Dear Speaker Adams,
As you negotiate the final budget of this term, I want to thank you and the Council for your advocacy, which has helped to maintain and create important programs for our city. Unlike last year, we’re starting from a place of many wins, including newly baselined funding for education initiatives, cultural programs, and social services, in addition to the influx of funding for housing that the Council secured through last year’s budget and City for All.
Still, the fight to protect our communities from federal budget cuts looms. This budget negotiation presents an opportunity to strengthen existing and create new programs that support our communities through this unstable time. The following are my priorities for the FY 2026 budget. I hope the Council will continue to advocate for these critical initiatives in the coming weeks.
Housing: While I again commend the Council for its advocacy for housing development and preservation, this year I hope that you will turn your attention to homeowners who are struggling to stay in their homes. Homeownership is one of the most important pathways to building and sustaining wealth. Unfortunately, deed theft has become a pressing issue in Brooklyn, especially for older adult homeowners in the central and eastern parts of the borough. When deed theft scammers target these communities, they are trying to displace our neighbors and lock older adults and Black and Brown families out of homes that they have had for generations.
That is why, along with the Brooklyn Delegation, I am proposing a new Anti-Deed-Theft Initiative, building on the Council’s Estate Planning Initiative. This new initiative is modeled on Philadelphia’s Tangled Title Fund, where the City supports legal services for homeowners to cover administrative, legal, and other costs that may arise in resolving a homeownership issue. Rather than funding the homeowners directly as Philadelphia does, this Initiative would go directly to providers to fund critical legal support, educational outreach, and workshops.I am calling for a $5 million allocation to be split evenly between nine organizations: Brooklyn Legal Services, Access Justice Brooklyn, Mobilization for Justice, New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG), Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, CAMBA, City Bar Justice Center, Grow Brooklyn, and the Legal Aid Society. This allocation would considerably increase capacity among these organizations to help keep our neighbors in their homes.
Additionally, I join the Council’s call on the administration to fully fund an updated and expanded Third-Party Transfer program with $600 million in capital (and I support the associated Intro 1063). The historical version of this program had many issues; however, Intro 1063 creates a much stronger tool to hold bad landlords accountable and to preserve existing affordable housing. I also join the Council’s call on the administration to fund headcount at HPD, especially for Development staff, project managers, and staff to administer and oversee the housing lottery. Developers who want to build affordable housing shouldn’t have to wait months or years to have a project manager assigned, and New Yorkers who apply for that housing deserve to have their applications processed in a timely manner.
Education/Youth: Providing free early childcare is critical for NYC families, given our city’s growing affordability crisis. In January, the NYC Comptroller’s Office noted that the average costs for family-based care have increased by 79% since 2019, now at $18,200 per year. Center-based care has also increased by 43%, now at a staggering $26,000 a year. These increases underscore that access to free and low-cost childcare can make the difference between a family staying in NYC or being forced to leave. That’s why the administration must fully match the State’s commitment to Child Care Assistance Program vouchers this year and continue to advocate for the State to renew its previous commitment and even increase it to meet growing demand. The administration also can and should take further steps toward universal free childcare. In addition to protecting and strengthening Promise NYC, the Council should advocate for $25.7 million to create a phase-in of 1,000 new seats to expand the existing universal pre-K and 3k to 2-year-olds.
Aging school infrastructure can hinder student learning, and State mandates regarding class size are now presenting additional challenges. While Brooklyn has sufficient overall capacity, many available seats are far from where students live, making class size reduction difficult. I support calls for an updated capital plan that ensures all schools have space to comply with the law. Additionally, an updated capital plan should prioritize:
- Accessibility: As of the 2023–24 school year, only 44% of Brooklyn schools were fully accessible. While SCA has committed to making all new schools fully accessible, significant gaps remain in districts with lower new seat projections. I support calls for $450 million in capital funding over five years to improve accessibility.
- Air Conditioning: In 2017, SCA invested more than $400 million for air conditioning and related electrical upgrades for all school classrooms. However, this initiative was limited to instructional spaces, leaving outareas of public assembly such as auditoriums, cafeterias, libraries, and gyms. Additionally, the City fails each year to budget for necessary repairs of existing units, forcing school leaders to use their own budgets. Acknowledging the increased frequency of heat waves and heat-associated health concerns, NYC schools must be adequately retrofitted to support students throughout the entire school year.
- Improved project completion times: The percentage of SCA projects completed “on time or early” continues to remain low, with 14% of projects meeting their specified timeline.
I also want to advocate for a $1 million enhancement to the City’s First Readers initiative. Co-founding this program with Councilmember Stephen Levin is one of my proudest accomplishments from my days as Councilmember. It successfully serves families with children ages 0-5 with workshops, events, coaching, and free books to encourage early literacy. This enhancement will help support curriculum development to further improve outcomes.
Health & Mental Health: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, NYC has been experiencing a public mental health crisis. Between 2013 and 2022, the number of people served by the State’s public mental health system increased 23%. We can and must do more to help every New Yorker who needs mental healthcare access it and stop criminalizing people in crisis. That’s why I have endorsed the Progressive Caucus’ Crisis to Care platform, which calls for $90 million in investment into mental healthcare. This includes critical programs such as Forensic Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) and Justice-Involved Supportive Housing (JISH), four new Crisis Respite Centers that serve as alternatives to hospitalization, and 60 new staff lines for Peer Specialists to staff crisis response instead of police. I also support calls for an additional $3.8 million for school-based mental health clinics. Considering the severity and scope of youth mental health concerns, the administration should prioritize funding for co-locating mental health services within existing school-based health clinics.
As you know, maternal health is one of my main priorities, and I want to thank you and this Council for always keeping this issue at the forefront. I support the Council’s advocacy to expand maternal health programs, especially the ask for $5 million for H+H to provide at least one maternal health psychologist in each of its maternity departments. As you know, mental health conditions are the leading cause of maternal mortality, and having staff onsite who can identify and address conditions early can make a huge difference.
Additionally, with Trump’s cuts to gender-affirming care providers already having an impact, we must ensure continued access in New York City. I support the Council’s call for $15 million to support non-profit organizations to fill the gaps left by federally-funded hospitals pulling back their services.
Closing Rikers Island: Rikers Island remains a humanitarian crisis, and closing it as close to the mandated 2027 deadline as possible remains one of my top priorities. To that end, I call on the Council to begin cutting back the Department of Correction’s bloated budget, starting by eliminating the over 1,000 positions that were vacant as of January of this year. Funding should be reallocated to programs that the Council is already supporting, such as Alternatives to Incarceration and planning for Renewable Rikers.
Sanitation: As you are likely aware, my biggest priority related to sanitation is the successful implementation of Commercial Waste Zones (CWZ). Although we passed this legislation in 2019, DSNY recently announced that we should not expect full implementation of the program until 2027, a full eight years later. By all accounts, the pilot district rollout in Queens
Central was a success, so there is no reason that we should have to wait so long for cleaner air, safer streets, and better jobs. DSNY testified at a hearing in April that they had 16 staff working on CWZ, which is half of what they need to implement this program successfully. Additionally, the City’s Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) is due next year. This document can be transformational; thanks to environmental justice advocates, the 2006 SWMP is why we now have the Marine Transfer Stations, which have removed countless trucks from the streets. Due to budget cuts, DSNY fired their consultant and brought work on the 2026 SWMP in-house. Although it is due next year, they have not started outreach and engagement on the plan’s development. Though they testified on the record that work is happening, it is unclear how many staff are dedicated to this work, or whether they will even make the deadline. I am asking the Council to work with DSNY and the administration to make sure that both programs are staffed adequately and executed in a timely manner.
Additionally, I continue to support efforts to containerize waste and expand composting. Our Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) must comply with containerization policy by the end of this year. While this will improve our streetscapes, unfortunately it is an unfunded mandate. I support the Council’s ask for $5 million to support BIDs by supplementing the purchase of containers. I also want to thank the Council for restoring community composting after the administration cut it last year. As you know, the benefits of these programs go much farther than just diversion of waste from landfills, including education and community engagement. I support the Council’s ask for an additional $7 million in baselined funding for these programs.
Aging: According to the NYS Comptroller, due to the rising population of older adults in NYC, we must allocate more resources to them beginning in this fiscal year in order to maintain services. The Council has historically funded the Borough Presidents’ offices to in turn fund programs for older adults through the BP Funding Restoration. The providers we fund are struggling with rising demand in addition to rising costs for food, transportation, case management, and program delivery. That is why our offices collectively are requesting a 50% increase to the BP Funding Restoration, which would bring the total allocation to $1,694,657. This investment is vital to ensuring that service providers can continue delivering high-quality, culturally competent programs to older New Yorkers without interruption or reduction. Additionally, I support the Council’s call for increased capital for Older Adult Centers. This $50 million enhancement will be particularly important for ensuring that the centers can continue to offer fresh and nutritious food.
Immigration: One of the most tangible ways we can fight back against Trump is by protecting our immigrant populations. I support the Council’s call for an enhancement to immigration legal services, including services for unaccompanied minors, the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), and CUNY Citizenship Now.
Community Boards: Community boards are a critical link between the public and City government, weighing in on important issues that impact everything from small businesses to street safety to the availability of affordable housing. Yet currently, the boards are underfunded and understaffed to carry out their Charter-mandated duties. In the long term, I support the creation of an Office of Community Boards to provide necessary support. In the meantime, increasing the boards’ budgets would allow them to better engage with the public, acquire technical assistance in land use planning, improve human resources practices, and more.
This list is by no means comprehensive, and simply seeks to highlight a few priorities in the larger budget conversation. I thank you again for your leadership and your support of these and other important policies. Please don’t hesitate to reach out as budget negotiations continue.
Sincerely,
Antonio Reynoso
Brooklyn Borough President