Most Common City Hall Answer to CB1’s Wish List Is ‘Get Lost’
Community Board 1 (CB1) recently received official replies to the 40 budget requests it submitted at the end of last year to the administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani for spending priorities in Lower Manhattan in fiscal year 2027, which begins July 1.
Responses from City Hall to such annual requests fall into six categories. The closest to a thumbs up is “agency supports and can accommodate,” meaning that the municipal government agrees with a proposal and has resources to implement it. The bureaucratic equivalent of “maybe” is “agency does not support but can address the need alternatively,” indicating that City Hall is unpersuaded by a request, but willing to try to address the underlying issue through methods different from the one requested. A diplomatic form of “no” is “agency supports but cannot accommodate,” which denotes agreement with the stated goal, but an inability to allocate resources to it. An undiplomatic form of “no” is “agency does not support and cannot accommodate,” conveying that a City agency has flatly rejected a community board request, and will not fund or implement it. The two remaining (and self-explanatory) responses are “agency does not understand the request as written and requires more clarification” and “this request has already been completed.”
CB1 got the City’s version of “yes” on four requests. For the proposal to provide P.S. 150 (on Trinity Place) with an outdoor gathering space, as well as a safe location for buses to pick up and drop off students, by closing a traffic lane on Edgar Street, the City answered that the Department of Transportation is “evaluating the area around P.S. 150 to assess the feasibility of installing the missing crosswalk and adding other elements to enhance pedestrian safety in the area.” A request to work with the Friends of Barnett Newman Triangle to support, enlarge and beautify the Tribeca park elicited, “we have been working closely with the Friends group to beautify the triangle, remove the old shrubs and put in new planting material. We will continue to coordinate with them to improve the site.”
More nebulous was the City’s reply to CB1’s urging it to “complete construction of East River Waterfront Esplanade up to Brooklyn Bridge.” The answer that, “the East River Waterfront will be rebuilt as part of the FiDi/Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan” sounds encouraging, but elides the fact that no funding has been committed and no start date of construction has been announced for a project expected to cost up to $10 billion and take as much as a decade to complete.
Similarly ambiguous was the response to CB1’s desire to “build income-restricted housing for a mix of family sizes and incomes.” City officials said, “we agree that your district needs additional affordable housing… [and] will continue to use all tools available, including but not limited to subsidy, tax exemptions, and Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) to fund the construction of affordable housing from the development pipeline to maximize available resources.” Apart from a reference to the City’s plan to create new affordable homes as part of a planned development on publicly owned land at 100 Gold Street, this answer commits the City to no specific deliverables or timetable.
Six other proposals were answered with “agency does not support but can address the need alternatively.” These included installing pedestrian safety measures at intersection beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, resurfacing Pearl Street, creating public restrooms alongside the Municipal Building, building another set of restrooms in Gotham Park, implementing a “shared street” for pedestrians and cyclists on Vesey Street, and funding the portion of the Reimagining Canal Street plan that falls within Tribeca.
More than two dozen other CB1 requests were denied, either with “agency supports but cannot accommodate” or “agency does not support and cannot accommodate.” These included proposals for a new public library, an outdoor public pool, and beautification of the Holland Tunnel Rotary, and improvements at Bowling Green Park, City Hall Park, Duane Park, and Collect Pond Park.
A request to fund the buildout of the Estuarium (a facility planned for Pier 26 in the Hudson River Park that will be a combined laboratory, public exhibit and learning space, studying New York Harbor and the larger Hudson River ecosystem) got the reply, “the agency does not understand the request as written and requires more clarification.” (The Estuarium project is a longstanding and well-documented local priority.)
And CB1’s proposal for “renovation and repairs for unfettered access to Brooklyn Bridge Beach with access to the water and maritime uses,” was answered with “this request has already been completed… the fully ADA-accessible get-down at the location of the Brooklyn Bridge Beach has been completed, and includes a locked gate that allows for access to the water via coordination by NYC Parks and the Economic Development Corporation.”