Spreading Love the Brooklyn Way
After completing his two terms as Council Member, Antonio was elected to serve as the 20th President of the greatest borough in the city: Brooklyn. His borough presidency is historic in more ways than one. He is the youngest Borough President elected to a four-year term, the first Latino to hold the office in the borough, and the first Dominican to be elected as a Borough President in NYC.
Safe and Joyful Pregnancies for Brooklyn Moms
After taking office, BP Reynoso set his sights on addressing the maternal health crisis devastating new families in Brooklyn. He vowed to do what he could to close the disparities leading to Black women being 8 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts.
In his first year as Borough President, he allocated the entirety of his Fiscal Year 2023 capital budget – a total of $45 million – to Brooklyn’s three public hospitals to create new and state-of-the-art maternal health facilities. This marked the first time a Borough President has ever allocated an entire fiscal year’s capital funding to one cause, and within one city organization.
A Plan for a Healthy and Housed Brooklyn
In his second year as Borough President, Antonio released his Comprehensive Plan for Brooklyn, the first borough-specific, large-scale planning effort ever in NYC and a model for planning citywide.
The Plan identifies patterns across Brooklyn and shows us what each neighborhood needs and what each neighborhood can give to ensure all New Yorkers are healthy, housed, and supported. For example, while one community district in Brooklyn created 12,000 new units of affordable housing over a ten-year span, another added only 7.
A Pivot to Celebrating Through Service
As New Yorkers began to face more and more struggles in their everyday life, BP Reynoso decided to do something unprecedented: pivot away from the cultural celebrations famous of Borough Presidents’ past and rededicate the office’s resources toward celebrating Brooklyn through service. He’s hosted deed theft prevention workshops, NYC Rent Freeze Program enrollment clinics, shelter animal adoption drives, one-on-one consultations to help homeowners get their DOB summonses corrected, and more. He even converted the Community Room at Borough Hall, a place once known for parties and food, into a satellite Asylum Application Help Center to help undocumented immigrants apply for work authorization. Since its start in March 2024, the site has completed over 5,000 work authorizations.
Watch Borough President Antonio Reynoso’s 2022 inauguration.
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What’s Next
Deputy Borough President, Reverend, and fierce community advocate are all words you can use to describe Kim Council.
Meet Team BKBP, Brooklyn Borough Hall’s small-but-mighty team working hard to advance a Brooklyn for all!