Community Board members in New York City serve two-year terms. These terms frequently roll over: across Brooklyn in 2023, 341 incumbents sought reappointment and 87% got it. Returning members made up a majority of all appointments.
There are obvious reasons to keep experienced members, who carry organizational memory about how to get things done. Term limits were approved by voters in 2018 and phased in gradually to avoid losing too much institutional knowledge at once.
The ratchet is visible in advice for neophytes. Join a committee, volunteer to draft resolutions, and build relationships with the District Manager and Council staff. Reliable rookies get trusted with more responsibility and leadership opportunities.
A chair gets still more leverage, setting the committee agenda and becoming the point of contact with City agencies. Each new responsibility teaches the member tricks and unlocks more direct relationships with officials, making the chair ever more useful.
Upstarts may have the same formal eligibility, intelligence, and willingness to contribute, but begin without the relationships or track record that incumbents built over many years. This is the banality of how a civic establishment reproduces itself.
None of this requires nepotism, corruption, or hostility to a particular people-group. The trap is as simple as letting useful knowledge remain locked in people’s memories. That personalist system also makes the institution more fragile when veterans leave.
A more resilient alternative allows competence to travel through mentorship. Procedures and decisions are written down, and contacts attach to roles rather than personalities. The tradeoff is less “job security” and a greater sense of replaceability.
Being indispensable is flattering to the person and dangerous to the institution. Experience can build competence, but length of tenure is not itself a virtue. A high reappointment rate can be a warning sign of dereliction in developing successors.