Do you ever wonder where to find information online about how to start a block association, or particular social services in your neighborhood? Or maybe you’re the owner of a local bar, applying for a liquor license, and need direction on how to do so? Often, the local community board has crucial information on how to pursue all of the above and many more. A simple online search and locating a board’s website can be the gateway to that information, but sometimes, not all boards are made the same when it comes to having those details available.
Just as New York City’s 59 community boards are gearing up for a new session this year, we took a comprehensive look at the quality of Community Board 6’s website and compared it to four nearby and neighboring district websites.
Community Board 6: Park Slope, Gowanus, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Red Hook, and the Columbia St. Waterfront
Starting with Community Board 6’s home page – (after it boasts the happiest district in the city title), it displays materials of “immediate interest,” which includes fliers regarding cooling centers, information on the Brooklyn Marine Terminal redevelopment plan and a few buttons that seem to be resources. These resources include information about the board, how to become a member, board resolutions alternate side parking and more.
Many of these resources on the home page link to outdated information. As of August 2025, The board member roster, alternate side parking, and the public school calendar are all from 2024.
Meetings: Information about meetings on Community Board 6 website can be found on the “Community Calendar” tab. The site allows you to view meeting information in a variety of ways. You can toggle the calendar format to view meetings in the format of a list, by the individual month, or by day. Only upcoming meetings for the next month can be viewed on the board’s calendar. For example, you can see the date for meetings in September, but not October and any of the following months for the year. The board also allows attendees to join via Zoom.
Record of Meeting Minutes: Documentation of this board’s records are sparse – only minutes from 2025 can be found on the meeting minutes page, which is stored on the board’s Google Drive. Only three meeting minutes documents exist on this drive, from the board’s January, February and April meeting. According to the board’s calendar, meetings were held in March, May and June, despite there being no record of minutes on the drive.
Resources: CB 6’s “Resources” page displays information about land use decisions such as the Brooklyn Marine Terminal & Gowanus rezoning, various online resources from New York City government agencies, and more baseline info like how to report a pothole or filing a 311 complaint.
Committee Information: The committee page lists and links to information about each of the five committees for CB 6. Each committee’s linked page displays information listing the names of committee members and resources relevant to the committee. For example, the Transportation,
Parks and Public Infrastructure committee page has information regarding a petition to redesign a part of Columbia Street to create safer access to Van Voorhees Park. It also displays information for the next committee meeting date, however, much of the information is outdated as many of these meetings are in the past.
Now, let’s compare the quality of CB 6’s website to those in other nearby Brooklyn community districts.
Community Board 2: (Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Fulton Ferry, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard)
Kicking off with the home page again, CB 2’s doesn’t show much information. It describes just what community boards are, the areas covered by this board, and a brief description of how they operate including contact information for the district office. Compared to Community Board 6, there’s not a wealth of information immediately presented on the site.
Meetings: Meetings can be found specifically on the “Calendar” page. They can be viewed by week, month, or by a list of meetings that display dates for a range of months. The board advertises these meetings via a Google Calendar that you can subscribe to. It also contains a sign up feature for its weekly newsletter.
Matching this up to CB 6, this board’s “list” of meetings is more expansive, allowing a user to view a longer span of meetings. It also features more information on the monthly calendar option, such as the weekly newsletter sign up, and specific details about meetings on each date, without having to click on a specific date. From looking at the calendar, it doesn’t appear as if CB 2 offers a
Zoom/online option. However, it does list that anyone who needs an “accommodation” to participate in a meeting, is welcome to contact the district office at least 72 hours prior to a meeting.
It’s not clear whether that accommodation is an online participation option or something else.
Record of Minutes: The board’s meeting minutes do not have a dedicated section on the website menu and it takes using “context clues” to find them. They can be located by clicking on the “Resources” tab on the menu at the top of the site, then selecting “Useful District Links”, which then leads to a Google Drive. But that’s not the end of it – the meeting minutes are tucked away in a folder labeled “General Meetings”, where they share a home with the meeting agenda documents, among other miscellaneous items.
Comparing this to CB 6, it’s harder to locate minutes from CB 2, and it’s stored with other materials for the community board. However, the minutes are kept up to date and you can find archives of them (up to 2019) unlike CB 6.
Resources: The resource page for CB 2 links to more individual pages with specific categories, such as “Arts & Culture”, “Business”, “Job Training & Placement”, “Resident Associations”, “Social Service Providers” and the aforementioned “Useful District Links”. All of these page categories have links to websites associated with the category. For example, the “Resident Associations” page contains website links to local associations such as the Brooklyn Heights Association. However, some of these category pages don’t have hyperlinks to the items they list, such as the entire Social Service Providers list, despite many of those service providers having an online presence.
Facing this against CB 6, there’s a heavier presence of off site links and listed resources to information, but many of these resources do not have links to them. On pages where information and links are plentiful, there’s not many images that convey what the resource is about, unlike CB 6’s resource page.
Committee Information: The committee page details the purpose of a committee, and provides links to the eight different committees of CB 2. Each has info on when they meet, what they do, a list of members, its calendar and a link to sign up for its newsletter, including a link to its public Google Drive with meeting documents.
As to where this stands with CB 6, this board’s committee page is more consistent in terms of what information is offered, but provides less general information such as current issues the committee is discussing. For example, the CB 6 land use committee page provides resources directly related to land use issues such as Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) and the Gowanus rezoning. The land use CB 2 page only has a link to its Google Drive with public documents, links to other parts of the site, and city agency websites.
Community Board 7: Sunset Park, Greenwood Heights, Windsor Terrace and
South Slope
Landing on Community Board 7’s home page, it displays basic contact information for the district office and its social media handles.
Meetings: The board meetings are displayed on the calendar tab, showing meeting business, dates, locations, times and an option to join via Zoom. This page appears to be regularly updated, and is a plain list of when community board meetings happen, with the upcoming and latest meeting at the top of the page.
Compared to CB 6’s meeting page, there’s no particular extension they use to display meetings – no online calendar format, it’s just listed information. Past meetings’ agendas are described upfront, with a Youtube link to view the meeting. CB 7 offers a Zoom format for participation, unlike CB 6.
Meeting Minutes: The meeting minutes for CB 7 are in an unusual spot compared to the other board sites examined in this article – they live in the “Committees” tab and the latest recorded minutes, according to the site, are from December 2021. However, for the entire year of 2021, there’s no link to recorded documents containing meeting minutes. Only the month and year are listed stating that minutes exist. For example one of them reads: “December 2021 Board Minutes”. There are only five instances of recorded meeting minutes available on the CB 7 site, all from 2020.
Facing the quality of this board’s upkeep of minutes against CB 6’s, it depends on what you’re assessing. It’s a battle of quantity versus recency. CB 6’s recorded minutes are from meetings that happened this year, although it’s missing a few. CB 7’s are from five years ago and have two more recorded meeting minutes than its neighboring board to the north.
Resources: There’s no resources tab on this site and no way to find community resources on any of the tabs displayed.
Going against CB 6, it’s an easier assessment because the resources simply don’t exist, as there’s nothing to compare!
Committee Information: There’s a large number of committees in CB 7 – 20 of them. It’s not exactly clear if all committees are active, as the Ad Hoc Committee on Census 2020 is a listed group. The site’s committee page lists the 20 committees individually, with descriptions on what they do, who chairs them, and when they meet. According to this page, the committees, with the exception of two, all meet “as needed.” This is reflected in the calendar tab, where one can see that many of the committees don’t meet on a consistent, monthly basis compared to other boards.
There’s not much besides the basics here, whereas for CB 6, there’s a full list of who serves on each committee and some information about current issues the group is focused on.
Community Board 8: (North Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Weeksville)
Just looking at the home page: it’s information-rich and opens with images of notable community institutions (i.e., Weeksville Heritage Center). It flows into a display of community board information, how to get involved, news about community events and information resources crafted by the board.
Compared to CB 6, it’s on par with the type of information provided, but offers more specific resources and more direct links to them.
Meetings: The meetings for CB 8 are listed via Google Calendar on the site’s “Meetings” tab which can be toggled to display meetings by month, week, or by “Schedule”. The latter is a list of the meetings by a selected date range, just like the CB 2 meeting calendar. Information regarding the location of the meeting is displayed and that meetings are in person only. There’s no Zoom/online option for scheduled CB8 meetings. Agenda items are listed upon availability.
Rivaling CB 6, this board offers more upfront information regarding its meetings when viewing them on the calendar. Future meetings for the remainder of the calendar year are also posted, whereas that information for CB 6 is again, a bit limited. Where it falls behind CB 6, is the lack of an online participation option.
Record of Minutes: The board’s meeting minutes can be found in the “Downloads” tab, where a user can then select “Minutes,” and view a dedicated page to the board’s documentation of minutes dating back to 2018. The record of minutes is the most historical of the ones compared here – with only the most recent meeting from June 2025 being unaccounted for.
CB 6’s upkeep of minutes is no match for this Central Brooklyn board.
Resources: The CB 8 resources page flows into a list of “Helpful Articles” that serve as guides for the community. Whether you want to learn how to get a street co-named or start a block association, this page is where you go for information on how to do that in the district. Also listed are links to pages providing information regarding community spaces such as cultural institutions, political offices, day cares and houses of worship.
Compared to CB 6, this board website offers more when it comes to resources that specifically pertain to the community, as opposed to more general information offered by CB 6, like filing a 311 complaint. The resources listed here are more comprehensive, with full articles explaining how to take action on something like applying for liquor license in the area. Many resources listed on the CB 6 website are outside links that lead to city agency sites.
Committee Information: The site offers information about each of the board’s nine committees, who chairs them, their purposes, meeting times and locations.
Assessing it against CB 6, this board provides baseline information about each committee, compared to CB 6’s page, which offers resources relevant to each committee, current events, and a list of committee members, and a link to apply for membership.
Community Board 9: (South Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Wingate and portions of North Flatbush)
Taking a glance at the home page: it doesn’t display much. There’s a call to stay informed and sign up for the CB 9 weekly email blast, a link to the calendar and contact information for the board.
The board’s home page has straightforward information that links elsewhere, but it’s not as information rich as CB 6 when it comes to current events.
Meetings: Meeting details can be found on the board’s “Calendar” page. It displays information about future meetings, federal holidays and holidays frequently observed in the district such as Sukkot, a Jewish holiday, and links to agenda items. The board offers virtual options as well, streaming their meetings through Youtube. It also provides a term index for any terms listed on the calendar that use an acronym such as ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure)
Unlike CB 6, CB 9’s meeting calendar expands its transparency through the use of a term index, and by taking note of widely celebrated holidays in the district. All of the information is upfront upon viewing the calendar. Like CB 6, an online viewing option is available.
Record of Minutes: Board meeting minutes can be found in the “About” tab on the site, which then leads to a tab labeled “Agendas & Minutes”. There’s a dropdown menu for each committee and the general board with each monthly meeting minutes recorded, categorized by year. It dates back to 2020.
Compared to CB 6, this board has a more thorough documentation of its minutes. Almost all (with a few exceptions) meeting minutes have proof of documentation on the website. However, you have to click around to find it, as opposed to CB6, where “Meeting Minutes” is its own section in the menu bar.
Resources: Article style information in the “Resources” tab on the website provides information on applications related to land use decisions such as rezonings, block parties and outdoor dining. The online resources tab also provides links to several city agency websites and portals.
Matching it up with CB 6, this board’s resources are more geared towards issues that require applications and processes, such as the aforementioned. There’s also links to city agency websites just like CB 6, but they’re sectioned off on their own tab.
Committee Information: Committees and their purposes, and their members are each listed on their own tabs under the site’s “Committees” section. Some feature information about current projects, events and applications in the district, relative to the committee. For example, the transportation committee page has a Dept. of Transportation presentation regarding a proposed bike lane in the district.
It’s almost on par with CB 6 in terms of what’s listed, as resources exist on the committee pages.
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