Eric Adams Breaks the Law!
It is believe that several new board members in 2014 were place illegally by Eric Adams, Borough President, to ensure that an up zoning of our community will happen and legal documents were fraudalently created to hide this fact.
The Broken Law
The law states that a Borough President can only recommend and appoint 50% of the members on a board, which is 25 out of 50. The other 25 members must be recommended by the councilperson covering the community board. However, within one given year only half may be appointed. This means the Borough President has 12 recommendations and the council has 13. If a council person does not recommend anyone, that slot must remain open and cannot be filled by the Borough President.
Eric Adams Actions
In June 2014, Eric Adams appointed 18 new board members to Community Board 9, compared to the average of 6 for all the other Community boards in Brooklyn. So there begins a clear case that there was intention to control the board by these appointees. These new members created a voting bloc forcing the old executive board to be replaced. 5 out of 6 executive board members were replace, an 83% change, compared to .07% for all the other Community Boards in Brooklyn.
Below is a legal document obtained via a FOIL request from Pearl Miles District Manager. The bolded names are new members recommended to be placed on the board and next to each person’s name there is the either the initials BP for Borough President or a Number which points to a particular councilperson.
Let’s take for example, Carmen Martinez, as you can see her name is bold, so it means that she is a new member of the board and the number next to her name is 40. This means that Councilman Mathieu Eugene recommended her.
However this is suspect because she has stated her long term relationship of over 30 years with Eric Adams . This relationship is further supported by the fact that she was seen on Eric Adam's float at the West Indian Day Parade in Sept 2014, and has members of Eric Adams political associates, former Attorney, Senator Jessie Hamilton and others, over her house for private parties etc..
Councilpersons Recommendations
Below you will see a document from Mathieu Eugene, from the City Council which shows that Eugene did not recommend anyone for new appointments. In fact all the documents, from City Council clearly state that there were no new recommended appointments for CB9 from any council person.
When the FOIL officer for the City Council was questioned about this discrepancy and asked for further clarification etc.. she responded back, “The New York City Council does not have any further information regarding your FOIL request. I have provided you with all documents that reflect Council Members Mealy, Cumbo and Eugene's recommendations for members to be appointed to Community Board 9 in 2014.”
Final Summation
This means that not only did Eric Adams, Borough President break the law, by placing more members on the board than he is allotted to, but that legal government records have been tampered with and altered to cover up this fact!
Based upon these facts, and evidence, it is clear the make-up of this board violates the law and that the Executive board that was placed into power by these illegally placed board members is also unlawful. We are demanding that a full investigation into this issue be done and that this board be suspended until its legal power is determined.
We have submitted this evidence to the DA’s office, the department of investigations and the attorney general’s office. The DA’s office has stated that they are taking these allegations “seriously”.