By Forum Staff
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. on Tuesday announced the release of the 2025 Queens Community Board Demographic Report, providing both an overview of the current profiles of community boards and a detailed breakdown of this year’s class of CB appointees.
The report is required by the City Charter. Richards said its numbers demonstrate how he has worked to rectify long-standing demographic inequities in community board membership by implementing reforms to the application process and prioritizing appointees from underrepresented communities.
In total, the Queens Borough President’s Office received 916 applications. Of this year’s 361 appointees, 119 are new members who were not previously serving on a board — the largest number of new members appointed during the Richards administration so far.
People of color were strongly represented amongst the 119 new members. People who identify as Hispanic/Latinx make up 29.4 percent of new appointees; East Asian/Pacific Islanders and South Asians collectively comprised 23.5 percent of new members; and African Americans make up 22.7 percent of new appointees.
More than half — 55.5 percent — of new appointees are under the age of 40, and nearly 20 percent are under the age of 30. The youngest new appointee is 17 years old. Prior to the Richards administration, less than 25 percent of community board members were younger than 45.
Of the 119 new community board members this year, more than 51 percent identify as female. When combining all five of Richards’ community board application cycles, 52 percent of his new appointees have identified as female. Prior to the Richards administration, 43 percent of board members identified as female.
Additionally, 24.4 percent of new members are parents or guardians of a school-aged child, while 19.3 percent are immigrants. In terms of LGBTQIA+ representation, 10.1 percent of new members identified as such, up from 3.2 percent of community board members as of 2020 prior to Richards taking office.
More than half of the 2025 class of new members, or 58.8 percent, reported they “mostly” or “often” navigate the borough by using the subway, while 94.1 percent said they at least “sometimes” use the subway. Additionally, 92.4 percent of new appointees reported they at least “sometimes” ride the bus, and 42 percent said they at least “sometimes” use a bicycle or other micro-mobility vehicle for transportation.
Richards’ initiative to digitize the community board application in 2021 continues to be a major success in generating a deeper and more diverse pool of candidates for appointment to Queens’ 14 community boards. Since 2021, over 4,500 applications were submitted — the vast majority of which came from individuals who had not previously served on a board.
Richards also said that community board appointments are a product of the BP’s Office’s modernization of the application process and sustained outreach to potential applicants, particularly those from underrepresented constituencies, earlier this year. Efforts to simplify the process included digitizing the application into an online form that no longer required notarization.
“With each passing year, I’m glad to see our efforts to create community boards that represent The World’s Borough continue to generate great results,” Richards said. “While there’s still work to be done, I’m proud of the strides we’ve made to ensure our boards look like the communities they serve.”
