Tuesday Election Results For Three NYC Ballot Proposals- Analysis Of What That Means And Why You Want To Be Put on Citizens Defending Libraries’ Short List For Emails and Communications

Tuesday was Election Day and there is much to analyze.  In New York City one of the significant things to analyze about local results concerns changes to the New York City Charter that will have an effect on city governance and the way that proposals for approval, including real estate projects, move through the city system.  That obviously could affect libraries which the city tends now to regard more in the category of pawns on the chessboard of real estate development, rather than for what they offer in terms of societal benefits.

The three proposals were all approved (on the real estate site "Curbed).

Like most ballot proposals, they were all worded to sound good to people strolling into a voting booth.  Nevertheless, the thinking about how desirable each of them was varied substantially, even though one of them was dubbed a  “campaign finance reform.”  The one that most concerned informed community activist groups (except for bicyclers who view the current Mayor as being on the same page with them), was a proposal that would, in a Trojan Horse fashion, give the Mayor more control and influence over the Community Board Planning process by putting the Mayor in change of the flow of additional planning resources to local Community Boards.

The best way to consider what the proposals might mean for future is to go back and look at some of the analysis offered prior to the election.  Citizens Defending Libraries endeavored to send out information to inform all our petition subscribers to inform them of various positions and analysis so that they could decide about their votes. . . . MoveOn (through whom we communicate with the bulk of our petition signers) blocked our email.*—   MoveOn communicated that advocating a position on the proposals (or offering information as we were?) Violated its regulations.—   This is a good reason for our Citizens Defending Libraries signers to want to be put on our short (more nimble) email list that doesn’t bog down in the vicissitudes of waiting for and getting MoveOn approvals: If you want to be on our short list, send an email to Cemac62 [at] aol.com saying that you request to be on the Citizens Defending Libraries “short list.”

(* MoveOn suggested that to comply: "Sorry we can't let this one through due to NY's regulations regarding elections and ballot initiatives. Maybe you can post something more vague telling people in general how to support libraries and linking to Facebook for more info?")

Also, for analysis and discussion of the potential impact of the charter changes that were on the ballot you can listen to WBAI’s morning show last Tuesday (wth Michael G. Haskins), where Citizens Deafening Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White discussed them with Alicia Boyd of Movement To Protect the People (in the WBAI archives for Tuesday, November 6th, advance to the 7:25 AM slot of the two-hour program- about 2/3rds of the way in- that starts at 6:00 AM).

The emails we attempted to send out to our petition subscribers will lead you to the analysis of the proposal that may help you as you works to confront development proposal going forward:

Here is the text of the email that was blocked by MoveOn even as we worked hard to conform to their regulations:

Subject: Defending Libraries: Voting on Tuesday's City Charter Proposals- Information Available

        (IMPORTANT:  Please email us to be added to our short list of contacts to get urgent information more quickly than through MoveOn.   Our emails often take more time than we would like to get through the MoveOn clearing process than we would like.  We apologize for all the times that urgent MoveOn emails can’t get to you in time.)

        (NEW RULE!- MoveOn Tells us when you pass along your MoveOn emails you should delete the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom or someone else could accidently unsubscribe you from our mailing list.- One more reason to ask to be on our short list!)   


This email is arriving to you late because MoveOn blocked our original email (which was to go out Saturday).  MoveOn informed us that it did so because MoveOn regulations didn't permit an email that appeared to be making specific recommendations on Tuesday's NYC ballot initiatives- As such, we can only inform about the analysis offered by others and their analysis (which is actually what we were doing).

          So, we can tell you that if you look at the somewhat varying recommendations (and analysis) of Save The Inwood Library, MTOPP– The Movement To Protect The People, The New Yorkers For A Human-Scale City Alliance, Transportation Alternatives and Noticing New York, you will see every possible variation of recommendations on how you might vote on each of the three ballot proposals.  Varying with some of the others, The Save the Inwood Library group argues against term limits for community board members, which seems to align their analysis on that with Noticing New York.  The Inwood group also favors voting for the campaign funding change that is proposal #1.

          Transportation Alternatives will give you a different viewpoint cheerleading for all three of the proposals and figuring that term limits could somehow be a great cure for how community boards not represents the public properly.

More analysis, recommendations, and other points of view and deeper analysis can be found here:

    Noticing New York: How To Vote On The Three City Charter Reform (Reform?- Really?) Proposals on The November 6, 2018 Ballot! (NO, NO. . . & MAYBE. .?), Saturday, November 3, 2018   

See also our Citizens Defending Libraries Post:

    Want To Know How To Vote On The Three City Charter Proposals on November 6th?: The answer is NO, NO. . . & MAYBE. .?- Covered in Noticing New York.  

   
That’s where we point out the thoughts Noticing New York includes pertaining to libraries and the need for charter and community board reforms.

REMINDER: To keep up-to-date between emails monitor our Citizens Defending Libraries Facebook page or our Citizens Defending Libraries Twitter feed (@DefendLibraries), and there is also our Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube Channel.

Thank you for reading and passing along* this email, and thank you for defending and caring about our libraries and public assets.

Carolyn McIntyre Citizens Defending Libraries

(* REMEMBER THOUGH- NEW RULE!- MoveOn Tells us when you pass along your MoveOn emails you should delete the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom or someone else could accidentally unsubscribe you from our mailing list.- One more reason to ask to be on our short list!)

MoveOn also blocked this earlier attempted email to our petition signers:

Subject: Defending Libraries: Voting on Tuesday City Charter Proposals- NO, NO, and MAYBE?

    (IMPORTANT:  Please email us to be added to our short list of contacts to get urgent information more quickly than through MoveOn.   Our emails often take more time than we would like to get through the MoveOn clearing process than we would like.  For instance, because of such delays our pre-election email reminder to vote with important related links didn’t go out until AFTER (long after) the election.  We apologize for all the times that urgent MoveOn emails can’t get to you in time.)

    (NEW RULE!- MoveOn Tells us when you pass along your MoveOn emails you should delete the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom or someone else could accidently unsubscribe you from our mailing list.- One more reason to ask to be on our short list!)  

Do you want to know How to vote on the three City Charter Proposals on November 6th?   The answer (NO, NO. . . & MAYBE), is covered by Noticing New York (with huge indebtedness to MTOPP– The Movement To Protect The People–  and the  The New Yorkers For A Human-Scale City Alliance) in this article:

Noticing New York: How To Vote On The Three City Charter Reform (Reform?- Really?) Proposals on The November 6, 2018 Ballot! (NO, NO. . . & MAYBE. .?), Saturday, November 3, 2018.

See also our Citizens Defending Libraries Post:

Want To Know How To Vote On The Three City Charter Proposals on November 6th?: The answer is NO, NO. . . & MAYBE. .?- Covered in Noticing New York.

That’s where we point out the thoughts Noticing New York includes pertaining to libraries and the need for charter and community board reforms.

The three proposals and the recommendations?

    1.    On “Campaign Finance Reform- Reducing the amount of contributions to politician’s campaigns and increasing the amount of matching funds.”  VOTE NO.

    2.    On “Creation of New Community Engagement Agency.”   VOTE NO.
  
    3.    On “Term Limits on Community Boards.”  MAYBE VOTE YES (but THINK ABOUT IT!!- see . . . The Noticing New York article)

REMINDER: To keep up-to-date between emails monitor our Citizens Defending Libraries Facebook page or our Citizens Defending Libraries Twitter feed (@DefendLibraries), and there is also our Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube Channel.

Thank you for reading and passing along* this email, and thank you for defending and caring about our libraries and public assets.

Carolyn McIntyre Citizens Defending Libraries

(* REMEMBER THOUGH- NEW RULE!- MoveOn Tells us when you pass along your MoveOn emails you should delete the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom or someone else could accidentally unsubscribe you from our mailing list.- One more reason to ask to be on our short list!)