Tales from the Community Board
There’s a freshly painted bike lane on Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn. It begins at Fulton Street, and 14 blocks east, at Classon Avenue, it abruptly ends. There are no turns, indicators or obstacles. Why does the bike lane end? Why on that particular block?
Depending on how you feel about local democracy, the answer may be worse than you think. The Lafayette Avenue bike lane comes to a halt because Classon Avenue is the border between Brooklyn Community Board 2, which approved the safety infrastructure, and Community Board 3, which rejected it.
It’s a story of the public safety buck passing between the New York City Department of Transportation and community members with no expertise in how traffic works, and it’s being told all over New York. Every week, after a docket of community board meetings, TransAlt’s team of community organizers heads back to the office with tales of corruption, confusion and a simmering frustration with the status quo.
Jaime Moncayo, who leads TransAlt in Queens, watched a community board chairperson attempt to pull a resolution moments before it was introduced when he realized it mentioned bike lanes. At a different Queens community board, Jaime saw a member propose that parking on sidewalks be legal until the DOT counts all the cars in the neighborhood and adds that many parking spots. When Jaime mentioned to a community board’s district manager that many people from the neighborhood were coming to support a proposed bike lane project, the district manager threatened to have everyone arrested.
Yet in other neighborhoods, community board members are the steady leaders pushing calmly ahead for safer streets. Like the Manhattan community board that has been asking the DOT to fill in the gaps in the 1st and 2nd Avenue bike lanes since 2013. Or the almost inhuman show of patience that Organizer Erwin Figueroa witnessed from Bronx community board members earlier this year when a resident screamed at them about parking with such fervor that when he finally stormed out, he left his dog behind.
“These safety improvements are a hot potato that the Department of Transportation keeps tossing to community boards. If the local community board flinches, then all too often the street stays dangerous,” explained Thomas DeVito, TransAlt’s Director of Organizing. “People are starting to catch on that their lives are at risk over worries about parking or something else arbitrary. More and more, people are calling to make the system more democratic.”
While a few bills have been introduced in the City Council that would improve how community boards work, none has left committee. One proposed giving community boards access to an urban planning professional; another would publish demographic data about the board’s voting members. A third bill would impose a six-term limit on community board members; currently community board members can serve, well, forever.
“We’re sitting down with other organizations to talk about how we can help community boards be their most fair, democratic selves,” DeVito told Reclaim. “It’s our most local democracy, and right now, it simply isn’t working for everyone.”
