BY JACKSON CHEN | Out of 81 new recruits recently seated on Manhattan’s 12 Community Boards, four of them will be weighing in on Upper West Side issues at Community Board 7.
But it wasn’t easy securing a seat on CB7, as there’s never a shortage of eager and engaged residents submitting their applications each year. In 2015, 74 residents applied to the board, dwarfing the average of 36 applications from Manhattan CBs as a whole.
While CB10 of Central Harlem received the most applications at 78 this year, CB7 trailed closely behind with 69 interested residents. The four who made the cut are hoping to provide their insights on housing, education, and senior citizens issues to the board.
Manuel Casanova, 44, first took on a public role in his community when he joined the Parent Teacher Association at West End Avenue’s P.S. 75, which his daughter attends. While he’s aware of the much deeper commitment required for a community board, Casanova — who works as an independent consultant — said any opportunity to shape the future of his neighborhood was important to him.
“Things are obviously changing and evolving,” Casanova said of the Upper West Side. “There’s always a balance of how you maintain the good things you already have with the things that need to be changed.”
With two daughters attending schools in the area, Casanova said education would always be a hot button issue for him, particularly in light of the large number of private, charter, and public schools in the neighborhood and their relationships to each other. Outside of education issues, he explained he’s also concerned about housing issues and about the community’s small businesses that are pitted against online retail giants.
For Susan Schwartz, the call to action grew out of necessity when the landlord of her apartment complex began illegal renovations in February 2015. After approaching local elected officials and forming a tenant association among the mostly rent-regulated residents, Schwartz was able to understand the rights she and her neighbors enjoyed and how to exercise them. After becoming, in this way, invested in her building, she decided to take the next step by applying for the community board.
“I really wanted to broaden my horizons and take what I learned from my building and help others,” said Schwartz, a co-owner of D N Schwartz & Co, a headhunting firm.
But her résumé spans far more than recruiting, as she worked in marketing for Nabisco before jumping into the world of film production, with time also spent engaged with historic preservation societies.
Schwartz’s community interests are just as expansive, with concerns ranging from historic preservation to transportation and quality of life for senior citizens. Her most pressing concerns, however, relate to the preservation and construction of affordable housing throughout the Upper West Side.
CB7 has also gained one of the borough’s youngest new community board members with Sarina Gupta, a 16-year-old junior attending Hunter College High School.
Despite her youth, Gupta brings impressive experience to the board. For three years, Gupta has interned with Borough President Gale Brewer, who formerly represented the Upper West Side as a city councilmember.
Outside her studies and internship, Gupta also serves on the National Youth Advisory Board for Loveisrespect, a nonprofit focused on preventing and ending abusive teenage relationships.
“I’ve just been really active in my community and really utilized all the Upper West Side’s resources,” Gupta said. “I wanted to be involved in that community more so than I already am and help create changes to better it.”
While early in her time on CB7, Gupta is already interested in sitting on the Youth and the Health and Human Services Committees.
Andrew Rigie, the fourth new member of Community Board 7, could not be reached for comment.
