RSS Feed
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
View From
A letter recently sent from Community Board 18 District Manager Dorothy Turano to the city’s Office of Management and Budget blasts the agency for practically ignoring all — not just a few — requests regarding budget priorities for the local area for fiscal year 2005. A copy of the letter was sent to members of the board and interested individuals. According to Turano’s letter, each year, with the release of the mayor’s preliminary budget, all 59 community boards in the city are required to evaluate the responsiveness of the city agencies to their priorities. As a result, the local board held a hearing on February 19 to solicit views and sentiments of members and others. The crux of Turano’s letter tells OMB’s Deputy Assistant Director Micky Josephs that Community Board 18 "voted unanimously to reject the agency responses to our proposed capital and expense budget priorities and requests for fiscal ’05 because they do not reflect an earnest effort on the part of the agencies to address the board’s ‘bare bones’ State-ment of Needs and Priorities." She names one agency as an example, noting that the answer she received was "This request cannot be funded in FY 2005. Resubmit for consideration in FY2006…further study is needed." "Many of the programs and capital projects re-quested are infrastructure maintenance projects," Turano wrote. "They are not designed to enhance, but rather to protect and maintain our current infrastructure….We recognize our responsibility to act with prudent judgment in making requests (but) we were dismayed to see, first hand, the lack of interest that the responding agencies demonstrated." She adds: "It appears as if everyone is ‘hiding’ behind the budget shortfall, rather than stepping up to the plate and advancing our community’s continued needs. Our requests were not grandiose, but rather straightforward and necessary. We would have expected a more interested forum." Three cheers for Turano. Three cheers for the members of Community Board 18. With all due respect, however, to those hard work-ing, conscientious, community-minded members and the administrators — who needs ’em? If city agencies are going to continually turn down their budgetary requests, what good are they? "There are some things that are frustrating and, yes, defeating," contends Turano. "We know they won’t pass, but we do them anyway." She cites land-use directives as being the chief area where the board excels, but, generally, that’s about it. The community board is strictly an advisory entity. Everything — that’s EVERYTHING they do is from a recommendation standpoint. And that’s it. They were established so that the community could have a say in projects, even laws, affecting them. The board meetings are, in essence, forums. Elected officials can voice their plans and projects and talk to their constituents there, and this is nice. Otherwise they’d have to find a civic association meeting in which to do so. Public hearings are held at board meetings regarding a number of subjects and this is where the board stands out. For instance, a gas station owner wants to renew his lease or maybe expand his facility. The board hears pro and con arguments about the expansion and then gives a recommendation to the proper authorities. In many cases, their approval will help get the person his new garage. Their disapproval will tell city officials why the community does not like the service station and the request is denied. But the city agency does not have to even pay attention to the community board’s recommendation. It doesn’t matter. Look at the over saturation here of group homes. We have great heart and compassion, but we’re definitely over saturated with group homes, although Community Board 18 consistently votes against them. Unfortunately, it seems the community boards in the city are victims of something called lip service, established only to pacify civic-minded members of neighborhoods. Sorry, but it’s the truth.
|
for larger version       |
||||||||||||||||
