On the Candidates: Jo Anne Simon

I didn’t find politics, politics found me. I think the people are ready for someone from outside the political realm, and I’m ready to bring a voice of neighborhoods to the city council.

Nestled at a corner table in the back room of Building on Bond café in Boerum Hill, Jo Anne Simon feels right at home, sipping an iced tea through a straw.

“I lived just down the block, and have lived in this neighborhood for 27 years,” Simon said, looking around the room. “I used to joke, that my block only had four brothels left! We used to have to fish hypodermic needles out of the garden. When I started working in this community, people didn’t even know what this neighborhood was. But we built it up, and the elected officials then learned the name, Boerum Hill.”

Such is Jo Anne Simon’s approach: change, on both a neighborhood and city-wide level , starts with the community. Currently serving as the female district leader for the 52nd Assembly District, Jo Anne Simon has been intimately involved in her neighborhood for decades. She served on the Hoyt-Schermerhorn Task Force, creating community-based development plans for the neighborhood, and has worked in various capacities with a variety of different organizations to bring necessary services to her district. Simon likens herself, above all else, as a people person: Someone with a unique ability to talk and listen to constituents and community members, and work on tough issues from the ground up.

“People will criticize you for being diplomatic, as if it means you aren’t strong,” Simon said. “But the loudest voice is not necessarily the one people want to listen to, and it’s not necessarily the one that accomplishes the most, and gets the most results. A legislative role is inherently collaborative. People know that they can rely on me, that they can trust me, that I can work with everyone and that I follow through for them.”

Simon also believes that the best way to tackle tough neighborhood issues is to view them as interconnected, and deal with development, transportation and open space as different—and equally important—sides of the same infrastructural coin.

“Development is a big issue. It makes people crazy,” Simon said. “In my mind, one of the fundamental flaws in how the city does development is that it does it in a vacuum, and it does it from the top down. We need to deal with the environment, the transportation and the land use together, because these issues are interconnected.”
In addition, as a former teacher, as councilperson Simon is determined to only make promises she knows she can keep, and build strong, useful and meaningful partnerships with fellow councilmembers, as well as constituents, non-profits and community-based groups through input, involvement and empowerment. Simon also insists that she will, as she always has, refuse to be intimidated into going along with the status quo if she feels it is flawed or corrupt.

“The flaws in the rezoning process is that it is a cookie-cutter approach—the all your eggs in one basket thing,” Simon said. “Sometimes you get knocked down, but you have to stand up to those powerful influences. Not everything is an argument, and if you make everything an argument then you damage your relationships and don’t build new ones, but when it’s about a naked exercise of power, you have to challenge. We have to empower the community to have a seat at the table, and to engage in these conversations. And if there is no table, we make one.”