I’ve been appointed to my Manhattan community board

New York’s most junior local policy influencer, reporting for duty

Jul 21, 2024

Did you know that a group of 50 volunteers has a say in everything from where bus lanes are installed to which restaurants get sidewalk seating permits in your New York neighborhood? These community boards are the lowest level of New York City's government, and they play an important role in advising agencies and elected officials on issues that impact the district.

In May, Borough President Mark Levine appointed me to Manhattan Community Board 8, which covers the 232,000 residents of the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island.

It’s been an exciting, empowering, and eye-opening few months. In this post, I’ll cover:

What community boards are: New York’s ground-floor of government, advising agencies and elected officials on topics that impact the district.
What my board has been doing: Endorsing most of the mayor’s housing reforms, not yet taking a position on the Governor’s congestion pricing pause, and having lots of meetings.
What I’ve learned from the experience: The breakdown of my board’s factions and how local politics do – and don’t – reflect the views of the population.

Me advocating to make it easier to build more homes at Manhattan Community Board 8’s meeting on July 17th 2024.

What are New York’s community boards?

Community boards are the ground-floor of New York City’s government, created by the city charter. Every New Yorker lives in one of 59 community districts, and each district has a community board composed of 50 volunteer members.

Map of New York City’s community districts: Manhattan is red, Brooklyn is green, Queens is purple, the Bronx is blue, and Staten Island is orange.

Community boards provide advice to government agencies and elected officials at the city and state level about locals' opinions. This includes topics such as housing, transportation, health, parks, libraries, schools, safety, the environment, and any other policy area or service delivery that the city or state government deals with.

Typically this takes one of two forms:

A proposal comes to the board: An entity like a government agency, a local business, or a property owner will come to the board seeking endorsement for a project that impacts the district. The community board reviews the proposal and issues an advisory opinion which gets sent to the ultimate decision maker. Examples of this include the Department of Transportation proposing to make changes to public streets (like adding a bus lane or adjusting parking rules), restaurants seeking licenses to serve alcohol or place dining tables on the sidewalk, or a property owner seeking to make changes to a historic building.
A problem comes to the attention of the board: A member of the community (or a board member) complains about an issue. The community board considers the topic and issues an advisory opinion that gets sent to the appropriate elected officials or government agency requesting their action. Examples include: complaints about traffic laws repeatedly being violated, concerns about ongoing transit service issues, or worries about public nuisances.

When dealing with these topics, community boards have no hard power, but wield significant soft power. It’s entirely legal for elected officials and government agencies to ignore community boards’ recommendations. In practice, however, community boards’ advice is paid at least some attention. Elected officials are typically reluctant to take actions that are directly contrary to the advice of community boards – if for no other reason than community board members are politically engaged community members and elected officials are probably more likely to get re-elected if they take actions that their community supports.

Who are the board members?

By law, community board members must have a “residence, business, professional or other significant interest in the district”.1 Unlike most elected positions, US citizenship is not required — just a strong commitment to the community is needed.

Community board positions are appointed by the borough president and city council members who correspond with the community district. When deciding who to appoint, borough presidents are required to ensure that “the aggregate of appointments fairly represents all segments of the community”, including “with regard to race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability status, sexual orientation, [and] language”.

Members of community boards serve staggered two-year terms, with 25 members of each board getting either reappointed or replaced each year.

There is a lot of competition for community board spots. This year, there were 832 applicants for the 300 open spots in Manhattan, and 190 went to incumbent community board members who sought reappointment, while just 110 of the spots were assigned to new members.2 The selection process involves a written application and an interview.

I am one of the 5 newbies appointed to Manhattan Community Board 8 in the May 2024 batch.

Why did I want to join?

I’m serving on my community board primarily to advance the policies I care about. I care about New York City and have strong opinions about how it should be improved. To the extent that community boards have soft power, I’d much rather that influence be deployed in favor of the Abundance Agenda: building more housing, improving our transit system, and making better use of public spaces. Serving on my community board is a way to increase the chance that elected officials and government agencies hear support for these policies.

Politics is about so much more than just elections, as my friend Daniel wrote in his recent post. “If voting is your only form of political engagement”, Daniel noted, “you are arriving to a party that’s been going on long before you got there, and will continue long after you left.” As someone who literally can’t vote (I’m not yet a US citizen), I see serving on my community board as a way to influence the creation and enforcement of the laws that shape our society.

Being involved with my community board also allows me to deepen my connection with the community. Already through the community board I’ve had the chance to work with some great, civic-minded board members who are becoming good friends. I’ve also been able to act as a connection point between the board and members of community groups that share my views, like Open New York and Transportation Alternatives.

Working on local politics makes me feel optimistic and empowered. Unlike at the federal level, where a multitude of systemic factors make it easy to feel powerless, at the local level I’ve seen first-hand that individuals can make a big difference. I was drawn into local politics after witnessing the success that local advocates had at getting a bus lane, bike lane, and pedestrian safety improvements installed on Third Avenue.

Community boards are not a panacea (and there are many ways they could be improved!), but given that they exist, I want to have as many pro-abundance New Yorkers serving on them as possible.

What has my community board done recently?

In the time since my appointment in early May, Manhattan Community Board 8 has dealt with dozens of topics — both large and small.

The biggest focus has been housing: reviewing the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (COYHO), which is a proposal by the mayoral administration to make it legal to build more homes, with a goal of reducing housing costs. My community board held several hearings for members of the public and the board to discuss the proposal. I spoke in favor of three of these proposals (videos: 1, 2, 3 – unfortunately I’m out of the camera for the first one), and think I managed to sway some board members’ opinions! In mid-July we passed a resolution supporting eight of COYHO’s reforms and opposing seven of them. We sent this recommendation to the city council members whose districts overlap with our community district, and they’ll consider this advice when they ultimately vote to adopt, amend, or reject the mayor’s proposal.

Some of the beautiful illustrations that the Department of City Planning has used to explain the proposals in the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity reforms

Transportation has been another big topic. We tried to address the Governor’s delay of congestion pricing and the resulting harm to transportation infrastructure projects that the MTA planned to fund with congestion pricing revenues. Unfortunately, some members of the board are strongly opposed to congestion pricing, and we haven’t yet managed to pass a resolution to communicate the board’s stance. I’m coordinating with fellow pro-transit board members to try to pass a resolution calling on Albany to restore funding for the MTA’s transit system upgrades, but the board hasn’t yet had time to vote on this.

Several of the infrastructure projects that have been deferred due to Governor Hochul’s delay in implementing congestion pricing. I tried to get CB8 to pass a resolution expressing our concern at the delay of these projects, but I haven’t been successful yet. Graphic: NYT

We’ve also considered smaller, local topics:

We endorsed a proposal by the Department of Transportation to create a bus lane on 96th Street.
We spent around 45 minutes reviewing and eventually endorsing a proposal from a homeowner to slightly adjust their fence. Normally, fence changes don’t require community board review, but this proposal involved slightly blocking some of the public sidewalk, so approval had to be requested.
We’ve approved many restaurants seeking new or amended licenses to serve alcohol and/or operate dining tables on the sidewalk.
We’ve approved a bunch of upcoming street fairs.

These are just a few examples of the many issues that my community board has dealt with over the past few months.

Reflections on my experience

I’m still trying to figure out how much soft power community boards actually wield. Will our city council representatives follow our recommendations about the City of Yes proposals? Will the Department of Transportation listen to a request I’m planning to organize to get some automated bus lane enforcement cameras installed along Third Avenue? We’ll have to wait and see.

The representativeness of community boards is questionable. Members tend to be people with a lot of free time. The standard community board commitment is to attend several board/committee meetings every month, with each meeting lasting 2-3 hours on a weekday evening. Relatedly, Manhattan’s community boards skew towards older New Yorkers, and young people are particularly poorly represented. People aged between 15 and 30 years old are 28% of Manhattan’s adult population, but make up just 10% of Manhattan community board members. People over the age of 60 make up 25% of Manhattan’s adult residents, but 33% of community board members.3 Boards that don’t reflect the demographics of their communities may not prioritize the right issues or provide the best advice.

I’ve begun to notice clear factions within my community board. The recent votes on the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity clearly demonstrated who is pro-abundance, and who prefers the status quo. Of the CB8M’s 50 members, ten are resolutely pro-housing and supported all eight key components of the COYHO reforms. At the other extreme, there’s a faction of eleven members who opposed all (or almost all) of the reforms. Then there’s a big group in the middle who voted in favor of some, but not all of the reforms. Much of the board’s discussion boils down to members on either extreme trying to persuade the less opinionated middle to join their position.

My plan for having an impact

I’m working on building relationships. Over the next few months I plan to get to know the abundance-minded and “in the middle” members of my community board. I want to learn what issues each member cares about most and how they envision the future of our city and neighborhood. Then, we’ll see how we can work together to use the soft power of our community board to make an impact.

I’m going to focus my efforts on housing policy, transportation, and our use of public space. There are, of course, many other important topics, but I can’t do everything at once. These are important areas where local changes can make a big difference. On top of COYHO, how can we build more housing on the Upper East Side? Can we prevent vehicles from illegally blocking the Third Avenue bus lane? Could we change land use rules to allow cafes to operate on Fifth Avenue alongside Central Park? Let’s get to work!

Sidewalk Chorus

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