Arnwine CB9 Brooklyn on trust and community service

Good morning, Dante Arnwine, District Manager, Brooklyn Community Board 9.

First, I just want to take the opportunity to thank my colleagues for their strong testimony so far.

A little bit about this is trust.

My story as district manager is a little different than most.

Prior to being district manager, our board at CB9 didn't have a district manager for five to six years.

So what does that mean?

Think about if your district

didn't have a representative, right?

That means that your community, all the community conversations, whether it's about sanitation, ULERT, transportation, all of those community conversations, that community gets left out of.

And that's what I walked into when I took the job as district manager.

And I can tell you after five years of being on the job, it's taken five years for me to gain the trust of not only board members who have come in and out of the board, but also the people that I serve.

I know that because I can stand in a room now with people who used to sue

our community board, our elected officials, and now I can speak to them and have that cordial conversation about how we get things done together to move the needle on things that we might not necessarily agree on.

And so I think that this position in itself is really a

about the trust of the community.

Elected officials come and go.

So do board members.

But typically, district managers are there for some time serving.

There's no better feeling I get when I get a constituent who comes into the office and says, I voted for you.

And I get to say, no, you didn't.

This is not an elected position.

And so no matter who the person is, no matter what they think, their political party, we get to serve in a nonpartisan, in a fair manner.

And so I ask that the city council, for the members who don't know their district managers,

Reach out to your district manager.

Ask them what they need.

Ask them what they're going through.

Because I can tell you from my time as district manager, I've done it all.

And we're asking for support from the city council.

And it's for various things, right?

Wild things happen in a community board office.

One date.

The gate goes out.

That's $10,000, right?

That literally just happened.

And so these are small little things.

We can't call and find a vendor.

These are small things we need help with.

So I ask the council to oblige all the requests to increase our budgets.

And again, if you don't know your district manager, meet with them.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next.