CROWN HEIGHTS — Citing a “lack of leadership” and “inappropriate behavior,” the chair of Brooklyn Community Board 9 has removed the head of the group’s transportation committee following a vocal campaign by a handful of locals to oust him.
Tim Thomas, a CB9 board member, local blogger and chair of the group’s transit committee since September, was removed from the committee by CB9’s chair Demetrius Lawrence following a meeting Thursday between Thomas and the CB9 executive board.
Among the issues they considered, according to those present, were charges that he had spoken disrespectfully to critics, botched a vote on a Department of Transportation safety proposal for Empire Boulevard and harassed opponents of both the proposal and him.
Lawrence confirmed Thomas’ removal, but did not offer comment about it to DNAinfo New York. However, in an email sent to board members, residents and members of the media over the weekend, he explained his reasoning:
“Tim, I’ve witnessed your conduct at various committee meetings and full board meetings. I’ve seen you become combative, rude, blown off committee members’ opinions and behaved totally irrational [sic],” he wrote. “Therefore, it was because of your lack of proper behavioral boundaries, inappropriate language, lack of decorum … that I found it necessary to remove you.”
Friction between Thomas and certain members of the community — specifically, Alicia Boyd, founder of the activist group Movement to Protect the People — is nothing new, as readers of his blog, The Q at Parkside, know.
But following his appointment as the chair of the committee in the fall, criticism of him became more pointed, particularly following the introduction of the Empire Boulevard safety plan, which drew considerable opposition from community members.
Longtime resident Karen Fleming is among those who question the plan and has requested to be appointed to the transportation committee in order to give input on the project; Lawrence approved her appointment (and that of three other non-CB9 members) to the board in November.
“He’s rude and disrespectful,” she said. “He called the women on the committee a bunch of f-cking clowns” — a charge Thomas admits and for which he says he has apologized — “That’s not OK. Just because you’re saying you’re sorry, that’s not OK.”
Boyd herself has stayed away from the transportation committee meetings (Fleming insisted Boyd had “nothing to do” with Thomas’ removal) and declined to comment to DNAinfo New York. But she has publicly rallied against Thomas for months, including on the day his actions were set to be considered by the board. In an email sent to MTOPP supporters on Thursday, she said Thomas “should not only be removed from the Transportation Committee but from the Board.”
“He has disrespected his fellow board members by talking about them in his blog post. [sic] He has stood up time and time again yelling at the public making personal attacks against members of the community,” she said in the email.
In his message to Thomas, Lawrence insisted his decision “wasn’t based on any third party input.” Sources on the executive board echoed the sentiment, saying the removal was due solely to Thomas’ behavior on the committee, not to outside complaints or even the controversial DOT proposal.
But Thomas doesn’t see it that way at all, telling DNAinfo New York that Boyd and Fleming “cooked up a way to stop the [Empire Boulevard] project” by claiming the committee bungled the vote to approve it — an allegation he has denied. He said they then pushed to add “a bunch of people to the committee” who oppose it.
“I don’t think there’s any precedent for removing a committee chair mid-year for anything other than, like, not showing up to meetings. And I’ve been doing all the work and we had some great proposals going on. So it’s just got me thinking, what’s going on here that Alicia gets everything that she wants?” he said.
At the time of Thomas’ removal, the DOT had presented the proposal for the safety project — which aims to calm traffic on Empire Boulevard with curb extensions and two pedestrian plazas — to CB9 twice. The full board has yet to vote on it. With the organization of the committee up in the air, Fleming couldn’t say what the future of the plan would be.
“The person who was maintaining the relationship with DOT is Tim. So, I can’t speak on where it’s going to go … as it stands right now, we are an army without leadership.”
