When done well, public testimony can persuade decision-makers to adopt your point of view. When fumbled, however, comments from members of the public can muddy the waters or even negatively polarize decision-makers against your preferred outcome.

As a community board member, I’ve listened to dozens of hours of public comments. Here are my top tips to ensure your testimony has the impact you’re looking for:

• Be clear about who you are, what topic you’re talking about, and what outcome you’re seeking

• Connect over values you believe are widely shared by your audience

• Signal warmth, credibility, and good faith

The basics of public meeting testimony

Typically, members of the public register to speak at the start of the meeting. At some point, your name will be called and you’ll get 2-3 minutes to say your piece. (In practice, the most effective comments are usually 30 to 60 seconds long.)

Sometimes a public comment section of a meeting will focus on just one topic; other times, the meeting will have a combined public comment section that mixes together speakers talking about multiple topics.

Be clear

Your testimony will already be far above average if you focus on communicating with clarity.

Speak slowly and project your voice.

Always state your name and neighborhood of residence.

If you are one of the first speakers to talk about a topic, briefly explain what the topic or proposal is. Even if you are intimately familiar with a topic, it’s likely that some of your audience won’t know about it. Your testimony might be the first time they’re learning about the topic, which gives you an important opportunity to frame the discussion.

Unambiguously state your position on the topic: e.g. “I support the proposal” or “I oppose this plan”. Far too many times I’ve had speakers conclude their remarks without me knowing whether they are for or against a proposal. It’s very frustrating!

Be clear about what action you want the decision makers to take. Do you want them to vote a certain way?

As a “don’t do this” counter-example, last year at a community board meeting I listened to complaints from several members of the public about a pickleball-related issue in a local park. Despite listening very carefully, ultimately all I could discern was several residents were very upset about something, a person called “The Pickleball Doctor” was involved, and there were some storage lockers they were fighting over. Everything else was very murky, and ultimately I think the community board didn’t take any action on the matter.

Connect over shared values

We all have our own policy preferences and priorities. When giving public comments, one thing that can set you up for success is to anchor your comments in shared values, and then explain how your proposed plan of action advances those values.

For example:

• “We all want kids to be safe when crossing the street” → therefore we should reduce visual obstructions near intersections to help drivers see pedestrians clearly

• “Everyone wants elderly people to have the option to keep living in this neighborhood” → that’s why we should allow construction of new apartment buildings with elevators

• “Families and children are important for thriving communities” → that’s why allowing strollers on buses is important to help parents and caregivers move around the neighborhood

You don’t need to dwell on this, but contextualizing how a proposal relates to big-picture values can help your audience better understand why your comments matter.

Signal warmth, credibility, and good faith

Decision-makers respond to how you speak just as much as what you say. In a public meeting, your tone, body language, and demeanor heavily influence how your comments are received.

The goal is to come across as a reasonable, constructive neighbor. Ideally you’re seen as someone who wants to solve a shared problem, not just vent frustration.

A few practical tips:

• Speak calmly and at a measured pace.

• Stand up straight and make eye contact with the audience.

• Smile and express gratitude for your neighbors’ contributions.

Even when you strongly oppose a proposal, appearing respectful and composed makes it much easier for decision-makers to engage with your substance. Angry, sarcastic, or accusatory comments may feel cathartic, but they often reduce your influence.

Public testimony is persuasion under tight time constraints. Signaling good faith and credibility helps ensure your message actually lands.

A template

As a starting point, here’s a template script you could use to structure your comments:

Ultimately, you should always tailor your remarks to the specific issue, forum, and context created by the speakers who came before you.

Avoid needless repetition. If several people have already made your point, either introduce something new (an additional fact, a clearer framing, or a different value) or keep your comments very brief.

Similarly, resist the urge to directly argue with previous speakers. Public comment is not a debate format. You absolutely can correct the record or build on earlier remarks, but your comments should stand on their own rather than naming or attacking others.

For example, if a previous speaker incorrectly claims that a new bus lane will delay emergency vehicles, it’s usually more effective to say: “Another benefit of this bus lane is that emergency vehicles can use it too, allowing them to reach their destinations more quickly,” rather than calling out the earlier speaker by name.

The goal is to leave decision-makers with a better understanding of the issue than they had before you spoke.

Making your voice count

Getting involved with local issues can be surprisingly rewarding. Whether it’s a street redesign, a zoning change, or a new construction project, public comment is one of the simplest ways to shape the future of your neighborhood.

If you want your comment to matter, optimize for clarity, shared values, and credibility.

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Read more about my experiences serving on my neighborhood’s community board:

In essence:

• CRCs propose structural changes to the city government, which get voted on directly by New Yorkers.

• Historically, NYC voters tend to say “yes” to CRC proposals. Over the past 20 years, more than 90% of charter amendments proposed by CRCs have passed.

• This gives Mamdani a powerful lever: by putting proposals directly to voters, he can push through popular reforms and build momentum to implement his agenda.

Why Changing the Charter Matters

The City Charter is New York City’s foundational law. It defines which agencies exist, how power is distributed, what procedures govern land use, budgeting, staffing, and more.

What a Charter Revision Commission Does

A mayoral Charter Revision Commission (CRC) is a group appointed by the mayor to review the Charter and propose changes. Those amendments go directly to voters at the next election, bypassing the City Council entirely. If a majority of voters support a proposal, it becomes law. Because the mayor appoints the CRC’s commissioners, the mayor has significant sway over what ends up on the ballot.

This gives the mayor an alternative pathway for major reforms that the City Council might slow-walk or block. And even before a CRC publishes its proposals, the mere threat of charter revisions often accelerates action by the Council.

The success of prior CRCs

New Yorkers have voted to approve 20 of the 22 charter amendments put forward by Charter Revision Commissions since 2005.1

Across housing, governance, policing, land use, and budgeting, New Yorkers reliably say “yes” to clear, focused proposals. Just this year, outgoing mayor Eric Adams secured major improvements to housing policy at the ballot box. And even the two proposals that failed lost only narrowly.

The record in New York is clear: focused ballot proposals that target issues New Yorkers care about are very likely to pass.

Mamdani’s Opportunity

A Mamdani-appointed Charter Revision Commission would have broad latitude to propose amendments to any part of the Charter, in order to achieve Mamdani’s goals.

The biggest opportunity is to advance a focused set of pro-abundance structural reforms that connect directly to Mamdani’s platform: housing affordability for renters, better buses, and a more capable city government.

Here are some illustrative charter revisions which could be achieved through charter revisions, without Mamdani needing to wait for the City Council, Albany, or Washington to act.

Housing & Property Tax

The Problem: New York’s property tax system makes renting more expensive than it needs to be. Rental buildings typically pay much higher tax rates than condos, co-ops, and small homes – even when they’re worth the same amount. Those higher taxes get passed directly into rents. Some of this is baked into state law, but the City still has meaningful authority it barely uses.

I’ve written about property tax issues previously:

How a CRC Can Help: Charter amendments can reduce housing costs by making the property tax system fairer and reducing the burden on rentals:

• Reduce unfair tax gaps between rental buildings: Require the Department of Finance to narrow the huge differences in how similar rental buildings are taxed and to publish simple, public metrics showing progress each year.

• Fix how condos and co-ops are valued: Make DOF use a clearer, more accurate, more transparent method for valuing condos and co-ops so they aren’t systematically under-taxed.

• Redirect subsidies toward people who actually need help: Phase out or redesign the condo/co-op tax abatement, which now mostly benefits owners in high-price neighborhoods, and shift those resources toward renter relief or need-based protections for low-income homeowners.

While full reform needs state action, a CRC can force New York City to use the tools it already has, and move the tax system closer to fairness and easing costs for renters.

Faster Buses

The Problem: Bus speeds in New York are among the slowest in the country. Riders lose millions of hours each year to blocked lanes, poorly timed signals, and fragmented street management. Yet fixing New York’s streets is fully within City Hall’s power; the Department of Transportation (DOT) just needs a clearer legal mandate to prioritize buses.

How a CRC Can Help: A Charter amendment can hardwire bus priority into the city’s street grid:

• Bus Priority Network: Create a legally defined network of streets where buses must come first. Require DOT to install protected bus lanes, transit-signal priority, and camera enforcement on a fixed timeline.

• Office of Bus Rapid Transit: Establish a dedicated office within DOT charged with designing and delivering true world-class bus priority street layouts across the city.

These reforms would create a binding legal obligation to give riders faster, more reliable bus service throughout the city.

A More Capable City Government: Hiring Faster and Smarter

The Problem: Abundance requires a functioning city government workforce. Right now, NYC’s civil service is struggling with big staffing vacancies at many key city agencies. As a recent Vital City piece highlighted, the City’s hiring system is outdated: year-long recruiting timelines, infrequent hiring exams, thousands of outdated job titles, and rigid rules that discourage skilled outsiders from joining.

State law sets some hard constraints to civil service hiring, but much of what slows the system down is within NYC’s own control.

How a CRC Can Help: Charter reforms can modernize the City’s hiring machinery so the city can actually execute:

• Evergreen Exams & Hiring Timelines: Mandate regular exams for high-vacancy roles, require scores and eligible lists to be released faster, and impose time-to-hire standards across agencies.

• Modernize Job Titles: Require a full rewrite and consolidation of titles every few years so the city can hire “software engineers,” “data analysts,” “housing inspectors,” and “project managers” instead of generic “analyst” or “manager” roles.

• Mission-Critical Hiring: Allow more flexible hiring for essential roles in housing, inspections, transit, finance, and technology by fully using the exempt and noncompetitive authority NYC already has.

These changes don’t rewrite state civil-service law, but they dramatically improve what the city can control. This is critical to staffing the teams needed to build housing, run buses, fix taxes, and deliver core services.

Time is of the essence

Mamdani will need to appoint a Charter Revision Commission in early 2026 if he wants its proposals on the ballot in November. Waiting too long risks the CRC missing key deadlines and having to delay until 2027 or 2028 to put the proposals to a vote.

Of course, many of these reforms could also be tackled by the City Council, if they choose to act. But if Mamdani is serious about delivering on his top campaign promises, a Charter Revision Commission is the most reliable way to independently make progress on these key structural reforms.

A CRC is the ideal tool for New York’s new mayor to start his term with an impactful bang.

In 2016, buried in the state budget, Albany gave New York City authority to pay for transit construction by levying extra taxes on increases in property values that result from subway expansion.1 When property values inevitably shoot up around new subway stations, value capture allows the government to recover the costs of construction.

New York has a long list of great subway projects stuck on the drawing board because no one can pay for them. If those same projects could fund themselves using the value they create for local property owners, then we could finally start building again.

This isn’t hypothetical, because mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is already thinking about these powers. Before winning the mayoralty, Mamdani proposed a state bill to improve the process for using value capture. The bill hasn’t gone anywhere, but it shows he’s thinking about the topic. That shifts value capture from a fun policy idea to a live option.

In this post, I’ll break down how value capture works and what this means for expanding New York’s subway system.

The history and future of the subway

New York’s subway system is old. Of the 476 stations currently open, 66% were constructed over a century ago. Only four new stations have opened in the past 35 years.2

Three of those were part of the Second Avenue Subway project, which in 2017 extended the Q train up Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The 7 train’s station at Hudson Yards is the only other 21st century expansion.

There are many high-impact subway extensions on the MTA’s wish list:

• Extending Manhattan’s Second Avenue Subway from 96th Street to 125th Street, and then along 125th Street to Broadway

• The Interborough Express, connecting Brooklyn and Queens

• Extending train service along Brooklyn’s Utica Ave

• And a dozen more…

The difficulty isn’t identifying good projects; it’s finding the money to pay for them. That’s where value capture can come in.

Good transit increases land value

Property value boils down to access: proximity to jobs, schools, parks, culture, etc. A new subway station slashes travel time to the rest of the city, which is hugely valuable.

We have proof. A study by and colleagues at NYU and Columbia found that the 2017 opening of the Second Avenue Subway from 63rd to 96th Street increased Upper East Side property values by $5.9 billion.3

But constructing that subway construction only cost $4.5 billion.

In other words, the subway expansion created more wealth for nearby landowners than it cost to build. Almost all of that windfall went to existing owners, who enjoyed both a more valuable property and a faster commute.

Of course, not all transit projects have such strong return on investment, but New York has a long list of projects that would raise property values — even before considering their value from a transportation perspective.

Value capture 101

Imagine taking a portion of that property value increase, and using it to cover the costs of subway construction. Then we’d be able to afford many more train lines.

Well, it turns out that New York already has a legal framework in place to do exactly this!

The 2016 state law allows the city to levy extra taxes on residential and commercial properties whose values increase as a result of transit expansion. The city can then use the extra tax revenue to pay down the debt incurred by the MTA to fund the subway construction.

No begging in Albany, and no waiting on Washington. Instead, New York City can fund expansions to the subway system ourselves. For any particular project, all the city government needs to do is:

1. Pass a local law designating the boundaries of the special tax district and establishing the exact parameters of the value capture tax.

2. Sign a contract with the MTA promising to use the tax revenues to help pay for a specific, identified transit project.

Despite sitting on the books for nearly a decade, the city has never used this power.

Why hasn’t NYC used value capture before?

Most people simply don’t know these powers exist. They’ve never surfaced in a major election or policy debate, and no administration has made them a priority.

Two practical hurdles help explain the inaction: local tax resistance, and the fact that the authorizing law is temporary.

Taxes are unpopular

Nobody likes paying tax. Even in a neighborhood thrilled about a subway extension, hearing “you’ll pay more in property taxes” will provoke instinctive pushback.

Fundamentally, property owners only get taxed on the increase in property values relative to what would have happened if the subway had never been expanded. The property owners didn’t do anything to earn that value, so there’s an element of fairness in taxing those gains.

Additionally, the statute give the city latitude to soften the impact by varying the tax rate and duration. The government can also offer programs for low-income property owners to only pay their tax bill upon selling their home.

The sunset of value capture

The value capture law currently expires in April 2026. It has been renewed in annual increments every year since 2021, despite never being used. That suggests quiet support in Albany, but the one-year cycle is an unstable foundation for long-term planning.

Ideally state lawmakers would give transit planners more certainty by making value capture permanent, or at least agreeing to a longer extension.

Why value capture matters

This is the rare case where the policy exists, the math works, and the politics might line up. Mamdani understands the policy and has already pushed to strengthen it. If his administration wants to add real subway mileage, this is the cleanest path: capture the value that transit creates and reinvest that value to build more.

Value capture can give millions of New Yorkers better access to jobs, leisure, and opportunity, while letting the city control its own future. The only real question is how soon we want to start.

Dig deeper: Read my past posts about fixing NYC’s broken property tax system, how vital transit is to NYC’s economy, and the future of congestion pricing. Or, subscribe for free updates about how NYC works and opportunities to make this city even greater:

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Hat tip to , who brought this topic to my attention.

Here’s what you need to know:

• NYC has a general election on November 4th, 2025. At that time, voters will choose the city’s next mayor, city council members, and other municipal officials.

• Alongside the election, there are five amendments to the City’s charter that New Yorkers will be asked to vote on. These focus on housing and our electoral system.

• Your vote matters. Find your voting location. Early voting starts October 25th. You can also vote by mail and/or register to vote by October 25th.

I recommend voting YES on all of this year’s ballot propositions. Read on for my analysis.

Lowering the rent by streamlining homebuilding

Propositions 2, 3, 4, and 5 focus on reducing the cost of housing in New York City by cutting red tape, removing veto points, and speeding up the process to get permission to build apartments:

• Prop 2 creates a simpler and faster approval process for publicly funded affordable housing and speeds up affordable housing approvals in neighborhoods that haven’t built enough affordable homes.

• Prop 3 simplifies the permitting process for small housing and climate resilience projects.

• Prop 4 makes it easier for housing developments to get approved by creating a board of appeals that can re-review housing projects that get shot down by the city council.

• Prop 5 speeds up housing approvals by replacing the city’s cumbersome collection of 8,000 paper maps with a unified digital system for land management.

Given New York’s severe housing shortage, I strongly recommend voting YES on all four housing propositions to help get more homes built, and bring the cost of living down.

Early polling suggests that a majority of likely voters support the proposals, which is great news:

Even-year local elections

Proposition 6 switches New York’s elections for mayor, city council, and other municipal offices to even years.

This would almost certainly improve voter participation by placing these municipal elections on the same ballot paper as high-profile elections for president, congress, and governor.

Turnout in odd-year elections hovers around 20%. Aligning them with statewide and federal races in even-numbered years could triple participation, ensuring voters who primarily engage during federal elections (especially renters and younger New Yorkers) have a stronger say in shaping city government.

Given the importance of achieving high voter turnout for electing a truly representative government, I strongly recommend voting YES on proposition 6.

(Low importance) Upstate ski facilities

Proposition 1 allows some land within Adirondack Forest Preserve to be used for recreational and competitive activities, while also expanding the park by over 2000 acres.

The location in question is five hours drive from NYC, so this proposition will impact few city residents. The question only appears on our ballots because the park is defined in the State constitution, so a statewide vote is required to amend it.

The plan is supported by local conservation groups and elected officials alike. I see no harm in voting YES on proposition 1.

These proposals are a chance to build a more affordable, inclusive New York City.

Vote YES on all six propositions, and make your plan to have your say, either in person or by mail.

Vehicle crashes are one of the biggest threats to New Yorkers’ lives. In 2024, New York City endured 266 deaths and 54,137 injuries related to automobile crashes, almost all caused by dangerous driving.1

Traffic police aren’t enough to make New York’s drivers clean up their acts. But there are well-tested technological solutions: expanding the use of traffic safety cameras to fine careless drivers and encourage safer behavior behind the wheel.

The danger on our roads: vehicles

The numbers are clear. Over half of New York’s fatalities from vehicle crashes were pedestrians or cyclists, while 43% were drivers or passengers in a motor vehicle.

This is a huge death toll. To put those numbers in perspective, in all of 2024 New York City suffered 382 murders — or 70% as many deaths in car crashes as there were murders.2

Drivers are overwhelmingly at fault for these crashes. Motorist inattention, error, or impairment was listed by the NYPD as the primary cause of 89% of these pedestrian or cyclist fatalities and 94% of their injuries.3

Deterring dangerous driving

Although research shows that the “certainty of being caught” is key to stopping crime, New York’s drivers know that most rule-breaking goes unpunished. Unless a police officer personally witnesses an incident, motorists generally face no penalties for speeding, red-light running, failing to yield, or maneuvering carelessly. Traffic police can’t be everywhere, so scofflaws proceed unchallenged.

That’s where technology can come in: using traffic safety cameras, it actually is possible to monitor thousands of New York’s intersections, avenues, and highways simultaneously. Whenever dangerous driving is noticed, the Department of Transportation can send the vehicle owner a fine.

If we cover enough intersections with traffic safety cameras, then we can change driver behavior by making motorists believe they actually will face a penalty for driving dangerously.

New York already uses automatic traffic cameras

Over the years, New York has taken “baby steps” towards using cameras to automatically penalize dangerous driving.

New York City already has 2,200 speed cameras and 236 intersections have red light cameras.4 These cameras monitor for drivers who exceed the speed limit or blast through a red light. When they detect a dangerous driver, the Department of Transportation issues the vehicle owner a $50 fine through the mail.

In recent years, New York’s buses have also increasingly been equipped with cameras that automatically issue fines to vehicles that block bus lanes, bus stops, and bike lanes along the bus’s path. Around a fifth of the MTA’s buses have this technology, which issues fines that start at $50 and escalate to $250 for repeat violators.

These automatic cameras have been remarkably effective. In locations with speed cameras, rates of speeding have dropped by 94% since these cameras were first introduced in 2014.5 Similarly, at intersections with red light cameras, the rate of red light violations has declined by 73% since the cameras were first introduced in 1994.6 The MTA reports that on bus routes with automatic cameras, bus speeds have increased by 5% and collisions have reduced by 20%.7

Upping the ante with automatic traffic safety cameras

While New York’s existing systems of traffic cameras have been a big success, the bad news is that state law places major restrictions on New York City’s use of cameras to deter dangerous drivers:

• Limited coverage: At any time, at most 600 of New York City’s 13,000 intersections can be monitored by red light cameras. Speed cameras are only allowed within a quarter mile of a school. This leaves many parts of the city unprotected.

• Lax standards: New York’s speed cameras only issue fines to vehicles that exceed the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour. With the citywide speed limit of 25 mph, that means the cameras actually allow driving 40% faster than the speed limit in most areas.

• Few laws enforced: Big categories of unsafe driving — such as failing to yield to pedestrians, turning recklessly, and blocking intersections after the traffic signal turns red — aren’t accounted for in the current automated enforcement systems.

These restrictions are legal limitations, not technical constraints. If our politicians wanted to, we could roll out traffic safety cameras at every major intersection in New York. And these cameras at intersections and on buses could track all types of dangerous driving, not just red light running and speeding, and bus-blocking. Recent advances in artificial intelligence and camera quality have now unlocked the technical ability to reprimand drivers who break any traffic safety law, without needing police involvement.

The politics of safer streets

The politics of New York City’s traffic safety are tough, though. The city relies on powers under state law to operate traffic safety cameras — which means that state legislators far beyond the city’s borders get a say about how we keep our streets safe.

Most state legislators who represent New York City and urban areas upstate are strong supporters of traffic safety cameras, while lawmakers representing suburban Long Island and upstate rural districts are opponents.

This was evident during recent votes to increase the number of red light cameras and reauthorize speed cameras in New York City. The original attempt to increase the red light camera cap from 150 to 1,350 intersections failed. Ultimately legislators compromised to allow the city to operate red light cameras at 600 intersections.

Opponents of traffic safety cameras argue, in essence, that they want drivers to be able to drive quickly and not face penalties. They complain about the burden of fines, while ignoring that only speeders and red light runners have to pay these costs.

My hope is that traffic safety cameras can win over opponents by anchoring in the facts: deaths and injuries from vehicle crashes are a big deal, and New York City’s experience shows they can reliably be prevented using traffic safety cameras. Those saved lives and eliminated injuries are worth far more than dangerous drivers reaching their destinations several minutes faster.

We have the technology to effectively discourage dangerous driving — if we can persuade legislators across the state to allow New York City to embrace these lifesaving approaches.

• Six months after New York launched America’s first congestion charge, we’re seeing huge positive impacts: reduced travel times, faster buses, fewer car crashes, and less street noise.

• To reap even greater benefits, we should raise the fees for driving in Manhattan’s core and create additional congestion pricing zones across the city. Now is the time to start this important work.

Manhattan’s congestion pricing program has been an enormous success, as reported across many news outlets (NYT, Bloomberg, AMNY, Curbed, Streetsblog, The Economist).

Charging a $9 toll to drive in Manhattan below 60th Street has had a big impact. Since tolling started in January of this year, we’ve seen:

• Fewer cars and less congestion: Roughly 76,000 fewer vehicles are entering the Manhattan toll zone each day, which is about a 12% drop in traffic volume.1 The time wasted in traffic jams in Manhattan each week has reduced by 25%. Congestion has reduced 9% across the whole NYC region, including a 10% reduction in traffic delays in the Bronx and a 14% reduction in New Jersey's Bergen County.2

• Faster buses: Bus routes that traverse rivers are moving much faster, with buses crossing the Holland Tunnel 48% faster, the Lincoln Tunnel 17% faster, and the Williamsburg Bridge 34% faster. Within the toll zone, local buses are rolling 3% quicker.3

• Better quality of life: Car crashes and injuries are down 14% in the toll zone, and down 9% citywide. Honking complaints are down 45%, and double-parking violations are down 4%. In the toll zone, 33% fewer school buses are reaching their destinations late (while elsewhere in the city, school bus punctuality is unchanged).4

• More funding for transit: The toll is on-track to raise $500 million this year for transit upgrades, including subway station elevators/escalators, new signals for faster and more reliable trips, and extending the Second Avenue subway to 125th Street.

• No signs of economic harm: Broadway theater bookings are unchanged, and restaurant reservations on OpenTable are up 7%. Retail sales appear to be up, and the number of people working from an office in the toll zone on an average weekday increased by 6.6%.5 Of course, it’s hard to know what would have happened if congestion pricing hadn’t happened, but the data we’re seeing is positive.

Now is the time for New York to go even bolder with congestion pricing. The three big levers I see to supercharge the toll’s impact are to:

• Raise the overall toll price to further motivate drivers to switch to transit and discourage low-value trips

• Increase tolls on taxis, Ubers, and Lyfts, to fix the surprisingly low per-trip tolls that we currently charge on this large share of Manhattan’s vehicles

• Create additional toll zones, to expand congestion pricing’s effects to Upper Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn

I’ll walk through these ideas, and explain the political and procedural mechanics of how we can implement these bold steps to build a more thriving city.

Raising Manhattan’s toll

Charging drivers higher toll prices would further provide even more incentive for drivers to switch to transit and avoid unessential drives into Manhattan. In turn, this would compound the benefits we’ve already been seeing.

The current toll for a standard car that enters Manhattan below 60th Street is $9 per day, with lower rates for motorbikes and higher charges for trucks. Overnight, tolls get reduced to 25% of their daytime rate.

These tolls are set to automatically increase by $3 in 2028, and by a further $3 in 2031, for a total car toll of $15 per day. These pre-planned increases will bolster the positive impacts of the $9 toll.6

These planned increases are great, but we should go further, faster. To get even speedier buses, less congested streets, and a more livable Manhattan, a bold government could accelerate these planned increases and continue to push the toll higher. The original environmental assessment for congestion pricing considered prices as high as $23 per car per day, and one academic at SUNY Stony Brook even suggests that $50-$80 per day would be the sweet spot.

How to raise the congestion pricing toll

Procedurally, adjusting toll rates is straightforward. The law allows the MTA board to change toll rates at any time, up to the $23 limit considered in the environmental review (and so long as the MTA collects enough money to support $15 billion in bonds for transit projects).

Politically, getting the MTA to increase the congestion pricing fee essentially requires the support of the governor and the mayor, who appoint a majority of the MTA board’s members.7 As time goes on, public opinion about congestion pricing appears to be improving, with support strongest among Manhattanites and transit riders.

Make ride-hails & taxis pay their fair share

Taxis and app-based for-hire vehicles (like Uber and Lyft) dominate Manhattan’s streets — on a typical weekday they account for between 35% and 50% of vehicles on the road.8 Yet the congestion charge that applies to these vehicles is a rounding error on most rides, and currently not enough to meaningfully shift rider behavior.

Currently, all rides that begin, end, or pass through Manhattan’s congestion zone are tolled $0.75 for taxis and $1.50 for Ubers/Lyfts. These vehicles are charged a per-trip fee that’s added to the rider’s fare, unlike the daily toll for private vehicles.9

These fees are too small. For many taxi and Uber trips, the congestion fee is smaller than the normal fluctuations of a trip’s price, on average amounting to just 3.4% of a taxi fare and 4.3% of an Uber/Lyft ride.10 Taxis already add $0.70 per minute the car is stopped or rolling slower than 12mph; so a single long red light can swing the fare by more than the congestion surcharge.11 Thanks to congestion pricing, cabs are moving faster, so total fares may even be lower now than before congestion pricing kicked in.

To further clear up Manhattan’s congestion, New York’s government should raise the congestion fee for taxis and ride-hailing services to a level that truly incentivizes riders to switch to alternative ways of getting around.

Why should a taxi rider pay a congestion charge of only $0.75 for a trip that a driver of a private vehicle would pay $9 for? It’s a question of fairness, and a question actually making a dent in Manhattan’s ride-hail and taxi gridlock.

How to raise the taxi toll

Fortunately, the process to increase the congestion price for taxis and for-hire vehicles is just the same as for private vehicles, discussed above. All that’s required is for the MTA board to agree to increase the charge, which can then immediately go into effect.

Creating additional congestion pricing zones

Tolling Manhattan’s core has shown that congestion pricing works, but this isn’t the only area that suffers from dense traffic. Let’s bring the relief uptown and across the river by establishing new congestion pricing zones in Upper Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn.

It’s important that we create new congestion pricing zones, rather than just expand the current zone. Private vehicles are only charged when they enter the zone, so if we just expanded the current boundaries we’d then miss out on tolling the trips that stay within the zone’s borders.

Upper Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn are obvious candidates for new zones: they have a high density of residential/commercial activity, plentiful transit, and streets clogged with vehicles. The Upper Manhattan zone would stretch from the current zone’s 60th Street boundary up to either 125th Street, or all the way to the top of Manhattan. I’m less familiar with Downtown Brooklyn, but I imagine the area enclosed by the BQE, Atlantic Ave, and Ashland Place would be a good place to start.

We’d set the toll for these new zones lower than the rate for the Manhattan core, but still enough to deter some driving and raise millions for transit upgrades.

A hard path to launching new congestion zones

The process to create new toll zones is long and complicated, which is all the more reason why now is the time to get started. Lawmakers in Albany will need to pass a law defining the new zones’ boundaries, the governor will need to approve it, and then there’ll be a multi-year environmental review, plus sign-off from the federal government.

Related: Even projects that are obviously good for the environment get stuck with years of costly environmental reviews. It doesn’t have to be this way.

The Trump administration has sought to kill the existing congestion pricing zone, so it’s unlikely that additional toll zones will receive federal approval during the current presidential term.

However, given the multi-year legislative and review process at the state level, now is the perfect time to get started. That way whenever a more amenable administration controls the White House, New York will already be prepared to ask Washington for the green light.

Ask and you shall receive

If you want to double-down on congestion pricing, now is the time to let your elected officials know. Congestion pricing has many vocal critics, but few people speak up when they feel the status quo is working well. Elected officials value input from their constituents.

I’ve called the offices of my state assembly member and state senator to let them know I support congestion pricing, and wish we would charge higher rates and launch additional toll zones. Just find your representatives’ details, and give them a 30 second call. You can email them, too.

Contact your state representatives

This is a chance to embrace what’s already working well, and take congestion pricing to the next level — for faster buses, more livable streets, and a city that thrives.

New York’s Charter Revision Commission is a powerful entity that can propose changes to the structure and distribution of powers within the city’s government. The current incarnation of the Commission, appointed by the mayor in late 2024, is considering a slate of changes that will likely appear on New Yorkers’ ballots alongside the November 2025 general election.

This is a huge opportunity to reshape New York for the better. Seizing this chance to improve our city, I testified at last week’s Charter Revision Commission hearing, urging the commissioners to adopt common-sense charter amendments that will help make housing cheaper and strengthen our democracy.

Two headline ideas I pushed for are:

• Making housing cheaper by streamlining housing approvals to cut time and cost from building homes. I suggested allowing staff at the Department of City Planning to sign-off on small housing projects, creating an expedited review path for housing projects that modestly change the size of what’s already built, and consolidating duplicative stages of the review process.

• Strengthening our democracy by rescheduling city elections to the even-numbered years (aligning state and federal elections) and having a single ranked-choice general election that’s open to all candidates (rather than having separate party primary elections).

These may feel wonky, but how we decide what can be built and the way choose our leaders has a big impact on whether New York's future will be livable, affordable, and thriving — or not.

Here’s the video of my testimony (transcript below):

Hi, my name is Sebastian Hallum Clarke, and I live on the Upper East Side. I’m a member of a Manhattan community board, speaking tonight on my own behalf and not as a representative of the board.

Tonight I want to speak about housing and democracy, building on the proposals you’ve been discussing.

Housing

We need streamlined ULURP reviews, to build more homes, and make housing cheaper.

So, streamlined reviews: Currently, many housing developments get separately reviewed by a community board, a borough president, the planning commission, the city council, and the mayor. This is super slow and expensive. Every day we can shave off these reviews is a day closer we can be to solving our housing emergency.

To build more homes, we need to fast-track as many housing projects as we can, create one-stop zoning-administrator reviews, and compress the ULURP review process as much as possible. I say we combine the Community Board and Borough President review stages, and give more weight to citywide or boroughwide elected officials over the views of individual city council members.

Let’s streamline reviews, to build more homes, and make housing cheaper.

Elections

We all want a robust democratic process, where every New Yorker’s voice can be heard.

The problem is that the high frequency of elections leads to voter fatigue and low turnout. I counted, and New Yorkers have been summoned to the polls ten times in the past four years. It’s too much.

To fix this, we should move our municipal elections to even years and replace party primaries with a single, open, ranked-choice general election. Then, with one consequential trip to the polls every four years, every New Yorker can have their say about who runs our city.

With this Charter Revision, let’s streamline our elections and make every vote count.

And on housing, let’s streamline the process to build more homes and make housing cheaper.

Thank you.

The Charter Revision Commission will continue to consult with experts and receive public testimony through at least mid-July. They’ll then decide on specific reforms to put to voters alongside the next election.

These municipal primary elections are the single biggest opportunity for voters to influence the future of our city. For most of our city’s elected positions, it’s almost guaranteed that the Democratic Party nominee will win the November general election. And the victors in these elections will go on to run a government with over 300,000 employees, a budget larger than 48 states, and influence over almost every facet of New Yorkers’ lives.

An awesome thing about New York City’s democracy is that we use ranked-choice voting. For each position, you get to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. When the votes are counted, if your favorite candidate gets eliminated, then your vote will transfer to your second-choice candidate, and so on. This allows New Yorkers to support several candidates in each race, without fear of wasting votes on less popular contenders.

Ranked-choice voting means you need to develop opinions about several candidates in each race, which takes a lot of work. To ease that burden, here are my recommendations of who to vote for in some of the most important and hotly contested races across the city:

By the way, if you’re new here, welcome! I’m Sebastian. I write this newsletter about how New York works, and opportunities to make this city even greater. I want New York to be a more affordable, prosperous, safe, and livable place to call home. Beyond this blog, I volunteer on my local community board and I work in tech.

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What I’m looking for from our candidates

I’ve assessed each candidate based on their past actions and current policy platform. My framework looks for candidates who will:

• Run the government effectively, with integrity, analytical rigor, and a love for what makes NYC special.

• Make housing cheaper through pragmatic plans to build more homes and reduce existing buildings’ operating costs.

• Make getting around our city easier, faster, safer, more reliable, and more accessible for pedestrians, transit riders, and people of all levels of mobility.

• Have well-reasoned and pro-urban positions on public safety, use of public space, trash, education, tax, the environment, and caring for people in need — without engaging in magical thinking.

For me, these are the most important lenses to evaluate candidates through. No candidate is perfect, and you might have different issue priorities, but I hope this assessment helps you be better informed about who to support.

Mayor

#1. Zellnor Myrie is my clear top candidate for mayor because he has the most ambitious and realistic plan to make housing cheaper by building more homes. He’s solid on transportation, and has sensible plans to improve police staffing and solve more crimes. I’ve met him, and he clearly loves this city. He currently represents part of Brooklyn in the State Senate, and previously was a legislative director for a City Council member.

#2. Brad Lander is a strong second-best mayoral candidate because of his deep knowledge of city government, his commitment to building more homes, and his ambitious transportation plans. I appreciate his vigorous support for congestion pricing and making property tax fairer. He is currently NYC’s comptroller and previously represented parts of Brooklyn in the City Council.

#3. Adrienne Adams is my third-ranked mayoral candidate because of her experience with city government and record on housing. As speaker of the City Council, she navigated the passage into law of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity upzoning reforms. I’ve not loved her take on transportation policy, which reflects her base representing a car-centric outer Queens district in the Council.

#4. Whitney Tilson is my fourth choice, given his policy positions on housing and improving government service delivery. He has not previously held elected office, and has worked in finance.

I recommend against ranking either Andrew Cuomo or Zohran Mamdani on your mayoral ballot.

• As Governor, Andrew Cuomo was underwhelming on housing, ineffective on transit, and defined by scandal. His record shows little interest in reducing the cost of living. His campaign’s housing plan is garbled and unserious. He opposes upzoning in low-density neighborhoods, which are the very places most capable of housing more New Yorkers. On transit, Cuomo starved the MTA of funds and micromanaged its leaders. His governorship ended in disgrace after the COVID-era nursing home data coverup and multiple sexual harassment allegations.

• Zohran Mamdani’s plans will seriously hurt New York, despite being superficially attractive. Mamdani has stridently opposed constructing new market-rate homes, preferring instead to build a smaller number of government-subsidized apartments at huge taxpayer cost. His signature transit proposal—fare‑free buses—would strip $650 million annually from the MTA, likely forcing less frequent service and greater crowding, rather than improving speed, reliability, or safety.

In addition to these recommendations, The City newspaper has a great quiz to help identify the mayoral candidates who most closely align with your preferences.

Comptroller

The comptroller is New York City’s chief financial watchdog: they audit every agency, sign off on contracts, and manage the city’s pension funds. When they do their job well, your tax dollars stretch further, waste is exposed, and the mayor’s policies face an independent, data‑driven check.

#1. Mark Levine is my clear top candidate for comptroller because of his record supporting housing construction, and his clever financing ideas to build even more. He’s been a champion of policies that keep New York moving, like congestion pricing, bus lanes, and accessibility upgrades. He is currently Manhattan’s Borough President. Levine previously served in the City Council, as a public school teacher, and as the founder of a neighborhood credit union.

#2. Justin Brannan is a distant second choice for comptroller. He’s an experienced chair of the City Council’s finance committee, and he knows city government well. Brannan supported City of Yes reforms to build more homes, but he exempted his own low-density Brooklyn neighborhood from these upzonings. If for whatever reason Mark Levine doesn’t win, Justin Brannan would make a fine comptroller.

To dive deeper into the race for comptroller, I suggest watching the excellent debate between Levine and Brannan hosted by the New York Law School in March.

Borough President

Each of New York’s five boroughs has a president. They advocate for borough-wide needs and influence how the borough’s land gets used.

Manhattan Borough President

#1. Keith Powers is my clear favorite for Manhattan Borough President because of his track record on housing. He was a key player in passing the City of Yes housing reforms, enabling office-to-residential conversions, and building more homes in Midtown Manhattan. He’s supported expanding bus lanes, outdoor dining, and cleaning up sidewalk scaffolding. Powers currently represents much of Manhattan’s East Side in the City Council, and I hosted a fundraiser for him last year.

#2. Brad Hoylman-Sigal is a distant second choice for Manhattan Borough President. He’s a credible State Senator who has led the charge on a variety of health, LGBT, and tenant rights issues (among others). He has a much weaker track record than Powers on building more homes, but nevertheless Hoylman-Sigal would be an adequate alternative if needed.

Brooklyn Borough President

#1. Antonio Reynoso is my favorite to be re-elected as Brooklyn’s Borough President. He’s taken concrete action to lower the cost of living, by supporting the passage of the City of Yes reforms.

No credible challenger is on the ballot, so I recommend only ranking Reynoso.

City Council

Only a handful of New York’s 51 city council districts have competitive races this year. You can see which district you’re in using this map.

I’m giving recommendations for Manhattan’s districts 1 and 4. Elsewhere, I suggest following the endorsements by Open New York and Abundance New York.

City Council District 1 (Lower Manhattan, map)

#1. Jess Coleman is my top recommendation for District 1. He supports building more homes, having better transit, and a generally abundance-minded vision of New York’s future. He’s trying to unseat an incumbent, Christopher Marte, who has stridently opposed legalizing construction of more homes, opposed congestion pricing, and opposed outdoor dining.

#2. Elizabeth Lewinsohn is my distant second-place choice. She is more tepid than Coleman on opportunities to reduce the cost of living, but appears to be far better than Marte.

City Council District 4 (Manhattan’s East Side, map)

I live in District 4, so I’ve been paying especially close attention to this race, which has five well-funded, serious candidates. I’ve also run an opinion poll of the race, which showed that a huge portion of likely voters remain undecided.

#1. Ben Wetzler and #2 Virginia Maloney are my clear favorite candidates for District 4. In my discussions with them, they both embrace building more homes as a key solution to making New York a more affordable place to live. They have rigorous, analytical approaches to evaluating problems and solutions. I especially like Wetzler’s detailed and pragmatic plans on housing and public safety.

#3. Rachel Storch is another experienced candidate who acknowledges the importance of building more homes and has reasonable positions on other safety, and education. I haven’t seen her say anything about transit policy.

#4. Vanessa Aronson identifies the cost of living as a major issue, and housing costs as a big part of that. She seems better prepared than the final candidate, Faith Bondy, who doesn’t currently mention housing, land use, or transportation on her campaign website.

How to vote

Make sure you’re registered to vote at your current home address. Then, either vote by mail (everyone’s eligible!) or find your in-person voting location. In-person early voting is available from June 14th to 22nd, and election day is June 24th.

Let’s go elect a great slate of officials, and build towards an even greater New York.

• 63% couldn’t name a single candidate they intend to support.

• Just 21% could name more than one candidate — a problem in a ranked‑choice system that asks you to list up to five.

These figures come from a small sample (0.35% of likely voters), but they confirm what I’ve been feeling on the street: no consensus has formed. That void is in stark contrast with the huge amount of cash going into the campaigns: $1.5 million raised so far, or about $60 for every voter who turned out last cycle.

In this post, I’ll break down the results of the Third Avenue Institute’s latest poll, and what District 4 can teach us about city elections more broadly.

The Race for the East Side

City Council District 4 covers parts of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Midtown East, and Stuyvesant Town. Since 2018, the district has been represented by council member Keith Powers, who has reached his term limit and is running to be Manhattan’s borough president. The district is home to 177,000 residents; 102,000 are registered voters.1 In the most recent major city primary election, in 2021, 24,000 people voted in District 4.2

Six candidates are vying for the Democratic party’s nomination — which all but guarantees victory in the November general election. Between private campaign contributions and public matching funds, five candidates have each raised over $250,000.3

The election is on June 24th, and early voting starts on June 14th. New York uses a ranked-choice voting system for city primary elections. Voters list up to five candidates in the order of preference. Everyone’s first‑choice votes are counted; if nobody tops 50%, the last‑place candidate is eliminated and those ballots move to their next pick. The cycle repeats until only one candidate remains, who wins.

An Undecided District

The Third Avenue Institute surveyed 84 verified District 4 registered Democrats who voted in the 2021 city primary election, according to official records. These are highly engaged voters, who are most likely to turn out again. To ensure representativeness, poll responses were reweighted according to the overall age and sex breakdown of the district’s voters.

Even the most reliable voters don’t yet know who they plan to support. Only 37% of voters knew who they would vote for, and only 21% were prepared to rank more than one candidate on their ballot.

Among the voters who do know their preferences, Virginia Maloney appears to be leading the race, with 38% of first-choice votes. This is not surprising, as Maloney has a big name-recognition advantage: her mother, Carolyn Maloney, was the area’s Congresswoman for 30 years.

Nevertheless, the District 4 City Council race remains competitive, with four other candidates each garnering between 21% and 12% of first-choice votes in the Third Avenue Institute's poll. With the right campaign messaging, any candidate could win this race, especially if they are able to win enough second- and third-choice votes.

The poll indicates that public safety is a critical topic for voters, with 42% listing it as their most important issue. The cost of housing is second-highest, at 20%.

The Invisible Race

I’m surprised how few District 4 voters have made up their minds. The first candidate entered the race over a year ago. In recent months, campaigns have been out there shaking hands, knocking on doors, dialing the phones, and trying to connect with residents. You’d think that $60+ per likely voter would be buying a lot of mailers, posters, and ads.

Yet, from walking around the district, it would be easy to be completely oblivious about the upcoming election. There’s very little election signage, and our letterbox hasn’t received any fliers from candidates. Most political news is focused on the mayoral election and federal issues in Washington.

Even for a dedicated voter, it takes a lot of effort to study candidates’ campaign materials and develop your own preferences. A few local news outlets have mentioned the race, but there’s been little coverage of the stakes of the contest and how voters should conceptualize the candidates.

The Home Stretch

The race for District 4 will come down to the final weeks of the campaign. Endorsements will likely be critical, as these give voters a shortcut to identify which candidates are strongest on the issues they personally care about most.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share a voter guide here on Sidewalk Chorus, identifying the candidates I recommend voting for in District 4 and across the city to build a more affordable, thriving city.

In the interim, make sure you’re registered to vote at your current address, and consider signing up to vote-by-mail if that would be more convenient for you.

That’s one reason I was so excited to visit Barcelona earlier this year. Spain’s second-largest city has made impressive progress in retrofitting pedestrian-priority streets, parklets, and plazas into its dense urban fabric. The result is a city full of calm, beautiful spaces where people feel welcome.

From my visit, I noted three design principles that make Barcelona’s pedestrian-priority streets especially effective and enjoyable:

• Comfortable and lively public spaces, with seating, plants, cafés, and playgrounds.

• Smart street layouts that discourage through-traffic but still allow vehicle access for local needs.

• A unified, flat surface across the street, making it feel like a pedestrian zone even when vehicles are present.

In this post, I’ll break down these design strategies and explore how New York could take inspiration from these approaches.

Comfortable, Welcoming Street Furniture

Barcelona’s public spaces start with simple additions: benches and plants. These give people a reason to linger—whether to rest, chat, or watch the world go by. The greenery adds visual appeal and softens the environment.

New York does this well in some parks and plazas, but many of our pedestrianized streets and avenues lack basic seating. You’ll often find plenty of space to walk, but nowhere to sit. Adding more benches and planters would be a low-cost way to make our streets more inviting.

Discouraging Through-Traffic Without Banning Cars

A core goal of any pedestrianization project is to reduce the disruption and danger caused by vehicles. But cities still need vehicle access—whether for people with limited mobility, deliveries, or service vehicles.

Barcelona handles this tension beautifully. Pedestrian-priority streets are still open to cars, but the road network is designed so that driving through these areas is slow and inconvenient. Speed limits are just 10 km/h (about 6 mph), and streets are laid out to loop back on themselves, making them poor choices for through-traffic. As a result, only drivers with a specific destination on the street tend to enter.

Here’s a diagram showing how the one-way loop system in the Eixample neighborhood discourages cut-through driving on pedestrian-priority streets (in green):

On these streets, cars can stop briefly to pick up or drop off passengers. During the day, trucks and vans can park for up to 30 minutes to load or unload goods.1 But private car parking is not allowed, further discouraging unnecessary driving.

New York has attempted to reduce vehicle presence around the city with mixed success. In small areas the city has managed to fully exclude vehicles: Times Square, parts of Broadway, slivers of Meatpacking, etc. Elsewhere, the city has supported temporary exclusions of vehicles, such as Open Streets and Summer Streets programs. These temporary exclusions have typically relied on staffed barricades to keep cars out, which has been very expensive and limited their expansion.2

One Level, One Message: This Space Is for People

What really sets Barcelona apart is how the entire street feels like it belongs to pedestrians. Instead of having raised sidewalks and a sunken roadway, the entire width of the street is paved at one level using attractive paving stones.

This uniform surface makes it easy for people to walk freely and comfortably across the street. At the same time, vehicles have to drive up a curb ramp when entering the zone, which reinforces the message: you’re entering a pedestrian space. The design communicates that vehicles are guests here, not the default user.

New York's recent pedestrianization projects in recent years have often resorted to painting the roadway, but maintaining the pre-pedestrianization elevated sidewalk and lower roadbed. This leaves pedestrians feeling like an afterthought, trying to make-do with our converted car-focused infrastructure. Here's an example on Broadway in Manhattan:

How Could New York Make This Work?

New York is not Barcelona, and we shouldn’t try to copy Spain’s approach wholesale. Our street grid, traffic volumes, and infrastructure are different in important ways. But there’s still a lot we can learn—and adapt.

While Manhattan’s avenues carry too much traffic for full pedestrianization, many residential cross-streets offer real potential. Imagine if we selected a few of these blocks and redesigned them as pedestrian-priority zones: calm, green, welcoming spaces where people come first.

Inspired by Barcelona, we could re-route traffic on pedestrian-priority blocks to discourage through-drivers while preserving local vehicle access. Potentially, we could do this by flipping the one-way traffic direction on an individual block. Drivers could still pick up or drop off passengers and goods, but wouldn’t use the block to reach destinations beyond. The layout would send a clear message: this is a place for people, not a shortcut.

Lower speed limits, wide flat paving, and simple additions like benches, planters, and play equipment would make these streets places to gather and enjoy—not just pass through.

A Little Courage Can Go a Long Way

Look back at Street View, and you’ll see that the Barcelona blocks I photographed were filled with cars as recently as 2022. Just two years later, they’ve become places of joy and vibrancy—full of life, greenery, and conversation.

That kind of transformation doesn’t require sweeping citywide mandates. It just takes one neighborhood willing to try something new—supported by the Department of Transportation, a local community board, or a neighborhood association. The real shift is in mindset: a willingness to rethink how our streets serve us and to test small, meaningful upgrades.

New York has always been a city of reinvention. Our streets don’t have to stay the way they are—we can make them greener, calmer, and more welcoming. The enthusiasm for New York’s Open Streets and Summer Streets programs shows that New Yorkers are eager for pedestrian-friendly spaces. The key is to find ways to make these pedestrian zones durable and permanent, rather than labor-intensive pop-ups.

Barcelona shows us what’s possible: streets that are lively, not loud; green, not gray; and above all, made for people. Let’s bring that spirit home. Even one block at a time.

Before this, I’d never even attended a political fundraiser, let alone hosted one. But I believed in Keith’s work — especially his leadership on housing abundance — and I wanted to do something tangible to help his campaign. When his team put out a call for supporters to host events, we decided to go for it.

I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. Would people actually show up? Would our friends be willing to donate? Would the event even be worth Keith’s time? But despite those uncertainties, the night was a huge success. Our living room was packed with engaged New Yorkers, the conversation was lively, and by the end, we’d raised thousands of dollars for a campaign we believe in.

If you’ve ever wanted to get involved in local politics but weren’t sure where to start, hosting a fundraiser is easier — and more impactful — than you might think. Here’s what I learned from the experience.

What Is a Political Houseparty?

At its core, a houseparty fundraiser is exactly what it sounds like: a supporter invites friends, family, and colleagues to their home for an informal event with a political candidate. Guests typically donate in advance (or at the door), and the event serves as both a fundraising tool and a chance for attendees to meet the candidate in a more personal setting.

For candidates, houseparties are a way to build grassroots support, raise money, and engage directly with voters in a low-key setting. For attendees, it’s an opportunity to actually talk to someone who might end up in office—not just hear their speeches, but ask them real questions and share their views face-to-face. For hosts, it’s a chance to draw attention to candidates they believe in and foster political engagement among friends.

New York City’s campaign finance matching program makes small donations incredibly powerful. When a city resident donates to a local candidate, the city matches their contribution 8-to-1. That means if you give just $10, the campaign actually receives $90. This system helps candidates rely less on big-money donors and more on everyday supporters—making grassroots fundraisers like houseparties a highly effective way to raise money.

The Hardest Part: Getting People to Show Up

Once we committed to hosting the event, we quickly realized the biggest challenge wasn’t picking a date or designing an invite—it was turnout. I wanted to make sure we had enough guests to make it a worthwhile event for Keith while also being careful not to unduly pressure friends into attending something they weren’t interested in.

I ended up tailoring my outreach carefully for each friend, colleague, or family member I invited:

• If someone wasn’t very familiar with NYC politics, I explained what the role of a Borough President is.

• If they hadn’t previously heard of Keith, I shared some reasons why I support him.

• If I knew they were already politically engaged, I framed the event as an opportunity to directly chat with Keith.

Ultimately, we invited around 80 people, and about 25 showed up—a solid turnout, especially since some who couldn’t attend still donated. The lesson here? Political organizing is personal. I think most of our attendees wouldn’t normally attend a political event, but because I personally explained the relevance to their lives, a bunch of people were willing to spend their evening with us.

One thing I didn’t expect was how much effort it took to craft all the personalized invitations. Next time we host something like this, I might try drafting some templates that I copy and paste to help lighten the load.

The Party: Casual, Yet Inspiring

The night of the event, we kept things simple: drinks, Indian finger foods from Jackson Heights, and a relaxed atmosphere in our living room for guests to mingle. Keith’s fundraising manager arrived early to help us set up, and as guests trickled in the conversations naturally shifted to city politics—transit, housing, affordability. Our light catering worked well, and a crowd favorite was the “Powers Punch” cocktail my wife mixed up.

When Keith arrived, he worked the room, chatting with guests in small groups. After about 30 minutes, I caught the room’s attention and gave a quick introduction. I thanked everyone for coming and thanked Keith for his work on the City Council. Then, I handed the floor over to him.

Keith gave a speech outlining why he was running, what he hoped to accomplish, and how he saw the Borough President’s role in shaping Manhattan’s future. But the best part of the night was the Q&A. Guests asked thoughtful questions about housing, transportation, and the challenges facing the city. Keith answered candidly, showing a deep understanding of the issues and vision for our city’s future.

The Impact: More Than Just Money

By the end of the night, our houseparty raised $8,156 for Keith’s campaign – made up of $1,116 of individual donations and $7,040 of matching city funds.1 At that stage in his campaign, our event accounted for 1.6% of Keith’s total fundraising, which I’m pretty proud of!2 Our guests’ contributions ranged from $1 to $200, with a median size of $25. Thanks to NYC’s public matching program, these dollars stretch much further, helping to fund outreach, campaign materials, and staff salaries as Keith builds toward the June 2025 primary.

But the real impact went beyond the money. We helped introduce a group of friends to local politics in a way that felt personal and meaningful.

For many of our guests, this was their first time meeting a politician in person. More than half of our donors had never given to a New York City campaign before. Some arrived unsure about what a Borough President even does; by the end of the night, they were engaged in real discussions about city policy with a key decision-maker. That felt like a real win.

Hosting a fundraiser doesn’t just help the candidate; it builds your own influence in the local political scene. If you ever want to advocate for an issue down the line, you’ll have already built relationships with elected officials and engaged citizens.

Politics feels very remote to many Americans. The barrage of political news — especially at the federal level — can easily leave you feeling powerless. But hosting this fundraiser reminded me how accessible local government really can be. If you care about an issue, you can meet the local officials who are shaping the present and future of our city. If you want to get a candidate elected, you don’t have to be a major donor — you can just open your home and rally your friends together.

Would I Do It Again? Absolutely.

This experience showed me that you don’t need to be a millionaire or a political insider to host a successful fundraiser. You just need:

• A candidate you believe in.

• A space to bring people together, typically with some light food and drinks.

• A willingness to reach out across your networks to invite attendees.

If you think you can check off all three boxes, then all you need to do is contact your preferred candidate by email or social media to get the ball rolling.

In New York, fundraising typically kicks off 6-9 months before the corresponding primary election. Reaching out to a candidate early in the campaign cycle with an offer to host a houseparty gives you the opportunity to have the biggest impact; the earlier the funds are raised, the better the campaign can optimize their spending.

Houseparty fundraising for the 2025 city elections has now largely wrapped up – but some candidates may still be fundraising, so don’t hesitate to reach out. The next big opportunity for hosting houseparties will be the 2026 elections for state assembly and state senate. The primaries for those state legislative elections are expected to be held in June 2026, so fundraising will likely begin in fall 2025.

If you’ve ever considered hosting a political event but felt unsure, I can say firsthand: it’s worth it, and it’s surprisingly easy. It’s a chance to bring new people into the fold, build stronger civic connections, and have real conversations about the future of our city.

And as it turns out, it’s also a pretty great excuse to throw a party.

As someone who serves on a community board, I’ve seen this dynamic firsthand. Compared to the average New Yorker, the voices in the room tend to be older, more conservative, more likely to own a home, and far more likely to own a car. Elected officials often hear more from the loudest and most organized constituencies than from the public at large. Inevitably, this flows through to policy and the laws that shape our lives.

That’s why polling is essential. By directly soliciting the opinions of randomly sampled voters, it's possible to hear from a much more representative spectrum of New Yorkers. While this issue polling is commonly done on the national level, the specific opinions of NYC residents are rarely studied. Several pollsters report on voting intentions, but there's a dearth of research on policy areas like housing, transportation, and the public realm.1 With good polling, however, it's possible for politicians and policymakers to more clearly hear the true preferences of their constituents — and better craft government to serve us all.

Introducing the Third Avenue Institute

Seeing this gap in our politics, I decided to take action. Rather than waiting for someone else to address the issue, I realized that anyone can conduct an opinion poll—you just have to roll up your sleeves and do it!

That’s why I’ve founded the Third Avenue Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization dedicated to regularly polling New Yorkers on key policy issues that shape the city’s present and future. I’ll be driving the Institute’s research program alongside my writing here at Sidewalk Chorus (and, of course, my day job!).

Unveiling our first poll: What New Yorkers Really Think About Congestion Pricing

To put this theory into practice, the Third Avenue Institute conducted a survey in January 2025 on one of the city’s most controversial contemporary policies: congestion pricing. The poll results tell a fascinating story about who benefits from the policy and who opposes it.

Overall, New York City voters are evenly split: 45% support congestion pricing, while 46% oppose it.

But when we break down the numbers, clear patterns emerge.

• Transit users, pedestrians, and cyclists strongly support congestion pricing. Two-thirds of this group (66%) back the policy, recognizing that reduced traffic congestion makes the city more livable and helps fund public transportation improvements.

• Drivers, unsurprisingly, oppose the tolls. A full 79% of drivers oppose congestion pricing. Their frustration is unsurprising: they’re the ones paying the tolls, even if they're also the beneficiaries of reduced congestion.

• Manhattanites are the most supportive, while outer-borough residents are more resistant. A majority of Manhattan residents (57%) support congestion pricing, while opposition is strongest in the Bronx and Staten Island, where car dependence is higher.

These results illustrate a key reality: congestion pricing is popular among those who experience its benefits, but deeply unpopular among those who bear its costs. A crucial open question is whether support will increase over time. In other cities with similar programs—like London and Stockholm—opposition was high before implementation, but support grew as the benefits became clear. If New York follows the same pattern, we could see more residents embracing the policy once they experience faster buses, less gridlock, and better-funded subway service.

Read the full analysis of the results here:

Third Avenue Institute's Newsroom

Manhattanites & Transit Riders Strongly Support NYC Congestion Pricing, New Poll Finds

NEW YORK, NY — A new survey from the Third Avenue Institute finds that New York City voters are deeply divided on congestion pricing, with support highest among Manhattan residents and transit users, and strong opposition among drivers. The poll, conducted from January 13th to 31st, 2025, surveyed 264 registered voters across the five boroughs…

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a year ago

Looking ahead

My plan for the Third Avenue Institute is to continue regular polls on congestion pricing, and expand to other topics that matter to New Yorkers. I want to investigate sentiment on outdoor dining and subway safety. I care a lot about housing policy, and I'd love suggestions for specific research questions on that topic.

Polls are imperfect. People with stronger opinions are more likely to respond. In running the congestion pricing poll, I struggled with many of my survey invitation emails getting caught in spam filters. Some of these issues can be overcome with statistical weighting. But beyond the logistics, polls only tell us a snapshot of public sentiment, which can easily be influenced by charismatic leaders, news headlines, and external events.

Despite these challenges, frequent polls can provide politicians with a clearer picture of public sentiment, helping counterbalance the disproportionate influence of a small, highly engaged minority. If our city’s leaders want to serve their constituents effectively, they should be sure to pay attention to the data—not just to the people who show up at City Hall with the loudest voices.

See my previous post for an outline of what New York’s community boards are and why I got involved.

Here are my main reflections:

• The community board members I’ve met care deeply about the city and its residents.

• We spend a lot of time on hyperlocal issues, sometimes with limited broader relevance.

• CB8 sometimes struggles to reach consensus on complex, divisive topics.

• The board appears to be out-of-step with public opinion on some important issues.

Before diving in, two caveats:

1. I’m new to this, while some of my fellow community board members have been serving for decades. These reflections come from the perspective of a well-meaning newcomer who wants to see New York thrive, and who wants community boards to help make that success happen.

2. This post is my own opinion. These are my personal reflections and don’t represent CB8 or any other group I’m involved with.

Dedication to New York and our neighborhood

Serving on a community board requires a significant time commitment, and I admire the effort that my fellow board members make. Each member attends several multi-hour evening meetings each month — at a minimum. Many members serve on multiple subcommittees, and several members have volunteered on Manhattan Community Board 8 since before I was born.

I often disagree with other board members’ opinions on policy issues, but there’s no doubt in my mind that every board member genuinely cares about the wellbeing of our city, our district, and the 200,000 people who call this neighborhood home.

A focus on hyperlocal issues

One of the most striking aspects of serving on CB8 is how much time we spend on issues that impact a single building, business, or city block. Examples of these small-scale topics include:

• Changes to parking rules for a couple of parking spots. For example, recently a building in the East 90s asked to change nine parking bays outside their entrance from “No Parking” to “No Standing”. We reviewed and debated this for an hour in the transportation committee and 20 minutes at the full board to eventually arrive at our position in support of the request.

• Restaurants and bars seeking permits for sidewalk tables, roadway tables, and selling alcohol.

• Property owners seeking permission to change their building. Sometimes this is due to the building being subject to historic preservation requirements, and other times this is due to the property owner seeking to use the land for a purpose or structure that’s different from what’s currently allowed.

I care a lot about New York’s land use, public space, and transportation. However, debating these topics at such a granular level is incredibly time-consuming and often feels like a poor use of our limited volunteer hours. I also worry that this hyperlocal focus can discourage participation—from the general public, who may be unwilling to sit through lengthy debates about a single block, and from potential members, who may be dissuaded by how much time is spent on minutiae.

I wonder whether we could establish broad, consistent policies that we automatically apply to frequently recurring topics. For example, we could adopt rules like “CB8 automatically supports all restaurants and cafes to have XX square feet of outdoor seating so long as the sidewalk is at least YY feet wide” or “CB8 automatically supports any building with more than 300 residents having have a 'No Standing' zone outside their entrance upon request”. We’d adjust our bylaws to automatically apply these rules to all relevant proposals, unless some sizable minority of board members request to have a discussion about any particular case.

This approach would expedite our meetings, ensure consistency across the district, and focus discussion on policy topics with broad impact to many residents.

Difficulty forging consensus

One of the biggest challenges I've seen on CB8 is that we struggle to efficiently find consensus on complex issues.

Our discussions on City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (COYHO) reforms — a package of 15 land-use policies aimed at addressing the housing shortage—illustrates this perfectly. It took CB8 roughly 19 hours across ten meetings to reach a position on COYHO, underscoring structural obstacles to effective decision-making.1

The process started with 14 hours of discussion within the Zoning & Development Committee over six months. Committee members debated the proposals’ merits, held non-binding “straw polls,” and compiled recommendations. However, when these were presented to the full board, it quickly became apparent that the broader board’s views didn’t align with those of the committee. We were still far from consensus.

We spent almost six additional hours in extended full board discussions about COYHO. The City Planning Department explained the proposals, and members launched into passionate debates, trying to persuade each other on COYHO’s merits and drawbacks. Over successive meetings, we attempted several resolutions expressing support and opposition to various parts of COYHO, each followed by a roll-call vote. When these repeatedly failed, we ultimately voted on each COYHO proposal individually and submitted these separate votes as our official position. While I’m pleased we eventually reached a consensus on this complex topic, I wish we’d been able to find that agreement more quickly.

CB8 has also had difficulty aligning on recommendations about transit funding. In June, critical transit upgrades for our district were delayed after Governor Hochul suspended the congestion pricing plan meant to fund them. I worked with other CB8 members to try to urge Albany to find some way of funding these transit reliability and accessibility improvements. Although I support congestion pricing, the board is deeply divided on the topic, so I framed our resolution as neutrally as possible:

“Community Board 8 Manhattan calls on the Governor and State Legislature to avoid further delays to critical infrastructure projects by immediately fully funding the MTA's 2020-2024 Capital Plan, without raising taxes on New Yorkers or increasing for-hire vehicle surcharges.” – my proposed resolution

This resolution passed in the Transportation Committee but failed to win the support of a majority of members of the full board. Some members feared Albany might misconstrue our request, while others opposed it due to their strong stance against congestion pricing. As a volunteer, I didn’t have the time to wrangle the wording that would be acceptable to 25+ board members. Fortunately, Governor Hochul appears to have relented and congestion pricing is back on-track to start in January 2025.

Our struggles to reach conclusions on COYHO and transit funding demonstrates a fundamental issue: community boards lack efficient mechanisms — beyond repeated roll-call votes — to identify majority positions on complex topics. Proper legislatures have caucuses, party whips, and staffers to forge consensus; community boards rely on the best efforts of well-meaning volunteers. This is a topic I’d love to dig into further.

Skewed demographics and perspectives

Notwithstanding the fact that CB8’s members are dedicated, hardworking volunteers, CB8's demographics and policy positions don't seem to always align with the broader community we’re appointed to serve.

In terms of demographics:

• Older residents are 53% over-represented on CB8. 46% of CB8 members are 60+ years old, whereas only 30% of the district’s adult population are 60+ years old.2

• Homeowners are 54% over-represented on CB8. 60% of CB8 members own their home, whereas only 39% of the district’s population are homeowners.3

To be clear, I have no personal animosity towards any of CB8’s members — many of these people are highly experienced and constructive contributors to the board’s work. But it does concern me when it appears that the underrepresentation of younger New Yorkers and renters might be contributing to the board’s policy recommendations being out-of-step with district residents’ views.

In terms of policy perspectives, it seems that in general CB8 is much less supportive of building more homes than the average New Yorker. On the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, twenty of CB8’s fifty members voted against at least half of the COYHO proposals to legalize building more homes in New York.4 In contrast, two separate citywide opinion polls show between 70% and 80% of New Yorkers support COYHO overall.5 There’s a clear mismatch between board members’ lukewarm stance on building more homes and the apparent pro-housing sentiment of New York’s public.

On transportation policy, I have a hunch that CB8 is more pro-car and less supportive of transit than the average district resident. In our district, 71% of households don’t own a car and only 8% of commuters drive.6 I don’t have any specific opinion polling to support my hunch, but given that transit is the primary way most district residents get around, I figure that surely most locals must want more reliable subway service and more stations to have elevators. And yet, CB8 was unable to reach agreement on a statement related to the recent delay of major transit projects in our district.

That said, on other issues there seems to be more alignment with community perspectives — which is great to see. The board approves almost all proposals for street fairs, alcohol licenses, and sidewalk cafes that come our way. Most proposals to renovate historic buildings are approved. I think this matches with residents’ preferences.

In any case, there will be significant turnover of membership across New York’s 59 community boards in 2027, which is when term limits will kick in for the first time. This will provide easy opportunities for borough presidents and city council members to make community boards more representative of their districts.

What’s next

Despite the challenges, CB8 accomplishes a lot of good work, and my time on the board has offered valuable insights into how local governance operates in New York. I’ve loved getting to know a bunch of people who want the best for our neighborhood, and whose paths I was otherwise unlikely to cross.

However, I’ve also observed structural challenges: a tendency to focus on hyperlocal minutiae, a slow and sometimes frustrating process for building consensus, and a demographic skew that may not reflect the perspectives of our district residents.

Going forward, I want to explore ways that community boards could be more responsive and reflective of the broader public. In future posts, I’ll look at:

• How we could use opinion polling to capture more representative community perspectives

• How we could streamline board business to welcome participation from those with less time to spare

As the implementation of term limits portends significant turnover of community board membership, now is the ideal moment to review how these institutions can become more efficient, inclusive, and aligned with the needs of all New Yorkers.

This post is my own perspective and does not represent CB8 or any other organization I’m affiliated with. Also, I’m now on Bluesky – come join me!

Proposal 1 is an amendment to the New York State constitution, proposed by the State Legislature. Proposals 2 through 6 are amendments to the New York City Charter, the city’s constitutional document.

Here’s how I recommend voting on these proposals:

• Yes on Proposal 1 to add protections to the State Bill of Rights

• Yes on Proposal 2 to clarify the role of the Department of Sanitation

• No on Proposal 3, which adjusts the lawmaking and budget process

• No on Proposal 4, which adjusts the lawmaking process

• No on Proposal 5, which adjusts the capital planning process

• No on Proposal 6, which combines three unrelated administrative issues

Let’s break down each proposal, explain what’s at stake, and review my voting recommendations.

Proposal 1: Adds Protections to the State Bill of Rights

I recommend you vote yes on Proposal 1, also known as the Equal Rights Amendment.

What It Is: This proposal amends the New York State constitution to add new protections to the State Bill of Rights, prohibiting discrimination based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.

Why Vote Yes: Proposal 1 would ensure that all New Yorkers are legally protected against discrimination and that abortion remains accessible to those who want it.

Currently, New York’s constitution protects against discrimination based on race, color, creed, or religion. We should expand our constitutional protections against discrimination to more comprehensively encompass the categories that New Yorkers expect to be protected.

Although New York’s government is currently controlled by leaders who support abortion access, there’s currently no constitutional protection that would prevent anti-abortion laws being passed in the future. Proposal 1 would fix this, by constitutionally protecting against any government actions that would reduce access to abortion, such as an abortion ban, prosecuting or criminalizing miscarriage, or adding medically unnecessary burdens on patients or facilities.

Proposal 2: Responsibilities of the Sanitation Department

I recommend you vote yes on Proposal 2.

What It Is: This proposal amends the City Charter to clarify and expand the Department of Sanitation’s authority to clean all city-owned property, including streets, parks, and medians. It also empowers the Department to enforce garbage containerization and oversee street vendors’ waste disposal on properties beyond streets and sidewalks.

Why Vote Yes: Proposal 2 would increase the cleanliness of public property and New York’s streets.

Currently, New York City’s laws about cleaning property restrict the Department of Sanitation from cleaning roadway medians, parks, and the perimeters of city-owned buildings. These can only be cleaned by other departments, like the Department of Transportation or the Department of Parks & Recreation. This segmentation of responsibilities causes confusion for the public and inefficiencies for the city, which this amendment would fix by explicitly naming the Department of Sanitation as the agency with primary responsibility for these tasks.

Relatedly, this amendment will make explicit that the Department of Sanitation is authorized to enact regulations requiring businesses and households to use trash bins rather than plastic trash bags, and clarify that the Department also has authority to enforce street vending regulations everywhere in the city.

Ultimately, I think having a clear division of responsibilities between agencies is good to ensure tasks are completed correctly, so I support Proposal 2.

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Proposal 3: Budget Estimates & Timelines

I recommend you vote no on Proposal 3.

What It Is: This proposal requires that the City Council receive fiscal impact estimates from the Mayor’s Office before voting on new laws (in addition to the fiscal impact estimate the City Council is already required to produce). It also updates budget deadlines, giving new administrations more time to prepare their first budget.

Why Vote No: Proposal 3 would harmfully constrain the power of the City Council to pass laws.

I believe that powerful, independent legislatures are important to ensure the creation and passage of good laws. While I appreciate that Proposal 3 seeks to ensure the City Council has access to accurate estimates about the fiscal impact of their laws, I believe any introduction of additional steps into the legislative process should be at the initiative of the Council itself — which has opposed this proposal.

I don’t object to the second half of this proposal, which slightly extends budget deadlines during a mayoral administration’s first year in office. However, the Mayor’s Charter Revision Commission has unhelpfully intermingled this deadline adjustment with the change to fiscal impact statement requirements, so ultimately I’m opposed to Proposal 3.

Proposal 4: More Notice and Time Before Votes on Public Safety Legislation

I recommend you vote no on Proposal 4.

What It Is: This proposal requires additional notice and public hearings before the City Council can vote on laws related to the operations of the Police Department, the Department of Correction, and Fire Department.

Why Vote No: Proposal 3 would harmfully limit the power of the City Council to pass laws.

Again, I think it’s essential that legislatures control their own processes. There is no particular reason why bills related to public safety should be subject to additional special hearings or notice requirements, and certainly not at the behest of the mayor. The City Council already holds public hearings on its bills, and adding more procedural hurdles seems unnecessary, so I’m opposed to Proposal 4.

Proposal 5: Capital Planning

I recommend you vote no on Proposal 5.

What It Is: This proposal amends the City’s budget process, requiring detailed assessments of city facilities and aligning capital planning deadlines with the city budget process.

Why Vote No: While this proposal aims to improve planning, the changes can be achieved through administrative updates rather than codifying them into the City Charter. Adding more steps to an already slow capital planning process could impede critical projects, so I’m opposed to Proposal 5

Proposal 6: Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs), Film Permits, and Archive Review Boards

I recommend you vote no on Proposal 6.

What It Is: This proposal addresses three different issues: establishing the Chief Business Diversity Officer to support Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises, authorizing the Mayor to designate the office responsible for film permits, and combining two archive review boards.

Why Vote No: This proposal mixes together three entirely unrelated topics. I’m opposed to enshrining the office of the Chief Business Diversity Officer into the Charter, because this makes the office permanent and it’s entirely plausible that future mayoral administrations might have different staffing needs.

I do support the second and third components of this proposal, which bring clarity to film permitting and streamline municipal archives. Ultimately, however, I see the downside of codifying the office of the Chief Business Diversity Officer as worse than the benefit of these other efficiencies.

Ultimately, the three topics are inappropriate to be in one combined amendment, so I’m opposed to Proposal 6.

Final Reflections on our Ballot Proposals

I hope these recommendations help guide your decisions at the ballot box. Remember, if you haven’t yet, you have until October 26th to update your voter registration or request to vote by mail:

In summary, Proposal 1 offers a critical opportunity to safeguard the fundamental rights of New Yorkers, ensuring protection from discrimination and preserving access to abortion. This amendment is about protecting the future of personal freedoms in our state, and I believe it’s essential for all of us. I’m particularly grateful for the leadership behind this initiative, spearheaded by State Senator Liz Kruger, who represents my district. The work done to get this on the ballot reflects the importance of acting now to enshrine these protections in our constitution.

In contrast, Proposals 2 through 6 are examples of unnecessary and poorly constructed ballot measures. These proposals ask voters to weigh in on technical, bureaucratic issues — things like which agency handles film permits or how the city schedules budget hearings — which don't need general public input. We elect officials to handle these details on our behalf, and bogging down the electorate with these trivial questions only distracts from more pressing matters.

The reality is that these city-level proposals stem from clashes between the City Council and the Mayor. The City Council had intended to propose amendments that would have given them greater oversight of the Mayor’s appointees. However, the Mayor sidestepped this by forming his own Charter Revision Commission, which resulted in this patchwork of minor reforms. Because proposals from the Mayor’s commission take precedence over those from the City Council, the Council’s efforts were blocked, leaving us with proposals that frankly don’t warrant mass voter input.

Perhaps in the future, we can revisit the process of amending the City Charter to prevent this kind of political gamesmanship. But for now, these six proposals are what we get to opine on.

I encourage you to vote “Yes” on Proposals 1 and 2, and “No” on the rest.

This November, in addition to electing government officials, New Yorkers will be voting on a ballot proposal related to abortion access and anti-discrimination protections — so you won’t want to sit this election out!

There are two key things that New Yorkers need to do now:

1. Ensure you’re correctly registered to vote at your current home address

2. Opt-in to vote by mail or identify your in-person polling site

I’ll point you towards how to do both of those actions. But first…

Isn’t New York solidly “blue”? Why does voting matter?

The Democratic Party candidate for president has won the most votes in New York State in every presidential election since 1988.1 It’s almost guaranteed this trend will continue in 2024.

Given that our system allocates all of New York’s electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most statewide support, some New Yorkers might consider skipping the effort of voting.

However, there are many elected positions beyond the presidency in our government. In November 2024, New Yorkers will be choosing their representatives in the state Assembly and Senate in Albany, and in the federal House of Representatives and Senate in Washington. All these officials influence your life.

To be honest, most of these legislative elections aren’t very close races, either — at least in New York City. In general, the city continues to be solidly blue, so it’s typically primary elections (which happen earlier in the year) that are more competitive. That said, there are some close general election races in the outer portions of Brooklyn and Queens. The magazine City & State has helpful roundups of New York races to watch this November in the state and federal legislatures.

Beyond elections, access to abortion and anti-discrimination protections are also on the ballot in New York this year. Alongside the November general election, New Yorkers will be asked to vote on an “Equal Rights” amendment to the state constitution that explains anti-discrimination protections and forbids future state actions to restrict access to abortion. Ballot Proposal One will appear on your ballot as the following text:

This proposal would protect against unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy. It also protects against unequal treatment based on reproductive healthcare and autonomy.

A “YES” vote puts these protections in the New York State Constitution.
A “NO” vote leaves these protections out of the State Constitution.

Polling suggests this constitutional amendment is very likely to pass.

You can preview which candidates will be on your ballot in November by entering your home address here:

Preview my ballot

How to register to vote in New York

Fortunately, New York makes it really easy to register and keep your details up to date. All you need is your name, address, and either the last four digits of your social security number or the number on your New York driver license. Enter those details on this page, and you’re done!

Register to vote online

Note: This form will offer to redirect you to the Department of Motor Vehicles to register through their system, but you can just choose “I have a DMV Number but want to use this Portal” to remain on this streamlined registration site.

If you’re already registered, you can double-check your details here:

Check my NYC voter registration details

If you’ve moved home recently, it’s worth updating your registration to ensure you’re voting for the candidates who are responsible for your neighborhood. It also makes sure your polling site is near your new home and/or your vote-by-mail papers are sent to the correct address.

How to vote by mail

New York allows any registered voter to receive their ballot and cast their vote by mail. You might find this more convenient than visiting a polling place in-person. To vote by mail in the November 2024 general election, complete this form by October 26th:

Vote by mail

How to vote in-person

If IRL voting is more your thing, you can find where to cast your vote here:

Find my NYC polling place

Your assigned polling place is likely to be public school or other government-run facility near your home.

Beyond 2024: In NYC, it’s the primaries that matter

Aside from the few districts where Republicans and Democrats are in close competition in the general election, typically the most consequential time for New Yorkers to wield their votes is during state and city primary elections — especially when there’s an open seat with no incumbent running for re-election. 

New York City’s June 2025 primary elections will include many of these “open seats”, where there’ll be a wide-open field, either due to term limits or the incumbent seeking higher office. This applies to the election for city comptroller (essentially chief financial officer), Manhattan’s borough president, and at least six city council seats.

Despite the significant influence these city elected officials have over New Yorkers' lives (they’re responsible for the NYPD, public schools, parks, streets, and land use policy – which determines housing costs – and lots more!), only 27% of registered voters turned out for the 2021 city primary election.2 Though low turnout may undermine democratic legitimacy, it grants disproportionate influence over our city’s future to the New Yorkers who do show up to vote. Will you be one of them?

I’ll have more coverage of New York’s 2025 primary elections in the new year. For now, make sure you’re registered to vote and have a plan to make your voice heard this November, either by mail or at the ballot box.

What you probably haven’t heard is that enacting this upzoning required the Department of City Planning to spend almost two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars navigating New York’s environmental review process. They meticulously studied the project's potential impact on everything imaginable: wildlife, schools, traffic, shadows, archeological remains, neighborhood character, and even how the project will change the number of books per person are in the local libraries.

The extensive scrutiny of the Bronx upzoning is required by New York's environmental review laws, which have become a major obstacle for our city’s abundance agenda. These laws add significant delays and costs to essential projects to house more New Yorkers and improve our transit systems — all while delivering questionable benefits to the environment.

Understanding New York’s environmental review process is essential for anyone who hopes to make this city a better place to live. In this post, I’ll cover how:

• New York requires most changes to the physical world to be closely studied for their impact on air pollution, noise, public health, libraries, schools, shadows, traffic congestion, subway ridership, and a litany of other topics.

• It is very expensive and time-consuming to estimate and review the impacts of potential projects to the level of detail required by New York’s environmental review laws.

• Making housing cheaper and improving our transportation system is seriously hampered by environmental review’s costs and delays. Even projects that are obviously good for the “environment”, like building subway lines or eco-friendly apartment buildings get stuck with these big costs.

• Reform of environmental review is possible and there have been modest successes at streamlining. However, it’s a really complex topic that requires technical expertise and political courage.

What is environmental review?

Environmental review is a process that New York’s state and local government agencies must follow when they take an action that might impact the environment.1

Under New York‘s State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), government actions that require environmental review are:

• Government-led projects that might impact the environment, like constructing a school or a highway, implementing congestion pricing, or amending citywide land use rules.

• Government decisions to approve a private sector project which might impact the environment, such as a private landowner requesting to change the rules that apply to their property so that they can construct a taller building.

So, what does environmental review entail? In essence, environmental review requires that the government agency:

1. Estimate the impact of their proposed action on the environment. The agency (or their consultants) make detailed predictions following an 831-page manual, and consult with members of the public who might be impacted. For privately-initiated actions, the person or business proposing the action has to cover the costs of the review.

2. Declare that their proposed action is the best path forward, after considering all the relevant environmental, economic, and social factors.2

Note that environmental review doesn’t forbid the government from taking actions that harm the environment — it just requires that agencies carefully study the impacts and attest that they believe their action is overall the best path forwards.

These environmental impact studies are incredibly detailed and wide-reaching — often extending to hundreds of pages of analysis. This meticulousness stems from the way that SEQRA is enforced and New York’s very broad definition of the environment:

“Environment means the physical conditions that will be affected by a proposed action, including land, air, water, minerals, flora, fauna, noise, resources of agricultural, archeological, historic or aesthetic significance, existing patterns of population concentration, distribution or growth, existing community or neighborhood character, and human health.” –  NYCRR § 617.2(l)

This definition means that almost anything about the physical world or the way humans exist within it is within the scope of environmental review. This includes obvious things, like plants, animals, air, and water. But this definition also covers much less environmental topics, like subway station crowding, the number of books in the public library, and preservation of historic buildings. The law requires that government agencies study how all of these topics might be impacted by their actions.

The other factor that incentivizes agencies to be exceptionally thorough with their environmental reviews is SEQRA’s private enforcement mechanism. Anyone who believes they’ve been harmed due to a government agency improperly following the environmental review process can sue in court. If they convince a judge that the government agency insufficiently studied the likely impact on the environment, then the court can freeze the project, and require the environmental review to be restarted.3 That could cause huge delays to a project, so agencies have a strong incentive to be exceptionally thorough with their reviews, to reduce the chance of a legal challenge in the future.

Case studies: Recent NYC environmental reviews

Let’s look at several recent environmental reviews in New York to give you a sense of what they cover.

Example 1: Bronx Metro-North Rezoning

Proposed action: Upzone areas of the East Bronx near several soon-to-be-built Metro-North train stations. The area is currently mostly commercial/industrial, but the upzoning will allow the construction of around 7,500 apartments with direct train connections to Penn Station and Midtown Manhattan.

Action proposed by: NYC Department of City Planning, on behalf of the City Planning Commission

Findings of environmental review: Overall, very little negative environmental impact. Increasing building heights will cast longer shadows. Beyond core environmental impacts, it’s estimated that the new residents will include 3,575 public school students. These new students will be able to be accommodated within the capacity of existing schools, except that one elementary school will reach 104% of its capacity. The review also found there would be some impact on transportation, with more riders on the subway, buses, and more car drivers.4

Length of environmental review: 900 pages. The review took 18 months from the first public filing in December 2022 to reach its conclusion in June 2024 (and presumably they started preparing the documents many months before their first public filings).

Example 2: Manhattan Congestion Pricing

Proposed action: Levy a toll on vehicles that drive into the area of Manhattan below 59th Street, in implementation of the state’s Traffic Mobility Act of 2019.

Action proposed by: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Departments of Transportation at the city, state, and federal levels.

Findings of environmental review: Turns out that having fewer cars on the roads is good for air quality, noise pollution, and makes traffic move faster. Who could have guessed?!? There’ll be a small increase in traffic on highways elsewhere in the region, as some vehicles which previously would have passed through Manhattan will divert to avoid the toll.

Length of environmental review: 868 pages (plus 3,139 pages of appendices). The review took 22 months from the first public filing in August 2021 until the Finding of No Significant Impact in June 2023.

Read more about congestion pricing and its recent pause:

Example 3: Gas Station to Restaurant Rezoning in Queens

Proposed action: Rezone a privately-owned property in Flushing, Queens (map), to allow the owner to build a restaurant with a drive-through. The land has been vacant since 2015, and before then it was a gas station.

Action proposed by: Bacele Realty Corp, the owner of the property. Because this was a privately-initiated rezoning, the owner of the land is fully responsible for the costs of the environmental consultants who prepared the report.

Findings of environmental review: No significant impact on the environment. It turns out that running a restaurant is less harmful to the environment than operating a gas station. Who could have guessed?!?

Length of environmental review: 116 pages. The review took 10 months from the first public filing in February 2023 until the review’s conclusion. Presumably the property owner started working on their paperwork at least several months before their first filing – in fact I’ve found correspondence about this project as early as June 2021.

The history of environmental review

New York’s onerous environmental review requirements trace their origins to the rampant pollution of the 1960s and 70s.

New York’s air and rivers were very, very dirty. Factories belched toxins into the sky. Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1966 a dense smog encased New York City and killed 168 people. Towns and factories intentionally discharged untreated sewage, garbage, and industrial waste into New York’s rivers. The situation was genuinely terrible.

It’s against this background that Washington passed the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, which introduced environmental review requirements for federal government actions. New York followed suit in 1975 with SEQRA. Both of these laws sought to reduce pollution by ensuring that government agencies consider the environmental impacts of their decisions. 

In practice, however, other laws like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act did far more to improve the health of our natural environment than environmental review procedures. These laws actually forbid the actions that are most damaging to the environment — unlike NEPA and SEQRA, which just force agencies to “carefully study” the impacts of their actions.

When you consider how polluted the environment was in the 1970s, it’s easy to see why the legislators who wrote NEPA and SEQRA thought that adding expenses and delays to development was acceptable in order to reduce further pollution. However, with the passage of time, the full costs and dubious benefits of these laws have become clear.

What we gain and lose from environmental review

There’s no doubt that environmental reviews produce detailed data to help us understand the impact of actions. We know, for instance, that New York’s congestion pricing system will increase traffic speeds in Manhattan by 16% at rush hour, reduce carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles in Manhattan by 8%, and eliminate 750 traffic-related injuries per year.5

But in performing these analyses, we incur huge costs and delays. For private residential projects, environmental review increases project costs by between 11% and 16%, and typically delays construction by around two years.6 Project sponsors must pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to environmental consultants, continue paying property tax, and bear the opportunity cost of the years of delay. Similarly, Government-led projects suffer years of delay and incur large in-house and consultant expenses on projects to build infrastructure and housing.7

It’s especially painful that these reviews appear to rarely yield clearly better outcomes for core environmental concerns — and in fact, by slowing down transit projects and construction of dense, low-pollution housing these laws may often be harming the environment by perpetuating the status quo.

What’s worse is that for government-led projects, these environmental reviews have limited benefit because the projects being studied are already committed government policy, and the law explicitly allows for agencies to approve actions so long as they, on balance, best advance policy overall objectives. 

For example, the environmental analysis of congestion pricing was completed four years after the New York State legislature passed its law requiring congestion pricing to be implemented. On housing, the various upzonings initiated by the Department of City Planning are already the explicit policy of the Adams administration.

Helping lawmakers do better cost-benefit analysis of policies before politicians commit to them could be really helpful. But merely going through the motions of environmental review after elected officials have committed to a policy is expensive make-work that delays the enactment of the will of the people. And those delays erode public trust in the government's ability to deliver.

Read more about cost-benefit analysis in An Abundance Agenda for New York.

Reforming our environmental review process

Just because legislators 50 years ago thought that environmental review might avoid harm to the environment doesn’t mean we have to be stuck with these processes forever. The Citizens Budget Commission has an excellent recent report that analyzes and proposes reforms to reduce the burden of New York’s environmental review processes, including:

1. Reducing which projects require environmental review, including exempting land use changes

2. Focusing only on core environmental concerns during review — not ancillary topics like schools, transportation, and neighborhood character

3. Consolidating environmental review with other public engagement, such as community board and borough president hearings

4. Setting goals for how long environmental reviews should take and holding agencies accountable for delays

We should enact the CBC’s recommendations. Their report contains specific details of how the executive and legislative branches of our city and state governments can act to streamline the environmental review process.

Fortunately, we’ve already seen several attempts at streamlining the environmental review system — but much more action is needed:

• Earlier in 2024, the city enacted a “Green Fast Track” system to lessen the environmental review burden for certain all-electric residential developments which have been shown in the past to very rarely have harmful environmental impact. This is good, but only applies to a subset of individual residential projects.

• There’s a bill pending in the state legislature to streamline the environmental review process for dense housing in urban areas. This bill has been crawling through the legislative process since January 2023, and it’s unclear whether it has any hope of passing in the next session.

But much more work needs to be done.

Zooming out to the abundance agenda

New York's environmental review process, while well-intentioned, has become a significant roadblock to achieving the abundance agenda. 

Reducing the cost of living, building more homes, and improving transportation will be severely hampered if we subject every project to an expensive and slow environmental review. I’d love to see community boards, YIMBY groups, and city council members proposing upzonings all over New York, but the costs of environmental reviews make it difficult for anyone other than the Department of City Planning or parties with a direct financial stake in a project to take action.

This makes reforming environmental review a high-leverage topic for the abundance movement to focus on. If we can streamline environmental review, like the CBC proposes, then all sorts of important projects can happen cheaper and quicker. Even just shortening an environmental review by a few months can save millions of dollars in financing costs for a high-rise apartment building, for example.

Reforming environmental review — and other similar constraints on New York’s development — requires electing and supporting pragmatic pro-abundance elected officials. It requires giving legislators the expert support to draft and implement reforms for these immensely complex topics.

And it requires building a powerful abundance movement full of people — like yourself, perhaps — who believe that a better New York is possible, and that it’s worth putting in the effort to make that vision a reality.

Last Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris said:

“Homeownership and what that means — it’s a symbol of the pride that comes with hard work. It’s financial security. It represents what you will be able to do for your children.

And sadly, right now, it is out of reach for far too many American families. There’s a serious housing shortage in many places. It’s too difficult to build, and it’s driving prices up.

As president, I will work in partnership with industry to build the housing we need, both to rent and to buy. We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels.”

Then, on Tuesday night in his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, former President Barack Obama said:

“Our job is to convince people that democracy can actually deliver. And, and in doing that, we can’t just point to what we’ve already accomplished. We can’t just rely on the ideas of the past. We need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. And Kamala understands this.

She knows, for example, that if we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country. That is a priority. And she’s put out a bold new plan to do just that.”

This is a huge boost to the movement for housing abundance. We’ve been gathering momentum over recent years as more and more people realize how our self-imposed shortage of homes increases the cost of living.

New York has made some progress, with upzonings here-and-there, and the current City of Yes for Housing Opportunity reforms. However, our city is still strangled by a web of laws that restrict our ability to build the homes we need, where we need them.

But this week we got an unambiguous signal: build, build, build — and cut the red tape that makes building hard, slow, and expensive.

I hope New York’s officials in City Hall and Albany are listening.

The simplest lesson of economics is that rent – like all prices – is set by supply and demand. When lots of people want to live in an area, rent goes up. When the supply of homes is plentiful, rent goes down.

A lot of people are willing to pay a lot of money to live in New York. Yet, as I’ve covered previously, New York has extensive rules that restrict building more apartments that could house thousands more New Yorkers – and reduce housing costs for everyone. The result is that as of 2023, just 1.4% of New York’s rental housing was vacant, and the median New Yorker who rents their home pays their landlord 31% of their pre-tax income.1 This is bad!

The good news is that New York’s land use rules can be changed – and there’s actually a surprisingly accessible process that anyone can use to get amendments to the city’s housing rules in front of decision-makers. In this post, I’ll explain how ambitious supporters of the Abundance Agenda can use New York’s zoning process to legalize building more homes, and help make our city a more prosperous and affordable place to live.

How to reform NYC’s land use rules (in brief)

In essence, the process to change New York’s land use rules is:

1. Understand NYC’s current land use rules

2. Figure out what land use rules you think should apply to your area

3. Determine who will propose what zoning change

4. Write and submit your proposed zoning amendment

5. Wait for decisions from the Community Board, Borough President, City Planning Commission, and City Council

The political reality of land use reform

In truth, changing New York’s land use rules is difficult. It requires significant effort and expense to prepare a valid rezoning application, and then substantial political savvy to gain the approval of the City Planning Commission and the City Council. In some parts of the city residents may be too opposed to densification for upzoning to be feasible.

However, the fact that any New Yorker can propose a zoning change gives residents and community groups a surprising amount of agenda-setting power. If you’re able to compile a valid proposal, the system will require your rezoning to be considered by all levels of city government. You’ll get coverage from local news, and an opportunity to make the case to your neighbors for pursuing housing abundance. In the best case scenario, your rezoning succeeds, more homes get built, and housing costs reduce for everyone. But even if your rezoning proposal fails, you at least make it explicitly clear to the community, developers, and elected officials that there are many New Yorkers who want to make it legal to build more homes. This helps to shift the Overton window, and can nudge politicians toward taking bolder stances on increasing housing supply.

Achieving housing abundance is a marathon, not a sprint. Working with your pro-abundance neighbors in an attempt to directly legalize building more homes could be a big step towards making New York a more affordable and prosperous place for us all.

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How to reform NYC’s land use rules (in detail)

Step 1: Understand NYC’s current land use rules

Before you try to change the law, you first need to understand what it says today. New York’s land use rules are contained in the zoning resolution, which is a 3,000+ page text that dictates the permitted forms and uses of buildings in every part of the city.

Each property is in a zoning district, which defines what rules apply. For example, my building is in an area that is zoned “C1-9”. This means the land can be used for commercial and residential purposes, typically with shops on the ground floor, and a tower of apartments above. Most retail, medical, and office uses are allowed in a C1 district, but more disruptive uses like motor vehicle repair, car washes, and gas stations are forbidden.2

Each zoning district has a code: a letter and a number (sometimes followed by another letter or number). The first letter of a district’s code – R, C, or M – indicates whether the district is primarily used for residential, commercial, or manufacturing purposes. The number indicates the intensity of building that is permitted, with larger numbers signaling that taller, bulkier buildings are permitted. Additional letters or numbers indicate subcategories of the main zoning district.

To understand what zoning district covers the areas that you care about, visit ZoLa, New York’s zoning and land use map.

Then, you can browse the DCP’s summaries of the rules that apply in each district. The ultimate source of law is the zoning resolution, but the summaries are much easier to parse. As an example, this is a summary of the restrictions that apply to my C1-9 district:

The most important concept is “floor area ratio” (FAR). This determines the maximum amount of floor area in a building that can be allocated for a given use, as a ratio of the zoning lot’s total square footage. For example, a 10,000 square foot lot in a C1-9 / R10 zone can contain at most 2.0 × 10,000 = 20,000 square feet of commercial space, and 10.0 × 10,000 = 100,000 square feet of residential space. This floor area is further constrained by other restrictions, such as how much of the lot can be covered by a building. Floor area “bonuses” can be granted for providing amenities like public plazas or by allocating a proportion of the apartments to low-income renters at below market-rate.3

I’ve found that the best way to understand zoning is to walk around my neighborhood (or fly around on Google Earth), and then cross-reference buildings I see in the real world with ZoLa to identify their zoning district. 

Step 2: Figure out what land use rules you think should apply to your area

Then, you need to work out what you’d like to change. Would you like to allow taller buildings with a greater residential floor area ratio? Or maybe make it legal to build apartments on top of shops in an area where this is currently forbidden? In theory, anything is possible. The easiest path is to identify another neighborhood you’d like to emulate, and study what zoning applies in that area.

Step 3: Determine who will propose what zoning change

Under the city charter, anyone can propose a zoning change.4 If you propose your change as an individual person or business, you have to pay thousands of dollars in application fees, but if you get a government entity (including a Community Board) or a non-profit to propose your change, then the application fees are waived.5

You need to decide exactly what zoning changes you want to propose. The two most common are:

• Zoning text amendments, which change the rules that apply within the existing zoning boundaries. For example, you could increase the residential floor area ratio in all R10 districts from 10 to 11, which would allow for taller apartment buildings that could house more New Yorkers.6

• Zoning map amendments, which change which zoning districts are in force in a particular area. For example, you could take an area that is currently zoned R8A and propose to upzone it to R9A, which would allow for taller, denser buildings. This change would only apply to the properties or blocks you specifically target in your proposal.

If you’re focused on a specific area, a zoning map amendment is likely the most simple path of action. If you want to make changes across the whole city (such as the current City of Yes reforms), you’ll need to make a zoning text amendment.

Step 4: Write and submit your zoning application

Meet with the Department of City Planning to get advice on your proposal, and then complete a land use application form. These applications can be complex, so it might be worth hiring professionals to advise you on how to prepare the documents.

You can browse all past and pending zoning applications online. Here’s an example of rezoning a group of properties in Queens, and rezoning East Midtown in Manhattan. Click through to the “Public Documents” to see all the attachments.

Step 5: Review by the Community Board, Borough President, City Planning Commission, and City Council

Your proposal will then be reviewed by the city’s elected and appointed officials. You’ll need to deploy your most persuasive arguments and all your political capital to convince these decision-makers to support your reform:

1. Within 60 days of your proposal, the relevant Community Board will meet to hear public comments on your proposal and vote to recommend the approval or disapproval of your proposal.7 While this recommendation is simply advisory, the City Planning Commission often gives significant weight to the perspectives of impacted residents. (You can learn more about Community Boards in my post from last month.)

2. Within 30 days of the Community Board’s vote, the Borough President will submit a recommendation to the City Planning Commission that they either approve or deny your zoning amendment request.8

3. Within 60 days of the Borough President’s recommendation, the City Planning Commission will review and vote to approve, alter, or reject your proposal.9 The 13 commissioners are appointed by the mayor, the borough presidents, and the public advocate. If the CPC rejects an application, the proposal fails.

4. Finally, within 50 days of the CPC’s decision, the City Council will vote on your proposal.10 If the Council rejects an application, the proposal fails. Typically the City Council’s vote will follow the lead of the Council member who represents the impacted. There are cases where a majority of the Council will go against the wishes of the local Council member, but these are rare. This means that gaining the support of the local City Council member is essential for any rezoning project to succeed.

Step 6: Build, build, build!

If you’ve made it this far, then you’ve won! Once you’ve secured all your approvals, your zoning change becomes the law of the land. Time to pick up your hammer, and get to work on building more homes – or perhaps find a friendly builder to do the construction for you.

A call to action

If reforming New York’s land use rules was easy, we would have done it already. The reality is that almost all rezonings are proposed by professionals: either property owners/developers who want to change the zoning of a specific property, or officials at the Department of City Planning who are executing the vision of the mayor and commissioner. Although New York’s law allows individuals and community groups to initiate zoning reforms, these actions are rare. 

Even then, I think it’s worth exploring grassroots efforts to change land use rules. Housing costs are such a critical issue for New Yorkers. There’s a growing constellation of grassroots organizations like Open New York, Abundance New York, and Maximum New York that are giving New Yorkers the skills, support, and direction to best engage with our system of government. With the right effort applied in the right places, reducing rents by legalizing the construction of more homes might actually be within our grasp.

Let’s remake New York into a city where housing scarcity is history.

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In May, Borough President Mark Levine appointed me to Manhattan Community Board 8, which covers the 232,000 residents of the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island.

It’s been an exciting, empowering, and eye-opening few months. In this post, I’ll cover:

• What community boards are: New York’s ground-floor of government, advising agencies and elected officials on topics that impact the district.

• What my board has been doing: Endorsing most of the mayor’s housing reforms, not yet taking a position on the Governor’s congestion pricing pause, and having lots of meetings.

• What I’ve learned from the experience: The breakdown of my board’s factions and how local politics do – and don’t – reflect the views of the population.

What are New York’s community boards?

Community boards are the ground-floor of New York City’s government, created by the city charter. Every New Yorker lives in one of 59 community districts, and each district has a community board composed of 50 volunteer members.

Community boards provide advice to government agencies and elected officials at the city and state level about locals' opinions. This includes topics such as housing, transportation, health, parks, libraries, schools, safety, the environment, and any other policy area or service delivery that the city or state government deals with.

Typically this takes one of two forms:

• A proposal comes to the board: An entity like a government agency, a local business, or a property owner will come to the board seeking endorsement for a project that impacts the district. The community board reviews the proposal and issues an advisory opinion which gets sent to the ultimate decision maker. Examples of this include the Department of Transportation proposing to make changes to public streets (like adding a bus lane or adjusting parking rules), restaurants seeking licenses to serve alcohol or place dining tables on the sidewalk, or a property owner seeking to make changes to a historic building.

• A problem comes to the attention of the board: A member of the community (or a board member) complains about an issue. The community board considers the topic and issues an advisory opinion that gets sent to the appropriate elected officials or government agency requesting their action. Examples include: complaints about traffic laws repeatedly being violated, concerns about ongoing transit service issues, or worries about public nuisances.

When dealing with these topics, community boards have no hard power, but wield significant soft power. It’s entirely legal for elected officials and government agencies to ignore community boards’ recommendations. In practice, however, community boards’ advice is paid at least some attention. Elected officials are typically reluctant to take actions that are directly contrary to the advice of community boards – if for no other reason than community board members are politically engaged community members and elected officials are probably more likely to get re-elected if they take actions that their community supports.

Who are the board members?

By law, community board members must have a “residence, business, professional or other significant interest in the district”.1 Unlike most elected positions, US citizenship is not required — just a strong commitment to the community is needed.

Community board positions are appointed by the borough president and city council members who correspond with the community district. When deciding who to appoint, borough presidents are required to ensure that “the aggregate of appointments fairly represents all segments of the community”, including “with regard to race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability status, sexual orientation, [and] language”.

Members of community boards serve staggered two-year terms, with 25 members of each board getting either reappointed or replaced each year.

There is a lot of competition for community board spots. This year, there were 832 applicants for the 300 open spots in Manhattan, and 190 went to incumbent community board members who sought reappointment, while just 110 of the spots were assigned to new members.2 The selection process involves a written application and an interview.

I am one of the 5 newbies appointed to Manhattan Community Board 8 in the May 2024 batch.

Why did I want to join?

I’m serving on my community board primarily to advance the policies I care about. I care about New York City and have strong opinions about how it should be improved. To the extent that community boards have soft power, I’d much rather that influence be deployed in favor of the Abundance Agenda: building more housing, improving our transit system, and making better use of public spaces. Serving on my community board is a way to increase the chance that elected officials and government agencies hear support for these policies.

Politics is about so much more than just elections, as my friend Daniel wrote in his recent post. “If voting is your only form of political engagement”, Daniel noted, “you are arriving to a party that’s been going on long before you got there, and will continue long after you left.” As someone who literally can’t vote (I’m not yet a US citizen), I see serving on my community board as a way to influence the creation and enforcement of the laws that shape our society.

Being involved with my community board also allows me to deepen my connection with the community. Already through the community board I’ve had the chance to work with some great, civic-minded board members who are becoming good friends. I’ve also been able to act as a connection point between the board and members of community groups that share my views, like Open New York and Transportation Alternatives.

Working on local politics makes me feel optimistic and empowered. Unlike at the federal level, where a multitude of systemic factors make it easy to feel powerless, at the local level I’ve seen first-hand that individuals can make a big difference. I was drawn into local politics after witnessing the success that local advocates had at getting a bus lane, bike lane, and pedestrian safety improvements installed on Third Avenue.

Community boards are not a panacea (and there are many ways they could be improved!), but given that they exist, I want to have as many pro-abundance New Yorkers serving on them as possible.

What has my community board done recently?

In the time since my appointment in early May, Manhattan Community Board 8 has dealt with dozens of topics — both large and small.

The biggest focus has been housing: reviewing the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity (COYHO), which is a proposal by the mayoral administration to make it legal to build more homes, with a goal of reducing housing costs. My community board held several hearings for members of the public and the board to discuss the proposal. I spoke in favor of three of these proposals (videos: 1, 2, 3 – unfortunately I’m out of the camera for the first one), and think I managed to sway some board members’ opinions! In mid-July we passed a resolution supporting eight of COYHO’s reforms and opposing seven of them. We sent this recommendation to the city council members whose districts overlap with our community district, and they’ll consider this advice when they ultimately vote to adopt, amend, or reject the mayor’s proposal.

Transportation has been another big topic. We tried to address the Governor’s delay of congestion pricing and the resulting harm to transportation infrastructure projects that the MTA planned to fund with congestion pricing revenues. Unfortunately, some members of the board are strongly opposed to congestion pricing, and we haven’t yet managed to pass a resolution to communicate the board’s stance. I’m coordinating with fellow pro-transit board members to try to pass a resolution calling on Albany to restore funding for the MTA’s transit system upgrades, but the board hasn’t yet had time to vote on this.

We’ve also considered smaller, local topics:

• We endorsed a proposal by the Department of Transportation to create a bus lane on 96th Street.

• We spent around 45 minutes reviewing and eventually endorsing a proposal from a homeowner to slightly adjust their fence. Normally, fence changes don’t require community board review, but this proposal involved slightly blocking some of the public sidewalk, so approval had to be requested.

• We’ve approved many restaurants seeking new or amended licenses to serve alcohol and/or operate dining tables on the sidewalk.

• We’ve approved a bunch of upcoming street fairs.

These are just a few examples of the many issues that my community board has dealt with over the past few months.

Reflections on my experience

I’m still trying to figure out how much soft power community boards actually wield. Will our city council representatives follow our recommendations about the City of Yes proposals? Will the Department of Transportation listen to a request I’m planning to organize to get some automated bus lane enforcement cameras installed along Third Avenue? We’ll have to wait and see.

The representativeness of community boards is questionable. Members tend to be people with a lot of free time. The standard community board commitment is to attend several board/committee meetings every month, with each meeting lasting 2-3 hours on a weekday evening. Relatedly, Manhattan’s community boards skew towards older New Yorkers, and young people are particularly poorly represented. People aged between 15 and 30 years old are 28% of Manhattan’s adult population, but make up just 10% of Manhattan community board members. People over the age of 60 make up 25% of Manhattan’s adult residents, but 33% of community board members.3 Boards that don’t reflect the demographics of their communities may not prioritize the right issues or provide the best advice.

I’ve begun to notice clear factions within my community board. The recent votes on the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity clearly demonstrated who is pro-abundance, and who prefers the status quo. Of the CB8M’s 50 members, ten are resolutely pro-housing and supported all eight key components of the COYHO reforms. At the other extreme, there’s a faction of eleven members who opposed all (or almost all) of the reforms. Then there’s a big group in the middle who voted in favor of some, but not all of the reforms. Much of the board’s discussion boils down to members on either extreme trying to persuade the less opinionated middle to join their position.

My plan for having an impact

I’m working on building relationships. Over the next few months I plan to get to know the abundance-minded and “in the middle” members of my community board. I want to learn what issues each member cares about most and how they envision the future of our city and neighborhood. Then, we’ll see how we can work together to use the soft power of our community board to make an impact.

I’m going to focus my efforts on housing policy, transportation, and our use of public space. There are, of course, many other important topics, but I can’t do everything at once. These are important areas where local changes can make a big difference. On top of COYHO, how can we build more housing on the Upper East Side? Can we prevent vehicles from illegally blocking the Third Avenue bus lane? Could we change land use rules to allow cafes to operate on Fifth Avenue alongside Central Park? Let’s get to work!

Further reading and what you can do

If you care about what happens in New York, I highly encourage you to learn about what your local community board is doing. Whether you pay attention or not, every month there are 50 of your neighbors earnestly collaborating and debating to figure out what advice to give to the government on your behalf. It doesn’t take much effort to find your community board’s website, pick a topic you’re interested in, and browse recent meetings and upcoming agendas. Most community board meetings are accessible on Zoom and replays are available on YouTube. Many boards have social media accounts you can follow to get convenient updates about upcoming events.

Once you’ve tuned in to your local community board, here are some interesting posts my friends have written about New York’s community boards and how you can have an influence on your city and neighborhood:

• Community board meetings are too damn long by

• How to influence your local community board by

• How to do politics: the political capital savings plan by

As per CB8M’s bylaws, the views expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Manhattan Community Board 8.

Congestion pricing is legally required to raise revenue for $15 billion of capital projects to improve the transit system. Delaying it undermines significant potential benefits: faster bus rides, cleaner air, and crucial subway upgrades like station elevators, signal improvements, and the Second Avenue subway extension.

Governor Hochul cited the city’s “fragile” economic situation as the reason for the delay, suggesting that congestion pricing would threaten the city’s prosperity. This rationale is vague and unconvincing. Instead of congestion pricing, Hochul floated the prospect of an increased payroll tax on businesses in New York City.

My Disappointment and Frustration

As a strong supporter of congestion pricing, I find this indefinite delay deeply disappointing and frustrating. This move stalls progress on multiple fronts and deprives the city of necessary improvements. It attempts to shift the cost of transportation from drivers to businesses.

Congestion pricing has the potential to transform our daily commutes and the air we breathe. Faster buses mean less time wasted in traffic, and cleaner air translates to better health for all New Yorkers. Businesses were excited that less congestion would enable more reliably timed deliveries, and less time wasted stuck in traffic. Moreover, the billions of dollars earmarked for subway upgrades are essential for projects like installing elevators, improving signal reliability, and extending the Second Avenue subway.

The political calculus behind Hochul’s decision appears deeply flawed. The most generous interpretation is that she believes delaying congestion pricing will garner votes for Democrats in the November 2024 House races in suburban districts around New York City. However, this strategy seems misguided. Even in these suburbs, few residents commute to Manhattan by car, while many rely on transit. Pandering to a small minority of car commuters is unlikely to shift enough votes to significantly influence the election outcome, according to insiders on those suburban races.

The Legal Reality

Fortunately, New York is not a dictatorship, and Governor Hochul’s video announcement does not change the law on its own. The MTA is still required to implement congestion pricing, and the plan remains scheduled to start on June 30, 2024.

Only the state legislature can change the law, and only the MTA Board can alter the implementation schedule. Hochul can request changes, but she cannot mandate them.

The legislative session is nearly over, making it unlikely that the law will change. The focus now shifts to the MTA Board, which would need a majority vote to delay congestion pricing. The Board consists of 14 voting members, with the chair breaking ties:

• 6 votes from members appointed by the governor

• 4 votes from members appointed by the mayor of New York City

• 1 vote from a member appointed by the executive of Nassau County

• 1 vote from a member appointed by the executive of Suffolk County

• 1 vote from a member appointed by the executive of Westchester County

• 1 vote shared by members appointed by the executives of Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam Counties

The MTA Board’s next meeting is on June 24 and 26. My understanding is this meeting is where any amendment to the congestion pricing plan will have to take place.

Taking Action

Now is the time for those who care about New York City's future to take a stand.

1. Email MTA Board members: Express your support for congestion pricing and urge them to maintain the June 30, 2024 start date. Click here for a pre-composed email you can edit.

2. Lobby your state legislators: Tell your state senator and assembly member that you care about congestion pricing and don’t want to increase NYC’s payroll taxes. Find their contact details, and give their office a call. It’s really easy! Just say “I’m a resident of XYZ neighborhood and I support congestion pricing. Please do everything you can to save it, and don’t raise payroll taxes.”

3. Follow advocacy groups: Riders Alliance and Transportation Alternatives are organizing advocates. Subscribing to their social profiles is a great way to stay updated.

Points to communicate to the MTA Board and your representatives:

• Congestion pricing benefits the vast majority: Faster buses, improved air quality, reduced congestion, and funds for critical subway and bus system improvements. Even drivers benefit from less congested roads, allowing them to move through Manhattan more quickly. There are exemptions for vehicles transporting passengers with disabilities.

• Financial prudence requires congestion pricing: The MTA has committed to projects relying on congestion pricing revenue and has issued bonds based on this assumption. Delaying congestion pricing will create financial instability.

• Alternative funding sources are vaporware: Governor Hochul has floated implementing a tax on NYC businesses to cover the gap in the MTA’s budget, but this will hurt New York’s economy and has little chance of passing before the end of the legislative session.

• Delaying congestion pricing is bad politics: The idea that delaying congestion pricing will help Democrats win House districts is deeply flawed.

This is our moment to ensure a better, more sustainable future for New York City. Your voice can make a difference — act now!