Queens Community Board moves to oust member

Community Board 7 will vote to proceed with the process that will remove board member and City Council candidate John Choe from the board on June 14. File photo courtesy of Choe’s campaign. 

By Jacob Kaye

A Queens Community Board took unprecedented action after it moved to expel one of its members last week.

The Executive Committee of Community Board 7, which covers the neighborhoods of Bay Terrace, College Point, Beechhurst, Flushing, Malba, Queensborough Hill, Whitestone and Willets Point, informed board member and current candidate for City Council John Choe that his days on the board could be numbered should the full board vote to remove him in the coming weeks and months due to allegations of misconduct.

The executive board of CB 7 voted unanimously to bring the action to the full board last month and notified Choe of the proceedings against him on May 26, according to documents obtained by the Eagle.

This is the first time in the board’s history that a vote to remove a member will take place.

Choe, who called all allegations against him absurd, said that the attempt to remove him is a waste of public funds.

“The leadership of Board 7 is using public resources and time to basically conduct a witch hunt against me and try and force me to leave the board,” Choe said. “And I think that's just the wrong way to respond with these types of issues.”

It’s not the first time Choe’s future on the board has been threatened.

Choe was re-appointed to the board by Borough President Donovan Richards in April despite not getting a recommendation from City Councilmember Peter Koo earlier this year.

“A lot of Community Board members recommended to me not to recommend [Choe] because he didn’t go along with the team and always opposed the agenda,” Koo told the Eagle. “We need more voices [on Community Boards] but in any community, we have to listen to the majority.”

Despite the lack of recommendation, Richards reappointed Choe to the board.

“The Queens Borough President’s office will let this process unfold and not interfere,” a spokesperson for Richards said about the attempt to remove Choe.

A spokesperson for Koo said that the council member had no knowledge of the brewing attempt to oust Choe when he decided not to recommend him to the board.

Should two thirds of the full board vote to proceed on June 14, Eugene Kelty, the chair of CB 7, will appoint a special committee consisting of five board members. The committee, acting as a grand jury of sorts, will hear the charges as well as testimony from Choe and Chuck Apelian, the board’s first vice chairperson and Choe’s main accuser. After the committee makes its recommendation, a simple majority vote will be held with the full board to decide Choe’s future with CB 7.

Apelian’s complaints against Choe are vast and varied. He, along with executive committee members Warren Schreiber, Frank Macchio, Lei Zhao and Kelty, say Choe violated multiple rules and regulations imposed on members by the City Charter.

The executive board has filed several formal complaints against Choe with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board. However, the COIB has not issued a ruling on any of the complaints. Additionally, Choe said he has yet to be contacted by COIB regarding any of the complaints.

On Dec. 17, 2020, Choe sent out at least one campaign fundraising email to an address associated with a board member. While the content of the email didn’t differ much from fundraising emails sent by other candidates for office, members of the executive committee alleged it was in violation of the charter.

According to the City Charter, public servants, including community board members are prohibited from “coercing any other public servant to engage in political activities or make any political contribution.”

Choe denied that he was in violation of the charter because he made no mention of his position on the board in the emails.

“I have thousands of contacts in my years of service in the community. And I have sent out solicitations as a private citizen running for public office. I have never represented the Community Board in any of these solicitations,” Choe said.

The committee also alleged that Choe was the creator of a Community Board 7 Facebook page, which was made without authorization from the board’s leadership. Choe confirmed to the Eagle that he had made posts to the page but declined to comment on whether or not he was the page’s creator.

The page, which was marked as an official government page, featured multiple posts related to the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce, where Choe serves as the executive director, screenshots of the now-defunct page show.

The board contacted the New York City Department of Investigation, which ordered the page be removed.

“Creating a Facebook page, which was a bogus government page, emulating a government site, and speaking on behalf of the board – because in essence, he's trying to use his voice onto the board's voice, as the voice of the board he’s endorsing and reposting – this is against our our ethics,” Apelian said.

Choe said that he instead was trying to keep the public up to date on the activities of the board, which was without a Facebook page until the unauthorized page was created.

“This is something that is public information that I'm distributing to people in my community about what's going on in a public agency,” Choe said. “That's not a crime.”

Apelian has also accused Choe of making slanderous accusations against various members of the executive committee, including Apelian himself.

“He accused the board members of being corrupt, and there was no basis for it,” Apelian said. “When all that started to come into play, and now this is no longer a person that's really representing the better good of the community or representing the pedigree of the board, it became pretty obvious that we've got to take action.”

Apelian is serving as a consultant to the developers behind the controversial Flushing Waterfront rezoning project. Apelian recused himself from the board’s vote on the plan, which ultimately passed 30-8 in February 2020.

The vice chair also accused Choe of being corrupt after the board member said that “for the right price, I might be persuaded to change my mind,” when he testified against the waterfront plan at a February 2020 Borough Board meeting. The comment was met with laughter.

Clashes over the Flushing waterfront rezoning are at the center of the case against Choe, who believes his opposition to the plan is behind the accusations.  Eagle file photo by Victoria Merlino

“What I was pointing to was the corrupt nature of what was going on, with developers pouring in millions of dollars, including paying Community Board members, and asking the borough president to take everything that the developer is taking with a grain of salt,” Choe said. “And what I was asking for was affordable housing, health clinics, it was a school, it was public parks. These were not for me for my personal gain – this is the community.”

The council candidate and the executive committee have clashed in the past. In 2018, Choe spoke in favor of the city’s attempts to diversify Community Boards through imposed term limits, something several members of the executive committee were against.

Choe, who suspects he will ultimately be removed from the board, believes his opposition to some of the board’s positions may be at the heart of the attempt to force him out.

“Unfortunately, I think this is going to set a bad example,” Choe said. “It's going to send a message that you shouldn't be participating, you shouldn't be speaking out and participating in these types of public hearings and meetings.”