Jay Sorid
3:03:35
Thank you very much.
3:03:36
My name is Jay Sword.
3:03:37
I'm a former member of the community board nine land use committee, a former member of the community board seventeen land use committee, and I volunteered for community boards and for, you know, different committees.
3:03:51
If this if the Charter Revision Commission, which is basically discuss discussing whether or not to put UILURP on the chopping block, what you should all do is you should have people from the the land use committees of community boards as part of this Charter Revision Commission.
3:04:10
The Charter Revision Commission, for instance, when you deal with Brooklyn, you should have had 18 members on this on the, Charter Revision Commission as the heads of the Euler committees from the various community boards so they can give input as to how they would be affected.
3:04:28
That's point number one.
3:04:30
Point number two is the if you want to change things and make it more democratic and more progressive in in a city and and be, you know, have all the integrity and all of the, lofty ideas that everybody is talking about, There should be direct election of community board members.
3:04:51
I gotta say it twice.
3:04:53
There should be direct election of community board members instead of them being appointed as political cronies who are simply loyal to the hand that feeds them.
3:05:05
That's the problem.
3:05:06
So if you have 40 census tract districts in community board nine, you could simply have elections for the 40 different census tract districts, and you get 40 members.
3:05:18
And then you have 10 more, spots, which could be at large, and then you fill up the 50 spots.
3:05:24
There should be direct election of the, community board members.
3:05:29
What's going on is is the local communities are losing control.
3:05:33
You're getting rid of the local voices of the local community, and you're basically making this a city decision over local matters, which nobody wants, which is hardly progressive.
3:05:45
I've heard a whole bunch of people add in the racial elements and to say that, oh, these community boards are too white or they have older white people.
3:05:53
You come into a place like community board nine, and you will see many community board many people who would join the community board.
3:06:00
Matter of fact, the majority of the community board is African American, yet they vote against a lot of the different proposals.
3:06:08
So the community board does not wanna give up power.
3:06:10
In the city of YES, I think the majority of the community boards, almost all the community boards, which were black and brown, voted down the city of yes.
3:06:19
So it is working.
3:06:21
And I I think that it's very elitist that the, charter revision could say that we're gonna get rid of local control, and it's gonna be up to the city.
3:06:30
Because there's a tremendous amount of displacement that happens as a result of decisions made
