Post 29: Continued dysfunction and collapse

As always, with the exception of public figures, I use altered names to protect the individuals in this history.

Having completed a plan, Victor and Maurice had William (I've altered the name), the CWG co-chair representing the Two Bridges Community Council, draw up a summary of the CAPZ decisions and CWG's resolutions on them, and then they announced their resignation and the dissolution of the CAPZ committee. While this was taken to be a completion of the CWG's task, both Victor and Maurice and everyone else in the group seemed to have forgotten that all the committees were charged with implementing their plans, not just designing them. 

The Coalition, or at least NMASS and CSWA, were focused entirely on their assertion that Victor and Maurice could not resign. As this was their crusade of the moment, it consumed a lot of meeting time, meeting time that seemed all the longer because their insistence seemed to members both irrational, unnecessary, impossible and necessarily fruitless. 

After Victor and Maurice resigned, the Coalition demanded that CWG take action to prevent the Extell development. This too was a lost cause. The Extell development was as-of-right, meaning that the building was within the law, they needed no special permission to build, and construction was their legal right. Moreover, CWG was a community planning organization, not a activist organization, and Extell had already begun construction, which means the building must follow current law, not any future changes to the law. This demand from the Coalition, however urgent and important, was viewed as yet another impossible and irrational burden on the members' time and patience. 

Coincident with Maurice' and Victor's resignations came the news that the new DeBlasio administration at DCP had rejected our plan as too ambitious. This should have given CWG motivation to push harder, but the members saw it as an opportunity to leave. CB2's departure made sense, since the CWG plan did not contain any recommendations for CD2. As mentioned, Two Bridges Community Council needed to leave because they were working with Extell, a conflict of interest, since the lots were in the CWG catchment area and we were discussing the future of its neighborhood. These two departures alone left CWG without any co-chairs who could convene meetings, and so meetings came to an abrupt end. The CWG email list was in the control of the website manager Zephyr, not in my hands as secretary, and Zephyr too had left the group. 

Community Board 3 continued to discuss the plan, but it had accepted the city's rejection. With its rejection, DCP indicated that if the CB could identify locations for development, the city would reconsider aspects of the plan. The CB did not respond to this extortion.