They may not realize it yet, but New Yorkers who live or
work in Greenwich Village, Soho or Little Italy have just given up a degree of
independence when it comes to their community board. Community Board 2 has
announced that its new chairwoman will be Aubrey Lees. Ms. Lees also happens to
be a local district leader of the Democratic Party, a conflict of interest that
immediately calls into question her ability to steer the board without a
partisan agenda.
While community boards have limited power, they can have
great influence in the court of public opinion. Community boards are meant to
be an alternative, nonpartisan way for
citizens to have a say in local decisions-not a vehicle to reinforce the
existing political power structure. But that is exactly what is happening
with Board 2. Ms. Lees’ refusal to give up her Democratic Party role does not
bode well for those who want the board to operate in an impartial manner. “Her
unwillingness to step down as district leader worries me,” Board 2’s vice
chairwoman, Ann Warner Arlen, told The
New York Times . “One wonders if we are going to see something that looks
more like patronage.”
Every decision Ms. Lees
makes will be seen through a partisan lens, paralyzing the board when it
most needs to be an effective voice for those who live within its boundaries. What will happen when groups with
interests at odds with the local Democratic
machine come before the board? Ms. Lees’ unusual position will also have
a chilling effect on local Democratic politics: Who can say that she will not
pressure up-and-coming Democratic politicians to abide by community-board
decisions? They know that, as their local
party leader, she can make it easy-or difficult-for them when primary season
rolls around. How many will have the courage to oppose the community board
knowing that their political future may be at stake?
Small-Town New York
New Yorkers often say that, after living here for several
years, the city takes on the feel of a small town made up of one’s
neighborhood, one’s daily route to work, one’s favorite restaurants, parks and
museums. But when it comes to how the city
is governed, our elected leaders rarely address problems on such an intimate
scale. The five boroughs are treated as if
each contained a homogeneous population, led by a borough president who has the absurd task of being responsive
to millions of highly diverse residents. The result: little gets done,
at great cost to taxpayers. Two State University of New York professors have a
solution: Why not eliminate the five borough governments and their presidents
and break up the city into 80 towns, each with a population of 100,000? This
proposal deserves consideration by any Mayoral candidate who understands, as
Rudolph Giuliani did when he won City Hall,
that New York thrives when its leaders challenge conventional wisdom.
If the city was split up into 80 communities, New Yorkers
would regain a sense of local pride, which
is crucial for such issues as education, public safety and sanitation.
The SUNY professors, Richard Nathan and Gerald Benjamin, suggest that each town
would have its own school board. Indeed, the Board of Education has proven that providing services for a large population
from a central bureaucracy does not work and probably never will.
Problem-solving could be accelerated. All too often, the
Mayor must take time to deal with geographically isolated issues, such as
traffic in Staten Island or immigration battles in Queens or real-estate
disputes in Manhattan. With the city divided into 80 towns, the Mayor would be
free to handle larger issues such as crime,
taxes, quality of life and tourism. There is a nearby precedent for decentralization:
In 1955, Connecticut abolished its county governments and put 169 towns in
their place, with great success.
The New York Times’ Joyce Purnick suggests
that a charter commission could explore
this idea. Such a move would make a nice bookend to the 1989 City Charter
revision, which gave the Mayor much-needed powers but did not provide an
opportunity for local values to become articulated in public policy.
Road Rage, Air Rage
and Now, Desk Rage
When Lizzie Grubman backed her father’s Mercedes-Benz over
16 people at the Conscience Point nightclub in Southampton recently, one could
not really call it “road rage”-although she was in a car, there were no other
drivers in sight. But what about “desk
rage,” a term coined by psychologists who are coming up with new ways to
keep tabs on anger and violence in the workplace? Ms. Grubman, after all, could
be said to have been on the job that night: She was employed by Conscience
Point as a publicist. Did her job push her over the edge? Or was it an
accident, as she is claiming?
In any case, even if most employees don’t have recourse to a
Mercedes S.U.V. with which to vent their
feelings, recent studies reported in the American Psychological
Association’s Monitor on Psychology indicate
that stress does lead to physical violence
in 10 percent of all workplaces. “Desk rage” does not usually go that
far; hostility and rudeness are most often the outcome. But even that can be
tremendously costly to employers. More than half the workers in one survey said they had lost time at work worrying
about a colleague’s rude behavior. One-third reported that they had
reduced their commitment to their work because of such rudeness. In another
large survey, 25 percent said they had been driven to tears at the office
because of stress.
Psychologists suggest
more flexible hours, anger workshops and, most importantly, carefully
screening job applicants for signs of aggression or rudeness before
hiring them. If a hothead is already on staff, it may help to keep an eye on e-mail: A former Central Intelligence
Agency psychologist named Eric Shaw told the Monitor he is developing software that can detect anger and mood
changes in employee e-mail. “Language becomes more simplified when we are angry
or stressed,” said Mr. Shaw. “Angry people use words that denote judgment, good
or bad, and they refer to individuals more frequently and are more emotional, more evaluative and more personal.” And if that
doesn’t work, Mr. Shaw’s software will also be on the lookout for the
words, “kill,” “fire” and “bomb.”
