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Q&A
Exploring alternative models for community participation beyond community boards
2:26:00
·
84 sec
Commissioner Shams DaBaron raises concerns about community board appointees sometimes lacking genuine community connection and asks Catherine Vaughn how the charter might address this. Vaughn suggests exploring entirely different models for community participation beyond the current board structure, such as citizen assemblies based on random selection, which might yield more representative input.
- Vaughn proposes looking at alternative democratic participation models.
- Examples include grand jury-style random selection or citizen assemblies.
- These models aim for broader, more representative input compared to current CB meeting dynamics.
Shams DaBaron
2:26:00
it's okay, just to follow I'm sorry.
2:26:02
To follow-up.
2:26:03
I know we got time.
2:26:05
But, I've seen in certain cases where, you have community board appointments that are not necessarily representative of actual community members, and don't have real stakes in the community.
2:26:25
So my my thought is on how, you know, and that, like, the idea of how the charter could, better serve to, address that particular thing.
Catherine Vaughan
2:26:38
Yeah.
2:26:38
I mean, I think you could also just look to other models of what democratic processes look like.
2:26:42
Community boards, if you've ever sat through a community board meeting, it can feel, it can feel very tedious and not necessarily really optimizing for community input and for true participation.
2:26:52
So thinking of I mean, there are, you know, I served on a grand jury here, and that was that looked like a truly representative slice at least of citizens in Brooklyn.
2:27:02
Whereas, you know, the way community boards look, it looks like people who have a lot of time and interest to sit there and often say no to things.
2:27:09
And and so, you know, selecting people at random, having kind of a citizens assembly model.
2:27:14
I'm not, again, I'm not an expert in in this either, but there's a wealth of literature on how other countries and cities, try to optimize for truly representative participation in democratic processes.