There are contingents of local citizens that comprise New York City’s community boards. NYC.gov says about them:
“Community Boards have an important advisory role in dealing with land use and zoning matters, the City budget, municipal service delivery, and many other matters relating to their communities’ welfare.”
For around eight years now, I’ve been attending the meetings of Manhattan’s Community Board 1 and its various committees. The World Trade Center committee is the biggie, of course. It’s the place where the Port Authority, MTA, NYPD, LMDC, and all kinds of other agencies and project leaders come to get credit for keeping the downtown “stakeholders” (buzzword!) in the loop.
True, it’s a raging river of information about all construction work, big and small. I know this especially because presenters usually go through their projects in great detail as if discussing it for the very first time. (e.g. “Here is a diagram of the World Trade Center site. These are the streets that it borders.”) And as such, the forum also serves as a tepid pool of redundancy that comes at the hands of a few CB members more committed to trying to sound smart and control the forum than actually respecting fellow attendees’ time.
For instance, one member who has, mercifully, recently moved out of town, used to pose the same question to every presenter: “Will there be benches in the [concourse, station, lobby, platform, etc.]?”
Only, he wouldn’t just ask it simply and then listen to the answer—which by the way, usually was something like “We’re just now drawing up the plans for the substructure, and procuring structural steel, so we won’t have the details of how the space will be designed for at least another 18 months.”
No, this guy would ask it, then rephrase it (“Because there are people with packages who may be tired and need to rest… will there be benches there?”), then re-rephrase it (“Often times I walk through the [concourse, lobby, station, hallway, daycare center], and I might be a little tired, or have an injury…so will there be benches there?”).
Usually he’d follow up by explaining why it’s important to have benches wherever we humans choose to walk. Sometimes he’d follow up with a question about whether or not there would be public restrooms, and what their capacity and accessibility would be.
Then there are the members who bury a simple question, like “Is the project on budget?,” with a lengthy introduction to the question. “As we all know, local residents here and in other areas of the city have had to endure delays on projects because of changing budgets and…[insert 250 more words].”
My favorite, though, is a tie between two incidents that occur nearly every meeting:
1. The thirtysomething guy who gives the impression that he’s a youthful retired firefighter (though I think he’s really just the fire marshal in his condo or something, so he gets to wear a whistle every now and then), who always notes something about how everyone in Tribeca is still breathing 100% contaminated air, and/or infers that the city is somehow neglecting to remedy the ailments of the entire CB1 population.
2. The genius who has his cell phone turned on near his microphone, so we all get to enjoy the rousing electric feedback every 30 seconds or so. But at least it helps keep us awake.
Did I mention the next meeting is tonight?
