voice
The pros of Nikki’s leadership style are that we had short, efficient meetings. There was little discussion and no conflict. But there were also downsides to Nikki’s culture of order and stability. Here’s an example.
I mentioned that I care about housing– the CB5 committee that deals with housing is the Land Use committee. But I’m not assigned to the Land Use committee– Nikki only put people with 3+ years of community board experience on that committee, and only with the approval of the Land Use Committee Chair. And she didn’t allow anyone but committee members to participate in the committee meetings. So I could go to the committee meeting just like any member of the public. And I could give 2 minutes in a timed comment window, just like any other member of the public. But I couldn’t interact in any other way– I couldn’t ask questions, I couldn't deliberate with the group.
In January 2024, that committee was considering a policy called Green Fast Track for Housing. You can probably already tell that I was stoked– a proposal to allow NYC to build sustainable housing more quickly– 🙌 let’s GO 🙌. I attended the Land Use committee meeting where they were discussing it– and it was maddening. The committee hadn’t read over the policy before the meeting, so they were trying to interpret it on the fly. I had read the policy and knew a lot about it, but I couldn’t chime in or help them. I listened in as they misinterpreted the policy. But I couldn’t raise my hand and say “hey, that’s not actually how it’s going to work.” I ended up texting one of the committee members, since that’s the only way I could let them know they were reading it wrong. This is the downside of the iron fist: the meeting didn’t have much dissent or conflict, but it also wasn’t inclusive to all voices.
The committee ended up recommending denial for that housing policy. Since I disagreed with the committee’s recommendation, my only option was to speak up at the full board meeting— where the culture, driven by Nikki’s emphasis on unanimity, was hostile to dissent. It was nerve-wracking. When I spoke and made eye contact with my colleagues in the room, I didn’t see nodding. I didn’t even see indifference. I saw judgment and hostile disagreement. I prepared what I was going to say ahead of time because otherwise I knew I'd be too nervous to be coherent. And that’s weird for me! A lot of my day job includes public speaking at conferences and workshops. I’m very comfortable speaking in front of audiences of 200+ people. But it was a new kind of vulnerability for me to share my opinion with 50 hostile people that just wanted me to shut up and get in line. My voice wobbled, my heart pounded, I got sweaty– I truly dreaded it. Sometimes all that effort would influence one or two people to vote with me, but usually not. In this particular case, the community board voted against the housing policy.
I wasn’t the only one feeling stifled by the iron fist policies. Other CB5 members told me that they “chose their battles.” That resonated with me too. It takes a lot of emotional labor to be “othered” by the rest of the group. So it’s a reasonable defense mechanism to let your values slide sometimes. And it’s easy to justify staying quiet– I often convinced myself that I wasn’t staying quiet out of self-preservation, but that I was saving my political capital for other fights that mattered more to me.
The downsides of the iron fist policies were that CB5 members were often barred from weighing in on the issues they care about. And that they felt pressured to keep their opinions to themselves. Other community boards have longer meetings and more disorganized discussion– but that’s a price I’d be willing to pay to be more inclusive to diverse perspectives. After all, that’s literally a community board’s job: to represent the voices of the community.
The shakeup
On February 7, 2024, Nikki sent a mass email to CB5 letting us know she was resigning effective immediately. It was very sudden. Out of the blue. Shocking. She was an institution. What would happen next to the house that Nikki built? Tune in next week to discover who will rise from the ashes.
Here’s the link to the next one:
Omg that cliffhanger!
Looking forward to part 2!