BY JACKSON CHEN | Close to 800 applicants, each of them no doubt confident that they have their fingers on the pulse of their neighborhoods, applied to Manhattan’s 12 community boards that tackle local issues like zoning, landmarks, transportation, and more. It would seems as though this year residents are more eager than ever to contribute, as 527 of the 785 Manhattan CB applications were from newcomers, a 12 percent jump from 2015.
CB8, which covers the East Side of Manhattan from 59th to 96th Streets, from Central Park to the river, welcomes four new members from its pool of 33 applications received this year. While the application numbers there were down from the 47 received last year, the new members all voiced eagerness to weigh in on community issues.
Michael Mellamphy, 39, has been working at Ryan’s Daughter, the Upper East Side’s self-proclaimed “local friendly neighborhood bar,” located on East 85th Street, since 2000 as a bartender. Soon, Mellamphy, a 16-year resident of the neighborhood, became co-owner with his business partner, James Gerding, and began attending meetings of CB8’s Street Life Committee as well as its full board meetings to understand the relationship between bars and restaurants and the community board.
“I wanted to educate myself as to how to interact with community boards, initially to make life easy for us as business owners,” Mellamphy said.
Eventually, he began to realize he enjoyed the community interaction and engagement and wanted to be a more permanent presence at the board.
Tricia Shimamura, 27, has only lived on the Upper East Side for a year, but her work life may have offered her a deeper understanding of the community and its relationship with government.
Shimamura, now a project associate at Columbia University’s Office of Government and Community Affairs, formerly worked as deputy chief of staff for Congressmember Carolyn Maloney, whose district covers the lion’s share of the East Side.
“The community boards can really act as a sounding board, but they are also the connection to elected officials,” Shimamura said. “I think the most important role that community boards can play is they really are the most humble face of government.”
Shimamura has already expressed interest in joining CB8’s Parks Committee because she’s a board member of Friends of the East River Esplanade, a nonprofit aiming to restore the long stretch of riverfront parkland.
CB8’s youngest member, Sara Solomon, 16, joined the ranks as a student from Dalton High School.
“I’m very interested in politics,” Solomon said. “I think this is one of the few opportunities for people my age to become involved in their communities and have a vote.”
After finding out from a relative who works with another community board that the age minimum was lowered to 16, she immediately seized the opportunity to have a voice in her community’s happenings.
Lynne Strong-Shinozaki, 56, becomes the fifth member of CB8 from Roosevelt Island. Despite the island being a part of the district, many board members haven’t even visited there, Strong-Shinozaki said.
“I wanted to give Roosevelt Island, with the current changes going on with Cornell coming, as much of a voice as to what’s going on,” Strong-Shinozaki said of the university’s plans to open up a technology campus there in 2017.
Strong-Shinozaki, a member of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association and trustee of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society, said she hopes to help her fellow board members better understand her area before voting on issues affecting the island. She plans to keep a particularly sharp eye on housing issues as she feels that the sparse availability options on the Upper East Side are steering away its younger residents.
