About two years ago, the Mayor’s Community Assistance Unit (CAU) provided each of New York City’s 59 Community Boards with computers to be connected to the CityNet computer system. Once installed, CityNet promised to give community boards greater access to a variety of city agencies they need to serve the needs of Queens residents.

Two years later, several community boards in Queens have yet to be hooked up to CityNet.

“The city is so far behind the times, it is ridiculous,” said CB9 District Manager Mary Ann Carey. “This definitely hampers our ability to serve the community.”

At CB9 one computer is hooked up to CityNet, but other computers that Carey said staff members need in order to efficiently run her community board have yet to be hooked up.

The problem is that the city has assigned only one computer consultant, Robert Schmidt, to keep tabs on the systems at all 59 city community boards.

“In 1998, when the various Community Boards testified as part of the Capital Budget Expense Priorities, we all stressed the fact that he can’t do the job alone,” Carey said. “Because of that, we’re all floundering here.”

“I don’t want to say that he’s not doing his job— maybe he’s overwhelmed,” said Rose Rothschild, district manager of CB4 in Elmhurst. “But, that’s not my problem.”

Carey said she has been waiting since last July to get a service call from the CAU. And Queens community boards reported a series of horror stories connected to the CAU, most of which concern a lack of technical support for the CityNet system.

At CB7, the problems began five years ago when the computer they had connected to CityNet was stolen. CB7 couldn’t afford to replace the computer, so they were disconnected from CityNet until the CAU supplied them with another computer two years ago. When they tried hooking the new computer to CityNet, they could not. An outside consultant was hired to hook up the in-house computer network, but they still were not hooked up to CityNet.

Difficulties with the CityNet system have been reported by community boards 5, 12 and 8, but no problems seem more severe than those in CB4.

“When we got the new computers, we wanted to have them connected,” said Rothschild. “He (Schmidt) said that we could plug them in. I said no. You know what happened when he came and plugged them in? The monitor blew up.”

After getting the monitor replaced, Rothschild found that getting the technical support she needed was difficult.

“They have a person that is supposed to come out, but I haven’t seen him,” she said. ”We’ve put phone calls into him for the last three months. He never called back.”

Rothschild said that past technical support often consisted of telephone walk-throughs, which lead to additional problems.

“He gave us a disk so we could move the complaint system from the old computer to another, because the old computer is breaking down. You couldn’t work with the disk. It didn’t work.”

Trying to circumvent the CAU, Rothschild then called the City Help Line. “I’m not a computer person that knows all of the words that they’re using. I said, ‘Can you speak English?’ The guy said, ‘If you don’t understand than you’ve got to call... then he gave me Bob Schmidt’s phone number.”

While all of the community board district mangers had high praise for Schmidt’s personality and technical knowledge, many report that they haven’t seen him for months, and in some cases for years. Some say they wait for months for phone calls to get returned. Others have given up, and hired outside computer consultants at their own expense.

“We’ve lucked out,” said Jonathan Gaska, of CB14. “I have someone in my building who does this type of stuff. But there’s only one person in the city doing this....it’s weird.”

Community boards looking for outside technical support face additional problems because the CityNet computer program is provided by the city and most outside computer technicians cannot access or repair the CityNet system. The problem affects the level of service community boards provide.

Civic activist Joyce Shepard has charged that CB7 is incapable of serving residents without the computer hookup.

“I’ve been complaining about community boards for about two years,” said Shepard. “It’s about time that the truth came out that our community boards are ill-equipped.”

“If you register a complaint on Jan. 1., the response is listed on index cards, said CB7 District Manager Marilyn Bitterman. “On complaints we don’t have priorities. We process them as they’re received,” she said, before adding the board has “volumes of cards in the drawer.”

The problems faced by CB7 are also being felt at other community boards. CB4 relies on the telephone, hand-written notes and complaint forms which are sent to the appropriate city agency. CB12 does as well.

And even if the system is working, there are still productivity problems. “The computer goes down a lot,” said a source at CB5. “Even when it works it’s slow because the mainframe is so slow.”

“We have to put a page of commands in to utilize the system,” Carey said. “It becomes time-consuming. With all of the things that we have to do, it’s very, very, difficult.”

In a release entitled; Computer Resources Available to Community Boards, the CAU suggests “a number of sources for computer-related assistance.” It instructs community boards to look elsewhere for Manufacturer Provided Hardware, Service Contract Hardware, Pay-Per-Use Hardware and Manufacturer Provided Software support.”

The release informs community boards that contacting the manufacturer should be the first line of attack when dealing with either a hardware or software problem. It suggests local computer stores and repair shops as sources of service contracts, and that any equipment owned by community boards not having a service contract is at risk.

Requests to speak with CAU Commissioner Rosemarie O’Keefe were forwarded to the Mayor’s Press Office. Mayoral spokesman Charles Sturcker was unable to comment on the issue.

Despite appearances, Queens Borough President Claire Shulman insists that Queens community boards are not on their own.

“We reached out recently, about a month ago, to the Community Assistance Unit,” said Borough Hall spokesman Dan Andrews. “Apparently there have been some problems.”

It’s less than a year from the millennium, and Queens community boards still process their information long-hand.