Mr. Reynolds, CB1’s district manager, continued, “that’s important because we are unable to look at how these areas are being served by the City in the same way that we can for other areas.”
Tammy Meltzer, chair of CB1’s Battery Park City Committee, elaborated, “when you look at a map CB1’s 311 data, there’s a very nice hole on the West Side of CB1, because there are parts of Battery Park City, where you can call 311 to lodge a complaint, but the street is not owned by the City. In the south neighborhood, most of the streets are owned by the City, so you can report pot holes and problems with street lamps. But in areas of the north, it’s not quite as simple. There’s a big giant hole for information for 311 issues.”
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Tammy Meltzer, chair of CB1’s Battery Park City Committee: “When you look at a map CB1’s 311 data, there’s a very nice hole on the West Side of CB1, because there are parts of Battery Park City, where you can call 311 to lodge a complaint, but the street is not owned by the City. There’s a big giant hole for information for 311 issues.”
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This discussion arose against the backdrop of a new bill, now under consideration in the State legislature, that would compel the New York City Housing Authority (NYHCA), “to integrate their service-request data into the 311 system,” Mr. Reynolds explained, “so people can look at the neighborhood level and see what the neighborhood needs are.”
Ms. Meltzer observed that, “when you look at the Roosevelt Island Operation Corporation [RIOC], they mine their own data and trends, and post it to their website.” This was a reference to the State agency that governs the planned community in the middle of the East River, which is in many ways analogous to Battery Park City. More relevant, in this context, is the fact that both communities, while physically located within New York City, are effectively controlled by the State (rather than the local, municipal) government. And both are thus managed outside the 311 system.
“The Battery Park City Authority [BPCA] did an amazing job of redesigning their website,” Ms. Meltzer continued, “but it is not as functional for residents looking for public safety information, or other kinds of data.”
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CB1 District Manager Lucian Reynolds: “That’s important because we are unable to look at how these areas are being served by the City in the same way that we can for other areas. A lot of the service requests that happen within Battery Park City are not piped to 311, so elected officials and City agencies, and others who serve the community, can’t get this ground-level data to see trends and issues that are arising.”
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She added that, “we’re watching where the NYHCA bill goes, because although we don’t have the same issues that NYCHA residents do, it is an authority, much like the BPCA and RIOC. And it would helpful to be able to see what goes on, to streamline more transparency for public access data. It would be really interesting if we could have long-range data.”
Battery Park City Committee member Tom Goodkind suggested that if residents have concerns, “we should get it at this board.”
Mr. Reynolds responded that, “when we get a constituent complaint at the CB1 office, the staff will ask the constituent to provide them with a 311 service complaint number. Without that number, without proving that they’ve called 311, we might be able to help the constituent, but we’re not improving the overall picture of how the City responds to service requests. It’s a balance. We want to see systemic change occur, but we also want to see the constituent’s issue being resolved as well.”
While the bill currently being debated in Albany focuses only on NYHCA and does not include provisions for integrating complaint data from the BPCA or RIOC into the City’s 311 system or its Open Data portal, the language of the measure appears to imply a similar bill would be required to create such a requirement for those authorities. As Mr. Reynolds noted, “it may take an act of the State legislature to allow the data sharing to occur.”