Racial, ethnic and gender disparities persist on every Queens community board. New applicants can change that
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A woman speaks out during a Queens Community Board 9 hearing on the city’s land use plan to build a new jail in Kew Gardens. Community boards serve as key conduits between communities and municipal government, but rarely represent the districts they serve. Eagle file photo by Jonathan Sperling
Analysis and graphic design by Amber Grof of Measure of America
Story by David Brand
This article is part one in a series on Queens Community Board demographics created in partnership with the organization Measure of America.
Latino residents make up about two-thirds of the population in Queens Community District 3, which covers Jackson Heights, Corona and East Elmhurst. But they account for just a quarter of Community Board 3 membership.
Men and women each make up about half the population in Queens, but male members outnumber female members on 10 of the borough’s 14 community boards. On three boards, men more than double women. Meanwhile, just two board members across the borough identified as transgender or gender non-comforming in 2019.
Queens community board applications opened earlier this month, presenting an opportunity to address racial, gender, ethnic and age disparities that pervade all 14 boards in the borough. The imbalances are revealed in a new analysis by the Eagle and the organization Measure of America.
The analysis, based on community district demographic data and an annual report issued by the Queens borough president’s office, shows several groups continue to be excluded from community boards, while others are significantly over-represented.
It’s not just Queens CB3: Latinos are underrepresented on every board in the borough, sometimes by huge margins, the data shows. So are immigrants, who make up about half the population in Queens, but less than a tenth of all board members.
Asian residents are underrepresented on 13 of the 14 boards.
And Residents 65 and older make up a disproportionately high number of members on every board in Queens, while individuals 45 and younger are underrepresented on every board.
Understanding the data
For the second year in a row, the Eagle worked with Measure of America to compare the demographics of each community board with the demographics of the districts they represent.
The comparison relies on two tools — an charter-mandated community board report issued by the borough president’s office and DATA2GO.NYC, Measure of America’s online mapping tool. DATA2GO.NYC uses population data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to determine specific community district demographics.
The Queens Borough President’s demographic report includes data on race, ethnicity, gender and age. Race and ethnicity is separated into five categories: Black, white, Latino, Asian and Other. The charter-mandated reports also compiles information based on the “self identified characteristics” of veteran, immigrant, “parent of a K-12 student” and “disability.”
The demographic analysis conducted by the Eagle and Measure of America isn’t perfect because the available data is incomplete: Most, but not all, members filled out the identifying information sections of their applications. The different rates of disclosure prohibit a complete analysis of the community board demographics.
A total of 587 Queens board members filled out at least a portion of their self-identification survey, with age the most common disclosure. Another 76 members did not reveal their age.
About 180 members did not provide a response to questions about their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, veteran status and other traits.
Community Board 10 Chair Betty Braton highlighted the gaps in an interview Tuesday..
“It’s good that they’re doing that report. I found it helpful,” Braton said. “But not everyone fills it out and so the data is incomplete.”
Nevertheless, new Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said the annual report is important for quantifying the disparities evident to most people who attend meetings. He said he was making it a priority to “make sure there is representation across the boards.”
He noted that he has for the first time allowed prospective community boards members to fill out their applications online. He said he has kicked off community outreach efforts among underrepresented groups, specifically Latino residents, public housing tenants and younger people, including college students.
“With at least 2.2 million people in the borough, it shouldn’t be hard to find individuals who want to serve on community boards, but that goes back to education and knowing what community boards do,” he said.
Understanding community boards
Members of queens community board 8 participate in a january meeting. image via cb8 livestream
Queens’ 14 community boards serve as key conduits between local residents and city government, making advisory recommendations on land use issues, weighing in on street design plans, educating residents about topics like ranked-choice voting and hosting forums on other key community concerns.
Each community board has 50 seats for unpaid members who live in, work in or demonstrate some connection to the district they represent. There were 37 vacant seats across the borough on April 1, 2019 — the date new and reappointed members began their terms that year.
The latest report, issued in July 2020, relies on 2019 demographic data voluntarily submitted by members. The report uses the same year included in the first annual report in 2019, but includes responses from hundreds of additional members.
The new appointees who took office June 1, 2020 are not represented in the latest report from the borough president’s office.
That means it is not yet possible to make year-over-year demographic comparisons, but the expanded data set is useful for getting an overview of the state of Queens community boards because most members are reappointed.
Local elected officials have major sway over who makes it on the boards — a key consideration with 11 city council seats up for grabs in Queens.
Half of community board members are nominated by local councilmembers and the rest apply through Borough Hall. Each community board member is approved and appointed by the borough president, giving Richards ultimate power over community board makeup.
Richards said the first step is educating residents about the boards and making applications and meetings accessible to everyone in Queens.
“Community boards play such a key role in the community, and yet the public is largely in the dark unless there’s a controversial land use item that comes up,” he said.
Indeed, meeting attendance, and media coverage, swells when a hot button vote comes up, like the city’s 2019 jail plan, or homeless shelter siting.
“We need to empower them to be more than controversial but a source of knowledge and a source of resources to the community,” Richards said.
Latinos underrepresented across Queens
Latino/Latinx individuals are underrepresented on every community board in Queens. graphic by measure of america
No racial or ethnic group is more underrepresented on Queens community boards than Latinos, the analysis shows.
Latino residents are most underrepresented on Community Board 3, which represents Jackson Heights, Corona and East Elmhurst. Latinos account for about two-thirds of the population in Queens Community District 3, but they account for only about 20 percent of Community Board 3, according to the borough president’s report.
Queens Community Board 3 did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.
Francisco Moya, the borough’s only Latino councilmember, said the borough president’s office must step up recruitment and advertising in Latino communities in Spanish as well as English.
“I’m all about making sure community boards are reflective of the communities that it represents, and I think it is incumbent on us to ensure we are getting the message out to our community, to recruit them and to say look this is a great opportunity,” Moya said.
Moya nominates some members of CB3 and nearby Community Board 4, which represents Elmhurst, Corona and LeFrak City. He said he has nominated at least 10 Latino members to CB4.
Still, Latino residents make up just a quarter of CB4 members despite accounting for more than 53 percent of the population in Community District 4.. CB4 did not respond to requests for comment.
A lack of vacancies can complicate recruitment and appointment, however, Moya said. Community Board 3 had zero vacancies in April 2019, the borough president’s report shows.
“That’s the crux of this,” Moya said. “If there are only a few vacancies, it’s hard to recruit many people.”
New city charter rules that took effect in 2019 limit members to four consecutive two-year terms, meaning more positions will eventually open by 2027. Richards also has the option not to reappoint members — a move that Acting Borough President Sharon Lee made in two high-profile instances last year.
Manny Silva, a former member of Queens Community Board 14 representing the Rockaway Peninsula, criticized previous outreach as a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t appeal to various groups and communities.
“The Latino community is very diverse. I’m Haitian and Dominican and my family was very mixed, and culturally I am more American than anything,” he said.
Silva, Richards’ former chief of staff, is running for his boss’s old seat in Council District 31. He said outreach from councilmembers, the borough president and community boards needs to take into account unique aspects of various cultures within the Latino community.
“These boards are not diverse and do not represent the communities that they’re supposed to represent,” he said.
Community Board 6 member Anisia Ayon, one of the few Latino members on her board, told the Eagle last year that representation was crucial for attracting new members and further diversifying boards.
“I used to go to the meetings and I saw there was not too much representation of Latinos, now we are three Latinos — only two women,” Ayon said.
“It’s a disconnect,” she added. “Maybe there’s not enough communication with the community.”
Immigrants underrepresented
Immigrants make up about half of queens’ population, but less than 14 percent of every community board in the borough. on some boards, no one identified themselves as foreign-born. graphic by measure of america
Immigrants make up roughly half the population of Queens, but no more than 14 percent of any community board.
Though foreign-born residents account for 64 percent of the population in Community District 4, no member of CB4 identified as an immigrant, according to the borough president’s report.
No members identified as an immigrant on Community Board 8 (Briarwood, Cunningham Heights, Flushing South, Fresh Meadows, Hillcrest, Hilltop Village, Holliswood, Jamaica Estates, Jamaica Hills, Kew Gardens Hills, Pomonok Houses and Utopia) or Community Board 12 (Jamaica, Hollis, St. Albans, Springfield Gardens, Baisley Park, Rochdale Village, South Jamaica) though foreign-born residents make up between 42 and 47 percent of the population in Community Districts 8 and 12.
Richards said he wants a new “immigrant welcome center” at Queens Borough Hall to drive civic participation among foreign-born residents. “We hope it will draw people to community boards,” he said.
He said his team is overhauling handouts and the borough president’s website to share community board information in multiple languages.
“It goes back to language access,” he said. “How do we make sure the website is covered in that area, the application process.”
New Community Board 2 Chair Lisa Deller said her board is working to attract more immigrant members — there were three in 2019, according to the borough president’s report — by partnering with local community-based organizations.
“First, people need to understand what community boards are and do and that’s not well published,” Deller said.
CB2 meets at the headquarters of Sunnyside Community Services, a nonprofit that serves low-income residents and immigrants.
During the interview, she realized the organization could work with Sunnyside Community Services to educate and attract their clients, many of whom are in the very same building during community board meetings.
“We meet at their facility and they serve a lot of people for whom English is a second language and people take advantage of their different programs,” she said. “Is there a link to introduce people who are involved in an agency or organization like that?”
“I never thought about that, but that is a way to do outreach,” she said.
Asian representation
Deller was one of just three community board chairs who responded to requests for comment and discussed demographic disparities. In addition to immigrants, she said community boards must do more to attract residents who identify as Asian and South Asian — a gap she said she has recognized on CB2 and other boards.
Asian New Yorkers are underrepresented on every Queens community board except one — Community Board 13 (Bellaire, Bellerose, Brookville, Cambria Heights, Floral Park, Glen Oaks, Laurelton, Meadowmere, New Hyde Park, North Shore Towers, Queens Village, Rosedale, Springfield Gardens).
Asian residents are most underrepresented on Community Board 11 (Bayside, Douglaston–Little Neck, Auburndale, East Flushing, Oakland Gardens, Hollis Hills). About 19 percent of CB11 members identified as Asian on their application, but Asian people make up 45 percent of the district. CB11 did not respond to requests for comment.
The borough president’s report may not provide a completely accurate picture of Asian representation, however.
After the Eagle published an analysis of Queens community board demographics last year, multiple people reached out to say the survey was flawed.
Many residents who identify as Indo-Caribbean may have selected “Other” or declined to fill out the form, said Braton, the CB 10 chair.
“The report was put out based on self response information from the applicants and it said Board 10 had no Asian members, but anyone who understands Board 10 knows our numbers are skewed because people identify as Indo-Caribbean,” she said last year.
“Like anything else, the format will be tweaked,” she said.
Black representation
Black New Yorkers were overrepresented on all but one board, Queens Community Board 5 (Ridgewood, Glendale, Middle Village, Maspeth). There are no Black members on CB5, according to the borough president’s report, but Black residents make up less than 2 percent of the district population. That, perhaps, highlights a different problem in a district compromised of many single-family homes.
On Southeast Queens’ Community Board 12, on the other hand, 85 percent of members are Black compared to about 63 percent of the district, the analysis shows.
White representation
White people account for more than 50 percent of the population in just one community district — Community District 5, where they comprise 51.6 percent of the population — but white people make up more than half of board members on six Queens community boards.
Based on the analysis, white people were overrepresented on 13 of the 14 community boards in Queens.
White people are most overrepresented on Community Board 8 (Briarwood, Cunningham Heights, Flushing South, Fresh Meadows, Hillcrest, Hilltop Village, Holliswood, Jamaica Estates, Jamaica Hills, Kew Gardens Hills, Pomonok Houses and Utopia) where they make up 60 percent of the board, but 30 percent of the district.
Gender disparities
Graphic by Measure of America
Community boards continue to skew disproportionately male, according to the analysis of member applications.
Women made up fewer than half of the members on 10 community boards. On five of those boards, women make up less than 40 percent of membership. Only two boards have members who identified as transgender and gender-nonconforming on their applications.
Women were most underrepresented on Community Board 7 (Flushing, Bay Terrace, College Point, Whitestone, Malba, Murray Hill, Linden Hill), where they account for 24.4 percent of members.
CB7 did not respond to requests for comment.
Last year, however, CB7 Land Use Chair Chuck Apelian discussed the disparities and said “knowledge” and experience were more important than representation.
“Just because you might align 100 percent with the statistics — which is hard as it is — all that guarantees in that moment are the best political optics, nothing else,” Apelian said. “Just because you have X amount of Black people, X amount of Asians, X amount of women doesn’t mean they have the best land use knowledge, the best transportation background.”
“Optics aren’t better than knowledge,” he added.
Making changes
While reporting this analysis, the Eagle reached out to all 14 community boards and board chairs. Three responded and discussed the disparities: Deller from Community Board 2, Braton from Community Board 10 and Community Board 6 Chair Alexa Weitzman.
All three acknowledged the disparities and the importance of building a board that reflects the communities it represents.
Weitzman said she has tried to make the meetings as accessible as possible for people in the district, which includes Forest Hills and Rego Park. Those efforts include streaming the meetings on Facebook Live and keeping the videos available on the CB6 Facebook page.
She said she has been announcing that applications are open during meetings and encouraging members and attendees to spread the word.
“In terms of outreach, I think this is a good example of our community board members being ambassadors to their communities,” Weitzman said. “I encourage people to share the info with their communities and we’ll do our best to amplify what the borough president is already doing, which is a lot of outreach on their end.”
The board wants to add closed captioning and language interpretation to the meetings but needs support from the borough president’s office, she said.
Richards said the technology team from the borough president’s office will assist each board with meeting accessibility. The tech staff will also take over live-streaming and archiving meeting videos on the borough president’s website.
Weitzman said she has made another change to promote inclusion. Instead of referring to board applicants as “citizen members,” CB6 now refers to them as “community members” — an acknowledgement of the many non-citizens who live in the district.
Still, like the 13 other boards, CB6 does not reflect the district it serves. Latino and Asian residents are underrepresented on CB6; immigrants make up nearly 50 percent of the district but just 6 percent of the board.
Weitzman said she hopes the new round of applications will help CB6 catch up to district demographics.
“We need to improve,” she said. “But I do know that people want to apply and that’s exciting.”
See the data
This article is part one in a series on Queens Community Board demographics created in partnership with the organization Measure of America. This is the third collaboration between the Queens Daily Eagle and Measure of America. Check out our previous projects on Community Board demographics and COVID-19 testing sites in Queens.
