I moved to the East Village last year and plan to attend to my first Community Board meeting early next month.
From a quick glance of what the board did in January 2017:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/mancb3/html/calendar/calendar.shtml
The focus was mostly on quality of life for existing residents - liquor license approvals, art installations and cultural activities. These are important things and people should care about them, but it's striking that those groups had meetings while the following didn't:
- Transportation and Public Safety - Land Use, Zoning, Public and Private Housing - Public Housing and Section 8 Housing
I'm going to spend the next couple of months attending these meetings to figure out how it all works.
I should caveat however that I'm atypical in this attitude. Because I spent the entirety of my childhood in dense urban environments - Dhaka and New York - I'm attached to city living. Most of my millennial friends are planning to take make the suburban trek.