The Park Slope Civic Council is governed by a Board of Trustees — 30 members elected to shape the future course of the organization and its role in the community. (One trustee is appointed by the Council’s Executive Committee.) Each trustee has a three-year term in which he or she can help make a difference.
This year, eight new trustees were elected, with another one appointed, to join their colleagues who continue to serve. Here is the trustee class of 2010:
After spending more than 20 years working on Wall Street, Bob Gilbert recently launched Brooklyn Green Home Solutions, a company that retrofits one- to four-family homes for greater energy efficiency. He brings that diverse experience to his role as co-chair of the Civic Council’s Sustainability Committee.
“We hope to educate the community on how to live in an environmentally friendly way,” Gilbert says. In addition, he’d like to see improved traffic patterns that are more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly, greater support of local merchants, and better landscaping along the Slope’s commercial strips.
Gilbert has lived in the Slope since 1991, and joined the Civic Council 10 years ago “to learn more about what is happening in the community. I’m glad I can contribute now as a trustee.”
A resident of Park Slope for 30 years, John Golobe is eager to use his skills as a teacher to help the Civic Council communicate to the public its positions on a wide range of complex issues.
The Council’s “advocacy of our common interests makes it possible to resist the encroachment of developers and moneyed interests,” he says. “The many events it sponsors bind the community together and fosters a pride of place.”
For Golobe, that pride of place is one of the neighborhood’s defining characteristics. It’s also a big reason why he joined the Civic Council five years ago, “when Atlantic Yards threatened to cast its shadow over Park Slope.” Today, Golobe wants the Council to continue to be proactive in its advocacy for the community.
A lifelong Brooklynite, appointed trustee David Herman was first inspired by Park Slope in 1992, watching “a beautiful sunset over Ninth Street and the Gowanus as I was waiting for a friend before a Celebrate Brooklyn concert.” He moved here less than a year later.
Since then, he has enjoyed so much of what helps to define this community — “Prospect Park and the Central Library, easy access by mass transit and bicycle, the architecture and the neighbors, and the Food Coop, to name a few.
“The Civic Council has had such a vital role in keeping these aspects of everyday life here so great,” adds Herman, a graphic designer, editor, and photographer who, among other jobs, was once deputy public affairs director for Borough President Howard Golden. As the editor and designer for Civic News and the Civic Council’s webmaster, he hopes to spread that message and get more people involved with the Council’s fine work.
“I love so many things about Park Slope,” Isabel Hill says, including “the small-scale buildings, the fact that my neighbors own businesses on Seventh Avenue, the incredible park at our doorstep, and the great mix of people and their backgrounds.”
Hill has worked in Brooklyn for 25 years as a an urban planner and architectural historian, but “very little of that has involved my own neighborhood.” After joining the Council earlier this year, she became more involved in Park Slope as well, on the Historic District Committee and the new design competition for the Third Street Entrance to Prospect Park.
Hill, a resident here for 18 years, also says the Halloween Parade “has always been a favorite event for me so I am signing up to help on that, too.”
Josh Levy has lived with his wife and children in Park Slope since 2004, going from renter to homeowner to investor in Park Slope real estate. Compared with other neighborhoods he knows, “the people are friendlier; the streets are quieter and safer; and the local restaurants, cafes, boutiques, and bars rock. And we have block parties!”
Levy hopes to help address a range of concerns as a Civic Council trustee, including better social services and improved parking. He sees the Council as an organization dedicated to “the preservation and advancement of what we all love about our community.”
As for why he joined the Council, he believes that “since I live here, drive — and park — here, bike here, send my kids to school here, and also invest here, I may as well get involved. After all, if not this, what?”
The Rev. Dr. Daniel Meeter spent his childhood in Brooklyn. When the Old First Reformed Church on Seventh Avenue asked him to be its pastor in late 2001, “I was thrilled to come.” He joined the Civic Council after he arrived, appreciating its advocacy efforts and annual scholarships program. “I believe in civic participation,” he says, “and I want my church to be connected.”
One aspect of community life he is interested in is how transient people seek roots and community. There should be “better awareness and honesty that our Park Slope way of life requires an immigrant underclass. [Also,] how can our community be more hospitable to the poor among us?”
As pastor, Meeter says, he has an eye for the ethics and economics of our community. “But I do love old buildings,” he adds, “and I think preservation and aesthetics are very important — and spiritually connected.”
In addition to his work as a database design consultant, Chandru Murthi received a master’s degree in environmental planning in 2004 from Pratt Institute, focusing on “green” buildings. That experience will help in his role as co-chair of the Council’s recently formed Sustainability Committee. “I hope the committee will provide ideas that will help us live a greener lifestyle,” such as in energy conservation and waste reduction.
This community, he says, “represents the perfect urban environment of density and convenience of services without being too crowded — easy walking environment, good transit, many entertainment venues, good public and private.”
A Park Slope resident for nine years and a Council member for two, Murthi lives with his 12-year-old son, whom he hopes will lead a suitably sustainable lifestyle when he’s grown.
Cathy Sokil Milnikiewicz moved to Park Slope from Vermont in 1991. Her husband had grown up in the neighborhood, and their two children have since enjoyed the many benefits of growing up in the Slope. “As a trustee, I want to help ensure that other young families continue to enjoy raising children here as much as we did.
“As an educator,” she continues, “I feel particularly passionate about education, especially our public schools.” Sokil Milnikiewicz now teaches at Bard High School Early College, a vibrant public high school on the Lower East Side that formed out of a partnership with Bard College, so she also brings to the Civic Council “a belief in the possibilities of successful public/private partnerships.”
As a pedestrian, biker, driver, a mother, and a gardener, Sokil Milnikiewicz is also looking forward to working on the Council’s Livable Streets Committee.
“I came to Park Slope 15 years ago because it was affordable and it had — and hope it still has — a strong LGBT community,” says Rebeccah Welch. “I stayed because it fit.”
Welch works for a local nonprofit that supports small-business and community development, with an emphasis in the “green-collar”/sustainability sector. With that and her education experience in mind, she would like to help Park Slope lead the city in such areas as accountable development, small-business support, cutting-edge sustainability projects, and educational opportunities for young residents and students.
“The Civic Council has woven itself into the community with a diverse set of projects that have come to define the neighborhood,” she says. Welch will be working with both the Livable Streets and Sustainability committees. “I would like to be an advocate for the community — especially on behalf of its most marginal residents and most incipient and inspired leaders.”
from the September 2010 Civic News