How to influence your local Community Board

Neighborhood politics: An antidote to doom scrolling

National politics getting you down? Feeling like you don’t have any control over huge immovable forces that rule our country? 

A jaunt to your community board might just be an antidote to your doom scrolling.

Because, quoting Vanessa Williamson, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution: 

• National politics don’t look good.

• At the local level, people can actually work face to face. A challenge we have in our national politics is that things are always mediated. Not interacting with people does not play to our strengths and our ability to compromise. 

• Pragmatic, concrete things can get done comparatively easily at the local level, like installing a speed bump in front of a school.

• Victories at the local level can take people out of their ideological silos and give them a sense of agency.

Conversation, compromise, and progress exist at the local level.

Community boards aren’t the only local settings in NYC where civic engagement happens. There’s also Democratic Clubs, block associations, your local union. Let me give the pitch for Community Boards, since that’s my experience base. In case you need a refresher on what community boards are again.

You might be thinking: “Sachi, weren’t you literally just writing about how your Community Board is super polarized? Yes. And, fascinatingly, it’s also a place where things can get done.  

Bringing you up to speed on my Community Board, Manhattan CB5, since my last post in April. 

• 🙅In May, multiple members were basically fired from the community board.

• 💰In June, we found out that CB5’s former leadership were using funds improperly. When these leaders quit the Community Board in March, it felt very abrupt at the time. But it turns out they quit a few days after an agency lawyer referred them to the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board. 🤨

• 🤼In June, we voted in individuals for 4 leadership roles. The votes were close: one was 23-22. 

• 🏘️ Last week, we had a 6 hour meeting that ended in us recommending approval of the citywide rezoning to build more housing across the city. 

Summary of the above: in a group characterized by intense polarization, fear, and distrust, we were able to come together to recommend approval of the most contentious and most critical housing policy of the decade.

Here’s my pitch: neighborhood politics has all the drama of national politics, and a lot less powerlessness. 

As an antidote to doomscrolling, consider showing up and giving 2 minutes of testimony about installing that speedbump in front of your school. About that scaffolding that’s been on your block for 3 years. About that illegal weed store downstairs. Because for local issues, it just takes a handful of people to actually get things done.

Would it help if I demystify the Community Board process a bit?

Community boards each have about 50 members. Getting 50 people to agree on something is really hard and very inefficient, so we work through committees to get things done. Here’s the basic committee structure:

If a neighbor cares about an issue, how do they get the community board to take it up? Here’s a recent example of a Community Board action that was spurred by community input:

There are multiple points throughout the process where advocates can influence the Community Board’s action (see below). In the above case, not only did community members propose the action and provide testimony over the course of multiple meetings, they also influenced the final wording of the statement. One neighborhood leader joined our final meeting and demanded we strengthen the language– they said the committee’s draft language didn’t go far enough. A community board member proposed the amended language, and the full board voted to approve it.

The more numbers you have speaking out, the better. But we’re not talking tens or even hundreds of people. If you got 5 people to speak at a community board meeting, that’d be a pretty significant proportion of our public commenters. 

Bonus points if you can get press coverage of your issue (this isn’t terribly hard with the super local neighborhood ones) and get your elected officials on board (write to their district office– they often respond to thoughtful notes.)

If an issue is more complex than one committee meeting can handle, sometimes the Community Board will form a separate taskforce. Taskforces are different than committees because they’re meant to provide a recommendation on a particular issue area and then disband. For example, my community board has had taskforces on outdoor dining, Penn Station redesign, and mental health on our streets. Any community board member can propose a taskforce to the chair of the board.

Conversation, compromise, and progress exist at the local level. So push an agenda at your local community board. Or your local Democratic Club. Or your block association. Or your union. Most of those probably work the same way: through committees and taskforces that are designed to be responsive. And tend to be responsive to just a couple people.