At the risk of making this thicket even denser (Prospect Park East is
beginning to sound like Central-on-the-Mississippi), Michael Atherton's
complaints seem to shrink as the saga continues. First, the neighborhood
group was changing its by laws to prevent people from voting - but it turned
out they had made a decision to exclude a student dorm new to the
neighborhood. Hardly an indictment of neighborhood groups meriting burying
NRP. Then, the implication was that PPERRIA was denying people records...now
THIS turns out not to be right - Michael thinks the neighborhood group
should be subject to that law, and people had "trouble" getting records
under a previous regime. But no tossed-off voters and no locked-up documents
in the end.
In the latest installment reveals a big problem is a grievance policy. Let
me tell you, if you get rid of NRP and make the city council the only
decision-maker, the grievance policy isn't much better. You can sue (and if
you're little, try doing that to city hall - and it's worth noting the
anti-lighting Prospect Park residents did sue over their assessments and
lost). Or, if you're in the wrong end of the election cycle, you can wait
three years to try to bounce your council person.
One of the things so frustrating about Michael's account is that seven years
ago, I felt a little like him. My grievance was 180 from his: We had a
neighborhood board in King Field that was not willing to have the
neighborhood join NRP - in other words, they were willing to leave $2
million-plus on the table. (Legend has it King Field was the last
neighborhood to join NRP, though I'm not sure if this was true.) That board
didn't seem all that interested in outreach and it seemed (to us newcomers)
to be run by a small clique of Same Old boys & girls.
We didn't even have the assessment outrage fueling us - just the sense the
board was out of synch. But several people (not me, I was only a fellow
traveler) led the charge and organized the heck of the neighborhood, and our
"bloc" won a majority of seats. Several old members were elected too; at
least one resigned but many others stayed, and after a few years, the blocs
were even working together a bit.
I can't defend every neighborhood organization as functional, and wouldn't
say that board members always make great or even proper decisions. I would
guess - only that - that the batting average in the neighborhoods is as good
as city hall. And the ultimate grievance procedure is more frequent &
powerful - annual neighborhood board elections. Get a slate, run a group,
and change the bad stuff of the old closed regime. If you can organize
opposition to a lighting petition, you can do this.
I believe there have been several elections in Prospect Park since the
lighting fiasco occurred (the controversy surfaces in Strib archives in
1999, and I believe it erupted a year or two before that). Since the
assessed residents were clearly not excluded (at least, Michael has not
alleged such), why wasn't their enough outrage to overturn the board making
such an egregious, anti-democratic mistake? I can tell you if I had screwed
up 130 people's assessments - the number who signed an anti-lighting appeal,
according to the Strib -- I'd be out on my ear as neighborhood prez here in
King Field. Perhaps because - democratically - Michael's position ultimately
doesn't carry the day in Prospect Park?
David Brauer
King Field - Ward 10
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