Hello! This is Part 3 of my blog series reflecting on my time on Community Board 9. If you stumbled upon this post, I recommend checking out Part 1 for context first.

This post distills the lessons I learned during my two-year term—from navigating committee assignments to getting comfortable voting “no”—to help future members make the most of their time on the board.

Contents

Make friends

The community among board members is one of the most rewarding aspects of serving. I quickly learned the value of introducing myself to other board members and asking them to share thoughts and experiences.

Soon after joining, I emailed a mix of fellow new members and more experienced board veterans. I scheduled a collection of coffee chats, phone calls, and park walks, thoroughly enjoying all the conversations. We have a remarkably friendly board, and it felt nice to break the ice with these folks.

These relationships are also crucial for the steep learning curve new members face. There’s a long list of terms, resolutions, and institutional memory to absorb. In my experience, senior board members were to fill in the gaps and provide context. These relationships taught me a lot and guided me towards asking the right questions

It’s also great from a social standpoint. Meetings (especially full board meetings) can be long and dry, but sitting with friends and occasionally sharing a knowing glance can make the hours not just bearable, but also fun. If you’re anything like me, most of your friends and acquaintances are similar in age and background. Getting to know fellow board members helps break your social bubble.

It’s not a bad idea to befriend people on other community boards as well. Sometimes, I needed a good vent session, and those friends were available. It’s also useful to periodically ask how other boards function, to grasp what is CB9-specific and what generalizes.

Learn the basics

There’s an overwhelming amount of information for new CB9 members to learn. While you’ll absorb most of this knowledge as it comes up in meetings, every new member benefits from proactively mastering the basics of a few key topics.

Here’s a quick list of helpful topics to learn when starting on the board.

  • Some key acronyms: WHDC, CBA, UMEZ, HDFC, ULURP.
  • The basics of Robert’s Rules of Order, used to run meetings. A guide like this is quite helpful.
  • The by-laws, for understanding how the board functions, what leadership does, and how resolutions pass.
  • The district Statement of Needs, which details funding requests from city agencies and formally-stated district needs. Skimming it helps new board members understand MCB9’s previous thinking on various issues and consider their priorities for the next year.

Take meeting minutes

I signed up to take meeting minutes for both my two official committee appointments and Housing, Land Use, and Zoning (HLUZ), of which I was not initially a member. I found it greatly helped my onboarding to MCB9 during those first few months.

First, it’s a great way to contribute concretely to your committees while you’re still learning the ropes. Well-written minutes are valuable to chairs, fellow committee members, and community members alike.

Second, I learned a great deal from taking minutes. When I didn’t know an acronym, taking meeting notes forced me to look it up. I also absorbed far more of a meeting’s content while taking notes live.

I eventually got the hang of it and found ways to speed up my minutes with generative AI. At each meeting, I took notes on my computer. Then, I fed the raw notes into a chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini with a prompt to format them into official minutes. The final critical step was to edit the output by hand. (This last step was essential. Language models frequently “hallucinate,” and I once found that it decided that “UAP” stood for “Uniform Affordability Project,” rather than “Universal Affordability Preference.”)

Be intentional

I joined MCB9 to work on housing and transit issues. Eager to get started, I emailed the chair with a request to join the Housing, Land Use, and Zoning (HLUZ) Committee and the Uniformed Services and Transportation Committee. When committee memberships were released, I received neither appointment and was instead placed on the Economic Development Committee and the LGBTQ Task Force.

Economic development is very important, and the committee does key outreach and programming for local businesses. But with no background in economic development or small business experience, I was unsure of my ability to contribute and frustrated that I wouldn’t get to do the work that had drawn me to the board.

Soon after joining a committee, your co-chairs and fellow committee members will start asking you to do stuff. Sometimes, they’ll ask for quite a lot. The Economic Development Committee decided to plan an all-day Small Business Forum to provide resources to local businesses, featuring guest speakers, catering, presentations from city agencies, and an involved marketing campaign. I initially felt obligated as a committee member to play a substantial role in planning. This was a shock, especially as a final-year PhD student busy writing a dissertation and searching for a full-time job.

Eventually, I learned that I could say no and my peers would be generally understanding. One’s central obligation as a committee member is to attend monthly meetings. (And this is really important: Committees cannot operate without quorum. As a board member, it’s critical to fulfill this basic responsibility. Attend every meeting you can, and give as much advance notice as possible if you cannot.)

But beyond that, it’s important to remember that you are a volunteer with finite time. You are not obligated to take a large role in event planning simply due to committee assignments. Granted, this type of work can also be extremely enriching and rewarding. It was a privilege to help organize events for the SGL-LGBTQ Task Force, including a film screening of Paris Is Burning and a discussion of Audre Lorde’s literary legacy. Do the work because you want to.

I also decided to be involved with HLUZ, official committee appointment or not. I attended the meetings anyway, took minutes, prepared updates on local developments, and learned as much as I could. It was a challenging learning curve that absorbed more time than either of my official committee assignments. But it was worth it: advocating for housing was what I wanted to do on MCB9, and my HLUZ involvement made that possible. A year later, I was officially appointed to the Committee.

The lesson here is to be intentional and judicious with your time as a community board member: Choose a few areas to go above-and-beyond and learn to say “no” on other matters. Don’t forget the reasons you applied to join the board.

Vote no

CB9 votes on resolutions at the end of full board meetings, when everyone is feeling a bit tired and ready to go home. Each resolution is introduced by a committee member, who shares an overview of the reso and the Committee’s thinking. After this person finishes speaking, someone in the crowd will almost always loudly call for “UNANIMOUS CONSENT!” Usually, no one objects to the motion, and the resolution passes unanimously.

But sometimes, an (often smaller) voice will object to the unanimous consent motion, and a voice vote is called. Twice in my board term, I objected to the motion, and proceeded to be sharply outvoted. (Once, I was the lone member to vote “no” on a resolution. Another time, I was joined by one other “no” and a scattering of abstentions.) Objecting to unanimous consent and casting an unpopular vote is scary, but I did so because I genuinely disagreed with the arguments made and felt they conflicted with MCB9’s stated priorities on affordable housing.

I think it’s important for new board members to get comfortable voting no on popular resolutions, for a few reasons.

First, it’s possible other board members also disagree with the resolution, but are hesitant to take the socially uncomfortable step of breaking unanimity. Without an initial objection to the unanimous consent motion, you’ll never know what each individual on the board actually thinks about a resolution. Someone needs to break the ice.

Second, after casting a lonely dissenting vote, several board members who voted against me approached me after the meeting, not with hostility, but with curiosity. Those moments allowed me to explain my thinking to my peers and opened space for respectful disagreement. If the goal is to ultimately persuade others of one’s views, this is often a necessary first step.

Third, the only votes I regret are the ones when I joined a bandwagon, despite my own doubts. “Banking political capital” is almost never worth it as a community board member, and I wish I’d been even more open to disagreement.

One last note: If you intend to vote “no,” I recommend notifying the board chair before the meeting begins and asking to be recognized to speak when the resolution is called for a vote. I did not do this the first time I objected, and I was not given time to explain my decision and attempt to persuade others to join me. A little forethought could have prevented this awkward moment.

Take critiques of CBs seriously

I treasured my time on MCB9 and regard my peers on the board as role models in public service. I learned a tremendous amount and gained immense respect for the bright spots of community boards as institutions, MCB9 in particular: their role as the “eyes and ears” of the community, their ability to speak truth to power, and their delicate balance of politics and service.

But as a board member, I think it’s also critical to engage with critiques of community boards. Here are a few questions I wrestled with:

  • Who is in the room and who is not? How are the perspectives of those not in the room represented, particularly those with caregiving responsibilities and demanding jobs who cannot attend many meetings? (I would recommend reading this community board demographics report and contrast it to this data from the Population Factfinder to think which community members are left out of CB decision making.)
  • What are the costs of hyper-local consultation and decision-making? Community boards are often reactionary and exhibit NIMBY-ish instincts: “We want more housing–just not here.” How can community boards voice local needs without preventing policy solutions to regional challenges, including housing affordability and homelessness?
  • Where does our political mandate and legitimacy come from? None of us are elected. How should we reconcile being appointed by elected officials with the task of representing communities with diverse viewpoints?

There are no perfect answers to these questions, and that’s the point. If community boards are to fulfill their democratic promise, we must act with humility and think carefully about how best to represent those whom we serve.

Wrap-up

Thank you for reading Part 3! Feel free to send questions and comments to claytonhsanford@gmail.com.

The final part is a collection of some personal opinions about MCB9, its functions, and its approach to land use issues.