Brannan Cries in the Paper After CB 10 Override
Councilman Brannan and the two other politicians overrode Community Boards 10’s decision on the bike lanes for Bay Ridge. The politicians’ base didn’t like that CB 10 didn’t approve of EVERY bike lane, so Brannan and the pols jumped into action for the special interest group and days later, the Community Board’s decision was overturned and announced as “Don’t Listen to Our Community Board” on the Streetsblog. (See here)
The day after Community Board 10 voted on the bike lanes, the three politicians posted an undated letter on Twitter. (See here) Can you imagine what would happen if they wrote a letter for a long-standing problem in our community? During the Community Board 10 meeting, a resident spoke about the property next to his being leased by a private school. The resident was upset that a church could lease the building (that also means it can be subleased). Even though he was at the same meeting that the bike lane issue was discussed, none of the pols contacted him or wrote letters to help him.
Two days after the politicians posted their letter to Keith Bray on Twitter, all the streets (with the exception of 3rd Avenue) were approved for bike lanes. The bike enthusiast’s blogs released this information before any politician. In fact, the pols have been kinda quiet about the results. Our local newspaper made a wishy-washy attempt at explaining what happened (strangely, the reporter didn’t even interview any of the politicians for the article). Brannan seems to be claiming that they “just did this” for 75th Street, but 84th Street and 85th Street were not approved by CB 10 and were approved because of the override.
Brannan cried in an Opt-Ed to the local paper because everyone didn’t like that he overroad CB 10. Brannan failed to tell Bay Ridge the whole story. The override of CB 10 has deemed this community board powerless. Members of Community Board 10 spent their time trying to do the right thing for Bay Ridge. Diane Gounardes, mother of Senator Gounardes voted with the Committee on adopting some bike lanes and refusing others. Steve Harrison voted ‘No’ only because 75th Street was missing. Harrison went up twice to speak in favor of 75th Street (which we appreciate him doing) and to say he agreed with everything else on the plan.
Brannan, Gounardes and Frontus should be embarrassed that they didn’t communicate better with Community Board 10. We didn’t elect them so they could make our Community Board powerless. There were many things the pols could have done here, other than the over ride CB 10’s decision.
The strangest part: Andrew Gounardes and Mathylde Frontus were not present for the meeting – both were in Albany and they rushed that letter to Keith Bray, WITHOUT waiting for Community Board 10’s meeting notes
Brey responded in two days. Has anyone seen things get done in two days in NYC? What made the politicians move so fast on this….even while two were in Albany? *This part is important.
Justin Brannan wanted me to know that Gounades’ chief-of-staff, Kelly O’Donnell was present at the meeting. No one in Bay Ridge elected Kelly O’Donnell to office. It’s nice she was present, but she failed to do her job in asking Community Board 10 for any letters they received from residents. O’Donnell has a degree in Communication, yet she doesn’t think it’s wrong that residents’ questions go unanswered on Senator Gounardes’ Twitter account. Each week, Gounardes asks for people’s issues and then doesn’t bother to answer them. I wrote to Gounardes’ twitter account when I saw the information about the override – he did not respond.
Special interests outside of the community have a hold inside our community. I found out this news at a restaurant on Third Avenue where a resident read the news from an article written by the special interest group. The article went after our community board and the comments below it were also terrible. I defended Brannan because I thought it wasn’t true. Brannan did not comment on that article and defend our community board. I tried communicating with the three pols – Gounardes ignored me, while Brannan and Frontus answered as politicians.
Finally: Brannan added Dan H. to Community Board 10. Dan went to the Streetblog and wrote some very negative things about Community Board 10 and residents. After the meeting at St. Anselm, Dan was mad that residents from blocks were invited to the meeting. He didn’t think that was fair, even though the Community Board had done this in the past. Community Board 10 had to write a response to Dan’s article because he misrepresented the meeting. *Dan has another blog that is better known in Bay Ridge, but that site didn’t have the Streetsblog article, even though he previously shared about the bike-planning meeting there.
Seeing Councilman Brannan put Dan on Community Board 10, seems like a stab at Community Board 10. This man wasn’t willing to work with residents for a common goal. We felt terrible that Doris had to announce his name as a new member. While Brannan claims he communicates with CB 10, clearly he didn’t here. Everyone knows that feeling where someone stabs you, but then they benefit…..yeah we saw that. We don’t know Doris personally, but we see she has been fighting for the community for a long time and deserved better communication from Justin Brannan. (Councilman Brannan, if you ever read this…you owe the good people on Community 10 an apology – they don’t show up to meetings so you can override their decision. Adding new members who are respectful and can work within the Community Board is a responsibility you didn’t take seriously.)
Hugs,
marlene
Topics: Bay Ridge | 1 Comment »
June 27th, 2019 at 3:50 pm
Why did Justin override their vote. Did he say the reason?
Did Justin say why he didn’t help resident with the new neighbors? A school next door to a home doesn’t sound right.
Justin is supporting a school on 86th street that residents have asked him to find a new location. Do you know anything about it?