By Trudy Whitman
Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Community Board 6, believes that New York City’s community boards are “going through their teenage years”; they’re fishing around a bit, he suggests, trying to find themselves. He doesn’t believe, however, as do some, that they are anywhere near old age: “Many of my predecessors raised me to think that any mayor could eliminate community boards at any time; I don’t subscribe to that fear. Community boards are entrenched in the neighborhoods as representatives of their citizens.”
Over a cup of chai at the cozy, new Tea Lounge on Court Street — the district manager is in the habit of gearing up for his day with tea and a sudoku puzzle at the Tea Lounge before heading to his office at 250 Baltic Street — Hammerman and I discussed the future of community boards and much more.
“Now we have to think about how to be more effective and relevant,” he continued, naming Scott Stringer, the Manhattan Borough President, as the key elected official focusing on the future of community boards. Stringer would like to see them empowered to be more successful local forms of government.
Hammerman noted that CB6 has taken great strides in that direction. The community board petitioned for not-for-profit status, and in 2004, became a 501(c)3, allowing it to write proposals for grants for funding for special programs. This has been a successful endeavor. “Because we are not going to be funded [by the city] at the right levels and are hampered by lack of resources,” he observed, “all community boards need to start thinking like this.”
Community boards also need to be more accessible to more of their constituents, he observed. In addition to the Cobble Hill office, Hammerman would like to see offices in Red Hook and Park Slope. In the meantime, his office is working to help people connect via special interest Internet listservs, matching these with existing community groups that might be of interest to them.
Although community boards operate only in an advisory capacity, making suggestions rather than rules, Hammerman said that this does not mean that they are powerless: “We need to recognize that we can help ourselves. There is a difference between power and authority; we don’t have authority, but that doesn’t mean that we are powerless.”
One way in which CB6 plans to exercise its power, Hammerman remarked, “is to sit on city agencies to make sure that the timeline for the reconstruction of Court Street doesn’t slip.” The Court Street project is scheduled for 2011, and there is $11 million in the budget earmarked for the work. The plan includes traffic calming devices that were identified in the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Study.
But the 11 million doesn’t include money for extras such as blue-tinted sidewalks and historic reproduction lighting — amenities that make all the difference. (One has only to look at Smith Street to see how carefully planned reconstruction paved the way for the metamorphosis of the shopping and dining strip.) Congressman Major Owens has kicked in $640,000 in discretionary funds for the project. Hammerman stated that other elected officials should do the same.
“The preliminary design issues should be decided now,” Hammerman said, “so there is no slippage. The more items we can include in the budget now, the better we can plan for it, so that it will fit with our vision of the project.”
Cobble Hill’s boutique opera company, Vertical Player Repertory, is presenting Médée, an opera in three tableaux by Darius Milhaud. The piece was the last opera performed in Paris before the Nazi occupation in 1940. VPR sets the ancient Medea myth in Nazi-occupied France within the context of French resistance fighters and Vichy collaborators.
Médée runs from November 9th through the 19th. Vertical Player Repertory is at 219 Court Street. For reservations, call 212 539-2696 or drop an email to VPRTickets@aol.com.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006
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