TESTIMONY
Lacey Tauber, Legislative Director at the Brooklyn Borough President's Office, on Support for Community Board Budgets
5:14:27
·
3 min
Lacey Tauber testifies on the insufficient funding and support challenges faced by NYC community boards, proposing the creation of a new Office of Community Boards.
- Discusses the critical role of community boards in linking the public with city government and their struggle to maintain basic functions due to stagnant budgets since 2014.
- Highlights the lack of an agency responsible for community boards' support, making each board act as an independent agency with limited capabilities.
- Points out the insufficient funding of the Borough Presidents' offices and the Civic Engagement Commission (CEC) to provide necessary technical assistance.
- Proposes establishing an Office of Community Boards to support boards with technology, policies, HR, legal counsel, and more to ensure their effective functioning.
- Urges action against proposed budget cuts that will impact community boards and other civic engagement efforts.
Lacey Tauber
5:14:27
Hi, Tara Russell, and the members of the committee, as mentioned that the representative for the bureau president, Antonio Reynosa, today.
5:14:36
The legislative director here at Brown Hall.
5:14:39
And I'm basically here to talk about community board budgets even though They're not on the hearing agenda today.
5:14:49
As you know, community boards are critical link between the public and city government.
5:14:53
Weighing on important issues that impact everything from small businesses, to street safety, to the availability of portable housing, and their individual budgets as well as the support they received from external partners deserves the council's attention.
5:15:07
This is a challenge actually since there is no one agency responsible for supporting their work.
5:15:12
In practice, each board is its own independent agency.
5:15:15
However, due to their very small budget supports cannot exercise the full complement of services generally performed by a city agency, including but not limited to procurement, HR, IT, etcetera, without assistance.
5:15:29
And because of their very limited budgets with no baseline increase since 2014.
5:15:35
The boards are struggling just to maintain their basic charter mandated functions.
5:15:41
Accordingly, the charter tasks, both our offices, the BPs, and the Civic Engagement Commission, with providing technical assistance and training to the community boards.
5:15:50
However, the BP's office is simply not funded to provide the full scope of the support and technical assistance that they need.
5:15:58
And the CEC is facing major post budget cuts that will hinder their already limited work in this area.
5:16:04
And it's worth noting that the CEC has a relatively new office.
5:16:08
It's actually really not assigned to a city council committee for oversight.
5:16:12
So the VP would urge the speaker to take action on this.
5:16:15
As these proposed budget cuts are not only gonna impact community boards, but also other efforts like citywide regulatory budgeting, and they should be examined.
5:16:26
So the situation where these 3 entities, the the boards themselves, the BPs that are CDC all have a role in ensuring that the boards can carry out their duties, get all three your underfunded and intercept to do so is why the BPA has been calling for the creation of new office of community boards that would become essential resource for assisting the boards with technology, policies, procedures, HR, legal counsel, training, etcetera.
5:16:51
We know this is a big ask when the city is facing difficult financial times, but no other city agency goes without bios support services, and the community boards shouldn't have to either.
5:17:02
I'm not sure which time I have, so I will just say we submitted, you know, a list of things that the office of community boards can provide, which district managers of these boards across the city have been asking for.
5:17:14
I mentioned a number of these things already.
5:17:16
Others include technical assistance and land use planning, identifying public meeting spaces, translation, childcare, and food for meetings, accessibility, procurement, tech, live streaming, and supporting meaningful meaningful engagement from city agencies on the budget process.
5:17:38
So thank you so much for the opportunity to who said this testimony today.
5:17:43
The borough president looks forward to working with the council on this another way since port, our community boards.
5:17:49
Thank you.