Budget + Taxes

How would you prioritize these elements of or changes to the city's contracting and spending processes?

1: A Database of Deals for all economic development projects.
2: Greater limits and oversight for campaign donations for companies and individuals who contract with the city.
3: Living wage requirements for city contracts, with cost of living adjustments (COLAs).
4: Council and borough president discretionary funding process.
4: Minority and women owned business enterprises (MWBE) programs.
5: Participatory budgeting for all council members and borough presidents.
I do not support this initiative: Participatory budgeting at the executive level.

Which proposals would you support to change or study changes to the city's tax system?

• Restructure the city’s tax brackets to have 7 instead of 5, reducing rates for the lowest brackets, and increasing them for the highest ($400 million in revenues annually) - and seek state legislative approval to accomplish this change
• Reinstitute the commuter tax ($900 million in revenues annually) - and seek state legislative approval to accomplish this change
• Constitute a new property tax commission to study and make recommendations on tax rates.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address the budget and taxes in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Workers + Economic Development

How would you improve jobs for CITY employees?

• End gender and race-based pay gaps (Note that there is an 18-cent wage gap for women in city jobs)
• Limit use of provisional employees
• Limit outsourcing of city jobs.

How would you prioritize creating and protecting job opportunities for NON-CITY employees?

1: Provide workers with the right to advance notice of schedules, greater flexibility of scheduling, and access to full-time hours.
2: Expand transitional jobs programs for the homeless and formerly incarcerated.
3: Expand job placement services for veterans.
4: Support training programs to bring workers into emerging sectors.
5: Expand summer youth employment.
I do not support this initiative: Change street vendor permit rules, such as the Street Vendor Modernization Act.

How do you rank these initiatives to spur economic development throughout the city?

1: Develop the technology sector, including campuses such as Cornell, and incubators for the sector as a whole.
2: Reform of Scaffold Law (requires change to state law).
3: Support manufacturing expansion and protection.
4: Support film and TV productions, including in the form of credits.
5: Support the sharing economy.
Not listed as a priority: Develop ports and waterfront jobs.
Not listed as a priority: Implement Midtown East Rezoning.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address workers and economic development in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Transportation + Infrastructure

How would you prioritize upgrading NYC's aging infrastructure?

1: Rail and bus service
2: Water and sewer system
3: Roads and bridges
4: Gas lines
5: Airports

How would you prioritize proposals to address transportation and mobility in NYC? (Note that many of these proposals require state level advocacy.)

1: Bus Rapid Transit
1: Triboro RX Subway Extension
2: Half-price fares for working adults at or below the poverty line
2: Increased funding for Access-A-Ride and ADA compliance for subway stations
3: Bike Lanes Expansion
3: CitiBike Expansion
3: Ferry Service
I do not support this initiative: Brooklyn to Queens Streetcar
I do not support this initiative: LaGuardia AirTrain
I do not support this initiative: Second Avenue Subway Phase 2
Not listed as a priority: Increased Ride Hailing

Many subway riders - and associated MTA data - would argue that subway service is getting worse. At the same time, city and state officials disagree about who is responsible for fixing the system and paying the bills. What proposals would you advance to improve the subways and their governance?

• Increase city funding to the MTA
• Increase state funding to the MTA - and seek state approval to accomplish this change
• Earmark state funds for the MTA and forbid moving MTA money from subways to other projects - and seek state approval to accomplish this change
• Increase funding via toll reforms, such as the MoveNY tolling plan, seeking state approval for this change
• Audit MTA finances, including contracts with vendors and maintenance costs, to find opportunities for savings
• Get more NYC representatives on the MTA board - and seek state approval to accomplish this change
• Move the MTA, or its NYC-specific services, within NYC control - and seek state approval to accomplish this change
• Increase personal income tax rate from 3.9 to 4.4 percent for individuals makings $500,000 or more, or households earning $1 million or more.

cm-subway-yes

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address transportation and infrastructure in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Any and all new funding must have mechanisms of transparency and accountability to make sure it is being spent where and how is was intended. We need a moratorium on new capital projects until we can start to pay down the enormous existing MTA debt. We simply can't afford lavish new rail projects right now. New spending should be focused on more cost effective and forward thinking solutions like BRT.

Land Use + Real Estate + Housing

As a council member you'd have influence over land use decisions and the process for decision-making in your district, and competing concerns may arise in the process. How would you rank various land use priorities as you make these decisions?

1: Expand classroom seats at pace with the increase in housing units.
1: Expand infrastructure, such as transportation and utility capacity, at pace with the increase in housing units.
1: Increase affordable housing units.
1: Increase market rate housing units.
1: Keep/grow community spaces, including parks and gardens.
1: Limit building heights to stay close to those of surrounding buildings.
1: Make sure development and zoning is in line with a DISTRICT-wide land use plan.
1: Preserve landmarks and/or institute neighborhood review to recommend which landmarks matter most.
2: Keep/grow small businesses, including mom and pop retailers.
3: Make sure development and zoning is in line with a BOROUGH-wide land use plan.
3: Make sure development and zoning is in line with a CITY-wide land use plan.
I do not support this initiative: Expand presence of chain and big-box retailers.
I do not support this initiative: Increase luxury units.

Do you support any of these proposals to reform ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure)?

• Increase transparency and refine procedures before ULURP applications are filed and/or during the certification stage
• Make community board input binding, rather than advisory
• Make borough president input binding, rather than advisory
• Change the ratio of mayoral appointees to the City Planning Commission, or change the term lengths or limits of commissioners
• Increase oversight of community benefits agreements between developers, community groups, and government officials - and make them enforceable.

What proposals do you support to address housing costs?

• Change inclusionary housing rules to limit zoning bonus of 421-a buildings to development on the building's zoning lot, eliminating transfer of air rights away from the affordable units (HPD proposal)
• Increase number of city-subsidized units set aside for middle and moderate income families (eg 3 person households with income between $69,000-141,735)
• Tie the percentage of rent increases to increased fees and costs for property maintenance, including taxes and water costs - rather than the annual determination of the Rent Guidelines Board
• Expand the city's Mitchell-Lama program
• Increase number of city-subsidized units set aside for low and mixed income families (eg 3 person households with income between $34,360-51,540)
• Preserve affordable housing units by subsidizing physical repairs to property
• Preserve affordable housing through financing arrangements with owners, ie tax subsidies.

Which proposals do you support to change the city’s homelessness service delivery?

• Find funding for NYCHA's $17 billion capital budget deficit
• Offer permanent rental assistance
• Increase accessibility of shelters to those with disabilities
• Offer permanent supportive housing with links to social services to address mental illness and other health issues.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address land use, real estate, and housing in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Environment + Sanitation

What proposals do you support to address the environment and environmental justice in the city?

• Fees for plastic bags (note that a city law was passed, but a moratorium was enacted at the state level)
• Expand green energy usage for public facilites, such as solar and natural gas
• Update the city's Fair Share criteria, and reform the city's statement of needs process for siting of facilities
• Prohibit siting certain facilities in oversaturated communities, even through emergency sitings, by requiring a higher bar than current law
• Tax credits for private green energy usage, such as solar and natural gas.

How do you prioritize proposals to improve NYC's waste management?

1: “Pay as you throw” charging for collection of waste other than recycled materials, similar to charges for utilities and water (estimated to raise $337 million annually, by the Independent Budget Office).
1: Improve education about residents' role in waste management.
2: Expand commercial waste zones.
2: Increase compost collection sites.
2: Recycle styrofoam.
3: Increase e-waste recycling facilities.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address the environment and sanitation in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Public Health + Safety

What public health and safety issues do you believe are in most need of addressing?

1: Access to healthy food.
1: Epidemic of addiction, including opiates.
2: Community-police relations.
2: Continuing sanctuary city policies.
2: Emergency preparedness.
2: Funding for safety net hospitals.
2: Integrity and proper management of buildings and construction inspections.
2: Keeping hospitals and emergency care in neighborhoods.

What do you think is the greatest health, safety, or emergency preparedness challenge facing NYC, how does it impact your district, and how would you address it?

Traffic and congestion, and the continually inadequate traffic studies of new projects. I would demand the proper software and modeling be done, and make sure that fire, and police are heard during the environmental review process so we do not further inhibit emergency services in our area.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address public health and safety in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Education + Children + Youth

How would you rank the significance of these alleged problems in NYC schools?

1: Not enough classrooms and/or seats.
1: Student achievement gaps based on race and income.
2: Inadequate racial and ethnic diversity.
3: Class sizes are too big.
3: Parental involvement mechanisms, such as Community Education Councils, need strengthening.
3: Restrictive environment for children with disabilities.
3: Too much student testing.
3: Too much testing to measure student and/or teacher performance.

What solutions would you advance to solve the problems you marked in the previous question?

Where do you stand on charter schools?

• The number of charter schools should be reduced
• Charter schools divert city funds inequitably to benefit some students at the expense of the majority
• Since charter schools are funded publicly, the government should have more oversight of their finances and operations
• They should NOT be co-located with public schools.

Should the city subsidize any of these services for children and their families?

• Universal free school lunch
• Longer library hours
• More youth employment and apprenticeship opportunities.

What proposals do you support to ensure the safety of children under the purview of the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) in the foster care and juvenile justice systems?

• Caseload reductions of front-line workers
• Greater transparency of data regarding caseloads
• Increased oversight, beyond court-appointed monitor
• Increased use of city council's oversight authority.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address the children, youth, and education in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Arts + Parks

Which proposals do you support regarding arts and cultural institutions and initiatives in NYC?

• Increase the city's overall arts budget
• Increase funding for small and/or community-based arts and cultural organizations
• Increase funding and/or partnerships for art and music education in schools
• Improve education and/or ease requirements for applications for cultural funding, while ensuring integrity and proper use of funds
• Increased funding for smaller community based cultural institutions is a priority of mine.

What proposals do you support regarding the management and funding of city parks?

• Standardize financial data reporting from private partnerships that care for parks - such as the Central Park Conservancy and Prospect Park Alliance
• Institute shadow laws to prevent parks from losing sunlight because of shadows from new, tall buildings
• We need greater transparency and a co-ordinated and cohesive effort to reform the DPR so that capital projects have a timeline that is in-line with the mayor's call for more private funding and partnerships. Private funding is not a reasonable request when capital projects take years to comlete.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address arts and parks in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Constituent Groups' Needs

The city offers services to address constituent needs - how would you address funding for these services?
Increase funding:

• Additional staff, including social workers, for senior centers.
• Extended hours at senior centers.
• Additional meals at senior centers.
• Education regarding availability of Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE).
• Education regarding availability of Disability Rent Increase Exemption (DRIE).
• Education regarding availability of evaluations for Individualized Education Plans (IEP) for students with disabilities.
• Education and job training for individuals with disabilities.
• LGBTQ community centers.
• Housing for homeless LGBTQ, particularly youth.
• Sexual health/HIV and AIDs services.
• Drug abuse and addiction services.
• Mental health training for city employees.
• Department of Veterans Services.

Fine as is:

• (Candidate didn't select answers in this category)

Decrease funding:

• (Candidate didn't select answers in this category)

Do you support any of these changes to NYC's human rights law?

• Amend the definitions of gender and sexual orientation (City Council Intro 1186)
• Prohibit employer retaliation if an employee requests a "reasonable accommodation on the basis of a religious observance, disability, pregnancy, childbirth, medical condition, or their status as a victim of domestic violence, a sex offense or stalking, among other possible reasons" (City Council Intro 1479)
• Clarify which employees are protected by the human rights law, including interns and particular independent contractors (City Council Intro 1016).

NYC provides a variety of services and information to immigrants, but not always in the languages spoken by the city's many immigrant communities. In which of these areas do you believe the city should provide resources in more languages?

• Elections and voting
• Health care
• Educational and youth services
• Senior services.

The current city budget supports funding for legal services for immigrants facing deportation. What do you think about that?

I think our system should provide legal representation to every individual who is under its jurisdiction, so I support the funding for all immigrants.

Women make up half of the population, but are slated to make up less than one-third of the NYC Council's next class. Do you think this is a problem? And if so, what would you do about it?

Yes, but I think the problem is much deeper and more insidious in certain sectors especially when it pertains to hiring practices and culture within those sectors. This is an all hands on duty problem, and for my part, I have been working on an advocacy speech I'd like to give to give to other Caucasian men in power about our blind spots and complicity in creating an unfair work culture, when we personally may believe we are good and decent and fair people ourselves. The essence is to help them understand my experience of realizing the pervasiveness and scope of the problem well into adulthood, and how it impacted my view of myself as someone who had previously thought they stood for equality and justice, but instead learned that I was completely blind to the systemic discrimination going on all around me, and how disappointed that made me in myself, and how I resolved to change that, but also how we can help each other identify and change ways in which we are complicit in unfairness, and how that is fundamentally damaging to our various enterprises in terms of their opportunities for success and profit.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address the needs of constituent groups in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Policing + Criminal Justice

Which of these strategies do you think NYC should implement to prevent crimes?

• Invest in education and workforce development for young New Yorkers, to steer them away from making money through criminal activity
• Strengthen partnerships between the police, government entities, and community organization working with at-risk youths.

Which of these proposals do you support to change policies of the New York Police Department (NYPD)?

• Pass the Right to Know Act, which requires police officers to identify themselves and the reason for the interaction, and obtain fully informed consent before conducting searches
• Publish data regarding when the Police Commissioner declines to discipline or reduces recommended penalties for officers, particularly for use of force cases
• Assess NYPD's quality-of-life policing tactics in terms of reduction of higher-level felony crimes
• Use existing succesful models in the imprelemtation of body cameras. No need to reinvent the wheel here.

Which of these proposals do you support to address pretrial detention, case processing, and trials for criminal defendants?

• Simplify the process to pay bail
• Institute best practices to manage the timeline of criminal cases, including triage for cases likely to go to trial and speedy resolution of other cases, courts monitoring the timelines of cases, and holding attorneys accountable for moving cases along
• Use specialized courts that deliver services to address recidivism and provide alternative justice models, such as Community, Youth, Reentry, Drug, and/or Mental Health Courts.

If Rikers Island were to close, where do you think a jail should be sited in your borough, how would you discuss this with your constituents, and what do you think should be the use of Rikers Island?

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address policing and criminal justice in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Government Structures

How do you think NYC's system of checks and balances is working?

• New Yorkers are not appropriately represented by their elected officials
• Elections are not enough to keep government accountable
• The mayor's office has too much power and the other branches of government cannot adequately counteract or check it
• This city is awash in soft corruption and pay for play. We need to further reform campaign finance, and change the definition of what "doing business with the city" means

How would you fix NYC government's system of checks and balances and keep officials accountable to the public?

• Give the public advocate more powers, such as power to issue subpoenas and prosecute officials' violations of the city charter
• Change COIB and DOI leadership appointments, so that they are not only appointed by the mayor but also by other branches of government that check the mayor and the city's agencies, such as the city council, public advocate, and/or comptroller
• Have the city council review COIB and DOI internal rules, procedures, and findings
• Conduct an extensive review of the city charter to balance and update government structures
• Readjust term limits to strengthen the city council and reduce mayoral power, allowing council members to serve for 3 terms while the mayor is limited to 2 terms
• Strengthen the role of community boards in neighborhoods' land use decisionmaking, while enhancing oversight of community boards
• Build on NYC's OpenRECORDS by publishing documents in response to Freedom of Information Law requests.

Over the past several years, NYC has developed an Open Data Plan and has been releasing datasets about select city services and operations to the public through the Open Data Portal. Is there any data about city services or operations that you think should or must still be shared with New Yorkers?

Yes, nearly all of it, and it should be structured data that is readable and understandable, and also has granular details. The DPR budget is a great example of a completely opaque aspect of government that lacks transparency.

All cities, including NYC, are "municipal corporations" of state government - and state law dictates what authority cities have over their own government and operations. State law limits NYC government's control over rent regulation (Urstadt Law), mayoral control of city schools, transportation and traffic (the MTA and subways, bridge tolls, and speed cameras and speed limits). As a council member, how would you deal with state government when it gets in the way of your city policy goals?

• This is a case-by-case decision, but I have an excellent and clear public voice and persona, and am more than willing and able to publicly air the ridiculous treatment of our city by state officials, specifically how funding is taken from our taxes and used for upstate development while our subway system (the beating heart of our city) is neglected and abused with additional debt and mismanaged priorities.

In 2016, the NYC Council voted to remove special stipends for chairs of council committees (which had been used as a political tool by the council speaker), while giving all council members a raise from $112,500 to $148,500 - the raise was signed into law by the mayor. If elected, how would you handle this issue if it comes up again?

• The real problem is how our state elected representatives are shortchanged to the point where it is attractive for effective assembly members and senators to leave their posts in order to run for city council. This is where reform should be focused.

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address government structures and accountability in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.

Elections + Campaign Finance

Where do you stand on these proposals to change voting and municipal elections in NYC?
Support - and would like to be prime sponsor on this legislation:

• Instant runoff voting
• Extend the vote to permanent residents

Support:

• Nonpartisan elections
• Expand use of poll workers working shorter shifts (less than the current 15 hour shifts)
• Extend the vote to non-citizens who have applied and are waiting for green cards
• Extend the vote to non-citizens who have been lawfully present for a specified period of time
• Extend the vote to all non-citizens, including undocumented residents

Oppose:

• (Candidate didn't select answers in this category)

Not sure:

• (Candidate didn't select answers in this category)

Should these elements of the public matching system be higher or lower?
Make it higher:

• (Candidate didn't select answers in this category)

Good as is:

• Threshold of funds raised to participate in public matching system ($5,000 for council candidates)
• Maximum public funds payment ($100,100 for council candidates)

Make it lower:

• Contribution limit ($2,750 for council candidates)
• Doing business contribution limit ($250 for council candidates)
• Threshold of donors to participate in public matching system (75 for council candidates)
• Spending limits in years prior to the election year ($49,000 for council candidates)
• Spending limits in the primary election ($182,000 for council candidates)
• Spending limits in the general election ($182,000 for council candidates)

Not sure:

• (Candidate didn't select answers in this category)

What do you think about the role of bundlers in raising campaign funds, lobbyists making donations, and nonprofits of elected officials taking donations from lobbyists?

Please use this space if you'd like to share any other thoughts and proposals to address elections and campaign finance in NYC, or expand your answers to the questions on this topic.