ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 11/27/2014 | BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | In the first competitive chairperson election at Community Board 2 in eight years, Tobi Bergman held off two opponents, Bo Riccobono and Richard Stewart, to win with 57 percent of the vote.
Forty-nine C.B. 2 members voted. Bergman got 28 votes to Riccobono’s 13 and Stewart’s 8.
Bergman, who was elected to a one-year term, will take over the leadership of the all-volunteer board on Dec. 1.
In the race for first vice chairperson, Terri Cude beat Jonathan Geballe 37-12.
In a tight race, Susan Kent, Katy Bordonaro and Maury Schott vied for second vice chairperson, with Kent ultimately defeating Bordonaro in a runoff.
Riccobono, Geballe and Bordonaro ran together on a slate.
Bergman has been on the community board for 17 years, and is best known for his activism around parks and youth sports. He is a former president of Greenwich Village Little League and the Pier Park & Playground Association (P3). On the community board, he formerly chaired the Parks Committee and more recently has been chairing the Land Use and Business Development Committee. He lives in Hudson Square.
All the candidates gave brief remarks before the vote, which was done by written ballot. Of course, the candidates had already all been vigorously lobbying the board members for their support in the weeks leading up to the election.
Bergman, in his turn at the mic, listed “five points” important to him regarding the community board and how to lead it.
“Ideas are like seeds that need to be planted and nurtured, and I like working on other people’s ideas more than my own,” he told the board members. “We are public servants and we have a responsibility to work hard to be effective. We need to be committed to offering a good experience to our members, who are volunteers.
“Our most important work happens at public meetings, and how we conduct our meetings shapes how people view us,” he added.
“Our office is a public office of a city agency and it needs to be clean and welcoming,” he said, referring to the C.B. 2 H.Q. in Washington Square Village, which is manned by several paid staff members. “We also need to look under the hood to make sure our staff priorities are the right ones and that their jobs are engaging and important.
“I feel my long experience on the board will be valuable to me as chairperson,” Bergman added, “but I understand board chairperson is different and I have a lot to learn.
“Participating in the election was very helpful for me. It gave me a chance to have long talks with many board members and prepared me for the job.
“All the candidates should be committed to coming together as a team after the election,” he concluded.
Afterward, asked by The Villager to lay out his thoughts about the upcoming year, he said he wants to wait until after he takes office.
However, he did say, “Over all, as I said, I want to work to help make other people’s ideas succeed.”
Riccobono, in his remarks before the vote, touched on the development juggernaut gripping the Village. Referring to a “55-story building at the St. John’s Center site, a 23-story building at Bowlmor…N.Y.U…the gas station maybe,” he said, “we’re surrounded. We’ve got to be proactive.”
Meanwhile, Stewart said, if elected, he’d work to find joint solutions.
“Consensus is important,” he stressed.
Afterward, Keen Berger, said she felt it had been a good race that thankfully didn’t sink into bitterness and attacks.
“I’m glad that we had such an interesting election,” she said. “We have great members. We’ll support our new chairperson.
“I was glad that the people I didn’t vote for got support,” she added.
Susanna Aaron, a C.B. 2 member and Hudson River Park activist, said of the night’s vote, “I was pleased at the outcome.”
For C.B. 2 member Robert Ely, there was no question in his mind that he would support Bergman for chairperson.
“He has done so much,” Ely stressed, “and that’s why he has succeeded. He got those ball fields on Pier 40 — that was his doing. It was his thinking. To think that that courtyard full of buses could be turned into ball fields.”
However, some on the board had felt Bergman’s relationship to Pier 40 was too close, especially now with the pier’s unused development rights likely to be in play in the near future in an expected sale to the owners of the St. John’s Center across the highway from the pier.
Last month, when the three chairperson candidates did a Q&A with the board members, Bergman alone had to answer a special series of questions about his relationship to Pier 40.
Two years ago, for example, Bergman was the point person on a concept plan designed by Pier 40 Champions — a coalition of Downtown youth sports leagues — to build two high-rise luxury residential towers at the foot of Pier 40, whose revenue would have been used to repair the decaying pier. That plan failed for lack of political support.
Legislation passed last year, however, now allows the park’s unused development rights to be sold across the highway. Any sale proceeds from Pier 40’s air rights are required to be funneled directly back into the massive West Houston St. pier’s repair.
During the October Q&A, Bergman was asked if he has an opinion on the possible transfer of development rights from Pier 40 to the St. John’s Center site.
“I don’t know what my position would be yet,” he said, though adding, “I do think our elected officials provided a very good way to fund the park.”
C.B. 2 provided the results of the chairperson vote, which is public record. Voting for Bergman were Susanna Aaron, Daniel Ballen, Keen Berger, Tobi Bergman, Carter Booth, Rich Caccappolo, Heather Campbell, Ritu Chattree, Denise Collins, Tom Connor, Terri Cude, Coral Dawson, Robert Ely, Joshua Frost, Robin Goldberg, Anne Hearn, Jeanine Kiely, Ed Ma, Alexander Meadows, Daniel Miller, Lois Rakoff, Robin Rothstein, Maury Schott, Arthur Schwartz, Shirley Secunda, Frederica Sigel, Robert Woodworth and Elaine Young.
Supporting Riccobono were Katy Bordonaro, Anita Brandt, Lisa Cannistraci, Cristy Dwyer, Jonathan Geballe, Sasha Greene, David Gruber, Arthur Kriemelman, Bo Riccobono, Sandy Russo, Sean Sweeney, Shannon Tyree and Susan Wittenberg.
Backing Stewart were William Bray, Maria Passannante Derr, Doris Diether, Susan Kent, Rocio Sanz, Shirley Smith, Chenault Spence and Richard Stewart.
After two one-year terms in a row helming C.B. 2, Gruber stepped down, per the board’s term limits policy. He received a warm sendoff and a succession of proclamations from Councilmember Corey Johnson, state Senator Brad Hoylman — himself a former C.B. 2 chairperson — and Borough President Gale Brewer. Councilmember Rosie Mendez also thanked Gruber for his service.
Above all, Hoylman said, Gruber “gets things done.”
Brewer praised Gruber’s “droll wit” and “good conversation,” which helped keep meetings interesting and running smoothly. The borough president also lauded his getting the board members to switch from using paper handouts to computer tablets for their resolutions at monthly full-board meetings.
“You’re saving the planet at the same time you’re making wonderful decisions,” she said.
“I’m starting to feel like Derek Jeter, but that’s O.K.,” Gruber quipped of all the politicians’ accolades.
“We’ve done a lot of good things over the past two years,” he said, reflecting on his tenure. “Some of it started on my watch, some of it landed on my watch.”
Rattling off a list of accomplishments, he mentioned getting a new middle school at 75 Morton St., to open in 2017 — although he admitted that process had started before his term — plus elementary schools planned at Duarte Square and, hopefully, at Bleecker St. and LaGuardia Place on one of the N.Y.U. superblocks.
There was also the approval of the Hudson Square rezoning, he added, as part of which C.B. 2 successfully lobbied Trinity Real Estate to include a gym — that will be open to the community — in its planned residential tower at Duarte Square, which will also include the new school in its base.
“We established the Washington Square Park Conservancy…and they have been very successful raising money and helping the park,” he continued.
In addition, Gruber noted, the board approved a Meatpacking District Business Improvement District that will include a first-of-its-kind “impact zone” extending from its borders to make sure residential neighbors’ concerns are being addressed.
In addition, he previously chaired the board’s N.Y.U. Working Group, which put together a comprehensive resolution on the N.Y.U. 2031 plan, which recommended an “absolute no” on the nearly 2-million-square-foot project slated for the university’s two South Village superblocks.
Last but not least, Gruber added that, in no small feat, he also located the comfortable new space for C.B. 2’s monthly full-board meetings, the Scholastic auditorium, on Broadway near Prince St.
