Link to full article at Block Club Chicago
LINCOLN PARK — Several former members of the Sheffield Neighborhood Association are speaking out against what they describe as a flawed, insular decision-making process that allows a handful of residents — some of whom no longer live in the neighborhood — to influence city policy.
The criticism comes after the board voted this summer to oppose adding Divvy bike stations near DePaul University, a decision that former members say was made without meaningful public input and reflects a larger problem with how the neighborhood association operates.
Neighborhood associations regularly send recommendations to their alderpeople, whose offices often rely on them to gauge community opinion on zoning, transportation and development projects.
But former members say the Sheffield Neighborhood Association’s internal process doesn’t live up to that responsibility, describing it as opaque, dominated by longtime homeowners and resistant to change.
“I was appalled at the process,” said Emily Talen, who resigned from the board in August. “It was basically an email chain where people were ranting — ‘I hate Divvy bikes,’ ‘We’re losing parking spaces’ — just personal gripes. There was no real deliberation, no weighing of pros and cons, no effort to hear from CDOT and no interest in a real discussion.”
Talen said that after the board voted to oppose the Divvy stations, she emailed Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) to express concern about how the decision was made. Hopkins then forwarded her message to group President Brian Comer, who she said called her “angrily demanding” to know why she went behind the board’s back.
“I got a threatening call from him,” Talen said. “I resigned immediately after that.”
Comer denied threatening Talen but confirmed he spoke with her shortly before she stepped down.
“It’s a shame that former board members want to question the process,” he said. “The minority doesn’t represent the majority. The process was sound — it is what it is.”
A Dispute Over Divvy Bike Stations
Founded in 1959, the Sheffield Neighborhood Association is a nonprofit run by volunteers. It has 14 board members and four officers, according to its website, and it oversees programs such as the annual Sheffield Garden Walk, a floral planter program and community events that draw thousands of visitors.
Over the years, the group has been a regular voice on zoning, planning and neighborhood beautification issues in Lincoln Park, and its recommendations often carry weight at City Hall.
The dispute began in mid-August, when DePaul University contacted the Sheffield Neighborhood Association about Divvy stations the city planned to install near its Lincoln Park campus.
According to emails provided by Comer, DePaul reached out on Aug. 12 to alert the association to the proposal. The board discussed the plan at its Aug. 17 meeting, and members continued to trade emails through Aug. 25 before voting 8-1 to oppose the installations.
Comer said the process was typical for smaller, time-sensitive issues.
“This was a time-sensitive issue,” Comer said. “Board members spoke with neighbors, business owners and other community stakeholders before voting. We did our due diligence.”
Comer said board members discussed the proposal over several days, balancing concerns about safety and parking with support for biking infrastructure. He also shared internal emails that show members debating possible locations and referencing input from local residents.
“We have moms, dads, young people, older people and a wide variety of representation on our board,” Comer said. “Nobody is anti-bike. We did as good of a job as we can in getting feedback from the neighborhood.”
But Talen said what little outreach occurred came from the same circle of older homeowners who already dominate the board.
The Sheffield Neighborhood Association “presented itself as speaking for the neighborhood, when in reality it’s a self-appointed board,” she said. “There’s no election, no surveying of members, no outreach. It is not representative of the community at all.”
The controversy has exposed deeper tensions within the 60-year-old neighborhood group.
Former board members said several people on the board no longer live or work within Sheffield’s official boundaries, raising questions about who gets to serve — and who the group represents.
Comer said the board currently has 14 members, including four officers, and that two members no longer live or work in the neighborhood but remain “active stakeholders with longstanding ties” to the community.
The Sheffield Neighborhood Association’s bylaws, which Comer shared with Block Club, allow membership for people who “live, own property or work within the boundaries of the Sheffield neighborhood.”
Comer added that those board members who have moved away remain “deeply engaged with the area and its ongoing issues.”
Comer also rejected the notion that the board lacks diversity or transparency, calling the Sheffield Neighborhood Association “a trusted voice in the neighborhood” and saying the group “operates in accordance with its bylaws.”
“The majority of our members act in good faith,” Comer said. “We’re volunteers trying to improve our community. It’s unfortunate that some people have chosen to question that.”
Several former board members see it differently. They argue that the Divvy controversy highlighted how a small, insular group can claim to speak for an entire neighborhood without truly engaging it.
“Several of us joined because we wanted to represent renters, students and younger people,” said Andrea Bryson, who served for two years on the board until this summer. “But the culture was not open to that.”
Bryson, who recently got a master’s degree in urban planning from UIC, said she joined the Sheffield Neighborhood Association hoping to broaden the members’ perspectives on issues like housing and mobility.
“I was the only renter on the board,” she said. “I got comments like, ‘You don’t own property, so you’re not invested like we are.’”
Bryson said the board frequently voted on projects after minimal discussion and with little, if any, effort to solicit feedback from residents.
“I never saw any emails from constituents or surveys going out to the neighborhood,” she said. “If an issue came up, it pretty much came up at that meeting and we voted on it pretty quickly.”
Bryson said that dynamic shaped how the board approached development and transportation issues.
“There was just a lack of transparency,” Bryson said. “Even as a board member, I didn’t always know what was going on.”
Comer disputed that characterization, saying the group has conducted neighborhood-wide email surveys within the past three years and regularly communicates with residents through newsletters and its website.
“We value transparency and engagement,” he said in a written response. The Sheffield Neighborhood Association “has continued to modernize how we share information and gather feedback.”
‘There’s No Higher Power to Appeal To’
Molly Lamping Fleck, who served on the Sheffield Neighborhood Association’s board for three years and chaired the Sheffield Garden Walk, resigned two weeks ago — months before her term was set to expire. She said her decision stemmed from a broader pattern of how the association conducts business.
“There’s a major lack of oversight over neighborhood associations in general,” Fleck said. “They say they speak for the community, but most don’t actually reach out to their neighbors before taking a position.”
Fleck said that during her tenure, the Sheffield Neighborhood Association never conducted a neighborhood-wide survey — not even for major projects like DePaul’s athletic facility or Sterling Bay’s Lincoln Yards development, which borders Sheffield.
“In my three years, we never once solicited a neighborhood-wide vote before taking a position,” she said. “There’s a big difference between the board taking a position and the neighborhood taking a position. Those are two different constituencies that are often conflated as the same.”
Fleck said the board is composed entirely of homeowners, and several members don’t live or work in the neighborhood. She said the association’s bylaws were recently amended to create an executive committee, which she believes consolidated more decision-making power among a small group of officers.
Comer said the executive committee was formally added in February following a yearlong review of the group’s bylaws — a process that included Fleck and Bryson. He said the committee includes five members: the president, vice president, treasurer, secretary and one non-officer director elected by the full board.
The executive committee “acts on behalf of the board between meetings in urgent or time-sensitive situations” and “remains fully accountable to the full board,” Comer said.
“In practice, there were the rules written in our bylaws and then the rules the board actually chose to follow,” Fleck said. “If the majority votes to ignore the bylaws, there’s nobody you can go to about it.”
Hopkins, whose 2nd Ward includes the Sheffield neighborhood, said he values input from associations like the Sheffield Neighborhood Association but doesn’t view their recommendations as binding.
“Before I was alderman, I was president of a neighborhood association very similar to” the association, Hopkins said. “It’s always a legitimate question to ask how deeply those official positions reflect the larger consensus of the neighborhood.”
Hopkins said he was aware of the dissent within the Sheffield Neighborhood Association for the Divvy bike issue but focused on the board’s official position, which he compared to a court ruling with “dissenting justices.”
The board asked Hopkins to oppose five proposed Divvy stations; Hopkins ultimately supported one of them.
“I can’t get involved in the internal disputes of organizations like” the Sheffield Neighborhood Association, he said. “Even I didn’t completely agree with their position. There’s room for a variety of opinions on this matter.”
Hopkins added that associations earn credibility when they reflect genuine neighborhood sentiment — and lose it when they don’t.
“If they stop representing the majority will of the neighborhood, they’ll lose members and relevance,” he said. “Conversely, if they’re successful in representing the consensus will of a community, they’ll be respected.”
Fleck said that’s why the system deserves more scrutiny — not just at the Sheffield Neighborhood Association, but citywide.
“These boards have tremendous influence over what gets built and how our neighborhoods change, yet there’s almost no oversight,” she said. “In [the associatoin’s] case, they don’t publish their bylaws, they don’t post meeting minutes, they don’t tell you when they meet. You might not even know they exist, yet they’re speaking on your behalf.”
What troubles Fleck most, she said, is how easily neighborhood associations can claim to represent the public without ever testing whether their views reflect it. She said that as massive projects like Foundry Square move forward, the lack of transparency could have real consequences.
“The Sheffield Neighborhood Association’s voice will be prominent in those discussions,” she said. “And yet, in my three years, we never once asked the neighborhood what it thought before we voted. That’s the real problem.”
To Fleck and the other former board members, the problem isn’t just who sits on the board — it’s how easily a small group can claim to be the voice for an entire neighborhood.
“These associations talk to aldermen, universities, private businesses — all sorts of influential groups — and say, ‘We speak for the neighbors.’ But many of them aren’t actually reaching out to solicit opinions from neighbors before taking positions,” Fleck said. “In [the Sheffield Neighborhood Association’s] case, the number of dues-paying members is in the double digits. Yet the board says it’s speaking for thousands of people. There’s very little effort to get input from the broader community.”