McKee CB6 Manhattan opposes 501
Sandy McKee, chair of Manhattan CB6, calls Intro 501 a solution in search of a problem, arguing no one has shown a need for it. She says institutional knowledge matters more than ever with member term limits approaching and that the bill was developed without consulting community boards.
Good afternoon, Chair Brewer and members of the Committee on Governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislation.
My name is Sandy McKee and I am the Chair of Manhattan Community Board 6.
I'm here to state CB6's opposition to Intro 501.
Manhattan Community Board 6 opposed the earlier version of this measure at this committee's oversight hearing last June, and our position has not changed.
Intro 501 is a solution in search of a problem.
No one has shown a need for it, and what it would actually do is introduce instability into community boards and inject politics into a role that is meant to be free of it.
The strength of a community board comes from two things, its independence and the deep institutional knowledge built up in its district office and members over many years.
That knowledge of the district's history, its agencies, and its people takes years to build, and it is often the difference between a community board that gets a community problem that gets solved and one that doesn't.
That institutional knowledge matters now more than ever.
With term limits for community board members taking effect in less than a year, members will soon begin turning over far more quickly.
And in the continuity that holds a board together,
together will rest less and less on the members alone and increasingly on the district manager's shoulders.
Disrupting that continuity on an arbitrary schedule doesn't reform anything.
It discards the very thing that makes the board effective, and it is the residents we serve who will pay the price.
If there were real concerns somewhere about a district manager, we would want it addressed.
But the remedy for an isolated concern is not an amendment to the city charter that affects all 59 community boards.
Intro 501 reaches into every district in the city to solve a problem that we are not even aware exists.
A change of this magnitude to how community boards function should never be made without the boards themselves at the table, and we were not consulted.
Manhattan Community Board 6 urges the committee to reject Intro 501 outright and to work in partnership with community boards to strengthen, not weaken, the systems that support good government at the neighborhood level.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Who's next?