District managers at community boards across the city have something new to worry about. At City Hall this week managers questioned intro 0501-A, which would impose four-year terms to their jobs. Part of the proposal is also giving Borough Presidents the ability to remove district managers. The latter part of the proposal is bazaar, because it contends that district managers might not be attending community board meeting, filing district needs statements or annual reports. It would give the Borough Presidents the ability to fire them at any time if they don’t comply. If a district manager fails to attend half the board meetings they should lose their job with no questions asked. And if a district manager doesn’t submit a ‘district needs statement,’ what are they dong?
The reasonable part of the bill, removing for cause, should not be combined with giving a four-year term. From our view, covering them on a weekly basis, district managers are vital to how this agency communicates with their community. We find that district managers are as passionate about the community as anyone. We have spent time in a community board office. The phone rings off the hook with complaints and condition reports and our Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods are better for district managers. They need to be secure in their jobs and the volunteers who comprise the community board members can evaluate the manager better than any one person. So, accountability already exists. We further find those district managers who have been on the job for ten years or more are champions of the community. The complexity of zoning issues alone takes years to understand. The uncertainty of losing a job after four years is not optimal. Sure, there might be some district managers who might not be at the top of their game. But these managers are not elected, they are hired. We are not sure of a hired, not elected position should ever have a term limit.
