Streetsblog has filed a freedom of information request after Queens Borough President Melinda Katz refused to provide us a list of 2015 community board appointments.
Community boards play an outsized role in determining how safe New York City streets are for walking, biking, and driving. Though their votes are supposed to be advisory, DOT rarely implements a project without the blessing of the local board. This holds true even for proposals that are intended to keep people from being injured and killed by motorists.
In Queens, community boards have skirted voting rules to renounce livable streets projects, rejected a request from a small business for a bike corral, declared that secure bike parking has "no purpose," and prioritized auto traffic lanes over safety at Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
On the upside, Queens CBs endorsed safety measures for Northern Boulevard, Broadway, and Queens Boulevard, three of the borough's most dangerous streets for walking and biking. With DOT poised to make improvements prescribed by the agency's pedestrian safety action plan, including the long-awaited redesign of Queens Boulevard, community boards will help shape the borough's streetscape, for better or worse, for the foreseeable future.
Community board members are nominated by council members and borough presidents, though beeps ultimately decide who is appointed. For some idea of how fossilized boards can become, safe streets opponents Vinicio Donato and Lucille Hartmann made news recently by stepping down from Queens CB 1 after 40 years. As a candidate for borough president, Katz said she supported term limits for community board members, but she now opposes them.
Given the power wielded by community boards, borough presidents should release appointee lists publicly as a matter of course, with each person's professional affiliations, length of tenure, and the elected official who recommended them. Of the five current borough presidents, Manhattan's Gale Brewer comes closest to the ideal -- though it remains a mystery why Brewer continues to reappoint people who are obstacles to safer streets and better transit.
The appointment process is normally completed by early April of each year. Katz, who took office in 2014, released the names of her first round of new appointees last June, but not a list of every appointee.
After Streetsblog submitted multiple inquiries to Katz's office requesting a list of 2015 community board appointees, press coordinator Michael Scholl declined to send one and recommended filing a freedom of information request instead.
Why would Katz's office withhold information that other borough presidents make public via press release? That's an open question. Meanwhile, I filed a FOIL for 2015 and 2014 Queens community board appointees.
We'll have updates on this story as it develops.
