If Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s preliminary budget for fiscal year 2011 is a predictor of the finalized budget, Community Board 7 may not fare too well.
That’s what some CB7 members said at the Steering Committee’s meeting on Thursday evening, where the committee discussed Bloomberg’s budget plan, released last month.
The Department of Parks rejected several construction and renovation projects that Community Board 7 members had proposed.
A handful of proposals—such as infrastructure upgrades for a branch of the New York Public Library on 100th Street—were approved. But the Department of
Parks denied many more requests for refurbishing parks and playgrounds, according to an itemized inventory of projects released by the mayor’s office.
The explanation cited for most of the rejections was “insufficient funds,” resulting from budget cuts due in large part to the city’s fiscal losses in 2008.
Steering Committee Chair Mel Wymore said before the meeting that these rejections reflected the difficulties brought on by the city’s $4 billion deficit.
“Fiscal difficulties made us extra clear in terms of the ordering of our priorities,” Wymore said. “For example, schools are an immediate priority for us right now.”
Despite what Wymore said were reduced expectations for the city’s capacity to fund projects, she was disappointed with the Parks Department’s refusal of the board’s requests, especially after the board participated in consultative sessions with city agencies in the fall.
“It’s a long series of rejections that don’t provide explanations and context,” Wymore said. “Our role is to justify the proposals we’ve already set forth, and make the case for each priority. It’s great for the democratic process but a bit onerous because we have to restate our priorities over and over again.”
The board will send local elected officials—including Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Councilwoman Gale Brewer, and State Assemblyman
Daniel O’Donnell—responses to the mayor’s budget. The board will join City Council hearings in March, although they will not be able to “negotiate actively,” according to Wymore.
Three months after the hearing, the City Council will vote on the mayor’s budget. Wymore said that the council contacts Brewer “nearly every day,” and that she is familiar with the board’s concerns.
And while some say that local priorities tend to go unrecognized by city authorities, Columbia is directly represented on CB7. Louis Cholden-Brown, GS/JTS ’12, was named CB7 budget director in January, after joining the board in 2009. While Cholden-Brown is new to the budget process, the board is trusting him to compile the budget responses that will be distributed to elected officials.
Though Cholden-Brown was somewhat disappointed with the budget released by Mayor Bloomberg, he said that he was optimistic that substantive revisions would be made.
“This is in no way the final budget. The budget that comes out of the City Council should be drastically different,” Cholden-Brown said. “We hope that the Council will take it upon themselves to restore funding. We will not accept the way it is now—we want it to better reflect the concerns of the community.”
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