BROOKLYN HOME RULE COALITION
Brooklyn Community Board Districts - shown as 301 through 318
The BROOKLYN HOME RULE COALITION (BHRC) Initiative is correcting the questionable NYC exception to home rule afforded in the rest of the State. NYC power resides with the mayor and city council located in Manhattan with impunity with the NYC Charter (NYCC). NYC operates only on a top-down not from bottom-up basis.
In NYC there is better representation in the State Legislature with 92 members than in the NYC Council with only 51 members. Our 89 Brooklyn neighborhoods are communities without any home rule or dedicated representation that neglects individual merit and local effort that even when we are successful, the Mayor in Manhattan then redistributes CBD residents into equal size community boards every ten years.
NYC Boroughs no longer are Home Rule entities as once existed, to the detriment of individual liberty, freedom and meritorious competition within. Each of five Boroughs has an elected borough president, district attorney and various city council members based upon one-person one vote that no longer coincide with the neighborhoods, community boards, state or congressional representation and or respective service districts. The residents of Brooklyn have little or no control over what may happen to private property or the conduct of governance that is imposed by top-down appointment of sinecures that officiate over the respective community board, in which the otherwise sovereign 2.5 million inhabitants within 89 actual Brooklyn neighborhoods are without any home rule.
Brooklyn Neighborhoods are: Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Fulton Ferry, Navy Yard, Bedford Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant Heights, Bushwick, City Line, Cypress Hills, East New York, East Williamsburg, Highland Park, New Lots, North Side, Starrett City, Carroll Gardens, Caton Park, Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Red Hook, South Park, Slope, Spring Creek, Stable Brooklyn, Greenwood Heights, Sunset Park, Vinegar Hill, Windsor Terrace, Crown Heights North, Prospect Heights, Prospect Park South, Weeksville, Wingate, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Fort Hamilton, Bath Beach, Borough Park, Mapleton, Midwood Park, South Midwood, South Side, West Midwood, Brighton Beach, Broadway Junction, Coney Island, Sea Gate, Albemarle-Kenmore Terrace, Ditmas Park, Ditmas Park West, Downtown, DUMBO, Homecrest, Madison, Manhattan Beach, Manhattan Terrace, Plum Beach, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Sheepshead Bay, Brownsville, East Flatbush, Farragut, Fiske Terrace, Northeast Flatbush, Remsen Village, Rugby, Bergen Beach, Beverley Square East, Beverley Square West, Canarsie, Flatlands, Georgetown, Marine Park, Mill Basin, Mill Island, Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Kensington, Midwood, Ocean Parkway, Paerdegat Basin, Gerritsen Beach, Ocean Hill, Gowanus, Crown Heights, Flatbush. Each Brooklyn inhabitant identifies with a neighborhood.
All Brooklyn neighborhoods have lost home rule under the tyranny of a NYC Mayor and ceremonial Borough President and city council dictate by top-down appointed community board sinecures that impose a redistribution doctrine striving for equal outcomes that divide neighborhoods and communities to suppress bottom-up initiative that imposes a common real property tax levy, as if local efforts and individual initiative of respective communities were equal in merit. As such under the existing NYCC, when one community board grows because of successful local initiative the community is then subdivided amongst those that have not succeeded as well every ten years.
BHRC PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE NYCC
The proposed changes to the New York City Charter by referendum ballot initiative with New York State Municipal Home Rule Law (MHR) Section 37 ([i] - see endnotes ). NYC eligible voters will vote on modification to the Charter of the city of New York (NYCC) at the 8th of November 2011 General Election. The BHRC referendum petition with say 75,000 signatures of duly registered voters here in Brooklyn will present the following NYCC provisions to be adopted by NYC voters:
Petition to amend the City Charter of the city of New York NYCC, and create the Home Rule Commission
1. Create and Fund the Home RuleCommission composed of the controller of the city of New York, the mayor, the city council speaker, several borough presidents and 64 private citizens of Brooklyn, three (3) duly elected from within each existing Brooklyn Community Board, with each paid at a minimum wage per diem starting Monday 9 January 2012 for every meeting to transform the terms and conditions of the NYCC into a new Charter to renew home rule municipal status for Brooklyn wholly within the existing County of Kings to continue in condominium with NYC; and for the Home Rule Commission to present to the eligible voters of the city of New York the New Charter transformation plan no later than four months before the general election of twenty thirteen.
2. Amend NYCC Section 2 the Boroughs to read: The boroughs of the city are continued as existing at the time of the adoption of this charter with the exception of Brooklyn with its own mayor, comptroller, and community board elected officials with New York State Municipal Home Rule Law by advice and consent in condominium with this charter.
3. Amend NYCC Section 50 to read: a. There shall be a districting commission consisting of fifteen members appointed as provided in this section with the exception of Brooklyn that shall perform districting wholly within as further provided.
4. Amend NYCC Section 2601 Definitions Clause 10. to read: "Elected official" means a person holding office as mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president or member of the council, and or member of the respective Brooklyn Community Board.
5. Amend NYCC Section 2700 Declaration of intent to read:. It is the intent of this chapter to encourage and facilitate coterminous community districts and service districts to be used for the planning of community life within the city, the participation of citizens in city government within their communities, and the efficient and effective organization of agencies that deliver municipal services in local communities and boroughs with the exception of Brooklyn that shall have a popularly elected representation one representative per 5000 inhabitants within a district modified with the census enumeration every ten years in each Brooklyn Community Board whose officials will form the Brooklyn city Council.
6. Amend NYCC Section 2701 Community districts Community districts to read:. a. Each community district shall: (1) Lie within the boundaries of a single borough, except as provided in subdivisions d, e and f of this section, and coincide with historic, geographic and identifiable communities from which the city has developed;
7. Add NYCC Section 2701 (f) to read: f. (1) Brooklyn Home rule provides for bottom-up elected representation in each Brooklyn Community Board District (CBD) composed of no less than three representatives each elected from a compact coterminous sub-district of 5000 inhabitants wholly within; (2) that each representative shall be elected for a one year term by eligible voters of each respective district, and when elected to be reimbursed in a per diem basis at minimum wage including reasonable expense; (3) that the respective CBD representatives shall elect by 2/3 vote a Chairperson for each CBD; and (4) the respective Chairperson shall possess the warrants and or CBD Members’ proxy on all matters presented by the respective CBD to the Brooklyn Mayor at the Brooklyn Council composed of eighteen CBD Chairpersons.
[i] ENDNOTES:
NYS MHR § 37. Provisions for adoption of city charter amendments or new city charters initiated by petition.
1. A local law amending a city charter (however extensively) or providing a new city charter, also may be adopted in accordance with the provisions of this section.
2. Qualified electors of a city, in number equal to at least ten per centum of the total number of valid votes cast for governor in such city at the last gubernatorial election, or to thirty thousand, whichever is less, may file in the office of the city clerk a petition for the submission to the electors of the city of such a proposed local law to be set forth in full in the petition. Qualified electors shall be deemed for this purpose to be voters of the city who were registered and qualified to vote in such city at the last general election preceding the filing of the petition.
3. Such local law shall set forth the new matter to be added to the charter either in italics or underlined and the matter to be deleted therefrom either in brackets or with lines drawn through it, and after adoption the matter so set forth in italics or underlined may be set forth in the charter in ordinary type, and the matter in brackets or with lines through it may be omitted; but failure so to set forth any provision of the charter which is in fact superseded shall not invalidate the amendment or new charter or any portion thereof.
4. Such a local law may amend, repeal or supersede any local law inconsistent with the charter amendment or new charter proposed thereby or any inconsistent provision of a state statute which may be amended by local law, in which event it shall specify the chapter number and year of enactment, sections, subsections or other parts of each statute or local law so affected. Such a local law also may contain provisions as described in paragraph (a) of subdivision four of section thirty-six of this chapter.
5. Such petition shall conform to the provisions of section twenty-four of this chapter in relation to petitions. It shall be examined and reported on by the city clerk as prescribed therein, and objections thereto shall be disposed of by the supreme court as prescribed by such section. In addition, the city clerk, at the same time that he transmits to the legislative body his certificate that the petition complies or does not comply with all the requirements of law, shall transmit a copy of such certificate to the person by whom the petition was filed and, if he certifies that the petition does not comply with all the requirements, shall state in such certificate specifically in what respects it fails to comply. If he shall certify that there is an insufficient number of valid signatures, he shall make available to the legislative body a statement as to the number of signatures found to be invalid and the reasons for such invalidity, and shall make the same information available to the person by whom the petition was filed and make it, together with the petition and his notations of rulings thereon or relative thereto, a matter of public record in his office. A finding by the city clerk that a petition does not comply with all the requirements of law may be contested in a proceeding in the supreme court.
6. Whether or not he finds the petition sufficient, the city clerk shall transmit such proposed local law forthwith to the legislative body. If the proposed local law is such that a mandatory referendum is not required for its adoption under the provisions of this chapter or of the city charter, such legislative body may adopt it as its own act pursuant to article three of this chapter. If a mandatory referendum is required, the legislative body may submit it to the electors of the city at the next general election occurring at least sixty days after the legislative body votes to submit it.
7. If, however, such a petition meets all the requirements of law and during a period of two months immediately following the filing thereof such legislative body shall fail so to adopt such local law without change or to submit it without change to the electors of the city as aforesaid, an additional petition filed with the city clerk at least two months and not more than four months after the filing of the original petition and signed at any time prior to its filing by qualified electors who did not sign the original petition, equal in number to at least five per centum of the total number of votes cast for governor in such city at the last gubernatorial election, or to fifteen thousand, whichever is less, may require the submission of the local law at the next general election held not less than sixty days after the filing of such additional petition.
8. Such an additional petition shall conform to the requirements of subdivision five for an original petition and shall be dealt with by the city clerk and by the supreme court in the same manner as an original petition except that the city clerk shall submit his certificate as to its sufficiency within twenty days after it is filed with him.
9. When so required by the filing of such an additional petition complying with all the requirements of law, the city clerk shall transmit such proposed local law in the form in which it is to be submitted to the election officers charged with the duty of publishing the notice of such election, and the legislative body shall provide for suitable publication thereof and publicity thereon for the information of interested voters. If there be more than one such proposed local law to be voted upon at such election, each such proposed local law shall be separately and consecutively numbered.
10. Any political committee organized for the purpose of supporting or opposing any charter amendment or new charter submitted to the voters under the provisions of this section shall have the same rights as a political party to name watchers and challengers to serve at the election at which the question is submitted.
11. No such petition for a proposed local law requiring the expenditure of money shall be certified as sufficient by the city clerk or become effective for the purposes of this section unless there shall be submitted, as a part of such proposed local law, a plan to provide moneys and revenues sufficient to meet such proposed expenditures. This restriction shall not prevent the submission of a local law to adopt a new charter or to reorganize the functions of city government, or a part thereof, relying partly or solely on normal budgetary procedures to provide the necessary moneys to meet the expenses of city government under such reorganization, whether or not such reorganization includes the creation of new offices, provided only that such reorganization shall not require specific salaries or the expenditure of specific sums of money not theretofore required.
12. No charter amendment or new charter submitted under the provisions of this section which requires the expenditure of money shall become effective with respect to such expenditure before the beginning of the first fiscal year for which a city budget is prepared and adopted after the adoption of the amendment or new charter.
13. If any such proposed local law receives the affirmative vote of a majority of the qualified electors of such city voting thereon, it shall become operative as prescribed therein, except that in case of conflict between provisions of two or more local laws adopted at the same election the local law receiving the largest number of affirmative votes shall prevail to the extent of such conflict.
CONTACT: BHRC
In NYC there is better representation in the State Legislature with 92 members than in the NYC Council with only 51 members. Our 89 Brooklyn neighborhoods are communities without any home rule or dedicated representation that neglects individual merit and local effort that even when we are successful, the Mayor in Manhattan then redistributes CBD residents into equal size community boards every ten years.
NYC Boroughs no longer are Home Rule entities as once existed, to the detriment of individual liberty, freedom and meritorious competition within. Each of five Boroughs has an elected borough president, district attorney and various city council members based upon one-person one vote that no longer coincide with the neighborhoods, community boards, state or congressional representation and or respective service districts. The residents of Brooklyn have little or no control over what may happen to private property or the conduct of governance that is imposed by top-down appointment of sinecures that officiate over the respective community board, in which the otherwise sovereign 2.5 million inhabitants within 89 actual Brooklyn neighborhoods are without any home rule.
Brooklyn Neighborhoods are: Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Fulton Ferry, Navy Yard, Bedford Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant Heights, Bushwick, City Line, Cypress Hills, East New York, East Williamsburg, Highland Park, New Lots, North Side, Starrett City, Carroll Gardens, Caton Park, Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Red Hook, South Park, Slope, Spring Creek, Stable Brooklyn, Greenwood Heights, Sunset Park, Vinegar Hill, Windsor Terrace, Crown Heights North, Prospect Heights, Prospect Park South, Weeksville, Wingate, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Fort Hamilton, Bath Beach, Borough Park, Mapleton, Midwood Park, South Midwood, South Side, West Midwood, Brighton Beach, Broadway Junction, Coney Island, Sea Gate, Albemarle-Kenmore Terrace, Ditmas Park, Ditmas Park West, Downtown, DUMBO, Homecrest, Madison, Manhattan Beach, Manhattan Terrace, Plum Beach, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Sheepshead Bay, Brownsville, East Flatbush, Farragut, Fiske Terrace, Northeast Flatbush, Remsen Village, Rugby, Bergen Beach, Beverley Square East, Beverley Square West, Canarsie, Flatlands, Georgetown, Marine Park, Mill Basin, Mill Island, Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Kensington, Midwood, Ocean Parkway, Paerdegat Basin, Gerritsen Beach, Ocean Hill, Gowanus, Crown Heights, Flatbush. Each Brooklyn inhabitant identifies with a neighborhood.
All Brooklyn neighborhoods have lost home rule under the tyranny of a NYC Mayor and ceremonial Borough President and city council dictate by top-down appointed community board sinecures that impose a redistribution doctrine striving for equal outcomes that divide neighborhoods and communities to suppress bottom-up initiative that imposes a common real property tax levy, as if local efforts and individual initiative of respective communities were equal in merit. As such under the existing NYCC, when one community board grows because of successful local initiative the community is then subdivided amongst those that have not succeeded as well every ten years.
BHRC PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE NYCC
The proposed changes to the New York City Charter by referendum ballot initiative with New York State Municipal Home Rule Law (MHR) Section 37 ([i] - see endnotes ). NYC eligible voters will vote on modification to the Charter of the city of New York (NYCC) at the 8th of November 2011 General Election. The BHRC referendum petition with say 75,000 signatures of duly registered voters here in Brooklyn will present the following NYCC provisions to be adopted by NYC voters:
Petition to amend the City Charter of the city of New York NYCC, and create the Home Rule Commission
1. Create and Fund the Home RuleCommission composed of the controller of the city of New York, the mayor, the city council speaker, several borough presidents and 64 private citizens of Brooklyn, three (3) duly elected from within each existing Brooklyn Community Board, with each paid at a minimum wage per diem starting Monday 9 January 2012 for every meeting to transform the terms and conditions of the NYCC into a new Charter to renew home rule municipal status for Brooklyn wholly within the existing County of Kings to continue in condominium with NYC; and for the Home Rule Commission to present to the eligible voters of the city of New York the New Charter transformation plan no later than four months before the general election of twenty thirteen.
2. Amend NYCC Section 2 the Boroughs to read: The boroughs of the city are continued as existing at the time of the adoption of this charter with the exception of Brooklyn with its own mayor, comptroller, and community board elected officials with New York State Municipal Home Rule Law by advice and consent in condominium with this charter.
3. Amend NYCC Section 50 to read: a. There shall be a districting commission consisting of fifteen members appointed as provided in this section with the exception of Brooklyn that shall perform districting wholly within as further provided.
4. Amend NYCC Section 2601 Definitions Clause 10. to read: "Elected official" means a person holding office as mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president or member of the council, and or member of the respective Brooklyn Community Board.
5. Amend NYCC Section 2700 Declaration of intent to read:. It is the intent of this chapter to encourage and facilitate coterminous community districts and service districts to be used for the planning of community life within the city, the participation of citizens in city government within their communities, and the efficient and effective organization of agencies that deliver municipal services in local communities and boroughs with the exception of Brooklyn that shall have a popularly elected representation one representative per 5000 inhabitants within a district modified with the census enumeration every ten years in each Brooklyn Community Board whose officials will form the Brooklyn city Council.
6. Amend NYCC Section 2701 Community districts Community districts to read:. a. Each community district shall: (1) Lie within the boundaries of a single borough, except as provided in subdivisions d, e and f of this section, and coincide with historic, geographic and identifiable communities from which the city has developed;
7. Add NYCC Section 2701 (f) to read: f. (1) Brooklyn Home rule provides for bottom-up elected representation in each Brooklyn Community Board District (CBD) composed of no less than three representatives each elected from a compact coterminous sub-district of 5000 inhabitants wholly within; (2) that each representative shall be elected for a one year term by eligible voters of each respective district, and when elected to be reimbursed in a per diem basis at minimum wage including reasonable expense; (3) that the respective CBD representatives shall elect by 2/3 vote a Chairperson for each CBD; and (4) the respective Chairperson shall possess the warrants and or CBD Members’ proxy on all matters presented by the respective CBD to the Brooklyn Mayor at the Brooklyn Council composed of eighteen CBD Chairpersons.
[i] ENDNOTES:
NYS MHR § 37. Provisions for adoption of city charter amendments or new city charters initiated by petition.
1. A local law amending a city charter (however extensively) or providing a new city charter, also may be adopted in accordance with the provisions of this section.
2. Qualified electors of a city, in number equal to at least ten per centum of the total number of valid votes cast for governor in such city at the last gubernatorial election, or to thirty thousand, whichever is less, may file in the office of the city clerk a petition for the submission to the electors of the city of such a proposed local law to be set forth in full in the petition. Qualified electors shall be deemed for this purpose to be voters of the city who were registered and qualified to vote in such city at the last general election preceding the filing of the petition.
3. Such local law shall set forth the new matter to be added to the charter either in italics or underlined and the matter to be deleted therefrom either in brackets or with lines drawn through it, and after adoption the matter so set forth in italics or underlined may be set forth in the charter in ordinary type, and the matter in brackets or with lines through it may be omitted; but failure so to set forth any provision of the charter which is in fact superseded shall not invalidate the amendment or new charter or any portion thereof.
4. Such a local law may amend, repeal or supersede any local law inconsistent with the charter amendment or new charter proposed thereby or any inconsistent provision of a state statute which may be amended by local law, in which event it shall specify the chapter number and year of enactment, sections, subsections or other parts of each statute or local law so affected. Such a local law also may contain provisions as described in paragraph (a) of subdivision four of section thirty-six of this chapter.
5. Such petition shall conform to the provisions of section twenty-four of this chapter in relation to petitions. It shall be examined and reported on by the city clerk as prescribed therein, and objections thereto shall be disposed of by the supreme court as prescribed by such section. In addition, the city clerk, at the same time that he transmits to the legislative body his certificate that the petition complies or does not comply with all the requirements of law, shall transmit a copy of such certificate to the person by whom the petition was filed and, if he certifies that the petition does not comply with all the requirements, shall state in such certificate specifically in what respects it fails to comply. If he shall certify that there is an insufficient number of valid signatures, he shall make available to the legislative body a statement as to the number of signatures found to be invalid and the reasons for such invalidity, and shall make the same information available to the person by whom the petition was filed and make it, together with the petition and his notations of rulings thereon or relative thereto, a matter of public record in his office. A finding by the city clerk that a petition does not comply with all the requirements of law may be contested in a proceeding in the supreme court.
6. Whether or not he finds the petition sufficient, the city clerk shall transmit such proposed local law forthwith to the legislative body. If the proposed local law is such that a mandatory referendum is not required for its adoption under the provisions of this chapter or of the city charter, such legislative body may adopt it as its own act pursuant to article three of this chapter. If a mandatory referendum is required, the legislative body may submit it to the electors of the city at the next general election occurring at least sixty days after the legislative body votes to submit it.
7. If, however, such a petition meets all the requirements of law and during a period of two months immediately following the filing thereof such legislative body shall fail so to adopt such local law without change or to submit it without change to the electors of the city as aforesaid, an additional petition filed with the city clerk at least two months and not more than four months after the filing of the original petition and signed at any time prior to its filing by qualified electors who did not sign the original petition, equal in number to at least five per centum of the total number of votes cast for governor in such city at the last gubernatorial election, or to fifteen thousand, whichever is less, may require the submission of the local law at the next general election held not less than sixty days after the filing of such additional petition.
8. Such an additional petition shall conform to the requirements of subdivision five for an original petition and shall be dealt with by the city clerk and by the supreme court in the same manner as an original petition except that the city clerk shall submit his certificate as to its sufficiency within twenty days after it is filed with him.
9. When so required by the filing of such an additional petition complying with all the requirements of law, the city clerk shall transmit such proposed local law in the form in which it is to be submitted to the election officers charged with the duty of publishing the notice of such election, and the legislative body shall provide for suitable publication thereof and publicity thereon for the information of interested voters. If there be more than one such proposed local law to be voted upon at such election, each such proposed local law shall be separately and consecutively numbered.
10. Any political committee organized for the purpose of supporting or opposing any charter amendment or new charter submitted to the voters under the provisions of this section shall have the same rights as a political party to name watchers and challengers to serve at the election at which the question is submitted.
11. No such petition for a proposed local law requiring the expenditure of money shall be certified as sufficient by the city clerk or become effective for the purposes of this section unless there shall be submitted, as a part of such proposed local law, a plan to provide moneys and revenues sufficient to meet such proposed expenditures. This restriction shall not prevent the submission of a local law to adopt a new charter or to reorganize the functions of city government, or a part thereof, relying partly or solely on normal budgetary procedures to provide the necessary moneys to meet the expenses of city government under such reorganization, whether or not such reorganization includes the creation of new offices, provided only that such reorganization shall not require specific salaries or the expenditure of specific sums of money not theretofore required.
12. No charter amendment or new charter submitted under the provisions of this section which requires the expenditure of money shall become effective with respect to such expenditure before the beginning of the first fiscal year for which a city budget is prepared and adopted after the adoption of the amendment or new charter.
13. If any such proposed local law receives the affirmative vote of a majority of the qualified electors of such city voting thereon, it shall become operative as prescribed therein, except that in case of conflict between provisions of two or more local laws adopted at the same election the local law receiving the largest number of affirmative votes shall prevail to the extent of such conflict.
CONTACT: BHRC
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