Community Board 10 will launch a new website soon. District manager Ken Kearns is working with the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications to design a useful online tool.
CB 10 will boast its very own web address, as CB 2, CB 7 and CB 8 already do. DoITT is offering help to community boards all over the city. CB 10’s website will feature archived general meeting and committee meeting minutes, city service announcements, grant notices, job and event listings, the board’s meeting schedule and photos.
“It will be similar to what I do every week in the Bronx Times Reporter,” Kearns said.
In 2002, the borough’s 12 community boards went online with Bronx Mall, a news/government/business website funded by Con Edison and administered by the borough president’s office.
Aspects of Bronx Mall have fallen into disuse. According to Kearns, CB 10’s Bronx Mall site and new Internet home will exist side-by-side.
“We need a web presence because we live in an Internet age,” Kearns said. “Just about everyone has a home computer or access to a computer at the public library.”
CB 10’s Bronx Mall site lists the board’s email address; its DoITT site will too. But the new site could feature an email complaint/comment form – fill in the blanks and go.
“We want to reach people who are Internet proficient,” Kearns said. “The web is a great communication tool.”
Kearns chose orange, white and blue as the colors for the new site – a nod to the borough’s Dutch roots. In 1625, Dutch colonists founded New Amsterdam, now New York City. Orange, white and blue are the historic colors of Holland.
Jim McQuade, chair of the board’s new economic development committee and owner of Schuyler Hill Funeral Home, is eager to make use of the online tool. McQuade will invite the neighborhood’s largest employers – JCPenney, Barnes & Noble, FedEx, Pepsi and UPS – to post jobs on the website.
The website could connect job seekers with language classes and seniors with computer classes, he said, preparing Community District 10 residents for new jobs in new fields.
