Each fall New York City’s 59 Community Boards initiate budget discussions for the upcoming Fiscal Year. Right now the Boards are deliberating over what their FY 2010 requests will include, which is why the Historic Districts Council is asking its Neighborhood Partners to voice their support for increased funding for preservation in New York City. In order to identify the unmet needs of the communities they serve, the Boards seek input from the public. Each Board then assembles lists, known as Requests for Inclusion, prioritizing the services it wants covered by the next Capital and Expense Budgets. These comprehensive requests have a significant and direct effect in determining how municipal resources are allocated to each community district, making this process one of the Community Boards’ most important duties.

In order to properly serve the needs of over eight million residents, the city administration is forced to prioritize and stretch its budget year after year. Given the current economic outlook, FY 2010 will be harder than usual as Community Boards juggle ongoing demands for necessary services, from improved roads to enhanced day care programs. Neighborhood advocates like you must convince the Community Boards to establish neighborhood preservation as a top priority and to increase funding for the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Expanded survey teams, an expedited permit approval process, and an increased number of landmark designations are just a few of the benefits a well-funded LPC could provide.

Please send a letter to your Community Board and ask its members to identify the services of the LPC as integral both to your quality of life and to your neighborhood’s unique sense of place. For your convenience a sample letter has been drafted an provided below. Please take just a brief moment to sign this letter and send it off as soon as possible. Community Boards finalize Requests for Inclusion by mid-October, so your immediate response is essential!

Don't know which Community Board represents you? Visit http://www.nyc.gov/html/cau/html/cb/directory.shtml to find out.

October 2008

Dear District Manager,

I am writing to urge Community Board 1 to recognize neighborhood preservation as a top priority within our area. Preservation of our neighborhood’s character is among our organization’s most pressing concerns, and we urge Board members to support the Landmarks Preservation Commission by listing the agency as a top ten priority in their Requests for Inclusion for the city’s FY 2010 Capital and Expense Budgets.

Our community would directly benefit from greater funding for the LPC. Increased resources, specifically through the Expense Budget to allow for improved programs, supplies and personnel, would allow LPC to expand upon its public services, offering more landmarks survey teams, an expedited permit approval process, and an increase in the number of local properties designated as landmarks. Such additional funds would guarantee that LPC could employ adequate staff to serve the interest of all five boroughs.

These are just a few of the citywide benefits a well-funded LPC could bring. Here, within the boundaries of Staten Island’s CB 1, there are a great many local neighborhood issues that have been ignored for years because of lack of agency resources. For these to be addressed, the LPC must receive additional funding.

Each year during the City Council’s budget negotiations, preservationists throughout the city rally together on the steps of City Hall to demonstrate widespread support for a well-funded LPC. In recent years the Council has responded to these demands, allocating funds to reinvigorate the LPC’s survey teams. Now we are turning to our Community Board representatives to take this one step further. In relation to the City’s budget as a whole, the LPC’s budget is miniscule—less than one one-hundredth of one percent of the City’s expenditures ($4.3 million in FY 2008). Because of inadequate funding, the LPC’s staff has been perennially overburdened, leaving our communities desperately underserved by the agency. Without your support, our historic resources will remain vulnerable, our neighborhoods unprotected.

Our organization hopes the members of CB 1 take into strong consideration the many benefits of preservation for our community. The services provided by the LPC are integral both to the quality of life in our community and to our many neighborhoods’ unique senses of place. Please identify neighborhood preservation as a top ten priority in the Requests for Inclusion for the FY 2010 Capital and Expense Budgets. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Signature: _____________________________________________
Name: ________________________________________________
Address: ______________________________________________