manhattan neighborhood network we're going to talk about community board i'm sitting here with leader fan one of our new members who also has a show called cut to the chase i have to show him and then cut to the chase and i'm also a newly manhattan sure we go from fifty ninth street all the way north to one hundred tenth street from central park west when i could part of central park in our district all the way to the hudson river so we include riverside  so we have two major parks tell us who is on the community board but we have fifteen members twenty five are appointed by the borough president and twenty five point by the city council members they serve for two year term twenty five are appointed one year and twenty five the next year so there's not we don't lose too we lose half of the well you know potentially and this year we got seven new members and last year we got seven new members how does one become a member of the community board so you have to apply for a present gale brewer has an online application and you you can also do it by print but you apply board members have to reapply if they want to stay on for next term and then anyone that wants to come on go through the application process and then sometimes there's an interview process and it's very exciting and then they'll  ask us do we need certain kinds of members like do you need someone who's an architect or do you need somebody who is from this part of the community because we want to keep the community boards diverse as possible and we want to make sure that we have  representatives from all different parts not just all the southern part but all different areas so anybody that is just interested in their community they can apply they can apply but we encourage people to come to community board meetings to come to the committee meetings to get to know the community board prior to applying here a staff so that when you board seven yes our district manager is pending she's been there for over twenty five years and she knows everybody and everything and she also runs our district service cabinet which is a very important piece of the community board assistant district manager is john martinez in our associate is jesse neves office staff works on a variety of consist constituent issues and let me give you our phone number it's two one two three six two four zero zero eight and we also have e mail office at c b seven dot org and that website is  local police precinct and the business improvement district and they get together for an hour very efficient meeting once a month to talk about whatever is happening in the community that they so that they transportation will know what's happening you know sanitation will know that they're going to be street closings you know so that everybody's on board you mention that constituents call and so what would a constituent call community board about they might be concerned that there is a pothole near them they might be concerned that the seventy two bus hasn't come in for two hours they might be concerned about some sanitation issues where the office can help them they do where they can't they'll send them to the correct agency or the correct you know place and where is community boards been located we're located at two fifty west eighty seventh street in a very lovely little office are most of our committee meetings meet there but our federal meeting which includes all fifty board members plus representatives from the electives am people from the community meets at a different location each month or so and we meet the first tuesday of the month at six thirty there's a public session with about an hour for people who want from the community want to come and talk and comment and ask questions and the locations are posted on our website rather than give a specific location it's probably best to go to the web site and look for where it's going to be so is there a prerequisite for a community person coming to the meeting can anybody come to the meeting anyone can come to the meeting a our meetings are open to the public we've been live streaming our full board meetings and we try and live stream some of our hearings so you can watch on you tube oh wonderful minutes are posted on the website so you could read the minutes you can come in and fill out a little sheet of paper that says you would like to speak or you can just come in listen they've had schoolchildren come which has been fun to ask us for something and you know which is willing nice and i have to tell you  when children come for a request board members tend to listen much more intently i could see why yes so tell us what is the purpose of a community board and how many boards on a day in the city ok the fifty nine community boards in manhattan there are twelve community boards and we the chair of each committee board is part of the borough board cabinet so i meet once a month with  office with the other chairs and we discuss what we've been doing we get great support from city borough president part of our job is to ensure that city services are sensible and responsible to the needs of all residents organisations business and institutions in our district we review and make recommendations to the city agencies about all sorts of issues including zoning out the cations tex amendments building liquor license sidewalk cafes street fairs changes to landmark business buildings and historic buildings transportation and traffic issues as well as some other concerns of of you know if someone comes in a has a concern that seems to make sense will take some action on him we've also over the last couple of years had resolutions on a variety of issues including immigration and school issues so how do you work meetings and to those committee meetings that we you know where we have an issue we talk regularly she's in she or he is in constant contact with the district manager the borough president's office also provides training for community board members as well as training for the public in a variety of issues from land use to data they also have plenty of staff they have a transportation analyst so we can call them and meet with with their land use people sometimes they'll come to us sometimes we go to them they're very open and gail herself is but we always joke at the borough board that none of us can keep up with anywhere and everywhere and she's very energetic now i know we are the board is and you're the cheer and typically what you do but how do you board work we have fifty members obviously so we've broken down into committees task force and working groups our committees our business and consumer issues health and human services housing land use parks environment preservation transportation youth education libraries communication strategy in the steering committee each board member is asked to serve on two committees so for example if you were interested in transportation you'd serve in the transportation committee the steering committee is made up of the chairs of  each of these committees has two co chairs steering is made up of the two members the two coaches from each committee and the executive committee to executives committee is the chair of the board the two vice chair secretaries the reason they are too close secretaries is they take minutes at the full board meetings which is you know can last quite a while and also the steering committee so it's a big job i think it would be too much for one person we also do update our task force right now we have several task force that we have the broadway task force which is looking at reimagining broadway from fifty ninth street two hundred tenth street we have the night task force which has been doing a lot of work with c b nine doing some forums and we're now going to have a charter commission task force because the mayor is coming out with his report which will be on the ballot broadway what is said about what broadway used to be this grand bowl of our it has some problems it has the most dangerous corridor on the upper west side for pedestrians and so transportations  looking at it but it's a broader issue and so if we decided it was too big to be part of transportation because it involves making it an avenue that you want to a brutal fard where you want to walk up and down the street where you want to have their own little spot and they'd sit there a certain time of day with their little snack in their coffee and we'd love for that to happen again and it will certainly help the small businesses and it just be exciting to be sure reminds me of all we have st pierce one of the things that the broadway task force is going to do is something very unique it started about five or six years ago not in new york but i think maybe in california it's called park and then the evening is the sort of in is day so what you do is you remove several parking spaces for the day ok and you have a pop up park you know you have to put a little barrier up to make sure people don't go past the parking space and see the parking spaces a part time lapse dance is going to partner with us to work that she's going to do a charity spring is going to have a whole program of dancing and maybe some yoga and maybe some other activities where we're going to have a section where we're going to let children draw pictures of how they imagine broadway with some arts and crafts with some other projects during the day melissa epstein who love your tree day is going to come and talk about the but we're getting a couple of buildings that are going to be seven hundred fifty feet so seventy five stories potentially seventy five or more stories it's a great concern because it's going to put shadows in central park it's going to add people on the street and these buildings don't have to come to us they don't have to come before the board for any approvals and it's also there is over over over population right so they don't come to us they don't need approval and so we can't plan for them part of a community board plan to say ok you know if you're building this building how many bedrooms how many children will you bring it so we need more seats at the local public school how will you be getting to work where he'll be working or using the parking too but you're going to be taking the train would that be enough room in the subway station for you if you're driving will there be work ingestion on the street what kind of retail will go in the buildings you know will be a big fancy store which we love but we also need the shoemaker and we also need the the the watch repair store and we also need the dry cleaner and we also need affordable housing that we definitely need affordable housing there quote as of right which means they have the right to build whatever they want to build they don't need to put affordable housing often some of the smaller buildings t et sold to become larger buildings had be affordable housing in the mind and so this people are displaced they've been members of our community for forty fifty years and they've been active and contributing and now they're going to have to leave for seniors who are homeless who live in the shelter they have full service for them they provide meals for them they give them all the help they need to get back so they can eventually have their own home so westside federation for senior housing known as was fish has recently got a building on eighty fifth street so they were able to fix that building up and take the residents that are present that were current that were previously of val lodge and move them there so they've now taken everything out of valley lodge the city h p d is sold three garages that were on one hundred a street to wish fish and wish fish is in the next couple of months will be demolishing the valley lodge into the garage sales now this all went through a land use review process over the last two years and we had multiple hearings we had people from the garage come they were parked their cars there and we tried to find them new places for their cars we understand the various needs of community people need a place to park their summer that you know should we be subsidizing parking or should we be subsidizing homes for seniors so what's going to go in this one hundred a street project that is so exciting is valley lodge will go from ninety five homeless seniors to hundred ten there will be a couple of hundred units when the whole project is finished of affordable housing for families and for seniors there will be community space there will be dining facilities if you have a community organization and you needed space f to be able to have a meeting there for me and then it turned out that one of the garages had the central park ambulance corps with a special corps of ambulances because they need to be smaller to fit under the tunnels in central park so the regular ambulances don't go into central park to have its own ambulances and these guys and gals and the you know we're different parts of the park are well it turns out they were parking in one of the garages ok so between the two of the garage it's a great playground whence this whole project finished there will be bathroom facilities which they weren't before and in one of the buildings is going to be space for equipment to play for the park next to the sortie there is a construction oversight group that's going on now that meets monthly with with the wish fish people from the school people from the community somebody from the community board to make sure that the construction doesn't have too many negative impacts on the community so exciting i look forward to seeing that and when will that project be completed i believe is completed in two thousand and twenty twenty one  because it and then they'll start the third grosh is going to wait until the this projects done and when they will to funding for that project and start that project well ok so that was big news my next question of course is asking about tell sixty first to fifty ninth street this side of the comment building had been zone in the early ninety's for a studio space it was sold several times to different groups it was finally time to build it and and they wanted to build apartment buildings so they had to go through the urban land use review process and they came to the community board and what was so exciting is for years the community board is had the riverside south task force which looked at all the buildings i had just come back on to the community where i've been on the board in the ninety's and i come back and we sat and went through our wish list it was going to be at one point i think was going to be seven buildings we got down to five buildings at one point it was going to have a huge wall on one side and people were going to be able to get it all down so we sat we said what would be good will when we're inside south came on board we wanted a public school so they said ok after the first five buildings department of education could buy a building at market rate well after the first five buildings came online you can imagine what market rate was so couldn't afford it so we're at this meeting and we're starting to say what we want i think the first thing we want is a public school right so our regional last was k through five expand it to k through eight expand it to larger than that the other thing we asked for is it's ten to twenty a president with city council rep at the time and we sent it to city planning and they looked at it they said we've never gotten a document like this before they were so impressed so anyways the first building had  principal the school a state of the art school who do and it's just fantastic and the other four buildings are going up and they're going to have thirty you know they'll have a nice i think it's two hundred  eighteen don't quote me a myth ok but it probably two hundred eighteen affordable units in three of the buildings which is going to be phenomenal you know you got a lot of help from the elected officials who are these elected officials represent our area we have three city council members helen rosenthal mark levine and speaker cory johnson assembly members are linda rosenthal danny o'donnell and dick godfrey state senators are serrano taro and wellman and our congress members are and then we have a representative from the mayor's office and of course we get a representative from brewer's office and these representatives come to two full board meetings if the council member the elected official isn't coming they will give a little report that's now what's happening sometimes we get the elected officials and which is wonderful because we get to hear what they're doing they get some feedback from us these particular representatives from the elected school invite to particular meetings if we think it's of importance or we'll call them we need help or if they have bill pending and they want come to us and explain their legislation and how we can be helpful so you know if we're having a transportation issue we will want some representative from the appropriate council members office so sometimes someone from market means office come sometimes it's somebody from from hell and so office or indeed is success so one of the any challenges we have a lot of challenges of course while i did a state was the success the parking issue was it was a huge challenge because we appreciate if they were you know we didn't want to dump more cars out on the street we have a big problem with ninety six street ninety six and weston avenue had major injuries trap you know injuries the traffic coming up off the highway and people pedestrians crossing the street so we've had several injuries if it just remains there and under vision zero we've worked closely with with helen rosenthal and they've been wonderful but it's been very hard to get what we need there because of look ation of the street the traffic patterns so it's a work in progress so it's hopefully going to be success soon but right now it's work in progress and it makes us unhappy when we can't say ok we've made that section safer one is the next full board meeting the next forward meeting is going to be