maria popa - activity 5

Manhattan Community District 4 includes the Chelsea and Clinton neighborhoods on the West Side. It has a total population of 87,479; 60.3% of which are white, 20.8% are Hispanic, 8.3% are Asian, and 7.3% are African American. 81.2% of them rent in the area, and 18.8% own the housing units they live in. The median household income in the area is $61, 525. (nyc.gov)

Community district 4 holds its meetings in conference room B in Roosevelt Hospital. The hospital is close to the end of the district on 58th street (the district ends at 59th street) and 10th Avenue, and it is about 15 minutes from the subway stop. But despite it not being conveniently located in the middle of the district and near a subway stop, there were over 100 people attending the meeting. Except a couple of Asian attendees, everyone else at the meeting was white; every member of the community board (present at the meeting) was white and predominately male.

I attended the community board meeting on Wednesday, April 07, 2010 and the first issue raised by the board’s chairmen was the shootings that took place in Times Square on Sunday. Even though the shootings took place right outside the community district, the chief inspector of NYPD came in at the beginning of the meeting and gave a detailed account of what happened and assured the community members that despite media allegations the police department was adequately prepared to handle the attacks. To my surprise, there was only one question from the crowd and that was a plea to the police inspector to put more police officers on the west side of 8th avenue. If I lived so close to the shootings I would be very concerned, so I expected more questions from the crowd.

Next on the agenda was the public session. Coming in to the conference room, everyone was required to sign in on either the “speaking” or “non – speaking” sheet. At the time I came in there were more people on the “speaking” sheet than on the other one. Popular topics of the public session were: the opening of the “Excel Lounge” on 56 street (everyone who spoke was in favor of it), the Hudson Hotel acquiring a cabaret license (everyone who spoke was against it), the failure of the Hudson Hotel of dealing with late night noise issues and traffic congestion caused by the taxis at its entrance, as well as their inadequate garbage disposal (one woman was complaining that they do not recycle and don’t have their dumpsters emptied frequently enough so there is an odor by her apartment). These are some examples of “citizens achieving dominant decision – making authority over a particular plan or program” (Arnstein, 242), because these residents actually had the power to decide whether to grant liquor or cabaret licenses to certain hotels, or to allow the opening of a new lounge in their neighborhood. A representative of the company who will build Excel Lounge came in with presentation posters of their plans to convince members of the community to allow it, at least making them feel like they had a say in it. There were also some other groups that spoke during the public session; a representative from “The Highline” park came in to announce their new, summer hours of operation, as well as some small, independent groups that organize community activities such as movie nights with documentaries about community district boards.

During the formal part of the meeting, the board chairman introduced the new members of the community board. Afterwards, the chairmen of the transportation planning committee, the waterfront and front committee, the business license and permit committee, quality of life and cultural affairs committee, and Chelsea preservation and human services committee, took turns to read several (27) letters of their individual committee meetings and resolutions. I found this part to be a little confusing since they didn’t introduce some of the issues they were talking about but just announced their decision. After the head of the committee announced their resolution, the board members voted whether they were in favor of it or not (they were in favor of all the 27 resolutions). One of the most important topics that the community was concerned about was the closing of St. Vincent Hospital’s Emergency Room. This was a fairly new issue in the community, and many of the residents of the district were outraged that their community no longer has a 24 hour emergency room and asked everyone to go to rallies and work together to force the city government to save the emergency room. All of the board members agreed that this was an important topic and that they would discuss it in depth at the meeting on Tuesday where all the board members will be present. This last part would be part of the manipulation ring on the ladder of citizen participation, because even though community members are allowed to express their concerns, board members would often “strongly encourage them to take it to the specific committee meeting”.

Ultimately, I was amazed and pleased to see so many people – from retirees to high school students – care about their community and actually speak up for what they believe in. It seemed like they were all friends (there were numerous inside jokes that I was completely out of the loop on) and worked together, joined committees, started websites, movie nights etc. to improve their community. And even though Arnstein labels committees and such meetings where the members are allowed to speak about their concerns as nonparticipation and a way for the government to manipulate the people and “serve no other purpose [but] educat[ing] them or engineering their support” (237), to see how passionate they were about their community made me eager to go to a meeting in my own community.