

Your Friends at Transportation Alternatives, circa the 2016 elections — I am in the front row on the left.

Hi New Yorkers,

When you go to the polls on November 6, vote for your favorite candidates and then flip your ballot and VOTE YES for community board term limits, the third proposal.

Now you may be asking, how will Community Board term limits make New York City streets safer?

Community boards are your unelected local representatives, appointed by elected officials in your borough. There are 59 community boards in the city and they each make decisions on which bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, and safety improvements go into the streets of your neighborhood. Or don’t.

As an organizer for TransAlt, I have been to dozens of community board meetings in Queens. Our advocacy team has organized volunteers to hundreds in all five boroughs. This much they have learned: your community board does not represent your community. People of color, transit riders, renters, and younger New Yorkers are underrepresented on community boards, and they provide no translation services for non-English speaking residents at their meetings.

City agencies and elected officials depend on approval from community boards to implement safe streets projects. But what happens when the same community board members stop representing their communities? I was at a meeting when a member who had served on her board for 30 years, Ann Darby, said that a proposed bike lane project was only for “illegals”. This same community board represents Corona, Queens, a neighborhood with one of the largest Latino populations in the entire city. Ann and other members of that community board were able to hold up a street safety project that benefited thousands of Latino families for years because voices like hers went unchallenged, without any incentive to create a more diverse and representative community board.

Ann was one of the strongest cases of abuse from senior community board members. But there are other cases of senior community board leaders holding secret meetings to stop safe streets projects, refusing to vote on a safer Amsterdam Avenue, and more. Without term limits, there will be no checks on unappointed community board members who wield institutional power built over decades and use it against safe streets supporters like you. On November 6, help bring fresh, diverse voices that support safe streets to your community board Flip your ballot and VOTE YES on question 3. Here’s a video explaining how.

Hope to see you at the polls on November 6!

Juan Restrepo

Queens Organizer