By Helen Klein
A planned $10,000 cut in its budget for Fiscal Year 2009 has Community Board 17 scrambling. The board – like each of the 59 community boards citywide – is facing the cut because of the expectation that the city’s revenues will decrease. And, like other boards in Brooklyn, CB 17 has responded with concern over the impending loss of a significant amount of funding. At the board’s March meeting, which was held in the auditorium at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, 395 Lenox Road, representatives of the board said that – like other boards across Brooklyn – they had tried to stave off the cut. “For 2007, the board was asked to make a $5,000 cut in OTPS (other than personal service) expenditures,” reported Louis Kilkenny, CB 17’s treasurer. “The Brooklyn boards said they couldn’t. On February 20th, we received a letter saying our Fiscal Year 2009 budget was cut by $10,000, and we have to present a plan either in OTPS or personnel service cuts.” “CB 17 has not submitted a plan,” noted Sherif Fraser, the board’s district manager. “We were holding out. We asked for an extension in hopes that the cuts would be rescinded, but we were told by the Office of Management and Budget that the cuts are already there.” 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. The boards 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. For CB 17, the board’s projected OTPS expenditures are in the $32,000 range, making a $10,000 cut in that area extremely difficult. Making it more difficult, said Fraser, is that the city may actually increase the size of the cut. “There is discussion concerning an additional three percent cut to the budget,” she noted. “That will certainly impact the board office.” How will the board deal with the budget cuts? “First we are going to examine OTPS to see if indeed we could make cuts there,” Kilkenny reported. “We are going to look at exactly where we can make the cuts.” The proposed cuts, he said, will be presented to the board’s executive committee for approval and, said Chairperson Lloyd Mills, if it is necessary to bring them to the full board, that will be done. While boards have the same annual budget, they do not necessarily utilize the funds available to them in the same way. CB 17, said Kilkenny, is one of just two community boards in Brooklyn that have three staffpeople in addition to a district manager. “Most have two,” he told the group. The budget cuts are in keeping with cuts made to other city agencies. 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.” All community board members are volunteers.
