Chair Williams and SIAP discuss applying civic cluster model in Southeast Queens

Okay, I guess I'm struggling to visualize what that looks like.

Are you saying like, for instance, I guess I'll use my district.

Like I have, you know, there are some cultural institutions maybe that are the center for arts and culture in Southeast Queens.

Are you saying like using...

Localized hubs of individuals or organizations to then expand out within those communities.

And then I guess in relation to us as council members, like how do we then use that model to support communities, especially communities that have been historically underserved?

Well, suppose there was a program that said identify points of strength across the city and fund them working in a partnership with other groups in more vulnerable parts of the district.

So I think that's sort of what we were imagining.

I want to add, I noticed you used the word cultural institutions.

So in other words, grantees, the people we know, the IRS, the 501c3, blah, blah, blah.

When we say nonprofit, we mean not-for-profit.

It doesn't mean if your parents'organ, a theater group showing at the rec center,

No revenue.

You know, I mean, that's a not-for-profit at a public facility with a cultural center.

The libraries, I know that's part of your committee.

We also look at embedded programs, immigrant-serving social service organizations.

So many of the immigrant and foreign-born organizations are cultural in our view.

We take a very broad view.

We don't just define things by the...

Official 501c3 nonprofit.

Everything's nonprofit that isn't making money, okay?

And we try to capture that, and getting to that will take more work.

It's five boroughs.

You've got a gigantic city.

Get it.

Just pick a couple places to start.

Don't go everywhere all at once.

It's gigantic here, you know?

So pick a place where some of your council or some of your staff from DCL, it can be city planning.

I happen to be biased toward planning.

Already have a hook, you know, they're already there, but they will be cultural whether they're on your list or not.

They're probably not CDF eligible, okay, or they may have gotten it together to apply and not made it.

We're just saying that's what, because we're Philadelphians and we've been able to come back so much, we can do stuff like that.

In another city, that's what we consider a five-city study with the five boroughs, right?

You know, it's a little different.

So you have to...

Yeah, no, I get it.

you know, Councilmember Stevens and I have been on conversations with folks in Baltimore on a separate topic.

And I think one of the things that we realize is it's not that we're not doing some of this, it's whether or not

government is responding in the standardized institutional way, because, you know, I feel like in these localized communities, a lot of that like horizontal networking is happening.

But what I find and what we found and

if anyone else has any other questions, I'll open up to my colleagues, is that, you know, because New York City is such a big city, our government infrastructure is also not malleable.

So it is not flexible to certain types of change, to how we allocate money to different groups, especially for specific city agencies.

And that is an area of opportunity because I think that...

We could better serve community, whether it be arts and culture or youth violence, is sort of the topic that we've been talking to the folks in Baltimore about.

The way that their governments are able to adjust, like, it seems like almost impossible here.

So, yeah, I do appreciate that.