Chapter 2: A Year of Turmoil and Transformation at Manhattan Community Board 5
In which my community board enters disarray
All takes are my own and not the views of Manhattan Community Board 5.
From last week’s post, you might remember that CB5 had had the same Chair for 15 years. Nikki ruled the community board with an iron fist, so our meetings were short and orderly but also stifled participation. The Chair is the most important role. And Nikki just resigned the post out of the blue, creating a massive power vacuum.
Okay, Chair is the only one that matters, but who are the rest of these people?
I keep saying “Chair is the most important role.” But now that Nikki is gone, it’ll be helpful to give a rundown of the next most important roles in red below. I’ll keep coming back to this visual (below), and black out the people who aren’t on the board anymore. So Nikki’s box is now black:
Next to Nikki was Mr. Permits. He was Vice Chair of the board and had been on CB5 a long time: 17 years. He chaired the CB5 committee that deals with liquor licenses and permits, so he often helped me navigate tricky situations where I was facilitating conversations with neighbors and liquor license applicants. He’s always very put together– well dressed, hair cut short, he has a calm presence. He’s very effective at chairing a short meeting– he can respectfully guide other members back on track when they go off topic. The role of Vice Chair is to chair the meetings when the Chair isn’t there, so Mr. Permits had already been chairing our meetings whenever Nikki was absent.
After Mr. Permits was 2nd Vice Chair, let’s call him PTA President. I don’t know PTA President that well— I know he leads the PTA at his kid’s school. One time we heard a presentation from the mayor’s office about migrant youth in NYC schools, and PTA President shared insights about the ways that his child’s school was supporting migrant youth, which was helpful to put a citywide issue into local context. PTA President is also on the Admissions and Diversity Committee for his part of the school district, even though he does not seem to support policies that lead to more racial integration. His role on CB5, 2nd Vice Chair, is a weird role– it only matters when the Chair is absent. When Nikki was absent and Mr. Permits chaired meetings, PTA President facilitated the public comment portion of the agenda. This mostly consisted of PTA President calling on speakers and then politely but firmly telling them their time was up when they tried to run over 2 minutes.
Shari was Secretary. I don’t know her well either. As Secretary, she took the minutes for the meeting and called the votes.
I know Badminton the best– I’ve known him since before I joined the board since we’re both involved with Open New York. He has glasses and shoulder-length dark hair and his hobbies are cycling and playing badminton. When I joined CB5, there were a couple other members that tended to vote more pro-change. Badminton was in that camp – we were often 2 of the ~5 voices voting differently than the rest of the group. When I joined, he’d been on the board for 2 years and was known for being super knowledgeable about housing policy. Badminton hadn’t been on the community board as long as the rest of the leadership, but he’d put in a lot of energy in a short amount of time. As Assistant Secretary, he helped Shari with the meeting minutes. It was not a very important job, but it was remarkable that he had a leadership role at all, given that Nikki usually reserved those for more tenured members.
30 Rock was our Treasurer. He has a media background and worked at NBC for over 20 years– that’s actually how he came to serve on CB5, because his office was at 30 Rock. Most other community boards are primarily made up of members that live in the neighborhood. CB5 is different in that way– a lot of our members don’t live in the district, they work in it. Because it’s Midtown– it’s not as residential as other neighborhoods. I think 30 Rock lives on the Upper West Side. But anyway. He was Treasurer, and I honestly didn’t even know what that meant– I’d never heard anyone mention CB5’s finances.
A shakeup in Chair, but not in overall leadership
Let’s get back to the whole leadership transition thing.
To be honest, it wasn’t that surprising that Nikki resigned. She hadn’t been to a meeting in months due to health issues. Her resignation was just incredibly sudden.
Our bylaws stated that Mr. Permits would then become Chair. It didn’t feel like a big change for Nikki to be replaced by Mr. Permits– their leadership style was similar. He wasn’t going to change the culture or structure of CB5.
Now Mr. Permits’s role was open– so we needed to vote on who would be Vice Chair. Badminton and Versailles were nominated for the position.
I didn’t mention Versailles before, but she was actually probably the next most influential person after Mr. Permits. Versailles is from France originally, so she has a classy French accent and aesthetic. She grew up in Paris, which informed her taste in architecture and passion for historic preservation. Like Shari (Secretary) and 30 Rock (Treasurer), she’s on the board of City Club, a local group that advocates for preserving NYC’s historic buildings. City Club is best known recently for suing to kill Little Island, and coming very close to succeeding. Versailles and I definitely disagree on questions like “how should we address NYC’s housing crisis?”, but I respect her and think she’s an effective leader.
Versailles was going to win the Vice Chair role. She’d been on CB5 for 19 years and had a very prominent voice on the board because she led two of the six committees, including the most important one: Land Use. She was leading the CB5 taskforce on Penn Station. She’s also really involved in local politics outside of CB5: She is a leader at the Chelsea Democratic Club (What’s a Democratic Club again? My post on clubs here) and she ran for Assembly in 2022 and lost. That’s pretty typical for running for office the first time– she’ll probably run again for something in the future.
Even though I didn’t think Badminton would win the Vice Chair vote, I was impressed that he was throwing his hat in the ring. Nikki wasn’t a fan of CB5 elections– she preferred to have a clean slate: no conflict or competition. So there weren’t that many new-ish members that even viewed leadership as an option. Everyone just assumed Nikki and her friends would always run the show.
Badminton and Versailles were both actively campaigning for the Vice Chair position. They focused on building connections in the lead-up to the election, reaching out to members via email to set up coffee meetings and secure votes.
Versailles’s email
On March 13, I got a text from another CB5 member asking what Versailles’s email meant. I didn’t get an email from Versailles. So they forwarded me the email.
Versailles resigned, and only sent her resignation email to select members. After reading it, I can tell why she didn’t send it to me. It’s because she basically named me and Badminton as her reason for leaving. Her email said: “The presence of [CB5] members affiliated with organizations that lobby for special interests is very disturbing.” Badminton works for Open New York, and I’m on its board. Open New York is a pro-housing advocacy group. Other CB5 members interpret Versailles’s email to mean that Open New York lobbies on behalf of real estate developers. And even though that’s explicitly false, it is very effective at stirring up fear.
Everyone was blindsided and confused by Versailles’s resignation. She had been campaigning for the Vice Chair seat just days before. But it also didn’t make any sense: if she thought an insidious force was taking over CB5, shouldn’t she stay to fight it? Especially when she was clearly going to win the Vice Chair position? Now that she’s resigning, Badminton will be Vice Chair. So she’s giving up her leadership role to someone that she thinks is a threat to CB5? This is some 4D chess.
I was super confused. Like that feeling when you’re watching a movie with too many plot lines. It’s dramatic. It’s fascinating. But you also feel dumb because you can’t quite trace all these plot lines to where they’ll end. You’re a step behind and you can’t predict the outcome. When that’s your actual life instead of a movie, and you can’t explain something, it’s stressful– your brain keeps turning it over and over to figure out the mystery: why did Versailles quit? Why now?
Mr. Permits’s short reign as chair
The next day, March 14, was the full board meeting. With Versailles’s sudden departure, everyone is looking to Mr. Permits for leadership. He’s the new Nikki– if he acts like everything is alright, then we’ll feel like it’s alright. If he’s stressed and tells us the board is in trouble, then we’re going to freak out too.
The meeting starts out with some minor freaking out– a few CB5 members get up on the mic to repeat Versailles’s concerns from her resignation email. They’re like “We at CB5 have been invaded by real estate interests, specifically Open New York.” Again, Open New York explicitly does not collaborate with real estate groups, but this is how the meeting starts out: members expressing concern.
Mr. Permits starts giving his standard report. He announces that he’s resigning too. He’s quitting during the meeting.😲
He says the reason he’s quitting is because of division on the board. He “doesn’t recognize this board.” He doesn’t want to lead this kind of board.
Everyone is stunned and bewildered. So much for any hope for stability. Mr. Permits was supposed to tell us that it’s going to be okay, but instead he basically said “it’s not okay and I’m leaving.”
Everyone’s looking around the room, making eye contact with others, waiting for someone to ask a question, make a move, lead us out of this confusion. But instead, we only see other confused, concerned faces. Everyone’s minds are racing, trying to think through “What does this mean? What happens next? What’s really going on here?”
If Mr. Permits isn’t Chair anymore, then who is?
After delivering his big news, Mr. Permits announces the vote for Vice Chair. Since Versailles quit the board, Badminton is the only nominee.
With no Chair, the Vice Chair becomes Chair. If Badminton gets more than 50% of the vote, he becomes Chair. Badminton would take over the role Nikki left. The role Mr. Permits just left.
But there’s a lot of people in the room that don’t trust Badminton. He works for Open New York. Versailles’s email basically said Open New York is bad. Other CB5 members got up on the mic and said they think Open New York is bad. So this vote is not only asking: “do you think Badminton should be Chair?” it’s also asking “do you agree that Open New York is bad?”
22 vote for Badminton, 19 do not– a very close vote. Badminton squeaks by. He’s Chair.
Badminton is visibly rattled by all this. He didn’t expect to be thrust into this situation tonight. He didn’t expect to be indirectly attacked by colleagues at the beginning of the meeting. He didn’t expect Mr. Permits to quit. He didn’t expect to take over the seat Nikki vacated. He just thought he’d be second to Mr. Permits.
Badminton thanks Mr. Permits for his leadership, and reminds the full board that he’s merely serving as interim Chair until our June election. That’s 4 months– Badminton is Chair, but only temporarily. We’ll do a whole new vote in June for all positions: Chair, Vice Chair, etc.
Badminton’s first day as Chair
The day after Badminton’s election, he sends an email to all the remaining board members basically saying: I didn’t expect to be thrust into this role, it’s an honor to serve as Chair since CB5 is such a special district and Nikki and Mr. Permits were great leaders, and I want to make sure that all board members voices are heard. He said he would make it his priority to listen before doing anything else, and gave his cell and proposed to connect with each board member 1:1.
Two hours later, a longtime board member replied-all to Badminton’s email saying, “I feel that after serving for roughly 8-9 years, I am no longer needed at CB5, and tender my resignation.” A second longtime board member sent a reply-all, saying they’re quitting too. Other board members replied-all, expressing their dismay and urging the quitters to stay. My reaction was the opposite: these quitters were part of the group that had made me dread speaking during full board meetings. The group that had stared me down instead of listening to my perspective. And they said they were quitting because their perspective was no longer needed. Maybe they knew something I didn’t. Maybe they had other reasons for quitting that they weren’t really letting on. But it seemed to me that they were quitting at the moment when their perspective was needed the most. And instead of accepting the discomfort and summoning the bravery needed to engage in real conversation, they left.
The day after Badminton’s election, the headlines about CB5 started. There were 6 or so headlines that week about CB5. The articles painted a dramatic picture of a battle between pro-housing and pro-status-quo camps. Some articles villainized Badminton and I as invading real estate interests.
This might be a good time for a reminder that our community board was about to weigh in on the biggest citywide rezoning since 1961. Only 2 months before Badminton’s election, CB5 recommended denial of City of Yes for Economic Opportunity due to concerns about quality of life issues like potential noise. Over the summer summer, we’d weigh in on City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which proposes to make it easier to build a little more housing in every neighborhood. This backdrop makes it especially news-worthy that our Land Use Chair just quit, citing concerns about special interests. Right before we weigh in on the city’s most critical rezoning policy. But also, don’t forget that community boards don’t have any real decisionmaking power (refresher here).
Badminton’s approach to running CB5
Here’s what it was like to be on CB5 around that time: there were new headlines every other day about our community board. CB5 members were emailing these articles to the full board and then others were replying-all with their reflections, often with subjects in ALL CAPS.
Badminton had to keep the board running and make decisions, but he was working in a low-trust environment. For example, he had to choose who was going to lead the Transportation, Land Use, and Licensing committees, since their chairs all quit. So he was trying to consult with other leaders to get their input, but some of them didn’t trust him. They saw the 1:1 calls as a sign of subterfuge and backroom dealing and they emailed the full board to let everyone know how they felt.
Badminton could have used all the powers under his disposal as chair to make big changes. What are the powers of the Chair again? Read here. He could have changed members’ committee assignments. He could have stacked the Land Use committee with whoever he wanted. He could have added more public members. That would have made more headlines though. Whether out of true magnanimity or to ease tensions, Badminton focused his time on listening to others instead of charging ahead with his own agenda.
One change that Badminton did make though was to make CB5’s structure and culture more inclusive to all CB5 members’ voices. He started allowing members to participate in committee conversations even if they’re not assigned to those committees. This was a huge shift from a couple months before. The tone and discussion changed palpably now that members were encouraged to share their perspectives and discuss, not just fall in line.
Attacks on Badminton
Despite Badminton’s lack of rocking the boat, a group of CB5 members called an emergency meeting for April 3, about three weeks after Mr. Permits stepped down. They said the meeting was “to have open dialogue and provide folks some peace of mind.” I was skeptical about how productive this could be, given that it was 25 people entering a room with neither a structured agenda nor alignment on what success would look like. I figured it’d be an unproductive waste of time, but given the amount of polarization already on the board, I didn’t predict it would actually get worse. I underestimated my colleagues.
Upon entering the meeting room for the emergency meeting, I noticed there were a bunch of reporters there and the mood was tense. An angry group showed up and yelled about lobbyists and real estate developers taking over the city. Although Open New York explicitly doesn’t have ties to the real estate industry, untrue accusations are still very effective at creating anger and polarization.
The meeting was so polarized that it didn’t even get going for over an hour. It was held up by Media, another CB5 member who works in media, who up until this point had been pretty quiet about this whole thing. Media served on CB5 many years ago, took a break, then restarted again at the same time I came on. He doesn’t have any leadership roles and he doesn’t tend to say much in the meetings that I’ve been in with him. He wasn’t one of the board members who took the mic at the last meeting to attack Open New York. He wasn’t one of the people who had been emailing everyone in ALL CAPs. So I was surprised when he popped out of the woodwork with this really aggressive challenge.
Media challenged Badminton’s authority to lead the meeting, claiming Badminton wasn’t authorized to chair. Although Badminton calmly explained that the bylaws designate the Chair to lead emergency meetings, Media repeatedly interrupted, demanding Badminton step aside. The room seemed mostly hostile to Badminton— though no one added to Media’s claims, they let the conflict unfold. Some pointed out the wasted time– it was over an hour of ~25 members arguing over procedure instead of substance. Eventually, Media’s relentless interruptions and persistence won. A vote was held, and Media prevailed through sheer stubbornness.
PTA President ended up leading the rest of the meeting. You might remember PTA President was 2nd Vice Chair, the next leader in line after Mr. Permits. PTA President had been on CB5 for over a decade. He was part of Nikki’s line of succession, so his leadership represented the “before Badminton” times. After Media’s “Badminton can’t lead the meeting” act, PTA President led the rest of the meeting. PTA President’s leadership goes smoothly, so the whole thing looks like “When Badminton tries to lead, there’s chaos. When PTA President leads, it’s fine.”
CB5 walked out of the Emergency Meeting more divided than when we went in. And the press ate it up:
Borough Prez reminds us that it’s a privilege to serve
The Manhattan Borough President, Mark Levine, who appoints the majority of CB5’s members, came to our full board meeting a few days after the April emergency meeting. He told us he was concerned. His tone was kindof “disappointed Dad”, with a message along the lines of: I wish you would focus on your schoolwork and think about your future, instead of just worrying about what your friends think. He referenced the important policy issues we were about to weigh in on, including the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. But instead, we were squabbling over who was in charge. Typical of most Dad wisdom, even though he was right, his message fell on deaf ears.
And then Borough President Levine showed us how he can hold us accountable for our actions. A few weeks later, on May 7, we learned that he did not reappoint PTA President or Shari to CB5. That basically means PTA President and Shari were kicked off CB5. Everyone is shocked. I was shocked. I’d never heard of anyone getting kicked off a community board before. My general feeling was like: wow, we’ve been squabbling amongst ourselves about who should lead this little group– we’ve been sending emails, we’ve been going to the press, we’ve been doing everything in our power to try to control this tiny group that has no decisionmaking authority– and then we got smote by an act of god.
All community board members are appointed by local elected officials, so we serve at the pleasure of those officials. If we mess up, it’s possible for those elected officials to kick us off, but that’s super rare because it takes political capital that electeds aren’t casually willing to spend.
This is a big shakeup– that’s two more of CB5’s leadership gone. If you’re following along using the visual below, you can tell that only 2 of the 6 board leaders from January are still on the board four months later.
The even bigger shakeup was that PTA President was going to run to be the Chair of CB5 the next month. And because he was up next in the Nikki succession line, he was probably going to win—until he was removed from CB5.
So why were PTA President and Shari kicked off? The Borough President doesn’t disclose why individual board members are not reappointed. But a bunch of neighbors and electeds had been complaining about PTA President because he voted against transgender youth in NYC public schools playing sports on the team of their chosen gender. So everyone thought PTA President got kicked off because he voted against transgender kids’ rights.
PTA President’s dismissal was yet another polarizing event for CB5. Right after Shari and PTA President got kicked off, there were a ton of public speakers at our next meeting sharing their perspectives on the issue. Some, including CB5 current and former members, defended PTA President and demanded he be reappointed. Other neighbors said he voted against transgender rights and called for a statement supporting transgender students.
But my guess is that PTA President’s vote against transgender rights probably isn’t the full reason he was kicked off, because Shari was also kicked off and she wasn’t involved in that issue at all. Basically PTA President’s ouster made for click-worthy headlines because of other controversial positions he’d recently taken, but internally to CB5 the bigger deal was that now Badminton was again the only candidate for Chair.
This whole Chair thing has been a whirlwind. Let me help you out:
Nikki was Chair for 15 years. She quit in February.
Mr. Permits was Chair for one meeting, but then he quit mid-meeting in March.
Versailles would have been chair, but she quit before she would have been elected in March.
PTA President was about to be tapped for chair, but he got kicked off in May.
Badminton is interim chair, and is running for a full year term as Chair.
The next month, June, we would vote for who would be chair of CB5. Tune in next week for Chapter 3.
Here’s the link to the next one:
Wow...hard to imagine CB5 getting back to a state of productivity and some level of cohesion, but I suppose all organizational shakeups eventually stabilize and work can again be done...hopefully!! This is my second favorite soap opera of the moment!!