Since Jan Lee seems to be playing very loose with ...

2010-02-01T17:46:43.116-05:00

Since Jan Lee seems to be playing very loose with facts, I feel the need to provide some.

Fact #1: The Court where the trials themselves were to be held is located in Community Board 1 (CB 1), not CB 3. A large chunk of the “soft-security zone” is located in CB 3.

Fact #2: Mr. Lee posted this entry two days after he and I sat across the table from each other at a presentation given by Commissioner Kelly, which is the first time I have been given any details of the security plan. Saying that I have been silent on this issue is completely false. I discussed the issue at Community Board 3’s Executive meetings in both December and January and the General Board meetings in January (http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2010/01/community-board-3-highlights.html/trackback). Additionally, the only conspiring Susan Stetzer and I have done on this issue is coordinating the invites to multiple meetings and taskforces we have been asked to be a part of as well as our top concerns of impacts to the community that we feel need to be addressed. I brought up two of these items with Commissioner Kelly after his presentation and which Mr. Lee and others from the CCRC heard as well.

Fact #3: Despite literally shockingly ZERO community residents coming to Community Board 3 with concerns over the trial, I have been concerned and have had discussions with Ms. Menin both in our December Borough Board meeting and since. In any case, we generally would not vote on an issue that is located mostly in CB 1 until after that board takes a position.

Fact #4: Ms. Menin has done a phenomenal job taking charge on this and I give her tremendous kudos for what she has helped to move so quickly in the last two weeks. In fact, the Borough President asked to get a better handle on the details before scheduling it for a full Borough Board (all CB’s in Manhattan) vote.

Fact #5: Ms. Menin and I determined that my calling an emergency Community Board 3 Executive and/or full board meeting to support the CB 1 resolution was probably not necessary. I will introduce it at our February Executive meeting and if passed, will be voted on by the full Board the next week. That’s not silence or inaction.

Fact #6: Considering the Board’s limited resources, I would rather spend my own and the Board’s time focusing on responding to facts and details, so that we can make informed recommendations, not getting into a tit-for-tat with either the Mayor or Mr. Lee.

I would think that after Mr. Lee served on the Board’s Outreach Committee a few years ago that he would understand the process for engaging the Board by now. However, it is clear that he was more focused on his fiefdom than including all of the neighborhoods encompassed by CB 3 and did not pay attention to or have any interest in building anymore bridges than his own. In January I established an Outreach Taskforce that will be headed by Gigi Lee. It is my hope that community members will learn how to interact with the CB more and vice-versa. It was the mission of the Outreach Committee, when Mr. Lee was a member, to do this before, however, the Board did not meet that goal, so we’re trying again.

I invite Mr. Lee to come back to the open Executive and Full Board meetings to reacquaint himself with how to bring issues to the board and to contact me and/or the office regarding his concerns. Why he has taken the time to write this blog entry instead of picking up the phone and reaching out to me for the first time since we have met is beyond me. It doesn’t seem productive or even the proper representation CCRC needs in this “bridge building” effort. I think the answer probably lays more in the fact that he is seeking to emulate Tea Party activism by fabricating an issue to get his way rather than to work with a completely sympathetic Board. He just needs to make the effort himself.

--Dominic Pisciotta, Chairperson
Community Board 3, Manhattan

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Since Jan Lee seems to be playing very loose with ...