Some Personal News
The newest member of Brooklyn's Community Board #8
This is Dad//Citizen, a space where parenting and civicness come together. Where we try to make our communities a little bit better, every day.
“Dear Jason Barefoot,
It’s a pleasure to welcome you to the 2026–2028 class of Brooklyn Community Board members!”
When I first read that sentence, I thought it was fake. I thought I had gotten a spam email. I had to read that line about four times before it truly sank in.
For the past three years, I’ve applied to serve on another community board in New York City, Community Board 7 in Park Slope. Three years of applications. Three years of waiting. Three years of getting passed over. This time last year I had a lot going on: my wife then about 6 weeks into her pregnancy, and I was furiously applying to new jobs. But I somehow still took the rejection pretty sorely and throughout the year I started to wonder whether this particular door was just closed to me. Maybe I was missing something. Maybe the timing was never going to be right. Maybe I needed to accept that and move on.
Thankfully, I didn’t move on.
But we did move, twins on the way will do that to you. Our one-bedroom, fourth-floor walk-up in Park Slope wasn’t going to cut it, and so we found our way to Crown Heights. That move turned out to be a bit of a civic gift. It allowed me to apply for CB8, the NYC community board that covers my new home neighborhoods of North Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, and Weeksville, bounded by Atlantic Avenue to the north, Eastern Parkway to the south, Flatbush Avenue to the west, and Ralph Avenue to the east.
And this time, I got in!
In finally achieving this small goal of mine, I learned that to me, persistence is actually a civic value. Showing up when it’s inconvenient and applying when you’ve been told no before, that’s the stuff civic life is made of.
A long time ago, a friend asked me how important I felt public service really was. I remember talking about that question for a long time that day. I still recall much of that conversation today.
There are obviously people doing work that is truly vital in every community. ER doctors. Nurses. Violence prevention specialists. Firefighters. The list is long, their work is serious, and I have enormous respect for all of it.
In a separate category, the work of elected and appointed officials is, to me, the most foundational occupation in our country. Above all else, its core function is to ensure that the democratic system remains a reflection of our society’s values, putting the interests of the many above more individualistic impulses. It is the infrastructure beneath every other kind of service. Without it, nothing else holds.
And done well, I think there are few acts more consequential.
Before I get into what I’ll actually be doing, it’s worth explaining what a community board even is, because most New Yorkers have heard of them but couldn’t tell you much beyond that, and to folks outside of NYC they probably sound strange.
New York City has 59 community boards, spread across all five boroughs. Each board is made up of up to 50 volunteer members, appointed by the Borough President, with half nominated by the City Council members whose districts overlap with the community district.
Community boards are the city government’s most direct point of contact with the people who actually live in each neighborhood. And thus, community board members are technically public officials! Their core responsibilities, mandated by the NYC Charter, span three main areas: monitoring the delivery of city services (like sanitation and street maintenance), planning and reviewing land use applications including zoning changes, and making recommendations for the city’s annual budget.
Beyond those three pillars, any issue that affects part or all of a community, from a traffic problem to deteriorating housing to a cultural festival, is a proper interest of community boards.
It’s worth being clear about what community boards are not: community boards do not make laws. While they play an important role in being the closest official body to communities, their recommendations are advisory, not binding. I like that actually! One day I’d like to hold an office in a lawmaking body but not everyone needs that authority. Community boards provide elected officials and agencies with feedback about policy decisions and laws, especially in the area of land use, economic development, health and human rights, and public safety. But advisory doesn’t mean toothless. The board’s voice shapes conversations, frequently slows down bad proposals, and amplifies positive policies or activities that would benefit residents in their neighborhoods.
As a board member, here’s what I’ll mostly be doing:
Each month, I’ll attend the general board meeting where members address items of concern to the community, hear from residents and other city officials, and vote on recommendations and resolutions. My first official one is in less than two weeks! Public participation is also built in, anyone can show up and speak, which is what I used to do!
I’ll also join at least one board committee, where most of the real day-to-day work of discussion and deliberation happens. Each board can be a little different with regard to the committees but they generally deal with specific NYC Charter mandates, such as land use review and budget committees, or agency committees that relate to a particular city agency like sanitation or parks. Some committees I’m considering joining if given an open choice include: the Parks, Youth, and Education committee, the Housing and Land Use committee, or the Environment, Sanitation and Transportation committee.
And beyond the meetings, the other core facet of the job is just being a good representative. That means being present in the community, knowing what residents are experiencing, and balancing the pressure of development and change to make more room in the community with the mindfulness that ensures the people who have been here the longest are not willfully displaced.
I’ve written before about how my parents modeled civic participation for me growing up in Decatur. They weren’t doing it for recognition. They did it because they believed their presence in civic spaces mattered, and they wanted my sister and me to see that.
I remember reading Frederick Douglass’s autobiography a few years ago and was moved by how much he insisted that civic participation wasn’t optional. He believed it was the mechanism by which a society either lives up to its values or betrays them. He once wrote that he believed his civic duty was, “by voice and pen...to stand for freedom of people of all colors, until in our land the last yoke was broken and the last bondsman was set free.”
The lessons I took from both my childhood and American history are part of what I’m trying to do today. The lessons I took from my parents are core to why I kept applying to community boards even after getting rejected. And the idea of striving for a more just society is core to how I want to show up every week on the board.
I don’t think we show our kids what civic engagement looks like by voting during most elections but otherwise opting out because it’s too inconvenient. I think we should do it every chance we get.
CB8 covers neighborhoods I already love and care about. It’s home. And now I have a formal seat at the table to work on the things that help make this place a little bit better.
I’ll be sharing more about the work as I get into it. Stay tuned!
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