By Helen Klein
Despite the fact that they asked for more money, that will be getting less. That was the result of efforts by Community Board 14 to encourage the city’s administration to increase the operating budget for the city’s 59 community boards, which comprise the most accessible level of city government for city residents, where they can bring complaints or concerns, and which will let them know about changes in the community which might impact them. CB 14 included the funding increase request in its list of expense budget priorities for Fiscal Year 2009. Each of the city’s community boards gets around $200,000 a year, much of which is used on personnel expenditures for the district manager and other office staff. All community board members are volunteers. However, under cost-cutting measures that are being implemented for all city agencies, the total allocation for each community board will be reduced by two and a half percent for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2008 and by five percent for Fiscal Year 2009. According to the mayor’s office, in total, “These spending reductions and revenue actions will realize $1.42 billion over Fiscal Year 2008 and Fiscal Year 2009.” Nonetheless, given the miniscule size of the boards’ budgets, CB 14 Chairperson Alvin Berk contended that there is little in the way of expenses that can be pared without eviscerating the boards’ function. While, he acknowledged, the response was, “Consistent with the mayor’s announcement that he’s reducing the budgets of all mayoral agencies,” Berk also contended that cutting community boards’ budgets was “not cost-effective.” Berk spoke about the situation during a public hearing on the city’s response to the board’s budgetary CB 14’s February meeting, at Public School 249, Caton Avenue and Marlborough Road. “The district manager’s salary is fixed,” noted Berk. “That is not susceptible to being reduced. There are certain fixed expenses we have, such as telephone costs and postage costs, that are pretty immutable unless we want to reduce outreach to the community, and after all, our whole purpose is outreach to the community. That is the reason why we exist. “The only flexible parts of community boards’ budgets, for the most part, have to do with their ability to engage part-time help on an hourly basis, and that again simply increases the burden on the full time employees if you have to have to reduce the hourly employees, so we didn’t welcome this,” Berk went on. Brooklyn’s community boards are each responding individually to the budget cuts, Berk added. While there had been a meeting of the Coalition of Brooklyn Community Boards, no consensus was reached, he said. “For our part, we are asking board members to reach out to organizations they belong to, and to reach out to elected officials, specifically city councilmembers, and remind them that the community board is an asset to them,” Berk told his listeners, calling the budget cuts affecting community boards, “penny wise, pound foolish.” The boards’ advice can actually save the city money, Berk added, citing a plan by the Department of Transportation to add neck-outs at Coney Island Avenue and Foster Avenue. When learning of the plan, last year, CB 14 had reminded the agency, Berk went on, that the neck-outs could interfere with turning city buses – a recommendation that had resulted in the agency amending its plans. “The point is, if we had not been here, if we were not able to function effectively, the city would probably have wasted money on a capital project that it would then probably have to spend more money to correct,” Berk stressed. “That’s the sort of value community boards bring to city government that has the potential to be compromised if the city persists in cutting community board budgets.” Now that city agencies have responded to the board’s various capital and expense budget recommendations, it’s the board’s turn to comment. To that end, said CB 14 District Manager Doris Ortiz, the board would be putting together a response to, “Send to the mayor and the Office of Management and Budget, detailing the ones we are not happy with.”
