Park Board Elections Letters from Candidates for Washington Market Park Board of Directors Karen Brodsky For the past nine years I have lived directly across from Washington Market Community Park. I am currently a stay-at-home parent with two children in pre-school and kindergarten. Like so many families in our community, the Park is an integral part of our life. It is our backyard, our town square, and our playground. I am completing my first term as a Board Member for the Park. I have learned a great deal during these two years, and hope that in the coming two years I will be able to use this experience to help maintain a Park that best serves the needs of our community. I have recently taken over as garden coordinator and hope to continue on the garden committee. I look forward to volunteering at the Park’s wonderful events and to help begin a more structured fundraising campaign. Monica Forrestall I want to run for the Washington Market Park Board because I am a Tribeca mother with an eighteen-month-old son, and we use the park every day. My son Max is perhaps at his happiest when he is running into that amazing new sprinkler opened this summer. It’s a beautiful, well-kept up-haven for my child and we appreciate it and I personally want to contribute my time to the park. I have many ideas and opinions about the changes happening in the park and would love to be a part of the group of people who help shape the future of what goes on in it. My family has a bit of a history of being involved in local politics. so it’s in my blood. I passionately feel that change for the better starts with individuals who care and get involved. My hopes for the park involve every age group of children from a newborn to a teenager finding a place to have fun in this park. My hopes are also about possibly getting some of the very well known local residents involved by donating their time, efforts and talent (not just a check) to the efforts like the Fall festival which was very well attended and was extremely cheerful. My hopes are for perhaps an easily accessible bathroom facility (even if that might be a porto-pottie) for the many care givers who frequent the park and have the challenge of watching two children. I would like to help by being a liaison with the many mothers of young children I’ve met in the months I’ve been hanging out in the park. Making an effort to spearhead some volunteers of music or art-making for the posters, events in the park. We are the most vibrant community in the city, and there are a lot of talented people in the neighbourhood whom I'm sure would love to contribute if they were only asked. I hope to do some asking to benefit our wonderful park. Kaija Berzins Braus I have lived in Tribeca for almost 25 years and am the parent of a one-year-old child. I grew up here and it is the only home I’ve known since I was 12 years old. Our neighborhood has progressed in many ways since then, and one of the most exciting ways is the growth of families and the new challenges this burgeoning population brings to all of us. Among the most challenging is how to balance this rapid growth with the preservation of the cool and special feel that drew people like my mother here in 1980. A critical part of keeping our neighborhood special is making sure that Washington Market Park is stewarded in a sensible and community-minded way. For example, I wish to safeguard the playground for young children as well as maintain the developing needs of children of all ages. Until recently, my son, Nathaniel, used the area in the southeast section of the park extensively. This part of the Park is now undergoing conversion to a second area for older kids. If I am on the board, I will try to ensure that we recognize that our very youngest children also need areas in which to play. In addition, I am a strong advocate of the environment around us. I am very involved in several environmental organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund, where my husband and I were involved in the founding of the Young Partners in Conservation, a New York-based fundraising arm of WWF. As such, I recognize the park must be maintained and nurtured as one's own garden – I have always felt that one must think globally and act locally. I will vigilantly fight to protect this precious Tribeca resource. As I have done through my involvement with the Tribeca Organization, where I was on the organizing committee of the T.O.’s recent, very successful fundraising event at the Tribeca Rooftop, I will work for adequate funding to ensure the Park’s future for many generations of Tribecans. Chiara Edmands As the pregnant mother of a one year old, I ask that you please consider my candidacy as representative of the toddler vote! I am running on behalf of the constituents who can’t talk yet—and who now have nowhere to play. Up until they ripped out the toddler area, my daughter Francesca and I were in the park each and every day. Now we don’t go at all. Most of the mothers and caregivers of Tribeca’s toddlers are in the same boat (pun intended.) But with some simple changes to the current layout, I believe the Board can instigate some successful changes that encompass and embrace all the children of Tribeca. I’d like to contribute to the positive changes ahead. My background is in producing and writing for television, so I can bring some strong organizational and people skills to the table. My husband and I are native New Yorkers and we’ve lived in Tribeca for almost five wonderful years.