Community Board 9 Schedules Election for Chair, As Baker’s Tenure Ends

CROWN HEIGHTS—Community Board 9 has set a date to elect a new chair.

CB9 has scheduled a Tuesday, July 23 special meeting to elect its chair, according to an email from the board office obtained by Bklyner. The meeting will also feature a vote on other executive officers, including the board’s 1st vice chair, 2nd vice chair, treasurer, secretary, and two members at large.

The election, which will take place at the Crown Gardens Community Room (1185 Carroll Street) at 7 p.m., comes after the board’s chair, Patricia Baker, said two weeks ago at a chaotic meeting that she wouldn’t seek re-election for the position, but would stay on the community board.

Baker called the board “dysfunctional,” and said unnamed members of the board spoke platitudes about getting along while causing strife, but defended CB9’s behind-the-scenes work.

“It looks like we get nothing done, but we do, because that office, regardless of what’s happening during the meetings, runs 365 days out of the year,” she said at the June 26th meeting.

Following Baker’s announcement, community board members rushed to vote on the new chair. But they soon ran out of time and had to leave the school building before they could cast their ballots. They decided to hold a July special meeting for the election, since CB9, like other boards, was slated to break for the summer. Now, the date for the community board—which has been without a district manager for more than three years—to elect their new leader has been selected.

The presumptive next chair is board member Fred Baptiste, as he is the only candidate running for the position, though write-in votes are permitted and, in order to be elected chair, the candidate must receive a majority of the votes during a meeting at which a quorum is present. At a May CB9 meeting, multiple members of the board walked out, killing the quorum and leaving the board without enough people to vote.