Will new double-parking rules fix our streets?
BY RACHEL HOLLIDAY SMITH
AND ANN CHOI
THE CITY
As Manhattan collects applications
for a new round of community
board members, surveys
show how the current crop falls short of
resembling the borough.
Overall, board members are older
than the borough’s population, homeowners
hold a disproportionately high
number of seats and Hispanic people are
underrepresented.
Only one of 12 boards, the Upper East
Side’s Community Board 8, reported a
Hispanic membership that matched its
district’s population. There, 12% of
board members identified as Hispanic
in a mostly white district where 9.5%
of people are Hispanic, according to
Census data.
At the 11 other boards — including
the one that covers heavily Dominican
Washington Heights and Inwood — Hispanic
people were underrepresented by
as much as 19 percentage points.
“When it comes to Latinos, we’re
underrepresented in almost every situation,”
said Deputy Borough President
Aldrin Bonilla. “I’m racking my brain
to figure out why we’re having such a
difficult time.”
A Manhattan
Breakdown
The picture of the boards comes
from self-reported demographic data collected
from members of Manhattan’s
dozen boards, where volunteers weigh
in on everything from zoning proposals
to street redesigns.
Last year for the first time, all five boroughs
were mandated by a 2018 change
to the city charter to compile and report
information race, ethnicity, sex and age
as voluntarily reported by members of
all 59 community boards. (Staten Island
failed to do so, but after THE CITY’s
reporting, the borough president vowed
to collect the information.)
The same charter change also dictated
that community board will face
term limits that go into effect starting
in 2027, a measure intended to infuse
boards with new blood.
Nominations for half of a board’s
50 seats come from local City Council
members, and final appointment decisions
come from each board’s borough
president.
THE CITY’s analysis last month found
that boards citywide tend to skew male,
while some match the local population
more closely than others.
Community Board 3 in the East Village, Jan. 28, 2020. PHOTO : BEN FRACTENBERG/THE CITY
Manhattan Borough President Gale
Brewer’s office has tracked board demographic
data for five years — well before
the new charter rule — and releases the
most thorough information of any borough
on board membership.
In the last half-decade, Bonilla, who
oversees the collection and compiling
of that information, has witnessed a
lot of changes. For instance, he’s seen
many more young people join the
boards — thanks to targeted recruiting
on social media and a rule change that
allowed teens as young as 16 to join, he
told THE CITY.
Ethnic
Disparities Persist
But some categories, he said, have
remained stubbornly low.
Even at Community Board 12 —
which encompasses Washington Heights
and Inwood, where a majority of people
are Hispanic — the number of Hispanic
board members fell short. There, 51% of
board members reported they are Hispanic
in a neighborhood where 69% of
people are Hispanic, census data shows.
Eleazar Bueno, the newly elected chair
of CB12, said for many Hispanic people,
joining a board is “a matter of time.”
“Usually boards have retirees, homeowners
— people that are financially
secure,” said Bueno, who owns several
empanada shops. “When you have a job,
or when you have kids and a family, you
don’t have the 10, 20 hours a week to
voluntarily give.”
Targeting communities not wellrepresented
at boards is key to attracting
more members, Bueno said. At CB12,
he is aiming to do more outreach on
social media, and pushing to livestream
meetings.
“A lot of the community boards are perceived
— not that that’s how they are —
to be private clubs,” he added.
Bridging the Age Gap
Manhattan community board members
also tend to be older than the
residents they represent.
Only about one-third of the borough’s
population is over 50. On Manhattan’s
boards, half of the members are in that
age group.
It’s an issue that Michelle Kuppersmith,
a member of the Lower East
Side’s Community Board 3, has recently
tried to tackle.
Working with the demographic data
released by Brewer’s office, she and fellow
CB3 member Joe Kerns created a
website, as part of a fellowship with
the political group Arena, that analyzes
membership as well as vacancies on
boards.
The aim of the project, Kuppersmith
said, was to encourage more people to
apply to their local boards all over the
city — especially young people.
“Different age groups in this city
experience life differently,” she said.
In particular, she sees young voices as
critical in conversations around housing.
“Millennials, my age group, are less
likely to own a home than their parents’
generation,” said Kuppersmith, 32.
“People who are searching for apartments
every year and paying higher
and higher rents might have a different
perspective on the housing situation and
land use.”
Bonilla says boards have become
much younger in the five years his office
has tracked the data. Overall, it’s been
“the biggest shift” of all the demographic
categories, he said.
Angel Mescain has noticed that
change on his board. He’s been the district
manager for Manhattan Community
Board 11 in East Harlem for about 10
years. When he started, the board was
noticeably older.
“Through retirement, or attrition, or,
you know, interest from the young folks
— it’s definitely mixed,” he said. “It’s a
lot different than what it was.”
Now, CB11 has just 13 members, or
about 30%, who are older than 50. The
biggest group are people in their 30s,
and the board even had a couple of teens
join in recent years.
“The younger folks are going to be
more interested in things that can be
considered change,” he said. “For me,
it makes the conversations much more
interesting.”
This story was originally published
on Feb. 10, 2020 by THE CITY, an independent,
nonprofit news organization
dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that
serves the people of New York. Read
more at THECITY.nyc.
Schneps Media February 13, 2020 13