• Follow Local Law 195 to develop and implement a transportation master plan every five years.

• Fully fund NYCDOT to implement the Streets Master Plan and build at least 30+ miles of protected bus lanes, 50+ miles of protected bike lanes and complete hundreds of intersection and signal redesigns annually, as mandated.

• Work with the MTA to implement a high-capacity bus rapid transit network.

• Prioritize projects in under-resourced and underserved communities.

• Use transit overlays and other zoning strategies to reduce and eliminate free parking while working to curb placard abuse.

• Follow the examples of Paris, London, Oslo, and Amsterdam to reduce and ultimately eliminate free on-street parking.

• Set and achieve annual benchmarks to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries.

• Study the impact, benefits, and opportunity costs of offering free bus service. For example, how else could the MTA better spend any new funding identified to replace bus fare revenue?

• Give NYC authorization for traffic enforcement cameras so we cover red light, speed and bus lane.

  
  

Success would mean faster buses, more protected bike lanes for cyclists, safer streets with fewer collisions, and fewer pedestrian injuries—especially in neighborhoods with the greatest safety challenges.

• Use the mayoral bully pulpit to highlight benefits of congestion pricing to everyday New Yorkers, continue to build public and political support for the program, align messaging with the Governor and MTA and actively push back on efforts to weaken or eliminate the program.

• Partner with the City Council, state, and MTA to monitor the program and effectively communicate its benefits.

Success would mean continued environmental, transportation, and health benefits across the city due to less congestion in the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ) below 61st Street and across the region.

• Coordinate with the City Council to fund and expand the Fair Fares program and achieve greater enrollment. This includes increasing the eligibility threshold to 250% of the Federal Poverty Line and working with HRA and the MTA to make it easier for eligible New Yorkers to access the program and streamline the application process.

• Give free or discounted fares to CUNY and SUNY students.

• Push for fare integration under OMNY or some other program to improve mobility options on MTA NYCT, MNR, LIRR, NJT, Citi Bike, and NYC Ferry.

Success would mean more New Yorkers receive transit discounts, and the MTA sees ridership among low-income New Yorkers increase. Success would also mean stream-lined transfers across the many transit systems serving the City.

• Maintain and expand the Chief Public Realm Officer’s role in the Mayor’s Office and build off the Realm of Possibility recommendations to improve the state of the public realm across the city, as well as the DOT Commissioner’s role in improving the public right-of-way through the authority granted by the City Charter.

• Develop public space strategies for children and families, following London’s lead.

• Implement a year-round outdoor dining program to ease burden on small businesses and provide more permanent outdoor amenities for communities.

• Expand Open Streets in communities with limited access to open space and improve support for community partners managing and programming such spaces.

• Re-envision the right-of-way by recalibrating curb space to provide holistic public benefits including open space for commerce and gathering, a contiguous network of protected bike and bus-only lanes, and green infrastructure that restores nature, biodiversity, evapotranspiration, and stormwater collection in our communities.

• Streamline capital projects on streets and broaden NYC DOT’s revocable consent to allow for a wider variety of public amenities.

• Support the QueensWay and full implementation of the Greater Greenways master plan, expanding to include more local connectivity and develop a safe network that enables more New Yorkers to utilize bicycle travel as their primary mode of transport.

• Implement a comprehensive resiliency approach repurposing the right-of-way where appropriate to mitigate against climate impacts.

• Support trash containerization and streamline the diversity of uses of our sidewalks to enforce better pedestrian flow.

Success would mean public realm projects delivered across all five boroughs that measurably shifts the quality, safety, and social utility of public spaces. It would also mean more community partners stepping up to implement programming and support for the public realm, more New Yorkers traveling safely by bicycle, and utilization of our right-of-way for resiliency efforts.

Read more about stormwater management in RPA’s report Preventing Another Ida

• Expand CitiBike citywide in coordination with greenway and bike lane expansion, especially in transit deserts and communities historically left out of such investments.

• Expand network of extra wide lanes, and pilot speed lanes, new signage, and other design interventions to separate slower bike users from motorized two-wheelers.

• Advance safe and equitable battery standards for lithium-ion battery certification, storage, and charging to enhance safety and prevent building-level bans that restrict access to electric mobility for delivery workers, people with disabilities, and other users.

• Improve micro-mobility accessibility through design including low-cost features such as runnels and rolling channels on public stairways and in subway stations to make it easier for cyclists and delivery workers to move through transit facilities, freeing elevators for those who need them most.

• Expand microhubs and loading zones to facilitate commercial micromobility.

• Move forward with the citywide plan to deploy 500 bicycle parking stations.

• Incentivize new development to support and facilitate the use of micromobility including offering tax incentives for outdoor bicycle charging and bike storage for both conventional and electric options.

• Streamline the revocable consent process and fast track applications for charging infrastructure.

Success would mean measurable increases in mobility and access to destinations for New Yorkers, reductions in fatal and injury crashes and reductions in conflicts among all users of the right-of-way.

• Implement the Freight Strategy for addressing truck pollution, safety and climate impacts including investment in the Blue Highways initiative and the new Brooklyn Marine Terminal. These projects offer new opportunities for waterborne freight mobility.

• Continue to expand neighborhood-scale microhub programs like LockerNYC, for deliveries across the city and electrify last-mile deliveries to reduce vehicle usage and pollution.

• Continue to incentivize off-hour deliveries and loading zones across the five boroughs to reduce congestion and double parking and to improve roadway safety.

• Include freight, truck routing and last-mile logistics in environmental and equity-focused reviews such as the required Racial Equity Reports.

Success would mean a more complete understanding of the impact of goods movement on communities and mitigation needs to enhance quality of life. It would also mean a measurable increase in freight moved by water; an expansion beyond the initial 36-location microhub pilot; having most last-mile deliveries shift to electric modes; and exceeding the target of moving 62,000 daily trucks to off-hour deliveries by 2040.

• Ensure the Cross Bronx Five Bridges Project reduces harm to local communities and improves local connectivity; continue to advance the long term community-led vision through the Reimagine the Cross Bronx that looks at decking and other amenities.

• Help establish a city-state authority to ensure any highway investments are coupled with support for community-led alternatives and consistent with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA); thus reducing harm and reconnecting communities.

Success here would mean a reduction in the number of lanes and overall footprint of existing highways with no additional lanes. It would also mean investments made to implement community-driven plans, measurably improving the public realm and enhancing health and quality of life for communities surrounding the highways.

• Build strong relationships with the Congressional delegation to safeguard funding for transportation infrastructure projects including the MTA Capital Plan, Penn Station, Second Avenue Subway, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and the Gateway Program.

• Create a contingency plan to use state and city budget strategies to ensure state-of-good-repair work is able to continue if federal funds are reduced or eliminated.

Success would mean continued progress and robust funding for transit projects in the region and the MTA Capital Plan.

• Embark on community planning for neighborhoods along the future IBX route connecting Brooklyn and Queens to improve connectivity and public space, address development concerns, and ensure the city is coordinating with MTA’s planning and construction.

• Coordinate with the MTA to identify service expansion needs in transit deserts and in places that are seeing new investments and growth.

• Develop a plan to invest in better connectivity along with service expansion.

Success would mean regional projects continue to see bi-partisan support and funding to move forward. It would also mean commitments are made by the MTA around bus or other expanded service on an appropriate timeline to serve existing transit deserts and when the city approves major redevelopment or rezonings.

• Of the MTA’s 23-person board, the Mayor can recommend four. This is a critical position to promote the city’s interest in decision-making at the MTA. Ensure that appointees reflect what is most critical for the City and riders who rely on transit.

Success would mean that the mayor’s appointments to the board act as a block to voice the concerns and needs of riders and the City as efforts are made to modernize and expand transit to serve more New Yorkers.

The world will be watching New York City next summer. With both the FIFA World Cup and celebration of our country’s 250th anniversary, the city is likely to see unprecedented interest in tourism. The next mayor will need to act quickly in order to address several interconnected challenges: equitable hospitality, accessible mobility, and economic development.

• Utilize the World Cup to showcase New York’s multinationalism and diversity as a core strength of the city.

• Work with credit card companies to track where visitors are booking and planning to visit as far in advance as possible and use this data to plan for a major influx of tourists, including working with institutions such as universities to provide for short-term accommodation.

• Coordination with regional transit operators will also be critical to providing accessible mobility – from the airports, subways, buses and rail – for people traveling from all over the world and commuting all across North America to witness the games or national anniversary celebrations. The next Mayor must work out logistics with New Jersey and identify opportunities to streamline mobility, especially on game days and the 4th of July, when our existing network will likely hit capacity.

• Consider advocating for a modification to short-term-rental legislation at the state level for the period of the World Cup, and potentially other large events.

• Create a robust website and/or app to guide visitors not only to games but to the many events around the city and region, as well as the best modes of travel to get there.

• Work with the City Council to legislate the BCR into law as a permanent city bureau.

• Coordinate budget planning to deliver baseline funding and fulfill staffing needs to meet project demands.
  

Success would mean that a new permanent agency is established–more fully-staffed– with annual capital and maintenance and operating budgets secured. It would also mean the coastal resiliency projects are coordinated more effectively within DEP and with other agencies as needed to move projects forward and protect more New Yorkers. The new agency should implement financial tools to reduce the financial burden on the city created through a new layer of government.

• Identify financial tools under the city’s control that could fund resiliency projects in the face of federal or state funding cuts. Recommendations from the Resilience Task Force provide ideas for new revenue streams (e.g. climate bonds, utility surcharges, etc.).

• Work with state allies to receive authorization needed to enact new revenue-raising tools to meet resiliency needs.

Success would mean that the estimated $50 billion capital needs and the $300 million annual M&O funding needs are secured through city-controlled mechanisms.

• Our public spaces, including streets and parks, can be used to serve multiple functions, including those they were intended for, and to reduce the impacts of climate risks, including flooding and heat. Expanding the city’s Cloudburst program, investing in more green infrastructure, and using parkland strategically are all ways to increase community resilience and quality of life.

Success would look like expansion of investments in multi-use projects - such as Cloudburst, Green Infrastructure, and Bluebelt projects– in the highest-risk areas leading to a measurable increase in protection for the surrounding community.

• Protect people living in at-risk areas. For example, implement a floodplain strategy incorporating voluntary buyouts, new zoning overlays, relocation tools and other resources.

• Coordinate with existing community groups that have developed resiliency plans (e.g. Edgemere) and consolidate bottom-up ideas into a citywide plan covering the diversity of challenges faced including stormwater, coastal flooding, extreme heat, long-term retreat strategies and more.

• Continue to address the problems with the Harbor and Tributaries Study (HATS) and push to get a more effective plan in place. Use the existing political landscape as an opportunity to better coordinate with neighboring jurisdictions.

Success would mean successful adoption of a citywide resiliency framework that incorporates community-driven plans and delivers progress on projects with funding committed and provides regular, transparent updates to the public. It would also mean more coordination with neighboring states and municipalities.

• Regardless of how the Charter Revision proposals perform on the ballot this November, the next mayor needs to streamline the process to approve and fund voluntary buyouts within a more reasonable timeframe, especially in the highest-risk neighborhoods.

• Scale up the pilot approach to buyouts to better reflect the needs of entire corridors and communities and move away from a piecemeal approach to relocating people away from risk.

Success would look like a well-established and funded program that meaningfully engages the most at-risk, eligible communities, and effectively reduces risk and increases resiliency in high-risk, low-growth communities through targeted acquisitions.

a. Champion Local Law 97 (LL97) with Proactive Assistance for Building Owners

• Ensure that LL97 improves affordability as well as quality of life by advancing an initiative to provide bulk procurement of equipment, low-cost financing through municipal bonds, and turnkey installation services. Work with the Governor and state and city legislative leaders to obtain state legislation authorizing the city to collect payment for building upgrades on the tax bill.

• Align LL97 compliance requirements with least cost path to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Success means all building owners will have the financial means and technical ability to upgrade buildings by improving energy efficiency and transitioning to clean electric heat pumps and induction cooking. Such upgrades will improve the health and quality of life for residents by reducing air pollution and providing air-conditioning for all.

b. Protect New Yorkers from Paying Billions for Unnecessary Gas Infrastructure

• New Yorkers are poised to pay tens of billions of dollars to replace gas distribution pipes that provide little value and are destined to become stranded assets as people switch away from gas to clean electric heat pumps.

• New Yorkers are also poised to pay upwards of $2 billion for the NESE pipeline, which National Grid’s own analyses show is not needed to meet consumer demand, as new construction transitions to all-electric and existing buildings switch to electric heat.

• The state Public Service Law currently requires all gas customers to subsidize the cost of line extensions (the ​“100’ rule”) and effectively prohibits neighborhood scale electrification regardless of how much more expensive it is to upgrade gas service (due to the law’s ​“obligation to serve” gas, rather than heat).

• City government must work with the PSC, the Governor’s office, and the legislature to prevent imprudent gas utility investments and to litigate when necessary to protect NYC residents from shouldering the cost when such investments are made.

Success would mean reducing winter heating bills by tens of billions of dollars, insulating New Yorkers from volatile gas prices over which the city and state have no control, and shifting more and more New Yorkers off a gas distribution system that is vulnerable to extreme weather, the upstream portion of which the city and state are powerless to protect.

• The next mayor should reinstill confidence in offshore wind development by strongly committing to existing strategies underway to attract investment. This includes investing in infrastructure, including transmission projects, port improvements, and preparing workforce development initiatives to help New Yorkers equitably access emerging opportunities.

Success would mean the completion of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal port upgrade and transmission project, advancement of the Arthur Kill Terminal, and commitment to strategies outlined in the Green Economy Action Plan to generate 400k green jobs by 2040.

• Address emissions from truck deliveries by the replacement of older, diesel-fueled vehicles and the electrification of delivery hubs, especially those in Environmental Justice communities, such as Hunts Point.

• Reduce vehicle emission by continuing to electrify fleet vehicles. success would look like a higher percentage of fleet vehicles are zero emission.

• Electrifying last-mile trucks, prioritizing changes in major depots and truck-heavy routes through EJ neighborhoods.

Success would look like ensuring DOT meets Clean Truck Program target of replacing 500 trucks and achieving electrification and emission reduction goals set in the Hunts Point Forward plan, including DOT’s goal of replacing up to one thousand Transport Refrigeration Units (TRUs) currently negatively impacting local air quality.

• Dedicate 2% of the city budget to parks on an annual basis, focusing on building up resources to maintain neglected parks, staff up critical free programming and meaningfully invest in climate-related projects to create dual-use infrastructure within our parks system.

Success would mean fully staffing and investing in parks across the city, with a focus on equitable investments to ensure all New Yorkers have access to quality recreational green spaces.

• There have been delays and the city is unlikely to meet its deadline to close Rikers Island by August 2027. However, the next mayor needs to deliver a concrete plan to adhere to the law and invest in borough-based solutions that deliver community benefits and address the many challenges those incarcerated at Rikers Island have had to grapple with.

• Begin the master planning efforts for Renewable Rikers which should include critical environmental infrastructure including renewable energy, battery storage and wastewater treatment, among others.

• Begin the process of creating a city-sponsored and controlled single-purpose nonprofit entity to effect this transformation.

• Immediately uphold commitments to fill and convene the Rikers Island Advisory Committee, transfer unused parcels on Rikers Island from Department of Corrections to Department of Citywide Administrative Services, and otherwise adhere to Local Law 16 of 2021 which details the process to transfer Rikers Island to non-carceral use.

Success would mean that a plan is implemented to fully close the Rikers Island complex and concrete steps and funding to implement the Renewable Rikers vision.

• Advance strategies to streamline and fast track affordable housing of diverse types where appropriate, regardless of the outcome of the Charter Revision ballot proposals. This will require tackling restrictive zoning and working to update our land-use procedures, codifying planning and equity goals, setting housing targets identified through a comprehensive assessment and making it easier for projects that address such needs to move forward.

• Identify opportunities to repurpose more underutilized public land and buildings, office space, ground-floor commercial and other non-traditional sites to build new housing as the city grows.

• Support equitable housing growth by implementing the Fair Housing Plan and adopting processes that hold communities accountable for meeting their fair share of citywide housing needs, especially during a housing emergency.

Success means aligning the city’s land use process to meet a citywide objective to both measurably reduce the number of New Yorkers who are housing cost burdened and meet the objectives of the City’s Fair Housing Plan.

• Commit to a full implementation of City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, and prioritize items that were diluted when it passed. These include the reduction or elimination of parking minimums, facilitating transit-oriented development around existing and future transit stations, and enabling accessory dwelling units in more neighborhoods.

• Follow through on previous city commitments related to major land-use actions and zoning changes, including the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, OneLIC, the Manhattan Plan and others, that will deliver significant new housing supply to address our chronic shortage.

• Identify new opportunities for major land-use changes in conjunction with anti-displacement measures, affordable housing requirements, infrastructure investments and other comprehensive planning measures.

Success would mean sustainably increasing zoned capacity in a way that can meaningfully reduce the estimated 500k unit deficit we will face by 2040.

Learn more in RPA’s 2025 report, Averting Crisis

• Fully support and scale up existing programs to rehabilitate NYCHA including the Rental Assistance Demonstration program and the Preservation Trust.

• Institute a program to expand the areas of at least some of NYCHA’s transferable development rights (TDRs) in order to both raise more funds and facilitate better campus planning.

• Support Build to Preserve (BTP), Transfer to Preserve, and identify other financial tools that will increase and diversify NYCHA revenue.

• Work with state and federal partners to safeguard existing funding and expand options to fully fund the capital backlog and protect existing NYCHA tenants.

• Take available opportunities to expand the inventory of NYCHA public housing or other social housing through NYCHA and the Preservation Trust.

Success would mean a substantial decrease in the $80 billion capital backlog and measurably improved resident satisfaction as building conditions get better and preservation projects are completed.

Learn more about RPA’s campaign to restore the promise of NYC’s public housing.

• Establish a centralized dashboard to track city agencies as they progress to meeting legislative and policy goals related to housing. This would help the public better understand the extent to which the city is working to create new housing and hold officials accountable if the funding, staffing or other resources made available are not adequate enough to help agencies fulfill their obligations.
  
  Dashboard example from Newark, NJ

Success would mean a formal, public-facing dashboard is created and updated at regular intervals informing the public and providing a scorecard on how the city is progressing in relation to formal housing goals set by the administration. It would also mean that the broader public better understands what is needed to accomplish housing goals and is able to advocate for budget or other resources as needed.

Homeownership is increasingly out-of-reach for more and more New York City households, with prices rising even faster, and vacancies falling even lower, than rental housing. The stability and wealth-building opportunities that homeownership provides for families who are committed to remaining in their neighborhoods long-term are an invaluable part of our housing portfolio. To help increase homeownership opportunities, the next mayor should:

• Target affordable homeownership development to neighborhoods currently without sufficient homeownership opportunities, especially affordable homeownership.

• Advocate for an improved tax exemption for new middle-income homeownership housing at the state level.

• Continue to partner with the State and Attorney General on comprehensive foreclosure prevention programs, including the proposed MAP+ program.

• Advocate with the state to Incentivize more owner-occupancy in homeownership housing through tax incentives like pied-a-terre taxes or other mechanisms

Success would mean an increase in the percentage of low and moderate-income New Yorkers who own homes, a narrowing of the wealth gap, and a decrease in foreclosure actions.

• In addition to the NYSHCR’s Housing Acceleration Fund, the city should establish a municipally-backed revolving loan fund administered by HPD or HDC to help fund affordable and mixed-income housing. This could help provide more affordable financing options to projects that might otherwise be struggling to secure resources needed to move forward, especially with increasing financing and construction costs.

• Work with the state to develop more flexible financing tools that can be used on a wide variety of projects that meet a wide variety of housing goals, and are not tied to a specific programmatic outcome.

• Invest in both full staffing at HPD, HDC and NYCHA and ensure they have sufficient capital budgets to ensure future projects and needs are met.

Success would mean the city controls a broader set of financial tools and incentives to facilitate housing production and preservation that are not reliant on federal approvals or policy, and has the budget and technical capacity to utilize them.

• Building on the recommendations of the New York City Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform, as well as RPA’s reports on the subject, work with the State toward comprehensive property tax reform that fundamentally restructures New York City’s inequitable property tax system.

• Utilize the levers under city control to better balance the property tax burden, such as lowering assessment percentages for Class One properties..

• Advocate to the State Legislature for the repeal of Section 581 of the Real Property Finance Law, which prevents New York City from assessing high-end co-ops and condominiums properly.

Success would mean an overall lower property tax burden for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, and a tax burden that is a better reflection of market value for higher-end properties.

• The entire country is grappling with a housing crisis, and it is not possible for NYC to address the housing needs of the entire region. The mayor must continue to prioritize efforts to regionally address the housing crisis, including convening tri-state leaders and developing strategies in coordination with regional counterparts in New Jersey, Connecticut, and the surrounding New York suburbs to solve our shared housing crisis.

• Building on the successful framework of ​“Where We Live,” the next mayor should also continue efforts to coordinate citywise planning and growth in New York City, in order to make sure population, jobs, and infrastructure are correctly balanced and the city develops in an equitable way. This could include a comprehensive planning effort for the city, which could also take a regional lens into account.

• The new administration should continue to focus on enabling housing in areas with existing underutilized mass transit infrastructure, as well as look for places in which smart transportation investments could spur further development.

Success would mean a formal agreement amongst regional decision-makers around specific policies to ramp up housing production and coordination.

• Coordinate LL97 compliance with housing retrofit needs and help affordable housing owners cover the cost of necessary upgrades. Identify funding to support affordable housing preservation and retrofits, as well as high-efficiency and all-electric new housing production.

• Better integrate resiliency into housing and land use, directing DCP and other agencies to better coordinate when projects are proposed in at-risk areas, especially if not supported by land elevation, utility upgrades, and other measures necessary to keep the community from harm.

Success would result in broader compliance amongst affordable housing owners and developers with LL97, who would be prioritized for funding to complete necessary upgrades. It would also mean more deliberate action in developing outside of areas at risk and robust efforts to reduce risk for communities that cannot retreat.

• Streamline approvals for supportive housing and shelters and differentiate between permanent beds and those used in scenarios such as the influx of new arrivals in recent years that necessitated an expansion of temporary housing supply.

• Continue to work with the state to robustly fund City FHEPS housing vouchers, and work toward a guaranteed funding stream to ensure steadiness for landlords.

• Robustly enforce New York State’s prohibition against source-of-income discrimination in order ensure housing voucher holders are able to access permanent housing.

• Explore opportunities to convert underutilized hotels and other buildings into permanent supportive housing.

• Develop a robust emergency housing plan for cases in which a large number of people may need emergency shelter.

Success would mean sharply reducing the number of people who are homeless, including both the sheltered and unsheltered populations, as well as implementing a fair share model of supportive housing and shelters, and streamlining the process to reduce timeline to approval and ensure that we can more quickly and efficiently move people from shelters to stable housing.

• Continue to support office-to-residential conversions with an affordable housing component, creating more mixed-use, mixed-income areas throughout Manhattan.

• Continue work on DCP’s ​“Manhattan Plan” to find ways to add jobs and housing in the borough.

• Repeal the need to obtain a special permit for hotels in areas which are appropriate for hospitality use and ease hotel construction restrictions.

• Invest in streetscape and other improvements to improve pedestrian circulation and environment in Midtown Manhattan.

• Create a public observation deck, or work with developers to create an observation deck available to New Yorkers for free as a public space amenity, similar to the CIty of London’s program.

Success would mean to build off the retail, Broadway, and foot traffic success post-congestion pricing implementation with improved accessibility, mobility, greater hotel and hospitality capacity, and more free public amenities.

Despite recent efforts to make capital project delivery more efficient and cost-effective at both the State and local level, delivering new capital projects — parks, schools, road improvements, etc. — still takes too long and costs more than it should. Each year, the City of New York, the MTA and private utilities invest an estimated $7 billion in capital projects to repair, upgrade, design and install infrastructure just within New York City’s street right-of-way. For a wide range of reasons, land, personnel, material, administrative and other costs are higher in New York than in any other U.S. city. Some of this is the result of New York’s density and complexity. But among the biggest reasons are the inefficiencies and slow, duplicative processes that are built into every stage of project delivery, from the time a project is allocated funding to the point of completion. The NYC Capital Process Reform Task Force’s 2024 report, ​“Build Better NYC,” made good to improve capital project delivery which the next Administration should build on.

• The new mayor can build upon and implement the Capital Delivery Road Map to continue to improve the rate and financial efficiency of capital programs.

• Launch a task force to identify additional strategies to streamline permitting and procurement.

• Align a transparent capital planning process with climate, equity and prospective growth metrics to target investments in areas that have long been neglected.

Success would mean delivering capital projects across the city for less money and along quicker timelines.

The next administration must also signal a renewed and strategic investment in the city’s greatest asset—its people. The ​“usual suspects” of leadership cannot sustain the New York City government for the long-term. With just over half the city workforce having fewer than ten years of service, this administration can set a new standard for leadership cultivation and succession planning—pairing institutional wisdom with fresh energy and ideas. New York City’s workforce is filled with extraordinary talent, commitment, and untapped leadership potential. Yet, for too long, professional growth within city government has been limited. Currently, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) only offers limited programs for mid-level managers and several fellowship programs for early-career professionals. While, these efforts are valuable, and they must be scaled to meet the moment. Such efforts could include:

• Triple or even quadruple the size of existing professional development program cohorts to expand access and visibility for rising managers across agencies. Over 100 people should graduate from these programs a year.

• Establish a rotational leadership program for high-potential employees to develop the breadth of experience needed for Commissioner-level and senior executive roles—potentially modeled on the federal Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program.

• Partner with civic, academic, and nonprofit organizations focused on leadership and public sector innovation to build a robust pipeline for future city managers and policy leaders.

• Reform the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget’s hiring practices to reduce the time it takes to approve and onboard new staff.

• Improve recruitment and retention through better professional development opportunities and competitive salaries.

Success would mean reduced staffing vacancies, greater retention of mid-level and senior staff, and a more experienced city government that not only delivers results today but also builds the bench for tomorrow.

• Improve data transparency and public dashboards, making it easier for anyone to track citywide goals and how agencies are delivering on their promises to communities. This has already been done as part of the commitments tracker related to neighborhood rezonings, and through efforts like the capital project dashboard at NYC Parks. These efforts should evolve into a more comprehensive, citywide system where anyone can get an understanding of the breadth of work being done throughout the city in pursuit of agreed-upon goals – e.g. PlaNYC, City of Yes, etc.

• Implement sound and equitable planning reforms to align land-use decision-making with a more comprehensive approach regardless of the charter revision ballot proposal outcomes.

• Identify opportunities to work with regional counterparts – whether mayors, county executives, or state officials – to coordinate in addressing shared challenges.

Success would mean the new administration, along with partners in civic society, acts as the regional convenor of policy leaders working to tackle climate, housing, and mobility issues across the tri-state as regional cooperation is a critical missing piece in achieving our ambitious goals.